When it comes to the bloody word "killing", I believe that many people will think of war, violence, and those pictures of swords and swords, shadows, and rivers of blood. Have you ever imagined that verbal combat can also be fatal, achieving the effect of fighting? Using dialogue to delay the other party is not a kind of "killing".
The movie "Carnage" to be recommended today tells the story of two pairs of parents who laugh at each other and pity each other all the way to protect their children.
▲ "Killing" Douban score 8.2 Phoenix Satellite TV Movie Station on April 23, 12:15 April 24, 09:20 aired
The French, German, Polish and Spanish comedy "Killing" is adapted from the famous French stage play "The God of Carnage", directed by the famous French director Roman Polanski, telling the story of two children fighting, the parents of the two sides negotiate, trying to show friendship, but finally tearing the mask of hypocrisy and attacking each other.
There are four actors in total, but each of them is a big acting school: "The Reader" Academy Award and "Revolutionary Road" Golden Globe Award queen Kate Winslet, "Silence of the Lambs" Oscar actress Judy Foster, "Shameless Bastard" Academy Award, Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor and Cannes Christopher Waltz, as well as "Chicago", "Stan and Ollie" Academy Award-nominated actor John F. C. Reilly.
▲ "The Silence of the Lambs" Judy Foster
▲ The impressive German Taibao Christopher Waltz in Shameless Bastard
After the film was released in 2011, the nominations were numerous awards, in addition to Kate and Judy's realistic performances received the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress double nominations, Roman Polanski also won the Little Golden Lion Award at the 68th Venice Film Festival, as well as the Golden Lion Nomination, the European Film Award Nomination for Best Screenplay, and the Spanish Goya Award for Best European Film nomination.
"Killing", based on the script of the stage play, has established the excitement of its plot from the beginning. Due to the limitations of the set environment, the stage plays mostly rely on the plot to convince people, and the scripts of elaborate masterpieces are abundant. Especially if it can be adapted into a movie, as long as it is added to the good actors who are full of drama, the quality will not be bad relatively speaking.
▲ High-scoring movies such as "Chicago" and "Phantom of the Opera" are all adaptations of stage plays
The film inherits the simple and clear plot line of the stage play, putting four people with different personalities and values in a room, plus a conflict, and the story develops naturally.
Although the theme of parental quarrels is close to daily life and seems ordinary, the wonderful dialogue and superb performance add a lot of color to the whole process, and it will not be boring to rely on the dialogue performance.
▲ Stills from "The Killing"
The story takes place in the metropolis of New York, where writer Pennylop (Judy Foster) and furniture wholesaler Mike (John F. Kennedy) are the first to be told. C. Reilly's son, who has two front teeth knocked out by the son of investment broker Nancy (Kate Winslet) and lawyer Allen (Christopher Waltz), and the conflict begins.
For a peaceful settlement, Pennylop invites Nancy and Ellen to the house to negotiate a fight over the children. At the beginning, everyone was superficially harmonious and sought common ground while reserving differences, but because of the differences in values and educational concepts between the words, they gradually rose up, and you and I came and went, ready to draw swords at any time.
Like the first line of dialogue at the beginning of the film, Penelop codes and reconciles the book on the computer while saying, "So, This is our statement-you'll be doing your own, of course... In just one sentence, the two pairs of parents were divided into two teams.
At first, all four of them behaved decently and politely, but a series of small things triggered the sensitive nerves of the four people, from protecting the calf mentality to maintaining their own education methods... They slowly shed the false mask of the urbanite and began to lose their minds until they pointed out and scolded each other.
At one point, the scene was chaotic, each of them was not accustomed to each other, but soon they would find new allies on the next thing, change their positions and change camps. Therefore, the quarrel between these four people is almost in a permutation and combination, sometimes the parents of the two sides quarrel, sometimes two men and two women fight each other, sometimes three people join forces to besiege one person, and sometimes the husband and wife infighting...
In the back, only the dialogue is pale, and the four of them staged performance arts such as bag loss, vomiting, and mobile phone throwing... What was supposed to be a dialogue with the hope of resolving violence between children in a civilized way has led to more primitive conflicts.
▲ Yes, you read that right, it is really vomiting,,,
Interestingly, despite their bouts and tongues in their rebukes, the four of them did not have foul language in their sneers, and even though you could see that they were already angry, they were not worried that they would fight. This shows the barbaric heart of the four humane civilizations, and satirizes the hypocrisy of adults to the skin.
Pennylop likes to control the overall situation from the moral high ground, and at every turn, he educates others in a master's posture, and once he is counterattacked by others, he is more likely to jump on his feet.
Mack pretends to be enlightened and tries to play the role of a peacemaker at first, but his heart is full of anxiety, and he only shows up when Nancy and Ellen go to the other rooms.
On the surface, Nancy wants to calm things down as soon as possible, but in her heart she is very dissatisfied with other people, including her husband, so once the last straw that binds reason is broken, it explodes more violently than anyone.
As for Allen, the mobile phone was not left in his hand during the negotiation, and he thought that the children could not intervene in the fight between the parents, so he almost directly said "Don't bother me except for business".
