Wen 丨 Liu Shaoyu
It's hard to tell if Carey Mulligan's performance is good or not.
Not only her, but the actors who caught fire with her around 2010, Mia Huasikowska, Jesse Eisenberg, Andrew Garfield, Emma Stone, Jennifer Lawrence, the first wave of post-8090 stars who became popular around the world, after acting in all the top films of the decade, are still difficult to define whether they can represent the highest acting strength of this generation.
Among them, only Jennifer Lawrence and Emma Stone have won the Academy Award for Best Actress and have been officially included in the ranks of acting stars. But outside of their award-winning films, do audiences often say their performances are outstanding?
The Academy Awards for this generation of young actors, more like a consequentialism, until they won the highest award, the audience began to take seriously their performance ability, whether they won the award or after the award, few audiences will pay special attention to whether their acting skills are outstanding when watching the film, the little golden man only enhances the appeal of the star, and this appeal is used to make more unremarkable movies.
This year's "Girl with a Bright Future" seems to be such a movie, and all its expressions seem to be ultimately to provide a proper reason for Kerry Mulligan's explosive acting skills, and every link is also in line with the characteristics of the "Oki" movie.
Kathy, a small-town girl played by Carey Mulligan, goes to the local nightclub or bar every weekend to pretend to be drunk, so that the men think she is easy to get, and then "wake up" after being taken home, warning/educating men that you are not right to do this, and leaving under the eyes of the men. It's a lot like the process in slasher films, except that the plot is not intended to show the audience that the victim is disemboweled, but to allow Kerry Mulligan to "properly" transform into an antisocial character in the film.
You don't know who Mulligan is playing, what she's doing, or even what the story is trying to tell, but you still feel like you're just one step away from figuring out these issues.
"The Girl with a Bright Future" deliberately sets up barriers of understanding, only for one purpose, so that the audience can have the greatest interest in the role played by Mulligan. Speaking too clearly, the audience will not want to take the initiative to solve in her, the film is first used in this way to make people's attention completely locked on her, and then the plot is gradually demystified, so that people see more and more clearly, so that more and more sense of identity.
Almost all the awards season films that want to compete for the Oscars and have no intention of other awards are filmed in this way. The whole film is to flatter the heroine alone, and after you watch her entire encounter in the film, it is equivalent to watching this movie.
There have been precedents in previous editions, such as Natalie Portman's "First Lady" and Renee Zellweger's Award-winning "Judy." These two films are regular biographical films, the film revolves around the protagonist to say that there is nothing wrong with it, "Girl with a Bright Future" is not in the biography genre, but a modern thriller with mixed styles, it is said that the plot should be before the characters, but this does not prevent it from exercising its duty to lift the heroine to the throne of the queen.
The number of characters in this film is relatively small, and the relationship between each person and each person is simple, including the heroine's parents and the owner of the coffee shop where she works, all of which are characters who can finish a sentence, and the rhythm of appearance is relatively chaotic, because the film is not seriously talking about these supporting roles. The heroine shuttles back and forth between these functional characters, and her encounters are mainly due to her compulsion in the panoramic society, but in the end it is still a one-man show.
Carey Mulligan made his debut by the standards of all Hollywood sweet girls, and in this scarred, rebellious film, he still did his literary duty. In the film, when she presents the darkest side, the image is still a doll, you replace these makeup into a bright love movie, it is likely to take effect, and the external feeling she brings to the character is not so completely related to the type of film in which the character is located and the situation in the story.
When she appeared in this film, the shadow of her past roles has also been distracting the audience. Kathy, the rebellious girl, is not rebelling against the environment she is in the film, but rebelling against the series of virtuous and introverted girls played by Kerry Mulligan in the past, her former role is often the object of harm, this film is replaced by her initiative to hurt others, and ultimately want contrast, "The Girl with a Bright Future" is intertextual with her past screen image from beginning to end.
Carey Mulligan, "Growing Up Education"
This precedent, such as Charlize Theron's "Female Demon Head", is determined to make the former image of the jade beauty a thing of the past, playing a more aggressive role, in order to say goodbye to the "beautiful decoration" as an actor's career bottleneck.
Charlize Theron, The Witch
On the contrary, it is Scarlett Johansson in last year's popular film "Marriage Story", who is trying her best to break away from the comic/facial image of Black Widow throughout the film, using the most trivial and real life content of the character, daily light makeup, to play someone else. It doesn't matter who this person is, as long as it's not a black widow, it's probably successful.
