Such a beautiful man in the legend will naturally choose a handsome male star to play. When I saw the news report before the screening in the UK that it was starring Ben Barnes, I had some doubts. After all, Dorian Gray in the original book has a beautiful image of "scarlet lips with soft curves, blue eyes frank and sincere, and golden hair curly". Although Ben Bassen has soft and beautiful lips, Others have straight brown hair and black eyes. Of course, he and the teenager in the original book have one thing in common that cannot be ignored, that is, they are young and handsome. When I first saw the posters and stills, I didn't think Ben Barnes's appearance was so amazing. It's just a handsome man with a pretty good looks. After watching the trailer, I have a strong expectation for the weird atmosphere in the film, the scenes full of medieval British style and the gloomy and gorgeous visual effects that penetrate the decadent smell. Although it was released in the UK as early as September, I was helpless until the end of December until I saw the film's true face. But fortunately, the time is not long, and it can be regarded as a farewell gift for 2009 that is about to disappear.
The beginning of the film is a good rendering of the ghostly tone of the whole film. The pale and handsome face of Dowling Gray emerges from the black background full of bubbles. What is shown to the audience is not like the painter described in the original book. Basil's studio started, but directly crossed over to that handsome man looking directly at someone below with a complicated expression, his thoughts seemed to drift away to a certain corner of his memory. Suddenly, he turned his hesitation into decisiveness, and then stabbed his body to death without hesitation. A large amount of blood spewed from the body of the deceased and splashed on the pale skin of the handsome man. The camera never showed who the deceased was, but focused on Dowling's facial expressions. The murderer wrapped the blood-stained yellow silk scarf around his hand, and his handsome face showed nervousness and excitement, even obsessive expression, smelling the bloody smell filled with the silk scarf. The gloomy and somewhat perverted character was revealed in an instant. In the next second, the camera switched to the carriage, and Dowling looked coldly at the huge bleeding suitcase beside him, and the camera switched to the river again. In the vast night, Dowling forcefully pushed the suitcase marked with DG into the river. Then the story returned to a year ago, opening the real prologue of the whole story.
Compared with the straightforward narrative of the original work, the beginning of this film can capture the magic of people's hearts in an instant. After all, the dark and bloody murder is more shocking and powerful in terms of visual impact and emotional tone than the pastoral and soft scenery, and it is more in line with modern people's appreciation logic. The story began when Dorian Gray came to London due to the need to inherit his grandfather's inheritance, and was picked up by the butler at the station. After that was the acquaintance of Dowling and Basil. Basil was obsessed with Dowling's beauty and began to create portraits of Dowling. At Dowling's request, he took him to a party and met Lord Henry. This process is not described in the original book, but it adds to the integrity of the story. In this additional content, the film also added a carefully arranged small detail. When Dowling begged Basil to take himself to the banquet, he changed his clothes behind the curtains, and accidentally exposed his white back, staggered. With scars of dark red that were shocking. In the later memory fragments about Dowling, we can see that such scars came from the violent beating of his grandfather with a cane when he was a child. And the shadow of such a tragic and gloomy childhood is not in the original book. Perhaps this increase in detail is the basis for the creator of the script, Toby Finlay, who wanted to show in a deeper level why Dorian Gray’s character degenerates so quickly and violently, making the character image more full and deliberately created. However, I personally feel that this is not directly or too indirectly related to Dowling's subsequent character distortion, but it somewhat adds to the horror and weird atmosphere in the film. At the party, the women were amazed by Dowling's beauty, and Lord Henry's obsession with Dowling also began. From the moment he handed Dowling the first cigarette, it might have indicated that he would pass the depravity to the innocent boy who was once ignorant.
