The ancient Greek god in charge of driving has returned-
Ryusuke Hamaguchi.
Why?
It's not just because he's keen to design the scenes where the characters drive extremely exquisitely.
It's even more so.
He can always make the story of dog blood fresh and thought-provoking.
For example, "Chance and Imagination".
One of the stories is about a woman who reads pornography from a book written by a literature professor in front of him in order to seduce him, and at the end of the story, asks him to masturbate to the recording.
And that's not even the most exciting.
The point is that the door to the school office was open all the time while they were doing it.
Is it just to show the darkness of human nature?
No.
What is admirable is that such daily accidents and the lines of the characters push the story in unexpected directions.
But this time, his style has changed drastically.
made a movie that many people couldn't adapt to -
Evil does not exist
Evil does not exist
This film is the third film in a row to win awards at three major film festivals, and won the Grand Jury Prize at the 80th Venice Film Festival.
Collect three trophies in three years.
There is no doubt that it is the popular fried chicken in the world film industry today.
On the surface, this film, like "Happy Hour", uses amateurs as actors to achieve a certain recording style, but the difference is that "Happy Hour" is 8.7 on Douban, and "Evil Does Not Exist" is only 7.2.
This is directly ranked last in Ryusuke Hamaguchi's films.
So much so that someone in the comment area shouted directly:
Preach Ryusuke Hamaguchi = disease
Is this a sudden onto the altar, and was instantly beaten back to its original form?
Okay, too.
It's just that we prefer that Ryusuke Hamaguchi stay where he is.
01
The biggest reason why many people don't adapt to "Evil Doesn't Exist" is that the pace of the film is too slow.
Especially the beginning.
It's like a nature documentary.
A shot of a tree branch can shoot for three minutes.
A process from receiving water by the stream to carrying it, it can shoot for five minutes.
The movements are repetitive and slow.
There is almost no plot to speak of in the first half hour, which is the daily life of an ordinary village resident, chopping wood, fetching water, picking up his daughter from school, and eating, which is repetitive and boring.
Even walked through the forest when I picked up my daughter from school, and counted what trees there were one by one:
Oak, pine, larch, mountain cherry tree, dogwood, five-plus......
△ Source of the picture subtitles in this article: @嗯嗯找片阿
But if you think that this movie is to show the beauty of the forest and create a fake big sky.
That's too underestimating Ryusuke Hamaguchi.
Remember "Snow Leopard" some time ago?
The expression of "Evil Does Not Exist" is similar to it, and it is about the conflict between man and nature.
The main line of the story is that a company wants to build a glamping site in the upper reaches of the village, which leads to conflicts with the villagers.
So the planning meeting.
The villagers kept asking their own questions -
Some people are very dissatisfied with the setting of the location of the clean water tank.
He believes that by setting up a water tank in the location of the blueprint, the sewage will flow down the terrain into the downstream well, which will pollute the drinking water of the villagers.
There are doubts about safety.
She suggested that if tourists come here for barbecues, then there will be campfires, and without 24-hour supervision, wildfires will break out more frequently.
But what about the developer's response?
As the representative of the developer, the two employees of the brokerage company can only say the nice words given to them by Party A, and are vague about these practical problems.
The location is decided by experts and surveyors, and they cannot change it at will, and the camping project will also bring more business opportunities to the villagers.
Etcetera.
So in the first hour or so of the movie, we can almost conclude that Ryusuke Hamaguchi is going to play the environmentalist card this time.
This is in line with the current world trend.
is an unquestionably "politically correct" film.
But.
Is Ryusuke Hamaguchi really just willing to do this?
02
A detail that many people will find weird when they watch it, but they can't tell what is wrong -
Visual angle.
In the film, there are often some unconventional perspectives.
For example, when the male protagonist saws wood.
The camera gives a top-down angle, as if he wasn't sawing wood.
It's the audience.
And the shot where they found the wild mustard on the side of the road was more direct.
They look at the camera.
It's as if wild mustard is us.
Why is this happening?
Linking the environment in which the film is placed, we can see that this is actually Ryusuke Hamaguchi's perspective on nature.
They turned us into wood, wild mustard, deer.
Or even become nature itself.
Although people live in this forest, they are not the masters, and their every move is also monitored by nature.
The effect of this is obvious.
That is, we can look at things very directly from the perspective of nature, not humans.
So on that basis.
We can't help but wonder, are the villagers really opposing camping development for the sake of protecting the environment?
Probably not.
Because all human beings are natural intruders.
For example, Takumi is a third-generation pioneer, or Minemura is a place where you moved your udon shop from Tokyo.
Despite living here for many years, they have no obligation to protect the land, and they ask a series of questions that appear to be for the sake of protecting the environment.
In fact, to protect one's life from being affected.
Therefore, every resident opposes the development of the camping project for his own selfish desires.
They only speak up when the sewage really affects their lives, but if not, who cares?
An example.
Gunshot.
There are three shots in the film, but each time people are indifferent.
Why?
Habit.
Because this is just "hunting", it is what they have been doing, and this matter will not affect their lives.
But is it just so ideographic?
Of course not.
If you watch the movie, you will remember that at the beginning of the film, Ryusuke Hamaguchi gives a long close-up showing the bones of a deer.
The male protagonist said that this is a "half-lost" deer.
It means that the hunter did not end its life with a single shot, leaving it to die in agony.
Such a brutal display of deer hunting is in stark contrast to the indifference of the villagers to the deer hunt.
This seems to imply.
