In the short film "The Secret of the School Choir", the director carefully uses a variety of audiovisual elements, as well as the plain image style throughout the film, to depict for the audience a children's voice war against the adult world, children's innocence and the secular utilitarianism of the adult world collide and confront in the sound, completing the simple awakening of individual rights and equality consciousness, and perhaps the director wants to use this to allude to the "aphasiars" in mainstream society, as well as their survival conditions that are suppressed and deprived. With its outstanding image style and profound theme, the film won the 89th Academy Award for Best Live-Action Short Film.
In this film with the choir as the main body, the sound is naturally a strong stroke in the film. In the middle of the film, Sophie and Lisa listen to the symphony with headphones, and Sophie has long been a child who has been deprived of the right to sing by the teacher, and the magnificent symphony in the headphones has become the song of life in Sophie's heart. At this point, the film has also taken a turn, Sophie began to fight from the original "silent" state, and all this has a more touching power under the background of the sound. In addition, in the film, you can glimpse that the director has another interpretation of the sound, in the final chorus competition, the children in order to retaliate and protest against the teacher's injustice and oppression, choose to sing silently, at this time the silence is better than the sound, the unique treatment of the sound pushes the film into a new climax, a child like Sophie remains silent here, which just symbolizes the awakening of the rights and equal consciousness of the broader aphasiars, so that the film also has a more far-reaching significance.
Not only the sound, but also in terms of tone, the director also exerts his "plain image style" to the fullest. The whole film is set in warm tones, but it should be noted that the warm tones in the film are mixed with a little darkness. In the shooting of most of the characters are side light and backlight, the silhouette of the character accounts for a large proportion, supplemented by warm light, visually creating a sense of doubt, the character's personality is mixed with a lot of hypocrisy, concealment factors, in this uncertain atmosphere, Sophie's activities appear to be somewhat cramped and limited, emotionally aroused the audience's attention to Sophie's situation, and escape, fear, dodge became Sophie's state, which is also the usual form of existence of "aphasia". The gray sky, the cramped interior, and the limited outdoor space create the activity space of Sophie and other children, and these cramped environments are like a closed container, full of insecurity and have the possibility of eruption, and those children who are deprived of the right to speak are these unstable factors.
Although the short film does not have the strong story capacity of a long film, the film is truly short and powerful, and in this film, the shaping and activity of the characters is undoubtedly a successful stroke. The film revolves around Sophie, setting the character of Lisa as her friend, supplemented by the teacher as the opposite of the two, and the contradictions are intertwined and unfolded one by one. The film takes sophie's perspective to narrate, Sophie is an interloper role in the film, as a new role into the choir, she is undoubtedly a secret and revealer, perfect interpretation of the word "secret" mentioned in the title, in the perspective of knowing, consistent with the audience, more attractive to the audience, breathing with the film characters, sharing a common destiny. Setting up a good girlfriend Lisa who is completely different from Sophie's personality, it is a strong contrast, Sophie chose to be silent and patient after being deprived of the right to speak, and Lisa, who is very talented in singing, chose to erupt and fight after learning of this unfair system, just like Chen Sheng Wuguang's uprising "the world gathers to respond", so Sophie began to awaken to power, and led more aphasiars to begin to rebel and speak, completing the value of the film and the climax of the story.
The theme of a good film is often profound and diverse, in this film, the director chooses a small entry point such as "the secret of the school choir", which begins with the story of education, revealing the unfair "unspoken rules" that exist, and under this unspoken rule, the original intention of education has been lost, replaced by utilitarianism and secularization. But the director obviously does not all talk about education, but a social problem, that is, the existential philosophy of the aphasian people who are prevalent in society, who is forbidden to speak up is to give way to the right to life, and what is achieved is a seemingly harmonious collective voice, but it is unknown but it has destroyed human nature, and if this unfair system continues to be copied and continued, everyone may be a victim of this system. "When an avalanche occurs, no snowflake is innocent" Only the awakening of individual consciousness, the courage to speak out and challenge, can change.
But perhaps because of the short length and the director's "theme first" mentality, this film has some flaws and deficiencies. In terms of narrative, the final rebellion of the film has the problem of insufficient preparation, which involves the director's "hidden narrative" approach; in terms of character shaping, the portrayal of the character is somewhat thin, the relationship between teachers and students is only a simple binary opposition, lacking diversification and three-dimensional sense; in the theme, the film is too much pursuit of utopian meaning, resulting in a lack of life logic and realistic considerations. It is true that defects are inevitable, what we need to see is whether the director has completed the purpose and value pursuit of shooting, if you stand on a higher perspective to review this film, in view of the social value and profound ideas it contains, we may wish to regard it as a wonderful attempt and breakthrough.
Text/Du Jiaxin
Editor/Xiao Yang
The pictures in this article are from the internet