Connecting Reality and Beyond
Review of "Clouds of Sils Maria" by Olivier Assayas
Juliette Binoche is a very special presence in the films "Clouds of Sils Maria" and "Non-Fiction" directed by Olivier Assayas. She plays the role of an actress in both films, but she sometimes "jumps" out of the situation through the current dialogue of the film to become the real Juliette Binoche.
In fact, "Irma Vep" in 1999 already approached this characteristic by Maggie Cheung playing herself, but compared to "Clouds of Sils Maria" the audience will find that this intertextual property is too concrete and thorough. The intertextual attributes of Jean-Pierre Léaud and Vincent Macéigne, who played the director (an incarnation of Assayas himself) in the film and the TV series of "Irma Vep" respectively, are slightly simpler, without much room for the depth of characters. In this way, "Clouds of Sils Maria" elevates the intertextuality of its characters to a level of abstraction, with depth, and if nothing else, allows the real actors to truly merge with their characters into a new form of "two sides with one body".
At the beginning of "Clouds of Sils Maria", the two main characters Maria (Juliette Binoche) and Val (Kristen Stewart) are tired of dealing with various business chores, and the sense of confinement and anxiety in the train space is continuously piled up. When the protagonists arrive in the Swiss Maloja area, the spectacular mountain scenery and snake-like winding "Maloja Cloud" will be anxiety and sense of closure, replaced by a fresh, comfortable naturalistic dialogue situation. The contrast between the two environments makes the area seem isolated from reality, like a fantasy dream, which lays an important foundation for the subsequent plot and narrative tone.
At first, these dialogue situations are simple, with several exchanges of viewpoints bringing out more of the characters' characteristics, and Maria begins to reveal her "mid-life crisis". Jo-Ann will play the role of "Sigrid", a character Maria has played before. Maria is too old to play the role of Sigrid's rival, "Helena". This happens to be the role that Maria is afraid of and hates, because Maria still thinks she is the young Sigrid and does not want to accept the middle-aged Helena.
A crucial aspect of the film is the dialogue between Marial and Val, who share a similar unequal relationship (employer-employee) with the characters (Sigrid and Helena). As a result, the contradictions and conflicts that are supposed to be a play within a play gradually become chaotic, as if they are about to break through the fictional boundaries and come to reality, which makes all the dialogues hard to distinguish and elusive. At this moment, the audience can already find an elusive circuit between Maria, Jo-Ann, Helena and Juliette Binoche, who are in three different realities (the film, the play and the real world), but they all seem to have different aspects and degrees of similarity and intertextual relationship: Jo-Ann seems to be the personification of Maria when she was young; Helena is both Maria is the role that Maria will play and also seems to be the personification of Maria in her middle age; Maria is the role played by Juliette Binoche, but both are very much the same in terms of profession, age and seniority. If so, then why Maria can not be the personification of Juliette Binoche? When the audience starts with this line of thought and extrapolates outward, they will find more such loops: " Val-Sigrid- Kristen Stewart ".
Characters of different dimensions entwine with each other, projecting their own characteristics onto each other, and seeing in each other the characteristics of the self in the third-person perspective. Abel Ferrara in "Pasolini" similarly constructs this superposition state of multiple realities in the same character: "Willem Dafoe - Pasolini in the film - Pasolini in the real world". This kind of one person playing multiple roles, connecting the circuit of reality and fiction, can stimulate the audience's desire to explore the characters. "You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet" directed by Alain Resnais uses the opposite constructive logic, i.e., multiple characters playing one role. Both methodologies have their strengths, but Assayas' approach certainly allows for a high degree of freedom in viewing. For example, the viewer is perfectly free to speculate whether Juliette Binoche, facing Kristen Stewart, will feel the same fear of being gradually forgotten by the times that Maria feels when facing Jo-Ann? Because of this, the audience's empathy for this character is overwhelming. Watching "The Clouds of Sils Maria" is like watching a documentary on the life of Juliette Binoche, the great actress who left so many deep memories in our hearts. To put it more abstractly, it's as if we can peek into the life of a real "person" through a fictional film, convinced of everything that happens on screen. The exploration of the characters, starting from the text, is one of the great pleasures of watching "The Clouds of Sils Maria".