After this, the film began the opening scene in the original work, the dialogue between Henry, Basil and Dowling during the portrait creation, and in the subsequent contacts Henry gave Dowling the perfect guidance on the reasons for the fall. To a certain extent, the greatest "heritor" who made Dowling depraved was none other than Lord Henry. He always believes in the argument that "beauty is more precious than kindness", because his decadent thoughts that beauty will age immediately and cannot be eternal, erodes Dowling's eternal simple heart that longs for beauty like poison. So before he knew it, he sold his soul to the devil, which eventually brought the tragedy to an end.
The acquaintance and love between Dowling and Sybil Wen is pure and beautiful in the film. The young and shy Dowling, and the pure and moving Sybil, the combination of the two seemed as beautiful as the most beautiful all in it. And the only bright picture in the film is limited to these fragments. The dialogue between the happy men and women at the riverbank is clear and affectionate. With the close-to-stop kiss and beautiful nude scenes between the two, Ben Barnes's thin, pale and compact carcass exudes marble-like whiteness, smoothness and femininity. Dowling, who was awakened in a nightmare and wounded himself, talked to Sybil about the shadow of his childhood abuse. When he showed Sybil the scars on his back but found it to be flawless, even if he hadn’t read the original At this time, the audience has more or less guesses about the connection with the portrait about such a weird scene.
After the two were combined, when Daolin announced to everyone that he was going to get engaged, the expressions of the women's disappointment were all described in the film as natural and as it should be. And Lord Henry would naturally not let Dowling belong to a woman easily. He took Dowling to the brothel, let him smoke a big cigarette, and taste the depraved pleasure of promiscuity, and finally let Dowling decide to break up during the quarrel with Sybil. The reason for the change here and the original Dowling is that Sybil found out that she didn't love her because of Sybil's abnormal performance in the drama, which is closer to the emotional thinking of modern people than it is. After all, in today's age, it is really too difficult to understand that you fall in love with someone because you fall in love with his performance, and you don't love someone because of the abnormality of his performance. However, in the original book, Sybil’s brother Jim never met Dowling and decided to kill Dowling after many years. This is compared with the plot in which Jim was arranged to find Dowling when Sybil died and tried to kill him. , I think the original work is more dramatic. The death of Sybil almost collapsed Dowling, and the soothing words of deviating from the world that Lord Henry said in the mouth of the lotus flower also gave Dowling a reason to feel relieved. It was just such a reason that swallowed Dowling's loyalty and purity of feelings, and thus completely degenerated.
In the middle of the film, there is a small climax in the story-the plot in which Dowling kills Basil. The reason is the same as the original, because Basil believes that Dowling's life is too depraved, and hopes to save such a pure boy from the beginning. In the play, it is bolder to express that Dowling had an unconventional relationship with a mother and daughter under the instigation of Lord Henry, and even his unethical sex with Basil himself, which made the corruption and depravity in the original work. Played to the extreme. The conflict broke out when Basil hoped to exhibit that portrait. There is no Alan Campbell who helped Dowling destroy Basil in the film. I still feel that the original work is more cautious about this. Of course, in the film, when Dowling took out the corpse from the box and discarded it, the scene of the suitcase filled with stones and pushed into the river was even more shocking. The bloody corpse, the head that was rolled in the suitcase without being thrown out for the first time, added to the film's horror atmosphere. When that huge suitcase was immersed in the embankment, Dorian Gray's humanity was also completely degraded. When Dorian Gray's conscience was completely destroyed, he led an extremely desolate and almost abnormal life. The film uses a lot of colorful scenes to describe this complex. Entangling with naked young men and women, drinking a woman's blood, being beaten to the blood, and self-mutilating with a bayonet...The beautiful, exposed, sensual scenes of the scenes of degeneration are strongly shocked. The nerves of the audience.
Finally one day. Dowling felt tired of life, so he decided to travel far. When he strongly invited Lord Henry to travel with him, Henry had to decline Dowling's invitation because his child was about to be born.
"Tell me everything you see."
"I always tell you everything. "
-These two sentences record the long goodbye between the two.
