Not long ago, Danish director Billy Auguste's latest work, "Lucky Pier", won the Temple of Heaven Award at the Beijing International Film Festival. Both the film's precise presentation of emotional issues and its in-depth analysis of Danish modernization issues feel familiar, as it is like Auguste's two predecessors — and a "combined" version of the two Palme d'Or-winning works, Pell the Conqueror and Betrayal of Good Intentions.
The protagonist, Pierre, is a construction engineer, and at the beginning of the film, Bill escapes from his gloomy religious family and travels to the big city to pursue his dreams, despite his father's threats. He researched a modern water conservancy system designed to improve Danish domestic shipping capacity, with ambitions to create a "Venice of the North", but because of his bold ideas, he frequently ran into walls, and the elderly government censors were scorned by Pierre as "power freaks" (presumably seeing in this colonel the shadow of his father who prevented him from leaving the family). With no stable source of income, Bill had to live on the help of a well-meaning restaurant waitress, and the two lived happily and poorly, until one day when The Goddess of Luck arrived, And Bill met the noble man who appreciated him, the Jewish rich Man Ivan Solomon and the entire family behind him, and his life took to a high speed.
In the process of interacting with Ivan, Bill met and gradually fell in love with his sister Nanni, and soon after, he found himself in love with Nanni's sister Jacobi and married her. From here, the troubles of the original family began to appear gradually: the miserly father who expressed emotions made Pierre develop an incomparably strong lust and conquest in reverse, and he constantly replaced the objects of his favorites and admirations, trying to obtain a fresh and sufficient emotional experience in this rapid metabolism. The long-suppressed passion gushed out, so that after marriage, Pierre still could not get out of the dilemma of emotional infidelity, and eventually dragged himself into the abyss.
On the whole, the "lucky" Pierre has all the valuable qualities that a young man in the pioneering period of capitalism could have: he loves the truth, despises authority, dares to love and hate, is full of vitality, and can give up everything (including many precious things) to achieve his ideals. But at the same time, as Jacobi put it, Pierre "grew up under the pressure of a narrow mind and superstition," which explained both his weakness and his great courage; the "power of contempt and willfulness" brought him to the fore, and the extreme paranoia and emotional infidelity of his character eventually became the last straw that crushed the camel, depriving him not only of the opportunity to leap up class, but also of his even more rare true love.
Although the length of this film is close to three hours, the direction of the second half can be described as a sharp turn, but the development of the story does not give people any feeling of procrastination and abruptness; on the contrary, the film's layers are rich and clear, and all the plots have a foreshadowing of the grass snake gray line, so in retrospect, it is often unexpected and reasonable. Starting from the contradiction between father and son at the beginning, then showing the character side of Bill in love, and then entering the exploration of religion and social class; from the individual, family, to society and civilization are presented in the film with great precision, people have to admire the original author, Nobel Prize winner Henrik Pentopidan's deep understanding of the process of Danish history and the complexity of the human heart. Of course, Billy Auguste is even more credited, and his ability to adapt and visualize the script has now been called "pure fire".
The protagonist, Pierre, does not believe in the old social order and moral system recognized by religion, and lacks understanding of the logic of capital operation with the family as the core, in this case, it is inevitable to be abandoned by both the old and the new worlds at the same time. However, Billy Auguste seems to have no intention of defining Pierre as a character tragedy or a social tragedy simply, and at least from a religious point of view, Pierre's ending is not nothing less than a God-based judgment on the blasphemers: in the film, Bill smashes icons, is hostile to his father as a priest, and does almost everything that violates religious morality, whether Christian or Jewish. Because of this, perhaps the most moving thing in the film is not the love between Bill and his wife that transcends family discipline, race, and class, but The heart-wrenching monologue that Bill makes to the priest after betraying his wife:
Most importantly, I was confused and I couldn't sleep because there were so many ideas. I'm confused, nervous, is this a test? Or is it punishment, is life's punishment for me? Is this God's judgment on my life? I feel so restless because of this. Or nostalgia? Or did my father's curse make me so upset?
It is only then that we discover that Pierre is so desperately living in a cage he has built for himself, dominated by fear and repentance all his life, reminiscent of his compatriot Kierkegaard and Herman Melville, who was also tormented by the "Silent God." He was not completely unbelieving of God, and what he did was more of a reaction to his original family and even some kind of "predetermined destiny" than a systematic denial of God's existence. He realized that he had been destroying himself all his life for no apparent reason, and that passions that had nowhere to go could only be used to hurt others. He was restless, confused, helpless, pathetic, ridiculous, pitiful, so real that it seemed as if he could come out of a movie and see all sentient beings.
This is where Lucky Bill failed, and it is undoubtedly the success of Lucky Pierre.
Text | The secretary of the round head
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