Some fans have said that the list of the most memorable films every year is the list of films declared by various countries for the Oscar for best foreign language films; although this view can only be partially agreed, the vast majority of Olympic bid films are indeed very worth watching the annual masterpieces.
Following the renaming of the "Oscar best foreign language film" to the "Oscar best international film", the application of various countries has also been closed in early October.
Today, I recommend the good movies in this year's Olympic bid. Let's start with the young Russian director Kontemir Baragov's The Tall Man (aka The Thin Man), which won a Kind of Attention Award for Best Director and a Fabisi Award at the 72nd Cannes Film Festival.
Kontemir Baragov
It is worth mentioning that the director, born in 1991, Kontemir Baragov, is only 28 years old this year, and he is beautiful and talented. And "Tall" is only his second feature film, and his debut film "Intimacy" two years ago was shortlisted for Cannes. Some fans said that his next film is likely to advance to the main competition unit of Cannes.
Dying in silence, or struggling in the darkness?
The Russian film The Tall Man throws a Shakespearean proposition to the audience: To be, or not to be. The film focuses on the lives of Soviet soldiers after World War II, with two women who fought in World War II becoming the focus of the story. And there is no doubt that the director Baragov is not at all interested in the beautiful totem of post-war reconstruction, but directly refers to the loss of the individual spirit.
When the war is over, what happens to the disabled soldiers? They endured the trauma of war, some with broken arms, some blind, some even paralyzed. For them, post-war reconstruction is only an incomparably bright background board, and they are only still lifes of the future, ignored, abandoned, and even become a burden on the country, completely reduced to transparent people in peacetime.
Martha, a female warrior returning from the front, is one of these groups. She endured not only the physical pain of the war, but also the humiliation that men did not have: to provide sexual services to officers on the front lines in order to survive. This triggered a series of consequences: abortion, continuous abortion, and eventually the uterus was removed and infertility was completely lost.
She had a son before, and because her husband was killed in battle, she decided to stay on the front line for revenge. This naïve decision led her to entrust her son to her artillery comrade Ia. Iya was tall, had been injured by shells during the war, and recovered from working as a nurse in a hospital, leaving sequelae in her brain. The film opens with symptoms of her brain traumatic sequelae: her body can't move, her throat makes strange noises, her eyes are sluggish, and she is unconscious.
Martha, a veteran, returns to Leningrad, expecting to see her beloved son, but learns from Iya's mouth that her son died in his sleep.
In fact, what really caused her son's death was an accident: Iya and Martha's son were fighting, but suddenly fell ill, and the child was strangled under Iya's body. This is the most brutal scene in the movie, and the sudden tragedy is unfolded in front of the audience, but then the impact of the tragedy disappears so quickly.
The pain of losing her son did not show much intensity in Martha, the devastation of the long war had already made this woman forget what "pain" was, and she showed more of a sick numbness in the movie, as if indifferent to anything, and the always smiling face could not be guessed.
Compared to the tall and silent Iya, she behaved more cheerfully, with a kind of neurotic indifference. She had only one wish: she wanted to have a child. The child represents new life and light, and for her, it is more like a hope to live.
Leningrad, which experienced the baptism of World War II, was full of death and silence, and the whole city was full of barren ruins. What is needed at this time is the advent of new life. Martha, like the city, needs a major blood change, flushing away the dust and dirt and injecting fresh blood.
Unfortunately, Martha forgot the fact that she could not have children. This is a tragedy of the times, but also a tragedy of women. The film does not intend to explore the root causes of the tragedy, but rather recreates the struggles of women in this "spiritual catastrophe". They are so confused, confused, not even have a future, the pain erodes them, and reality torments them.
In the scene where Iya and Martha reunite, the director directly throws the two into the darkness, as if they are on a silent stage. Under the gaze of the long camera, they are allowed to breathe in front of the audience; and the extreme lack of light sources seems to hint at their later life: a darkness, full of dead silence.
This is also why Martha's desire for procreation has reached a point where she is already in such a bad situation that she will have to find something to support herself.
She decided to have Iya have sex with the hospital leader, hoping to conceive Iya and indirectly bear a child for her. How easy it was to conceive in that age of material and spiritual poverty. But she was not discouraged, but immersed herself in fantasy again and again, and the more she longed for miracles, the more she highlighted her own tragedy.
Part of Iya's tragedy also stems from her love for Martha, and the deeper she loves, the deeper the pain. When she saw Martha dating her boyfriend, her heart was like a knife. The obscure lesbian love has become a bright color in the movie, but it is also doomed to be a sterile tragedy.
The two women, who depended on each other, were in a vast wasteland, covered with snow and cold winds. No one loves them, and they can only survive if they huddle together for warmth.
The film gives us a very accurate picture of the desolation of that era, but it also obscures or omits the context of that era. It seems that for the director, more important than history itself is its outline. The dilapidated situation of Leningrad after World War II provided the director with a very perfect wasteland stage.
And Iya and Martha are the heroines on this stage. Born in 1991, the director has no ambitions to structure a grand historical landscape and explore the roots of suffering and tragedy. Instead, it starts from "people" and shows their mental state in the face of adversity.
Therefore, for this movie, the stage setting is particularly important, so as to highlight the smallness and humility of "people". Thus set the tone of the film: solemn and depressing. The dusky yellow tone of the setting sun gives the whole movie a hint of death, but the overall oil painting-like texture cannot help but make people mesmerized.
There is no soundtrack in the whole film, and the slight abruptness of the post-dubbing makes the whole film seem extremely quiet. People are like beasts in the dark, whispering, drinking, having sex. The long night, the expressionless face, the dead silence under the winter sun, unconscious, tends to be still.
They are swallowed up by the night and are companion to the night.
If the film itself is like a sleeping beast, there are a few more vivid scenes, like birds jumping around the beast. Thus we can see a soldier with a broken arm learning to spread the wings of a bird, who longs for freedom and vitality, which is comforting and pitiful. In my opinion, this should be the most poetic stroke in the movie.
Of course, we will also be moved by the last hug of Iya and Martha, which is intensified into a powerless beauty under the collision of red and green. They were two losers, marginal people, who ended up getting nothing. Just comforting each other in each other's fantasies, looking helpless and ironic.
But isn't this spirit of their fantasies worthy of our awe? As a "human", they are fighting against the whole wasteland, they do not give in, all they do is live with a hope.
The last wishful fantasy is also my wishful belief: I would rather believe that it is a bright future. Just as I believe in human beings, I believe in women, I believe in myself.
Article reprinted from the original author: Your world a few points (watch the movie to see the dead)