There are no fragments of Dowling's travels for several years in the film, but a few fragments of the letters Dowling wrote to Henry telling part of his experience. Through the lens, Henry looked out the window and told the audience that several years had passed when his little daughter was playing outside.
It wasn't until one day that the still handsome Dowling appeared at a party and looked at his old friends and the women who admired him. He was shocked to realize that decades had passed. In addition to the aging people, the director also uses the soldiers on the street very delicately, the original horse-drawn carriages turned into cars and other details to show the changes of the times. In this gathering, Dowling met a young woman full of the breath of the new era, Emily. During the conversation with Lord Henry, Dowling accidentally discovered that this woman was Henry's daughter.
Inevitably, Emily is still in the fascination with Dowling just like other women. It was precisely because of her love that Daolin's closed heart was opened again. They began to fall in love, and eventually fell in love. Lord Henry couldn't tolerate this happening, and he started trying to find the secret that Dowling kept so young, and finally fixed his gaze on the portrait that Dowling had hidden early. On the other hand, Dowling began to feel uneasy in his conscience and began to hope to be a good person again. For this anxiety, he went to the river where Sybil was buried, went to the church to confess, and finally attracted Sybil's old brother Jim to chase down again. When Jim was accidentally hit and killed by a train, Dowling's long-closed guilt and conscience burst out like a volcanic eruption.
At the end of the film, when Henry discovered Dowling’s secret, when he burned Dowling’s portrait with an oil lamp, when Emily came and begged Dowling to come out of the room, and Dowling desperately held her from the iron bar. The whole play reached its climax when she told her "You are the only one in my heart" and returned to the burned portrait without hesitation. In the end, Dorian Gray held a sharp sword and stabbed the evil and ugly soul that was ready to appear in the portrait, and was buried in the flames. Lord Henry also destroyed half of his face in the fire and made his daughter break with him because he resented what he had done to Dowling. In the last few minutes of the film’s end, when he walked into the storage room and watched Dorian Gray regain his beautiful portrait again, he said, "Poor boy, only I can bear to see you." Then he turned and left. In the closed dark room, the originally gentle and beautiful Daolin in that portrait gradually changed again, the original kindness disappeared again and slowly turned into a cold and cruel expression.
This ending may be to leave the audience a suspenseful foreshadowing, implying that Dowling did not die, so the portrait will begin the decadent cycle again. It is also a higher level of spiritual hint, telling people that the degeneration of the soul is endless. In any case, this kind of ending storytelling that did not appear in the original is more complete and suspenseful, which can be regarded as icing on the cake. Although I don't like the appearance of Lord Henry's daughter, a character that hasn't appeared in the original book, I prefer Dorian Gray just because of his own liberation and hope to re-behave rather than love. And Lord Henry should also be described in the original book, even if he learned that Basil was killed by Dowling, he was indifferent and numb and cold. But relative to the sudden end of the original work, such completeness may not be a completeness.
As far as actor performance is concerned, Ben Barnes's acting skills are remarkable in this film. Although it is a little immature compared to the powerful veteran Colin Firth, it is a far cry from Prince Caspian in "The Chronicles of Narnia 2". He combined the simplicity and ignorance of his youth, the gloomy and sophisticated after his middle age, and the aristocratic temperament of England with great success in showing his characters. Especially those dark black eyes that are full of magical power, expressing emotions unreservedly and vividly. Of course, I still can't help but say a few words. Some people may think that Ben Barnes is not particularly handsome when looking at the pictures, but in the film, the lively Ben Barnes can definitely be described as impeccably handsome. The jade-like slender and tall figure can definitely satisfy the erotic pleasure of sex girls. As far as I am an honorary member of the Appearance Association, the only downside is that the women in this film do not have any amazing or particularly beautiful actors. Perhaps the so-called British temperament beauty is better in temperament, not beauty.
I wanted to write a review myself, but I was moved by this film review. Turn around and talk about it. I decided to watch the movie after reading this film review.
Original source: http://movie.xunlei.com/comment/107020
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