The German film "The Masterless" is based on the life of german contemporary artist Gerhard Richter, and the film is being premiered on the premiere app.
We can capture the shadow of Gerhard Richter and his creative approach everywhere in the film. Even the title "Masterless" is reminiscent of his "art without theme" style.
In the 1937 Art Gallery in Dresden, the docent was making a secular ridicule of abstract art, and Kurt was the smallest viewer.
Later, the boy said to his aunt Elizabeth May, who had brought him in, "Maybe I don't want to be a painter at all." ”
01
Yes, genius is not the result of pursuit, but talent.
At the beginning of the film, we can conclude that this is a story about artistic genius.
Kurt told his aunt in the coach that he missed the city very much. Outside the car window, the city is sunny.
When I returned to the country town, it was late. The town is shrouded in darkness, with a predominantly gray-blue hue that draws one into melancholy, with a hunch that there won't be Dresden's sunshine or art in the galleries – what's going to happen here is a sad story.
The aunt asked the bus driver to honk the horn collectively to help her vent the depression in her heart. She closed her eyes at the sound of the flute, experiencing the surging and resonance of her heart. Kurt looked at everything in front of him incomprehensibly.
The aunt took his hand and went home, turned her back to the camera and said, "Paint a picture by feeling, that's what those rebellious artists did." We couldn't see the expressions of the two of them, and the words fluttered in the gray-blue space, both illusory and real.
When the art enlightener instructed his nephew again, he was in a state of extreme excitement. She played the piano naked, turned her back on her nephew and said, "Never look away, Kurt, everything, as long as it's real, is beautiful." ”
In the background, innocent Kurt appears, as well as a fireplace with white tiles.
The director uses childlike and white to highlight her high spiritual purity, and her purity and authenticity are almost the embodiment of art. But during the Nazi period, mental sensitivity brought her unexpected disasters.
She displeased nazi doctors with whom her family had a family feud by publicly speaking out about the psychiatrist's marital discord, and reported her as a victim of a plan to purify her race.
Her frank telling him about the mediocrity she saw from the gynaecologist Carl Siebend's daughter and comparing it with her nephew's talent deeply irritated Dr. Westband, who was not only sterilized but also sent to the gas chambers.
The director's intention is very obvious, he is telling us that in the world of art, reality is the most core and beautiful. But in the real world, truth—including truthful expressions, evaluations, and undesirable behavior—can lead to disaster.
The contradiction between the value of reality in art and reality has brought great confusion to Little Kurt.
When the sister-in-law was forcibly taken away, Kurt twice raised his small hand in front of his eyes. From his subjective lens, we see a clear and harsh reality and a vague subjective consciousness switching.
The director uses this set of shots to make us feel the confusion of little Kurt, and also lays the groundwork for his future success.
02
He did not know that his lover's father was the murderer of his sister-in-law
After the war, the young Kurt entered the Academy of Arts. There, he met a beautiful girl with the same name as his aunt and became a couple. But he did not know that his lover's father was the murderer of his sister-in-law, Siebend.
The West Bend doctor, who served in the Nazi service, was sheltered by Soviet officers by chance after the war, and not only evaded the pursuit, but also got back on track.
Kurt's father lost his job because he refused to join the Nazis during the war; in order to survive, he joined the Nazis against his will. But after the war, this made him unemployed again. He eventually committed suicide because he could not bear the humiliation.
Kurt's father and Dr. West Bend, two intellectuals, one who insisted on the truth but ended up ill-fated; the other, sleek and knowledgeable, could eat well in any era.
The scene when Kurt goes to the West Bend doctor's house to rent an apartment is the best revelation of the doctor's nature.
The doctor in the custom suit came down the stairs, and Kurt looked up at him. The doctor walked up to him and looked at the young man in the homemade "suit" who was very rough in design, tailoring and materials, and it was difficult to restrain his contempt for inferior people.
He first mocks Kurt's stiff expression, and then takes advantage of the opportunity to paint and paint the same word, deliberately mistaken, treating Kurt as a painter and letting him paint the house for himself.
Subsequently, when he expressed his views on Kurt's painting style, he still maintained a condescending sense of superiority.
The arrogant West Bend did not know that the suit on the young man was the "masterpiece" of his daughter, who lacked talent.
The director here gives us two very important messages: First, Siebend is a pure racial purifier, with absolute confidence in his good qualities and no mercy for inferior people.