Val, as Maria's personal assistant, seems to have always been Maria's accessory. While Maria gradually reveals her childish side, she always maintains an unperturbed and calm state. Many viewers may be confused by Val's unexplained disappearance at the end of the Chapter 2, because Assayas never explains why she disappeared, and the only clue left for the audience is a seemingly insignificant argument between Val and Maria.
When the two of them get lost in the mountains, Val's long-pent-up frustration finally explodes: "I can walk you through the words, but I don't see the point... You hate the play, you hate 'her', you don't have to take it out on me." . On the surface, "she" refers to Helena, a character Maria hates; another hidden interpretation is that "she" refers to to Sigrid, the character that Helena hates, which is the role that Val has been playing in the couplet. At this point, we can finally understand why Val gets too involved in the play: as time passes, Maria becomes more and more like a real "person" (becomes Juliette Binoche), and Val, on the other hand, becomes more and more like a fictional character (becomes Sigrid), which is why Val is hurt by Helena (Maria). The fundamental difference between the two is that Maria is convinced that the play is fictional and foolish, while Val believes that the play is often more real than life. This disagreement eventually leads the two characters to choose different paths: one chooses to return to reality, while the other chooses to live in a fictional fantasy (i.e. Maloya). The film also reaches the pinnacle of the junction between truth and fiction at this point.
In the Epilogue, the audience and the characters return to the beginning of the story, to a stressful and irritating reality. The superimposed states of the characters seem to disappear, the experience in Maloya is like a phantom dream, and Maria seems to have long forgotten the memory. But is this really the case? In an unpleasant conversation between Maria and Jo-Ann, that is, with her "past self", Maria laughs at herself as if she is still living in the era when she was still Sigrid: "You think you have forgotten your old habits, but they all come back, I have to break them." Even though Maria seems awkward and redundant at this moment, what we see is: when Jo-Ann took over the role from her, she seems to have suddenly woken up to something, or let go of something: she accepted the fact that the times have changed, and was also open to the change of the main character. She began to act like a seasoned senior, reassuringly passing her stage to her juniors despite the unpleasant circumstances, and leaving the hard-won acting opportunities to the talents belonging to the current generation. She chooses to quietly fade away and disappear from this era.
As the camera captures Maria's confident, glowing face as she waits for the show to begin, it is as if we are seeing Juliette Binoche looking back at each of the characters she has played in the past and saying goodbye to them one by one. Time is also at this moment forever fixed in the chaotic zone between reality and fiction. I think, in this moment, Assayas and Juliette Binoche together announced the end of the old era represented by Binoche, and the arrival of a new, infinite possibilities of the new era.
The Sense of Alienation
Review of "Personal Shopper" by Olivier Assayas
Listing three films by Olivier Assayas in which women are the main characters: "Irma Vep", "Boarding Gate" and "Personal Shopper", it is easy to see the gradual evolution of Assayas' style from the 90s to the 10s. All three films seem to me to share the same essence, but the forms and methodologies they use to express this essence are different. It is precisely because of this that the audience can feel and empathize with the emotions hidden in the films and the characters. This is a formal and cosmetic difference from other films that render emotions.
Simply put, all three female-driven films exploit the quality of " alienation" by placing the main characters in unfamiliar, detached environments and people in order to highlight their isolation and loneliness. Interestingly, all three films are driven by a vague, genre-defying, suspenseful shell, and if one focuses only on appearances, one is likely to get carried away by the genre logic of the films and lose sight of the emotional core of the films. This spontaneous development and unclear logic of the genre framework is also part of the reason for the criticism.
One of Assayas's best-known masterpieces in China, the 1996 film "Irma Vep" is a textual "metafilm" that not only reinforces the emotions surrounding Maggie Cheung, but also allows Assayas's radical expression to find a clever footing at the time. In the film, Maggie Cheung, who plays herself, comes to France to work with an unfamiliar crew on the film "Irma Vep", while the director, played by Jean-Pierre Léaud, can be seen as the embodiment of Assayas himself. As a Chinese viewer, seeing the Asian-faced Maggie Cheung interacting with a foreigner in a situation where she does not speak the same language and does not fit in, you will immediately feel a strong sense of alienation and loneliness. Assayas' attempt to highlight the identity of the protagonist indirectly leads the Chinese audience to "identify" with the Asian-faced protagonist and therefore feel a deeper empathy with the character. At the same time, thanks to the intertextual relationship between the characters and the director himself, the end of the film, which seems to have a very different tone from the main film, can be seen as a showcase for Assayas: in the film, the nervous and eager Léaud makes a masterpiece of a short film, while outside the film, the destruction of the audience's expectations brings a real climax to the slow-paced film. It is a clear and subtle demonstration of Assayas' directorial will and talent.