In other words, "Marriage Story" is Black Widow's 136 minutes to prove that she has no superpowers, and it is also intertextual with the inherent image of the previous great success, and it is not as thorough as Marvel's own self-reflective "Wanda Vision" with the family drama.
Scarlett Johansson, The Marriage Story
This type of film erupts in frontal conflict with the characters from the trivialities of family dramas, and the scenes are often two intimate but opposing people yelling at each other face to face, releasing full force during performance, crying and blaming themselves after acting angry, giving star actors who have never said dirty words in movies the opportunity to say dirty words. In short, they all use external performance to break through self-stereotyping.
Every year, oscar entrants have this genre, occasionally winning Best Supporting Actor and Actress, as well as a chance to win a leading actress award. There are even "derivatives" of several directors who specialize in making such films, David S. O. Russell, Adam McKay, they slowly became the exclusive conduit for the production of performance awards in the industry.
Jennifer Lawrence, The Happy Thread Behind the Clouds
How is Kerry Mulligan in this film not a "female demon"? Because of the relationship between the character settings, it is difficult to say that she can be in place in the competition for the acting award, and her performance results in "Girl with a Bright Future" have no obvious advantage over the possible competitors of the same year, such as Francis McDormand of "The Land of Nowhere", which is difficult for her to stand out with an unquestionable advantage. Once there is no place to lead absolutely, it will be overwhelmed by other films that are also rushing this award.
Looking back at the Oscars over the years, the characters played by the winners mostly appeared in the image of social constraints. Costume dramas or period dramas are not very popular, and only three films have won post-film awards in the past decade, "Margaret Thatcher", "Darling" and "Judy", these three protagonists are the times Junjie, but the movies also focus on their privately frustrated side. More commonly, award-winning films are that the heroine must have a clear career, such as the ballet dancer of "Black Swan", the boxer of "Million Dollar Baby", and the football coach of "Weakness".
But regardless of the difference in their identities, these films whose ultimate purpose is to compete for the Oscar can be roughly classified as films that show psychological trauma. The film first talks about the pain suffered by the protagonists, then cares for them with love, and finally uses the "one perspective" of film art to disprove that "the Academy Award is always full of humanistic care".
It is impossible to say for sure that this is a kind of "tacit cooperation" between the studio and the academy: you give me the highest honor, and I give you a chance to show your posture. But the Academy has been "nurturing" this type of film with its highest honors.
Especially in recent years, the 8090s generation of winners are more representative of the new generation of women's demeanor, and the little golden people are to justify the intergenerational public achievements they have achieved, similar to our "advanced youth model", the keyword is "youth", rather than the "top acting skills" in the business. So can you say that Kerry Mulligan, like Emma Stone and Jennifer Lawrence, represents a whole new look for a new generation of actors today? She doesn't have that advantage.
Carey Mulligan's image in different films has been varied
In addition, in the competition for the award, her competitors are not all contemporaries, but "each has its own strengths". She was followed by Silsa Ronan, charlize Theron, Meryl Streep and others, and michelle Williams, who was close to her, although these actors were not necessarily all in the same class as her, but they were obviously her long-term opponents.
Each year, these actors will occupy four of the five nominations for new works, and then set aside one for ethnic minority or overseas actors, reflecting the equal treatment of the jury.
This "non-my race" cast is usually rarely a chance to actually win, and the Oscars accept them while giving a cold truth: they are already the highest achievement they can get. They are not as "born" as the others, but they have received great praise and care, starting with identity and ending with identity, you can see that this care is very hypocritical and even arrogant: if you can come in and sit in the first row, it is already the peak of your life, come and see, let everyone see you, and then go back!
This kind of equal sharing is bound to make the shortlist criteria overshadow their performances themselves by the identity labels of age, country and ethnicity. In the end, the person who won the award is not that your acting skills are particularly good, but that you can act so well on behalf of your race and age, which is worthy of this praise.
So perhaps the most dangerous thing for Kerry Mulligan is that she is still running as a "British actress" as a Hollywood outsider, even if she has been acting in Hollywood movies.
Young actresses from the UK, who successfully transitioned to acting school through the Oscars after the age of thirty, have precedents before, such as Kate Winslet. But obviously, Kerry Mulligan is more like following the mainstream British actress route such as Kayla Knightley and Emma Watson, whose British characteristics are not as obvious as Winslet's removal.
