Introduction: The ten times in the movie contain drama and the real world, and the eleventh time outside the movie is another world, true and false, false and true.
The film "The Eleventh Time" is a comedy film directed by Chen Jianbin, which tells a stage drama arranged by the Municipal Repertory Theatre based on the "tractor murder case" of thirty years ago, in which the parties to the case, Ma Fuli, in order to clear his "murder" crime, took turns to "compete" with the drama, in the process of which Ma Fuli suffered from the dual pressure of family and life. After the film "A Spoon", the director has interpreted the nature of the literary film in "The Eleventh Time" with its depth and breadth, and the film not only integrates the dramatic elements, but also adds a series of metaphorical symbols to the expression of the story, making the film more layered.
1. Metaphorical symbols
Director Chen Jianbin followed his unique personal style in "The Eleventh Time", basing the story on the emotional relationship between small people to reflect artistic creation and the social status quo in the changing times. The film uses a chapter-and-loop narrative to cut the film layer by layer, and forms a perfect coincidence of parallel time and space in the unfolding of multiple clues, in the process, the director places a large number of metaphorical symbols into the film, making it add unique meaning and complexity at the story level. In the movie "The Eleventh Time", there is a special plot design, that is, every time the drama is rehearsed to the two people under the tractor running over the car, someone will appear and shout to stop the rehearsal, and every time the people who appear to stop are different, but they all have the same appeal, that is, changing the play, but each change makes the drama farther and farther away from the truth. This reflects the director's appeal to whether artistic creation can help find the real life, everyone has their own independent ideas, thinking about art, which is also what Hu Quentin and Jia Meiyi have been obsessing and pursuing in the film.
The second is the character design of the a and b sides of the film, Ma Fuli a who is sold in life who firmly believes that he did not kill people earlier, and the "murderer" b who killed Li Jianjian and his wife Zhao Fengxia without stepping on the brakes choreographed by the drama troupe, one is the real self that no one knows and understands in life, and the other is Ma Fuli who is choreographed on the stage. In the film, Ma Fuli himself is a person who has no subjective consciousness at all, and the director metaphorically describes this multi-faceted character to their loss of self-awareness, just like In the film, Ma Fuli stands in front of the window TV to examine himself, and each TV sets project a Ma Fuli, which is the best metaphor for the blurring and division of his self-consciousness. The director even applies such a and b designs to the entire film, each character in the film has two sides of a and b, and the superposition of drama and reality is like the fictional self of other people in life and the real self in reality.
The large number of symbolic details of the film's story is the clever design of the director's personal art and pursuit. The names of the characters in the story all have the symbolic image expression and parody color given by the director. Quentin Tarantino, an unusually unruly director, corresponds to Hu Quentin in the film, but is clearly a "Quentin hulai". The role of the actor In the film, Xiaobai Jameyi, corresponds to the legendary Meryl Streep in the acting industry, so she becomes a "fake Aunt May". The film uses two foods, apples and bean blossoms, as symbolic images, and the director uses these two ordinary foods in the film. First of all, the bean blossoms, Ma Fuli swayed between the lawyer and the ass brother because of his own lack of determination, and the same bowl of bean blossoms "is it salty or light?" "What is shown in the film is the confusion about the taste of the bean blossom itself, but in fact it refers to the different views of everyone on the same thing in real life, and in the film, it is a symbolic expression of the unclear truth of the case." The second is Apple, the Apple in the hands of Jia Meiyi and the "Apple Mobile Phone" that the actors in the crew are looking for have created an illusion between the "Apple" heard and the "Apple" that is really looking for, and the actor who suddenly breaks into the dialogue between Hu Quentin and Jia Meiyi, which is also a hint of the secret feelings between the two.
2. Theatrical integration
Director Chen Jianbin studied drama for many years after graduating from Chinese opera, as he said himself: "I am particularly obsessed with and fascinated by the backstage of drama, so I want to make this movie, so that the audience can see that the story that happens backstage is more exciting than the front desk", so in the movie "The Eleventh Time", director Chen Jianbin finally made the perfect integration of theater art and film, and the narrative form of the chapter body made ten chapters of the feeling of classical literary novels through the way of the movie, but the name of the movie was "The Eleventh Time". The director also said another layer of expression in his heart: life is like a play. Director Chen Jianbin mentioned: "The real eleventh time is from the moment when you walk into life at the end of the movie."
In the film, the life of Ma Fuli, who is a fan of the authorities, is like a drama, the past of thirty years ago is turned out and put on the stage for performance, the stage drama is forced to interrupt, change, rearrange again and again, and finally through the obsessive acting idiot Jia Meiyi found the truth of the matter thirty years ago. Outside the theater, it is like a drama, everyone is playing their own role, and life is like a frame of movies, a scene of drama. The actors' performances, actions and lines on the theatrical stage, as well as the dialogue between Hu Quentin and Jia Meiyi on the stage with the lines from the classic drama, on the one hand, fit the plot and artistic conception of the film, on the other hand, the director's theatrical art and the ideas he wants to express are best integrated in the film.
In addition, the film has repeatedly appeared in the dialogue stage between the gap between the curtains to form a passage picture, when the characters enter the passage to form a square dead loop of the picture, they are trapped in their own roles, and will continue in this cycle, suggesting that the actors in the film have to go down the role path. The director lets the audience see that the absurdity in the story is the projection of the delicate real life form behind the story. The truth in the film for many years has been distorted and stopped by different people and recombined, but the truth of the case is more and more distant from the stage drama, which is undoubtedly the bitter embodiment of the director's creative road, and the audience also sees that the scene inside and outside the play has formed a subtle and real reflection under the director's creation.
epilogue
The film "Eleventh Time" condenses the director's strong personal style, integrating drama and film, and reflecting art and life. The film's open-ended ending expands the audience's reverie, but there is no doubt that until the end there is still the film's characters' adherence to firm beliefs. The film analyzes the existence of truth and falsehood in ordinary little people, the unchangeable status quo of life, and the determination to strengthen faith without hesitation, which has become a literary and artistic film that reflects life and needs to be carefully savored.