In 2007's "Boarding Gate," the identities of the characters and their environments are swapped: Asia Argento plays the protagonist who is forced to live in exile on the streets of Hong Kong, running through the unfamiliar city in order to survive. The spatial relationship between the characters and their environment becomes very apparent in the constant high-speed editing and camera movements. On top of that, the characters' illogical, spontaneous and emotional behavior makes the film full of uncertainty, and the trajectory of the plot becomes unpredictable. However, this does not prevent those moments of respite, which belong to Asia Argento alone, from bringing out the emotion of loneliness, and the uncertainty of future destiny deepens this feeling, which is the meaning of the randomness of the plot. Here is a guess, perhaps for the European and American audience, the European and American faces of the protagonist in the middle of the Asian faces of the alienation can also deepen their sense of "identity" of the character, and thus feel a stronger emotion from it.
Continuing the suspenseful elements of "Boarding Gate", "Personal Shopper" in 2016 presents a "Irma Vep"-like everyday situation in most of its sequences. But further than the previous two films, Assayas no longer needs to use the repulsive relationship between the character's identity and the environment to render the emotions, nor does he use radical expressions; Kristen Stewart is perfectly attuned to the environment with which she finds herself, while the setting and the atmosphere of the film itself are cool, figurative and possess a strong sense of detachment. The editing and plot development also have a sense of randomness and white space, which could be criticized for being sketchy, yet I see it as a sign that Assayas has weakened the director's presence, trusting and handing over sovereignty to the characters and the environment.
When the camera records the expressionless and cold Kristen Stewart moving from place to place in the usual way, doing what she thinks is a boring job, we seem to see the microcosm of every lonely soul living in modern society. To quote the short review of my friend"MiGong": "A movie with only characters and only one character", it is easy to understand that what moves us are the characters and the loneliness surrounding them. The text messages sent by the ghosts in the movie, can't they be our friends in our cell phones? The ghosts that appear everywhere from time to time, can't they be the embodiment of our obsessions? These things may be extremely illusory, but they are always tied to us, to Kristen Stewart.
In the most anti-typical and atypical way, "Personal Shopper" portrays the true picture of some people in modern life. This is deeply buried in the genre framework, and is delicately depicted and expressed in the most inconspicuous way. But it is precisely these hidden, sincere and life-affirming things that make the film's existence extra precious.
The Beauty of Clichés
Review of "Starship Troopers" by Paul Verhoeven
The hard demand for creative ideas, quality of special effects and emotional impact in genre films today has pushed films further and further into the capitalist realm. This is an inevitable trend in this era, but also a very normal and uncritical phenomenon. The mainstreaming and commercialization of science fiction films has created a small number of films that I like very much (e.g. Blade Runner, Interstellar). But it has also allowed some movies that I think are very crude and cheesy to dominate most of the market. At the end of April this year, I watched Paul Verhoeven's "Starship Troopers" for the first time, and it largely turned my understanding of science fiction and Verhoeven's work upside down. What I discuss in this article is my rethinking of Verhoeven's films, and of the genre in its broader definition.
Before watching "Starship Troopers," I had already seen two of Verhoeven's later films: "Showgirls," "Elle" and "The Black Book. Based on these three films, I established at the time that Verhoeven's authorial style was a strong sense of spectacle (i.e. "the sense of presence") and a story with a weak sense of realism and a strong sense of absurdity. Nowadays, Johnnie To & Wai's romantic comedies, Tobe Hopper, Marcus Nispel's horror comedies all put this creative vision in their own framework of expertise to use. And after watching "Starship Troopers" I realized that Verhoeven had already started and used this style to perfection back in 1997. He placed this sense of dystopia in the framework of science fiction, making every dramatic point with its clever integration, not only to achieve a strong satire of militarism, but also to subvert the traditional thinking of the audience watching the genre films.
