Red post box on Escher Street
Director: Yuan Ziwen
Writers: Yuan Ziwen
Starring: Morgan Maara / Tomoko Fujita / Akira Fukikoshi / Marina Ozawa / Ryotaro
Genre: Drama / Comedy
Screening Date: 2020-10-04 (Japan)
The mention of Yuan Ziwen must be inseparable from incest, broken corpses, blood and other words, but this time, Yuan Ziwen has brought us a "small fresh" movie full of grass, breeze, and flowers (do you believe?). ）。 In addition, the setting of the play-within-a-play makes people get lost in a maze of endless loops.
Pictured| stills from the movie "Real Devil's Game" (2015).
Pictured| stills from the movie "The Red Mailbox on Escher Street" (2020).
narrative
Collage with faces into endless circles
Japanese director Kobayashi is recruiting actors for his new film "Masquerade", which has attracted countless passers-by to audition, and they have thrown their registration forms into the red mailbox on the side of the road according to the requirements of the crew, and it is the red mailbox that brings them all together to compete for the opportunity to participate in "Masquerade", and in the end, they achieve a chaotic and completely free resistance through the filming of "Masquerade".
Natsume, Kiriko, Yasuko, and Hirowa in the film are all people who have nothing to do with the film industry, but they are all people who are deeply trapped in the predicament of life, and the movie "Masquerade" has become a kind of resistance medium for them to pursue freedom.
Figure | "bad girl" Natsume in the eyes of the public
Natsume is a bad girl in the traditional moral opinion, and other girls form a girl gang all day "not to do the right thing", she is introverted in appearance but sexual desire, in the audition of the masquerade, her monologue shows her desire to get rid of moral shackles, be herself, and become a "bad girl" in the eyes of the public.
Figure | Looking for your own kiriko
Kiriko is a woman who cannot get out of her husband's death, and her fanatical love for her deceased husband makes her live completely for her deceased husband, and after playing the role of "Masquerade" again and again and expressing herself with her lines, she gradually finds herself and constantly fights for the freedom of self-expression.
Unlike the weakness that Natsume and Kiriko sometimes present, Yasuko, who lives on the brink of love and death, uses all her strength to frantically rebel against the restraints of social morality on her. Compared with others, she is more like a leader in this group, her resistance is simple and rough compared to other ways of resistance, and her existence is more like a projection of the superego in the hearts of other characters.
Figure | Kobayashi and his girlfriend
In addition, director Kobayashi Masa is the projection of Yuan Ziwen, and Kobayashi's screenwriter girlfriend is the projection of the side of Kobayashi who is following the inner self-judgment, in fact, everyone in this movie is a projection of each other, and their different faces together form a collective resistance above individual consciousness. The film's multi-line scattered narrative method is very cleverly collaged with this mutually projected face. Many characters are like multiple rivers, and each river eventually merges into the same raging river.
Picture | Stills from "The Red Mailbox on Escher Street"
In addition, in the audition of many faces again and again, and the shooting of "Masquerade" again and again, the chaos repeatedly presented is also in line with the finishing sentence in the movie, "Life is like running on an oval ring, turning in a circle, living in a continuous cycle, trapped in the same place." This repetitive collage of content also makes the film extremely rhythmic, which is not difficult to think of Shepard's tone, presenting an infinite sense of tension climbing in the process of repetitive scale transformation.
The setting of the imagery
About grass, florets and cement roads
It can be seen that the theme of "rebellion for freedom" runs through the film, and this theme is not only reflected in the plot content, but also in the video style. Compared with Yuan Ziwen's other films, this film is not bloody and rough, but has a lot more natural breathing. In place of the flesh-and-blood blurred corpses are the grass that moves with the wind under the handheld camera, the curtains that gently stir, and the small yellow flowers on the side of the road. Through this film, it can be seen that Yuan Ziwen's expression of freedom is no longer limited to rough presentation, he can already capture those delicate subtle things beyond the rough lines.