Such four people with different personalities, there are hypocrites pretending to be enlightened, some real villains refuse to dialogue, some are strong but have weaknesses, some are weak but to the point, saying that they are peace talks but everywhere is tit-for-tat, it is no wonder that the war is about to break out.
Seeing all kinds of small events trigger contradictions, small contradictions lead to larger contradictions, and everywhere there is the shadow of black humor, which makes people laugh.
The "Killing" movie fully expresses the theme of the original script - there is no civilization, there is violence; excessive civilization, but hypocrisy.
There are only two scenes in a film, one of which is only a fixed vista of the park presented at the beginning and end of the film, and the emotional changes and disputes of the four people are compressed into a small room and just 80 minutes, perhaps only the director is as strong as Polanski can master it so well.
Roman Polanski
Admittedly, for Polanski, who has filmed "Cold-Blooded Horror" and "Strange Lodger", it is not difficult for him to deal with a single scene in a narrow space, but this is also the first time that Polanski has challenged "real-time" shooting of a film.
▲ Roman Polanski directed the film "The Pianist"
Unlike discrete footage that makes up the story, real-time shooting has no time to condense or beat (time-lapse) such a fancy cinematic language, the real time the story takes place is the time when the audience watches the play.
As a result, the audience can follow the four characters into the story in real time, and witness how the two pairs of parents have developed from good voice and calm communication to scolding each other.
Using this kind of shooting to unfold the story in real time, there will be no intermission in the middle, and the audience can only be impressed with the most original dramatic tension of the script and the actors.
It was after watching the original stage play "God of Killing" and feeling the charm of this real-time advancement of the story that Polanski came up with the idea of remaking the film in the same way.
Polanski said: "The tone of the stage play is very exciting, the rhythm is bright, and it is particularly attractive to advance the story in real time. I've never made a real-time movie, not even the slightest shift in time and space in the play, and I don't remember seeing such a movie. ”
▲ "God of Killing" is a stage play by Parisian contemporary dramatist Jasmine Reiser, which has been highly praised by critics and general audiences, and has since performed in London, New York Broadway, and Hong Kong, each of which is difficult to find
In order to conform to the spirit of the original work and retain the spicy and pithy style of the text, Polanski invited the original screenwriter Jasmina to personally adapt the screenplay of the film into an American version, such as changing the location of the story to Brooklyn in New York City.
Polanski said: "The spirit of the script seems to be more in line with the fact that there are more American families than In France, and Brooklyn is where such liberals live." ”
It can be said that the success of the real-time shooting of the movie "Killing" is inseparable from the excellent script. The popularity of the God of Killing stage play is because of its brilliant dialogue sentences, which make a series of verbal battles look more thrilling and vicious than fist and foot movements, so Polanski wants to retain this form and let the audience focus on the sharp dialogue that advances the story.
▲ "God of Killing" stage stills
Polanski said: "Real-time shooting is a challenge, in fact, from childhood to adulthood, I have enjoyed the story that happens in one scene, far more than the action movie. I like the feeling of zero distance synchronizing with the characters, and the audience can be in the middle of it. I've made films that happen in too confined spaces before, but I haven't tried to complete the whole story in a self-sufficient space like this one, which is a whole new experience for me. ”
For Kate, whose acting skills have always been highly praised, the most successful part of the original work is that it explores some of the most homely themes in a humorous way, such as family education and marriage relations. She said: "The expression of the comedic way makes the story richer and thought-provoking. Joke about the human condition, no matter what country people can find resonance. ”
Kate said, "Parents always have to pretend to be friendly when negotiating with other parents at school, which is for the sake of their children, so even if they don't like each other, they must pretend to be friendly, which is a very real situation." ”
Judy, who is also a director herself, described "Killing" as a film about self-cultivation and at the same time about giving up self-cultivation. Judy said: "It seems that the character of Winslet, she always seems to be a good person, she constantly mediates everyone's conflicts, but everyone knows that she is the most duplicitous." We watched how she disguised herself all the way and how she gradually revealed her true demands. ”
Each person in the film hides his true side at the beginning, and then explodes at different stages. The best thing about Jasmina's original work is that every time you think the debate is about to end, someone has an accident that makes things worse and worse. As she herself describes, "When you put your characters in difficult situations and ask them to behave civilized, that's the best comedic material." ”
All four have tried to find the right way to solve the problem, but is the politically correct thing the right thing? Slowly, the four became more and more vicious. They are all polite and well-thought-out people, from middle-class families, highly educated. You think all the discussions are going to go well, but who knows where it's going to get worse.
Ironically, the four parents liberated their nature, let go of themselves, and scolded the other three people, but still could not find a reconciliation plan that everyone was happy with, and when they had fallen to the "altar" of civilization, the first two barbarians, two fighting children, had become good friends in the park.
Perhaps everyone is like this, thinking that people will regulate themselves in the upbringing, establish some kind of moral value, and that communication should be unimpeded. But in fact, we are very primitive, and we will all expose our barbaric side at some point. If we were willing to acknowledge it and release it from the beginning, it might be much easier for people to get along with each other.
23 April at 12:15
24 April at 09:20
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The Killing
Text: Skylar
Editors: Skylar, Lin Zi