When we watch Verhoeven's films with the expectation of empathizing with the characters, it is easy to see that Verhoeven's characters are "distorted". They are created based on the audience's stereotypical understanding of characters in genre films, which is why they are so fake and illogical. Not only the characters, but also his films themselves have many such overtones. Especially in films like "Black Book," "Showgirls," and "Elle," which feature women, the absurd contexts unfold and the distorted characterizations allow these films to touch lightly but not slip into feminist texts. The audience is able to take a break from the issues and focus their attention on the more important characters themselves.
What makes "Starship Troopers" a masterpiece of science fiction and the ultimate expression of Verhoeven's style and philosophy are the poorly rendered images (crude special effects), the anti-mainstream camera language (rudimentary filming) and, most importantly, the faceted characters that give the film a peculiarly "artificial" and "intentionality". That is, these false and crude treatments are intentional, not limited by the cost and simplicity of the production. What the audience needs to do is to actively accept the cliché of the setting and the crudeness of the special effects, and then feel the absurdity and comedy of the film.
Unlike "Crocodile"'s comprehensive presentation of the creative vision, and unlike "Scream"'s verbal transmission to the audience, "Starship Troopers" is always leading the audience to form a new way of watching with those clever nodes. This quality comes precisely from Verhoeven's carefully designed and subtly placed satirical strokes. The inserted mediums and the exaggerated absurdity of the characters allow the audience to perceive the authorship of the film and, in turn, to accept the "clichés" of the film. Thus, the film constitutes a satire of militarism in its text, while targeting some clichéd Hollywood genre films in its content presentation. Also based on the stereotypical setting, Starship Troopers is absurdly funny, while some Hollywood genre films stop at boring, hard to watch and on pins and needles.
Overall, "Starship Troopers" shines by disguising its authorship through the genre film framework. As such it represents a successful fusion of commercialism and authorship, a landmark commercial production. The new thought it gave me was: Does the clichéd setting have the potential to subvert the entire film and change the way it is viewed? How should the director confront the "cliché" and use it as an indelible sparkle in the film?
Hooper's Horror-Comedy
Review of "Crocodile" by Tobe Hooper
Horror films have accumulated a wide range of audiences over the years of its development, and along with the expansion of the audiences, today's mainstream commercial horror films are being forced to respond to audience expectations for "Thrilling" "Bloody," and "Innovative" and other aspects. However, some of the horror films go too far on these aspects and cause discomfort to the audiences. The "Discomfort" mentioned here does not mean to feel frightened, scary, but refers to a sense of rejection of the content in those films. Whenever I see these kind of films, I would think of some new ideas regarding the good horror films in my opinion. To talk about these thoughts, I must introduce Tobe Hooper, a director who has changed my concept of horror films to a great extent.
Tobe Hooper made his 1974 classic "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre", which received a lot of praise from audiences and critics. However, Hopper's creative transition in the '00s with "Crocodile" was not understood by most audiences and received extremely low ratings on major rating sites. However, I think what really made Hopper a "Master of Horror Films" was the unpopular "Crocodile", which led to a new understanding of horror films and a new method of watching it in a way that most audiences rejected.
The story of "Crocodile" is very clichéd: a group of men and women are chased by a giant crocodile while they are out camping, and they go through a lot of hardships and eventually resolve the crisis. The key of this film, however, is that the narrative tone of the film unexpectedly contradicts the audience's preconceived notion of a "Slasher Film". The witty, humorous tone and plot carry through the entire film. The characters' anti-intellectual, flat, and confusing behavioral logic is complemented by the cheesy story, making the film an outright absurdist comedy. The main content of the film is not the process of the predator chasing and killing the characters, but the absurd and ridiculous behaviors of the characters and the funny interaction between them. These flat characters, who stay in, and even far exceed, the audience's stereotypical image of the genre films, largely reinforce the film's humorous narrative tone, thus turning the film into a new type of horror comedy that is "the more clichéd the setting, the more laughable it is".
It is easy to see the influence of Paul Verhoeven's "Starship Troopers" on "Crocodile". Both are films with a strong authorship in the guise of a commercial film framework, and the flat characters used for satire in Verhoeven's film have become a tool to strengthen the comedy and absurdity in the "Crocodile". What both films have in common is that the director's attitude toward clichés is not to reject them, but to rework them in order to make the audience aware of their positive impact on their perception. Therefore, it is not an exaggeration to call these two works "Landmark Commercial Films".