In addition, the cement road is also an element that cannot be ignored. In the film, Kobayashi's girlfriend's sentence "The whole world is dominated by cement roads, they are neither good nor evil, but are used to dominate other people." It makes us understand that Yuan Ziwen's reflection on the image of the "cement road" is a symbol of control. In the film, the cement road is always full of obstacles, and on the cement road, there are useless traffic police set up by the government to block the way of the characters to their destinations, and there are countless passers-by who walk through painful resistance and are indifferent. We can see that almost every important character will have a scene walking on the cement road, and although they have nothing to do with the plot, they are expressing their struggle against the cement road by walking firmly. Even in the end, director Kobayashi is running on a cement road to chase the illusion of his dead girlfriend. The long running image here may be director Yuan Ziwen's tribute to Shuji Terayama. Director Shuji Terayama expressed his resistance to the cement road to the extreme in the film "Throw Away the Books and Go to the Street".
Not only Shuji Terayama, but we can also see Yuan Ziwen's homage to many films in the film, such as his tribute to the classic shot of "Song in the Rain" and the tribute to the wind blowing photograph shot in Yang Dechang's "Terrorist", which expresses a certain poetic aesthetic of violence.
Figure | Poster for Shuji Terayama's film "Throw Away the Books and Go to the Street"
Figure | Poster for the Japanese version of the film "Terrorist" directed by Yang Dechang
Drama within play
What is true and what is false?
The most notable point of "The Red Post Box on Escher Street" is the setting of the play-within-a-play, where Yuan Ziwen made a film in which he was making a movie. The film opens with the real opening of "The Red Post box on Escher Street", the film abandons the traditional film title form to introduce the actors, but through the shooting road actors have entered the picture to step out of the picture to complete the introduction of the actors, these actors are both the actors of the movie "The Red Post box of Escher Street" (most of the characters are also the first time to participate in the film performance) and the actors of the film "Masquerade". This form blurs the boundaries between the inside of the screen and the outside of the screen, and at the same time makes people wonder what is real.
Figure | The beginning of the movie is the opening board of the whole movie
In the movie, the screen appears several times. For example, inside the screen is the shooting screen of the "Masquerade" crew, off-screen is Kobayashi as a director looking at the screen inside the screen, he did not pay any attention to the star star in the center of the screen, but cared about the blurred face of Kiriko behind the lead actor, he understood that the center of the screen is false, and the blurred kiriko face behind it is the true embodiment of the movie. Therefore, the most real life is in the background inside the screen, blurred like a ghost. Even more ingeniously, Kobayashi is seeing the real ghost on the screen, that is, his dead girlfriend, and he sees the ghost illusion in his heart, but this false illusion presents Kobayashi's incomparably real inner state.
Figure | Kobayashi is looking at his girlfriend on the monitor
Also in the setting of the play-within-a-play, in another scene on the set, the cinematographers of the "Masquerade" crew are shooting around the star starring, while the cinematographer of the real film "Red Postbox on Escher Street" hides behind the camera to shoot the real protagonists of the film, the group actors of the "Masquerade" crew, and the real camera follows the main actors like ghosts, it captures the most real group of people in the "Masquerade" crew, even captures Kobayashi's ghost girlfriend, and it also captures the "Masquerade" crew. The star star and cinematographer of the "Masquerade" crew, the photographer of "The Red Post box on Escher Street" shot freely with a real camera, breaking the barrier of the play-within-a-play, breaking the false barrier.
Figure | The movie "Red Mailbox on Escher Street"
In the final shot of the film, Kiriko and Yasuko break into the real streets of Japan, shout slogans, run, and then the camera for the filming of "The Red Post Box on Escher Street" is blocked by the police, which is undoubtedly the strongest irony of truth and falsehood in the film.
Photo | Kiriko and Yasuko run onto the streets of Japan, chased by police and blocked from camera footage
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