Kate Winslet played the German in The Reader
Kerry Mulligan, "Don't Let Me Go"
"The Girl with a Bright Future" also removes Mulligan's British characteristics, and the result is that her character does not look like anyone else, which directly affects the persuasiveness of the character's most direct face. It is not clear to say a person, some things, and finally can only resort to mystery, this movie seems to be creative and distinct, in fact, it has been arbitrarily using style and plot twists to make up for the loss of character building.
In addition to the above factors, the innovative attempts of "Girl with a Bright Future" in genre also seem to have not worked. The film shows the sense of nothingness of the younger generation in front of the scars of the family, with the style of the small production "whispering core" in the past. As we all know, "whispering nucleus" is a kind of state photography, very fond of using jumping scissors to show the protagonist's mental state in a large period of life, they face everything is the same expression, the same momentum, resulting in a very provocative literary tone.
But the mainstream youth films in the United States will never be thick makeup, soft as boneless, in its "beautiful" and "mourning" coexistence of the appearance, will always have a kind of youth stubbornness, the protagonist in the mature society everywhere does not cooperate, from the independence of the character personality, this "I do not seek people, but I rely on you" feeling, is the modern youth film inside the "steel frame", very hard.
Feminism and the anti-sexual assault movement are the current manifestations, and "Girl with a Bright Future" instills this personality into the protagonist and allows her to implement "iso-ism resistance" in the film, which is quite logical, but it is still not the best carrier to reflect the heroine's acting skills.
This is mainly because of its homogeneity, which does not have the characteristics of the advertised independent film. When future generations see our films in the past ten years, they may wonder: Why were your films at that time all busy with these things?
The current Hollywood is to project a large number of ready-made social contradictions into almost all films, which seems to be a weak endorsement, but often the contradictions they show in the story are decoupled from the spiritual value of the film, and are only the mirror image of social consensus. Its biggest advantage is that the image is clear, but it is not deeply interpreted, or even interpreted.
"The Trial of the Seven Gentlemen of Chicago", which will be "competed in the same field" at this Oscar and "Girls with a Bright Future", is also such a superficial film. Everyone in the film seems to be fiercely colliding with the value, but in the high-frequency dialogue, you can still see the emptiness of the inner expression, and each actor wants to borrow some exaggerated design of the characters to enjoy a "drama", but when all the actors are doing this at the same time, there will be extreme similarities in various parts of the film.
The portrayal between people is similar, and the appeal between films is similar. Excessive pursuit of the protagonist collides with the social wind direction of the film, and being a person who does not fit in in the mediocre world is not a life-like superhero movie. The protagonist is different from everyone at the beginning, and the whole film is used to prove that her difference is right, and for "Girl with a Bright Future", it cannot be considered another different film in the awards season because it is too black.
Near the end of "The Girl with a Bright Future", the whole process of directly restoring a person kneeling to death with a knee is directly restored, and I don't know how the family of the victim of the Floyd case would feel if he saw it. After the heroine's death, the film seems to finally clarify its role in the film, that is, although the story revolves around her completely, she is still a symbolic object, after death she is a mysterious corpse, and when she is alive, she is only a mysterious living person, and the two are probably no different.
For most of the film, Casey, played by Carey Mulligan, appears as a cold-eyed Avenger who lies and doesn't blink. When the film shows its appearance and heart, there is a clear loss of one or the other, and all the scenes that can help the audience enter the heroine's heart are all squeezed into the scenes where Mulligan is in tears.
The role is also likely to make her have "acting moments" and adjust the rhythm of the whole film, rather than really opening the protagonist's heart. The audience does not fully understand her in the end, and can only sympathize with her in the end.
Note that compassion is not the same as understanding in the vast majority of cases, and often the more you don't understand, the smoother you can apply compassion, which is the most limited place in today's women's films or minority films. The audience's unconditional embrace of the weak in the film in front of the screen may be the easiest thing in the world, and the film art will exert its greatest "image power" at this time - skipping the inference and dialectic link, and directly playing a role in the audience's emotional cognition.
When you see the ending of "Girl with a Bright Future", think about it, it is addictive, but can it really happen? The idea of Hollywood cinema now is to keep up with current events, not to cooperate with power but to challenge power, an action and position that is novel enough, but there is a lack of real breakthroughs in the work.
The female voice of the film is needed by society, but we need the plot to have a process of deliberation. The film can make people intuitively see the conclusion, but what can finally impress the audience is its process context.
The Academy, like the little golden man who represents them, has only a posture and no face. The same is true of movies made for the little golden man.