Text/Six Beasts of Wu Ridge Special Author: bb.
I have seen Icelandic director Gu de Monsson's 15-minute short film "Valley of the Whales", which is very similar to most Nordic films, and it is cold and depressed. Later, at the Venice Film Festival in 2016, there was "Heart Stone", which is the director's feature film based on "Whale Valley".
Nordic directors make films, no matter how bizarre the subject matter, how perverted, how pure love, like to adopt a clean painting style, under the extreme composition is a kind of disguised tenderness full of estrangement.
At the beginning of "Heart Stone", there are shots of several teenagers fishing on the docks, the blue water adsorbs the rare sunshine, and the teenagers here give people a sentimental and melancholy temperament.
The protagonist Christian and Thor, who is younger than him, appear one after another, and under the director's intentional close-up, the vague ambiguous relationship between the two boys surfaces. It's clear that Christian has a crush on Thor, but Thor likes Beth.
You love him, he loves her, and such a chain of love is the norm of gay emotional life. This reminds me of Gui Lunmeng and Chen Bailin in "The Blue Gate", which is also a bend and a straight. For Christian's emotions like the fight of the trapped beast, the director has designed a lot of foreshadowing or metaphors, and the stone fish that is disliked by the teenagers in the opening scene, the bird that would rather fold its wings and endure the pain of breaking free of the rope, are all telling the disapproval of same-sex love. This is echoed in "Valley of the Whales", the whale stranded on the beach, suggesting that the dilemma is everywhere, depressed, and collapse is inevitable.
As a gay Christian, he loves Thor, but he can't say it, but instead goes to help him chase Beth. If you love someone, you want him to be happy, and who makes that happiness, does it matter? unimportant. His love for Thor was so pure that it was heartbreaking. Humans often find it strange and are keen on categorical games, such as dividing love into heterosexual, gay, bisexual, labeling them and treating them differently.
But no matter what type of love, it is a chemical reaction that constantly produces dopamine, and on a scientific level, this does not make a fundamental difference. Human beings always focus on things that don't matter, but instead lose their understanding of the true meaning of love.
In the film, the director carefully uses restraint to show the subtle changes in Christian's emotions, and also allows us to understand the emotional world of comrades more deeply.
The point that poked me was the way Christian digested his feelings. Thor casually kissed him while playing The Adventure and he felt angry, and for Christian it was a hurt, if you were seriously loving someone.
He was standing on the edge of a cliff, and I understood that urge to jump, at that moment, was the only way not to be sad. Christian likes to use diving to escape, likes to smash cars to vent, such violence is lonely, silent, no one cares, no one can feel it.
I think of the whale with 52 sonic waves that ended up dying alone. Gays are like giant whales with independent channels, it can take a lifetime to find a matching partner, and their love process is purer and simpler than heterosexuals, but the hard work is also multiplied.
Christian finally attempts suicide, and the boy in "Valley of the Whales" intends to end himself at the beginning, and suicide is simpler than falling into a fruitless relationship.
We all laugh at people who are timid about daring to court, but what if exposing one's sexuality only causes more harm?
We are all too self-righteous, where do we know that homosexual suicide is not just to escape, but more to protect the loved ones.
Thor may have finally understood what the concept of such love was. But love cannot be demanded, so Christian chooses to disappear, leaving the last bit of dignity.
Truman Capote said, "Love, because it knows no geography, has no boundaries." "Same-sex love is always equal to exiled love, not within the prescribed boundaries, and has to go into the cramped space to find a chance to breathe."
The quiet and sad shots, the oppressive tones, seem to tear a rift valley at any moment. Whether it's Brokeback Mountain and Carol, or My Own Idaho and Heart Stone, the same-sex love described in it is too delicate to be good.
Any love comes with a price, but in same-sex love, the price is particularly heavy.
At the end of the film, the unlikable stone fish is thrown into the sea by a teenager, and the camera is frozen in the falling stone fish for a long time. After an unknown number of seconds, the stone fish, which seemed to be dead, shook its tail and swam toward the light. Two hours of repression finally ushered in a relatively warm ending, and Christian was successfully rescued. Thor sneaked into Christian's bedroom in the middle of the night and kissed him lightly on the forehead, and some people said that Thor had been bent, but I felt that whether or not he had been bent was not the point.
That kiss is more of an induction and reception of his emotions, with apologies and understanding. The emotions between teenagers are like the ice-blue waters of Iceland, occasionally floating by a few seagulls, with sadness and purity. The emotional rendering and the title are successfully matched, and the stone in the heart is constantly falling, and below is the unknown realm, which is a desperate situation, or it may be nirvana.