In fact, the so-called advocates of environmental protection may not be so environmentally friendly, in a closed environment, the dark places of human nature will take root, and they will hide their true motives for a certain purpose.
Just because we can't see evil doesn't mean that evil really doesn't exist.
Thereupon.
An extremely delicate scene appears in the film.
In the car, the male owner of the villager and the two people sent by the developer discussed the fence of the glamping site, and the male owner said, the deer here are very afraid of people, and jump very high, you have to build a 3-meter-high fence, and once the fence is so high, I'm afraid not many people are willing to come.
The woman asked rhetorically: If the deer are afraid of people, isn't it okay not to build a fence?
The male protagonist is stopped.
Then he paused and said, "Where should the deer go?"
He did not answer the woman's question.
Instead, he lit a cigarette in the car and smoked it without hesitation.
His face at this time.
Obscured by a bout of gloomy light.
The killing intent has risen.
This plot is of course a foreshadowing of the subsequent story.
But at the same time.
It is also telling us that evil is not determined by who you are or what your motives are.
And once your philosophy is questioned.
Even if it's a lofty ideal.
It will also be mixed with all kinds of dirty means.
Speaking of which, probably many people will think of another movie:
Nuclear Magnetic Resonance.
In that film, director Monji calmly dissects this society, calmly and accurately, and it seems that it is the two sides of the same coin.
However, Ryusuke Hamaguchi seems to want to go further.
He wanted to discuss the issue of perspective.
As the director said in the post-screening interview: "If you only look at the natural world, evil does not exist, for example, no one will condemn a tsunami as evil." Although this kind of violence is habitually present in nature, we basically do not regard it as evil.
If we look at human beings as simply a part of the natural world, there is no such thing as evil, and although there is such an argument, on the other hand, it seems that everyone does not think so. ”
So he added a natural perspective.
So he made the whole story unusually slow.
As for the effect.
Sir can only say.
It's like an irony to tie such a title to such a story.
03
Douban's score of 7.2 is enough to prove that Ryusuke Hamaguchi's change this time has not received much recognition.
What people expect.
Or the same Ryusuke Hamaguchi who challenges the courage of the rules of the world in the story of dog blood.
It is a cutting-edge director who explores human nature in a dark and obscure boundary.
And not to say.
There are amazing technical details, but there is no flow of emotions in the craftsman.
Yes, if you look closely, you can see that many of the film's settings are so elaborate that you could even call them masterstrokes.
For example:
Remember the slow-paced narrative mentioned earlier?
In the second half of the story, you will find that many of the actions are also repetitions of the beginning.
But the essence is different.
It still took three minutes to saw the wood.
Five minutes to receive water.
Walk through the forest and walk to the lake.
Is it just the people who are with the male protagonist who have changed?
No.
And the evil thoughts that grow in the dark.
For example, the pheasant feathers.
At the beginning of the film, the male protagonist cherished this feather when he found it.
He wrapped it in a piece of cloth.
Carefully give it to the village chief.
And in the end?
When he found another feather, he threw it into the river without saying a word.
These are all symbols of a change in mentality.
There are many more designs like this.
For example, the same paragraph will have a completely different effect in different situations, just like a male employee in the company twice said that he wanted to live in seclusion, the first time was in the car, and when he said it to his colleagues, it would make people feel sincere.
The second time was in the village, when he talked to stakeholders, it was inevitable that people would think that he was hypocritical.
Or some unique shots bring people a special feeling, like in the film, there are many times when the car is driving forward, but the camera is placed in the rear of the car, so that every time we see something, it is moving away from us, so that it becomes more and more difficult to see, expressing the concept of vanishing.
All of these designs.
all make the film a delicately structured fable with various imagery.
It's just a pity.
Under such a delicate appearance, only "feelings" are missing.
It's ingenious.
Instead, it lost the lightness of the director's original daily narrative of the film.
So much so that the audience not only can't empathize, but even the foundation of the story, the relationship between the male protagonist and his daughter, can't be understood.
Especially the latter.
People will remember that the little girl is like a pure product of nature, and every time a deer appears, she is there, and the deer will approach her without hesitation.
She became a symbol of nature.
And not a living, empathetic person.
So.
This time Ryusuke Hamaguchi changed his style, did he really fail?
Truly.
We can say that there are too many shortcomings in such a change.
But even so.
Sir will still appreciate such a change.
Why?
One premise is that Ryusuke Hamaguchi is indeed one of the most popular directors at the moment, and he is not only favored by fans, but also blossoms in various film festivals.
This was the moment of his fame.
And we know.
As an emerging director with a unique style, the most difficult thing to do is to give up his successful experience and choose a path that he has not taken.
Because it's easy to fail.
was even questioned about the honor he just had.
This makes many directors always tremble, and a narrow road to the end is also a trick that is eaten all over the world, for fear of losing their existing status and the audience they have so hard.
This is the reason why many new directors lack sharpness.
It is also an important reason why the current film innovation has been stagnant.
But what about Ryusuke Hamaguchi?
Although Sir also feels that compared with his previous works, such as "Chance and Imagination" and "Drive My Car", this "Evil Does Not Exist" does not meet our expectations.
But at the same time.
What we care more about is that even though he is now highly praised, he has not given up on the idea of finding a different path.
This in itself is encouraging.
After all, curiosity and experimentation are the driving forces of creation.
Even if it fails.
It's also much better than those who tremble and repeat themselves.
The picture in this article comes from the Internet
Editorial Assistant: The second child of the Sakamoto family