Text: Overnight flowers
As the first English-language film directed by Ang Lee, "Sense and Sensibility" not only achieved a global box office success of $130 million, but also nominated for the 68th Academy Awards for Best Picture, Best Director and other core awards, marking Ang Lee's great success in the mainstream Hollywood film industry system, and also laying the foundation for the popularity of "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" a few years later.
Films based on Jane Austen's literary works, such as Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice, and Edward Morgan Foster's Novels, Howard Manor and The Room with the View, are representative of the British "heritage film". In layman's terms, they are usually born out of British literature, drama, history and humanities, with the purpose of recording the traditional British way of life and humanistic tastes, with the visual shape of classical oil painting and a beautiful idyllic artistic conception.
Therefore, from a modern viewing perspective, the film not only conveys the rich meaning of Jane Austen's text with exquisite images: the exploration of the emotional appeal of women's love and marriage under the dualistic contradiction structure of "reason" and "emotion", but also a milestone in the film road of director Ang Lee, lead actor Emma Thompson (also the adaptor of the film's novel to the script), Kate Winslet.
From novel to film script adaptations, Emma Thompson, who is well versed in the media distinction of film literature and the aesthetic characteristics of audiences in the 90s, has played a crucial role. On the one hand, she firmly grasps the dualistic contradictory relationship between "reason" and "emotion", "woman" and "man", "marriage" and "love", making the film concise and condensed, in line with the audience's viewing habits at different levels and cultural contexts; on the other hand, humor but not losing ridicule, tolerance and critical introspection, so that the film has a good appreciation on the basis of retaining literature. This is consistent with the gentleness and peace of the original work, rational reflection but no lack of idealism.
01. Feminism under a Dualistic Structure
Female characters in previous mainstream Hollywood commercial films have been charmed by Sharon Stone in Instinct, their own viewing objects as male audiences, and Glenn Cross's destructive dangers and hysterical ugliness in Fatal Temptation, becoming a saboteur of the traditional "family-marriage" system imagined by the male standard. The female perspective in "Sense and Sensibility" is self-evident, and when Ang Lee depicts women's living conditions and spiritual difficulties from the perspective of sisters, he completely takes women's own emotional appeals as a foothold, they have independent and plump personalities, and do not aim to please men.
Sister Eleanor (Emlinor, Emma Thompson) is the embodiment of reason, she is good at restraining emotions, hiding herself to take care of her mother and sister, with a family-centered, considering the feelings of others "altruistic" psychology and the overall situation, her rationality and calmness, gentleness and kindness are even too cautious, so her love for Edward is often in a depressed state.
Her sister Marianne (Kate Winslet) is a symbol of emotion, she is sensual and independent, emotionally energetic, bold and imaginative, unlike the tradition and conservatism of Victorian women, she has the characteristics of a modern woman, mentally self-reliant and with a somewhat romantic idealist.
The dual elements in the film are not very different opposites, but a complementary and mutually integrated. The sister's reason is also mixed with a kind of sensibility under the trend of emotion and passion, and the sister's sensibility and frankness are not separated from the rational cognition and judgment of people. At the same time, the film's feminism does not slip into the other extreme, the male characters of this film, whether edward loved by the sister, are upright, cautious and loyal, but trapped in worldly reputation; the sister's beloved Willoughby, with extraordinary demeanor, full of energy, keen and cheerful but neglectful of responsibility, and a weak temperament, they are three-dimensional, humane, and humane characters.
And the opposition between marriage and love is not portrayed as a simple opposition: money on the material level and love on the spiritual level. Colonel Brandon, upright and unshakable to Marianne, the rational sister makes impulsive choices for love, and the emotional sister returns to reason. The intermingling of reason and emotion is an imaginative solution provided by Ang Lee.
02. Comparison of two performance methods
From the brilliance of Sense and Sensibility to the radiance of Titanic, Kate Winslet's charm lies in the fact that she is both a "British rose" in line with the traditional aesthetic – elegant and classical and beautiful, but also intrinsically rebellious with modern women – independent personality and free spirit. Therefore, compared with many actresses of her generation who are conformist and unsalient, she can wander freely among mainstream commercial melodrama and avant-garde experimental and exploratory art films. Her emotional fullness and true emotions are particularly moving than the British actors' emphasis on external expressions.