Marcus Nispel, an effective inheritor of Hooper's methodology, has worked to integrate the narrative tone of Hooper's works from the 1970s (e.g. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre) with those from the '00s (e.g. Crocodile). His "Friday the 13th" and "Exeter" are both in a constant "thrilling-funny" variation. Although Hideo Nakata was not influenced much by Hooper, his horror films such as "Stigmatized Properties" that place the narrative in the present and introduce a modern media still manage to create a natural sense of comedy and mix American horror with Japanese horror. Wes Craven's "Scream" series, on the other hand, chooses to teach audiences by listing the cliché of horror films and always follows this track, hoping that audiences will be able to get rid of the negative definition of "cliché" and thus understand the "cliché" films like "Crocodile" that have a more external point of view and always display the director's creative vision.
I am not completely against today's mainstream commercial horror films, but in the face of the above mentioned directors and their films, many mainstream horror films in this area of mediocrity will be difficult to cover up. Although the audio-visual tricks can hardly make a qualitative change in the creative vision at the root, they still create a small number of mainstream commercial horror films that are enjoyable and immersive to watch, and these are also films that fascinate me . But as a fan of the genre films, I still hope to see more horror films, even the genre films which under a broader definition and directors with a new creative vision, not to be buried by the mainstream.
Understanding the Heterogeneity
Review of "Cosmopolis" by David Cronenberg
Audiences familiar with Cronenberg's films from the 70s-90s may find "Cosmopolis" to be a film that cannot be accessed using previous methods of watching. This is not Cronenberg's first involvement in the field of literary adaptations, as 1991's "Naked Lunch" is a typical, "Cronenberg-esque" adaptation. By comparing the two films, we can discover the evolution of Cronenberg's authorial style over the past 20 years better, namely the de-spectacle and the creation of "heterogeneity". Understanding the sense of heterogeneity is the key to "Cosmopolis" and even "Maps to the Star"
Before entering the main text, it is important to explain a common mistake of watching this film: you cannot discover the author's style after 10s of Cronenberg's film by cutting into the film from a completely textual perspective. This also includes some viewers (myself) who, after reading the original, try to find aggression in the dialogue and desire figurative features. Otherwise, "Cosmopolis" is considered to be a common visualization film that lacks authorship
The audience should use a direct, simple way of entering the film to avoid being trapped in a textual vortex. In "Cosmopolis," the dialogue is choreographed, and the fluidity of the progression is the first thing that is noticed. The characters enter and leave the situations, and the contextualization is omitted, blurring the identity and purpose of the characters and directly hindering watching this film from textual aspect. The efficient context switching and the single point of view inside the car successfully eliminate the audience's ability to perceive time, and the only medium that reflects the view of time is the street scene outside the car window. When the audience tries to look at the street scene to find evidence to prove the sequence of the dialogue, they will find that the environment outside the car is always covered by a blurred, distorted digital filter. This is where the heterogeneity comes in。
In "Maps to the Star", Cronenberg uses the characters' rigid acting style to create a sense of fright and to satirize the phallic approach to the Hollywood movie stars. In "Cosmopolis", the unevenness of the composition, the mechanical coldness conveyed in the forward and backward shots, and the hollow, mechanical state of the characters all effectively enhance the flow of heterogeneity. The audience then needs to discover these implicit audiovisual elements on their own and perceive their impact on the overall watching experience.
The unknown environment outside the car and the subsequent riots on the street help the viewer feel attached to the interior of the car and perceive it as a safe, orderly space. Once the protagonist leaves the car and walks towards the outside environment, the audience immediately feels a sense of unease. The lack of logic and heterogeneity in the progression of the plot, whether the protagonist interacts with other characters or enters other scenes, puts the film in a dangerous atmosphere at all times. This sense of unease deepens the audience's understanding of the film's structure, that is, the process of moving from order to disorder and the slow collapse of the internal world.
Compared to the same year's "Holy Motors", both films display a sense of "amateurism" on the image level, but the subsequent trends are very different: Leos Carax deconstructs and realizes the film's self-reflexivity; Cronenberg creates a series of situations and heterogeneous images in the textual vortex, pure on the surface but chaotic on the inside. But they both achieve the same goal, namely, a kind of narrative liberation. When the audience's point of view is no longer limited to the story, the possibilities of cinema will be infinite.
