After the success of "Love Letters", Shunji Iwai's ambitions were exposed, and the movie "Swallowtail Butterfly" was born.
Japan's bubble economy occurred between 1986 and 1991.
Looking back, the "Heisei boom" that was a carnival all over Japan and almost full of speculative opportunities was only four years and three months, from being full of pride to seeing it on the rooftop, but overnight.
Born in 1963, As a teenager, Shunji Iwai fully experienced the modern apocalypse of the bubble economy, and it was impossible to remain indifferent to such a huge social shock, not to mention that the artist himself was sensitive.
The background of the story of "Swallowtail Butterfly" is just like the story of Japan during the bubble economy, where the yen soars, and in order to earn yen, it is smuggled to the yuan capital and lives at the bottom, which is called the story of the "yuan thieves".
Poster of swallowtail butterflies on the chest of Guli fruit
The protagonist of the story is a group of portraits, the story of the second generation of yuan thieves, the story of the young girl Phoenix butterfly and her mother; the story of a pair of men and women looking for dreams but lost; the three brothers and sisters struggling to survive in the yuan capital after smuggling; a single clue can independently support a movie in the hands of other directors. Shunji Iwai strings them together, skillfully using various genre film techniques to disrupt the boundaries of genre films, which is the embodiment of his ambition. It is also his essence, in the dream of seeing Japan's rapid economic development and peaceful and beautiful, the reality is the cruelty of the heart. Pure love and cruelty are just two sides of the same coin. Life is layered like an onion, and belonging is no different from the beginning.
The butterfly part, Hikari and Shunji Iwai's pure love movie have the same film and television technique application, and individually edited out can be a pure love movie
The heroine's eyes quietly watch everything happen, but also grow up in it, she is the second generation of thieves, she is a bridge and bond, most of the scenes of the heroine, is still the Iwai style pure love movie image style, even in the face of the death of the mother and the mother locked in the dirty bathroom listening to the outside mother doing business, light and shadow are telling about youth and innocence.
This movie and later "All About Lily Week" left Ito's most beautiful film and television image
When the camera shifts to a scene that the heroine does not face directly, the film can be seen as a gangster movie or an action movie, and the red application portrays the living environment of the yuan thieves in a bloody posture.
In the unattractive of the heroine, the red and black intertwined with desire and violence is the theme of light and shadow, and such a video style is mostly used in gangster films
Xu Zhi'an is actually very suitable for the image of this perverted thug, but unfortunately he does not have much interest on the big screen
In a sense, under the worldview setting of Yuandu, a series of films can actually be derived. This worldview is very charming, the most glorious places in the world may be the Yuandu, people of all colors gather for money and this; and the Yuandu is not immortal, after the collapse of a Yuandu, there will be a new Yuandu, and even the people of the previous Yuandu will gather here to party for money.
Money can be falsified, money exists because of the credit of Yuandu, and the reality is the same, money has no actual value. What everyone pursues is nothing more than a void. While mourning Phenom, all the banknotes were burned.
The top killer Wolf Lang and Qingkong itself, who had been staying in the "Qingkong" where the Yuan Thieves had originally gathered, were the final destination of the people who fell to the bottom, and gently accepted everyone.
These complex discussions of human nature and philosophy are scattered in the corners of each exquisitely crafted film and television language, and understanding Shunji Iwai, "Swallowtail Butterfly" can be either the beginning or the end.
Since 1920, the Hollywood-centered commercial film manufacturing system has used the routine of "genre films", which has framed the talents and dreams of many directors, and countless warriors have launched an impact on genre films one after another, such as European avant-gardeism, Italian neorealism, and the French New Wave. Under big productions, directors have no editing rights and are castrated from the power to express ideas through film, subject to commercial interests, which is hated by real artists.
In Japan, Shunji Iwai used an almost poetic approach to break the confines of commercial film routines, making him unique. He is the beneficiary of Japan's diverse production system, and he has full interpretation of his films.
Shunji Iwai's films, he almost all of them are single-handed, directing, editing, writing, music and so on. Overly personal stylized works, it is inevitable that there will be a sea of pearls, ignored, in 1994 to complete the production of "Dream Traveler" in 1996 was released, is a fateful short film, three angelic beautiful boys and girls, cruelty and innocence do not conflict, angels can not exist in the human world, the world is pathological but not self-aware.
Dream Traveler is the peak of the charm of the three main actors, and many of Iwai Shunji's film characters are unsurpassed by other actors
The death of young boys and girls carries the meaning of religious sacrifice, looking at the pure light and shadow, the pure white teenager is shaking, the sound of the broken cervical vertebrae is mixed with the melodic music; the girl is full of innocence and points a gun at her temple, and the high-speed lens depicts the feathers that fly away, beautiful, weird, pure, is the classic death scene on the big screen, no one has ever portrayed death like this.
Koichi Hashimoto, who contributed to this classic performance, was killed in a car accident on July 9, 1999, at the age of 26.
Tadanobu Sato and Chara are united because of the dream traveler
Pull the eye back to "Swallowtail Butterfly" again, why is this movie called Swallowtail Butterfly, Guliguo has a total of two brothers, one of the brothers died tragically, because it is an illegal immigrant, so it can not claim the body, which is the same as the experience of the mother of the young girl Butterfly, Guliguo tattooed a swallowtail butterfly on the chest, hoping that when he dies, at least some proof will be left. In a sense, the tattoo is her life and freedom, so when the swallowtail butterfly is hung high and imprisoned in the picture frame, Feihong only sees the huge gap that has been formed between herself and Guliguo, and chooses to give up and sell; but she does not know that when the swallowtail butterfly hangs high, the identity of Guliguo will also be exposed, which is a dream journey destined to be tragic. When the young girl butterfly killed the butterfly in order to keep the butterfly, after losing her mother, she became the larva of the butterfly in Guliguo, becoming the beauty she had asked for and could not aspire to, and finally hatched the butterfly.
When the swallowtail butterfly hangs high, the identity of Guliguo will also be revealed, which is a dream journey destined for tragedy
Tattoos of butterflies
Artistic success and fan admiration did not translate into box office success, and "Swallowtail Butterfly" disappointed the audience who walked into the theater with full expectations for pure love movies influenced by "Love Letters". However, the audience was quickly appeased by "April Story", and then gradually had a more impartial attitude towards the artistic achievements of "Swallowtail Butterfly", and even began to look forward to the cruel Shunji Iwai.
In 2001, Shunji Iwai's self-written and self-edited work "All About Lily Week" seemed to be a mockery of films that were poorly imitated by "Love Letters", and all the plots of dog blood, under the description of Shunji Iwai, had new interpretations.
Next articleWe continue.