Last year, there was "Jojo's Whimsical World" and this year there was "Persian Lessons", and filmmakers around the world have never given up reflecting on the human catastrophe provoked by fascism in the last century, and they are very sharp in their perspectives.
"Persian Lessons" tells the story of a German Jew at gunpoint, who lied on a weak leg and ended up living a miracle. As the saying goes, a lie needs a hundred lies to defend, and a series of lies by Jew Giles eventually constituted a unique language called "Persian". Originally just wanted to lie that the Persians had escaped death, the German commander was looking for a Persian teacher, so Gilles, who did not know Persian at all, had to improvise and teach "Persian" to survive.
Improvisation a language has its irrationality and its rationality. The rationality lies in the fact that language is not uncreated, such as the Klingon language in "Star Trek" and the Dothraki language in "Game of Thrones", which is tailored by the filmmakers to invite linguists, which has also become a manifestation of the soft power of the film and television industry. Taking a step back, you can also borrow from the classics, such as the wolf Chinese held by Fei Xiang in "Painted Skin 2", which is actually a borrowing of ancient Sanskrit, anyway, everyone can't understand it, just as if it is the unique language of the Wolf Country.
The irrationality lies in the fact that language has evolved over a long history, and even if linguists create a new language system, it is necessary to rely on the accumulation of professional knowledge and the need for creative cycle polishing, not overnight. Giles is not a linguist, there is no strange language can be used to steal beams and columns, the incident occurred suddenly, can only see the tricks, now the compilation of learning and selling, coupled with the doubts and tests of Nazi officers and soldiers, the death rate is one hundred percent. Of course, the film is the art of dream-making, for ordinary people can not do, for us to show the miracle of life against the sky, this is the value and meaning of the existence of the film.
Except for the so-called poems that officers have learned to use to create, the rest of the film is basically scattered vocabulary, and does not really show the texture of a whole new language. The film itself is not here, its charm lies in the inspiration for Gilles's creation of these words, namely the list of concentration camp Jews. As 40 urgently needed vocabularies intertwined with the Jewish list, this greedy and fearful little man began to unknowingly shoulder a heavy historical mission to remember the "unknowns" who were killed in Nazi concentration camps. Gilles created 2,840 words in the names of 2,840 Jews, in other words, a "Persian language" of 2,840 dead souls, evidence that the Nazis could not burn and destroy. This single idea was enough to make "Persian Lessons" unique among many concentration camp films or anti-Nazi films.
"Persian Lessons" received high praise on all major platforms, but unfortunately, because there were too few Belarusian creators, they missed the opportunity to participate in the Oscar foreign language films. Then again, even if "Persian Lessons" were shortlisted, it would be difficult to win in the end. Obviously, this is a story of creativity first, improvising the creativity of a language intertwined with traditional concentration camp themes, and the characters are innately on the blade, which is really eye-catching. Unfortunately, in the specific creation of the film, there is too much room for improvement and discussion.
First of all, the character positioning is sloppy. The male giles are treated as functional beings, even the background of the characters is ignored, and the human setting lacks flesh and blood. The relationship between the hero and the Nazi officer is easily reminiscent of Polanski's "The Pianist", but Biscayat's interpretation of Gilles is slightly flat, the same thin image, also experiencing the extreme torture of human purgatory, far less than Brady's "I see pity". In contrast, the Nazi officer Klaus's personality is a little more three-dimensional, even the tragic childhood has been dug out, but his wandering between tenderness and brutality is not so fluent, the motivation to learn Persian to open a restaurant in Tehran is not so smooth, the key is that even the bitter feelings of childhood are sold, and in the end, he has not seen any evolution of his personality, and he has to end up with a deserved end.
There are many criticisms in the plot of the film. We can see that the play first has a story idea, then pulls the synopsis, and then fills in the traces of the plot, and several advances and reversals are mechanical. The soldiers offered the "Persians" to the commander in exchange for a canned reward, turned around and doubted the identity of the commander, dug himself into the wall, and offended the commander. Such things have been done back and forth for several rounds, and have been used as a means of plot waves, which is not only improper in behavior logic, but also weak in creation. The film even features a large number of female officers chewing their tongues and gossiping idle pens, the firepower is not concentrated enough, and the body of the story is pulled down with a vigor. What's more, the paradoxical affection between the two male protagonists cannot be carried by the boat of friendship.
The film is based on the list of concentration camp Jews, which is easily reminiscent of Spielberg's "Schindler's List", but the mirror language and scene scheduling of the two films are not at all an order of magnitude. The design of the protagonist to build a system of lies is also easily reminiscent of Bernini's "Beautiful Life", but the latter is far more meaningful than "Persian Lesson". There is no harm without comparison, and compared with the predecessors of the same genre, "Persian Language Lesson" is still quite unpolished, but this does not prevent it from adding another icing on the cake to the anti-Nazi film family.
(Zeng Nianqun, film critic, now lives in Beijing.) ）
Source Beijing Daily Client | Author Zeng Nianqun
Editor: Li Jing, Jin Liwei
Process Editor Wu Yue