From "Howard Manor" to "Farewell to the Sentient Days", emma Thompson's character wanders between different social classes and various characters, and her performance is based on a highly conscious rationality and precise design of the role, and the different reactions of the characters to the understanding of the interesting character of people of different classes make her performance have a documentary - that is, a kind of screen reproduction of the British classical humanities. Therefore, the characters she portrays are mostly stoic, heavy-handed, rational and restrained, which is a portrayal of The "national character" of Britain. Her high personal literary attainment and her wisdom and humor make her a rare filmmaker who has won both Best Actress and Best Screenplay.
It can be seen that the interaction and contrast between the two actors themselves are "rational" and "emotional", and the perfect integration between their respective external temperaments and artistic image positioning and roles also makes the film have more levels of rigor. Reconciling the actor's own image and role meaning, so that it achieves a high degree of unity and harmony, is exactly what Ang Lee has always been good at, from Lang Xiong and Gui Yalei in the "Family Trilogy" to Zhou Runfa and Zhang Ziyi in "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" later.
Compared with wong kar-wai, Hou Xiaoxian, Cai Mingliang and other "author-style" directors with strong personal styles, Ang Lee is not known for his characteristics, especially in the production mode of the Hollywood industrial system, everything is to maximize the cultural output of the film and sacrifice the director's personal characteristics. In this case, Ang Lee can still control his own rhythm in the "four flat and eight stable" images.
01. Smooth and solid images and the art of "balance"
The first is to simplify the complexity through efficient and crisp audiovisual language, making the film easier for audiences outside the context of English culture to understand. At the same time, he also moderates the irony of looking at the world and class in the text, making the tonality more in line with the aesthetic tendencies of the public.
For example, the efficient sub-shots at the beginning of the film succinctly give the audience a glimpse of the embarrassment of the sisters' family after being driven away by the eldest son of the inherited manor, and the harshness and snobbery of high society. The marginal position of the mother's composition and the "squeezed" in the visual space also hint at the family's financial constraints. A family under the warm candlelight on the dinner table uses a single shot of high sensory separation, on top of the false interests between people in high society, family and affection are thrown away, contrasting and ironic with the warm colors that should mean warmth and serenity.
If this kind of neatness in the lens language is still "excellent" in the Hollywood industrial model, then the grasp of the situation highlights the oriental aesthetic characteristics. In particular, her sister Marianne began to have a crush on Willoughby in the rain, and then ran to the rain after being frustrated. This kind of landscape idyllic composition, the emotional blankness of the scene, like Chinese painting, not only adds a bit of oriental charm, but also does not dominate, but still serves the character shaping.
Ang Lee once said: "In some film passages, I let myself withdraw from the novel and use the long-range to express the spirit and elements of the novel. The open and magnificent wilderness and the poetry of wind and rain that appear when portraying her sister are her sensual, frank and strong emotional portrayals; in contrast, her sister is often in the enclosed space indoors, rigid mechanized composition, the shackles of modern civilization metaphorically, and the rational shackles brought to her sister.
02. Slightly tragic "Ang Lee" harmony
At the end of the film, it seems that the sister's love marriage has a complete ending, but the union of the sister and Edward will still face rational self-examination, and even if the sister gains stability and stability under the love of Colonel Brandon, will she endure the calmness and boredom of Colonel Brandon? This is the tragic color hidden at the end of the film. No one's life and love can be settled forever, and it still needs to be constantly chased, thought, and run-in.
Looking at any of Ang Lee's films, not only is the plot in a state of dark tide under dynamic balance, but the seemingly satisfactory and happy "Ang Lee-style" reunion ending is actually a compromise and tolerance after each character is helpless and powerless.
In "Pushing Hand", Lang Xiong and Wang Lai, who are wandering in a foreign land, comfort and dissolve each other in the endless nostalgia and the loss of the gap between new and old generations under the collision of Chinese and Western cultures, and the last Lang Xiong and Gui Yalei at the end of "Wedding Feast" are a kind of self-dissipation that personal sustenance cannot complete. This tragic reconciliation, it seems that everyone has been soothed, but in fact the confusion has not disappeared, and this confusion is the never-ending life that follows everyone.
The spiritual pursuit of the individual is worn away in the collision of individuals and social groups, and the ideal is unable to be realized in the ideological conflict of the changing times, which has always been the interrogation of the fundamental dilemma of people in the harmony and balance of Ang Lee's films. Therefore, behind Ang Lee's seeming warmth, peace and harmony, it is a reflection on life, society and culture, there is no ups and downs, everything is just telling.
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