Second, he told Kurt, a student of art, that he only recognized the social realist genre, indicating that he understood the tendency to inflame.
Even if he insists on racial purification in his heart, he is old and spicy, and he is superficially obedient to the wishes of those in power. It is implied that it is entirely possible that he could have used his relationship to send his daughter to an art school that should have required talent.
The scene where the portrait of Siebend is painted can be said to be the director's portrait of his soul. On the right side of West Bend hangs a schematic diagram of the fetus, and on the left side stands a full-body skeleton model of the human body. Siebend chose these props to include in the painting, seemingly emphasizing the professional characteristics of his obstetrician-gynecologist.
But following the eyes of the painting Kurt, he stands between the two, giving the strong visual impression that he is a man who can control the fate of others—both to help people gain life and to transfer people to the devil (the skeleton skeleton model is easily reminiscent of the devil).
In this suggestive picture, the morally upright doctor stands in front of the skeleton, like a devil spokesman.
Nearly 30 years old, Kurt and his wife defected to West Germany. On the night of departure, the streets and stations were shrouded in a cold blue. After saying goodbye to their friends, two bright yellow light spots flashed on the dark window glass against the background, indicating that they were about to embark on a bright journey of hope.
As they entered the station, the officer shouted, and everyone was extremely nervous. In a state of nervous fear, the red and yellow train pulled into the platform.
Warm-colored trains cut through the cool-toned images, bringing nervous passengers into warm carriages and carrying them away from the cool world.
From the moment I entered the carriage, the picture remained warm. The director uses the changes and contrasts of the two tones of cold and warm to distinguish East Germany and West Germany, and also opens the transformation of Kurt's fate.
03
Great art should be rooted in reality
In West Germany, Kurt chose Düsseldorf, where modern art flourished. Despite the admonition that he was older, he still entered the Düsseldorf Art Academy without hesitation and devoted himself to modern art. And did not hesitate to suffer ridicule and insults from his father-in-law.
In the end, Kurt succeeded—though he took many detours and made many ingenious and wrong attempts.
The film shows Kurt exploring various creative means, leading us to pay attention to his creative methods.
Kurt's prototype, Gerhard Richter, was successful in Western art and his creative method played a huge role. Ignoring the information provided by the film, we have failed the director's painstaking efforts.
In the film, Kurt was criticized by the professor for only imitating the work and lacking representation. The professor educates Kurt with his own experience, and only that kind of unforgettable thing is the most real.
Great art should be rooted in this reality.
Inspired by the professor, Kurt found inspiration from an old photograph. He clearly painted old photographs of his aunt and himself on the canvas, and then used a brush to process them into a hazy and blurry effect—forming a blurry real image.
Just like the scene he saw when he stretched out his palm, it was the most memorable feeling and memory of his childhood.
The film's final climax is left to Kurt's photo-based painting. His prototype, Gerhard Richter, succeeded in his approach and work, which derived from photographic gray and deliberately obscured subject matter.
It is photo-based, but does not fully reproduce the photo, nor is it collaged. Instead, it reinterprets the photograph in a gray color and, when drawing the photograph, places two contradictory techniques (rough and detailed) in the same work.
Ignores the details of the original photo while blurring the photo.
In the film, Dr. West Bend almost collapses when he sees the painting by chance.
Kurt painted "accidentally" on the same canvas "patient killer" Berghard Kroll, West Bend, his aunt and his childhood self.
Due to the treatment of frictional deletion, the work, although figurative, is vague; the facial features are visible, but the expressions are missing. Under the barrier of a vague layer, the viewer seems to never be able to truly touch the truth of the work.
The characters appear on the screen seemingly accidentally, but they are actually Kurt's recollections of the dark experiences of his childhood; inadvertently revealing the history and inner shadow of Dr. West Bend's sin.
The film repeatedly appears in the climax of the film through the window to the outside and inwards. The director quietly put an artistic cognition of the artist here in advance.
Gerhard Richter argues that every fragment of nature bounded by a window frame, no matter how fortuitous, randomly chosen or incomplete, is "authentic" and "correct" to people.
In reality, artists don't express this idea until a decade later.
At the end of the film, Kurt's work attracts attention and he successfully holds a solo exhibition.
Coming out of the exhibition, Kurt passed by the bus terminal, and he asked the drivers to honk for him. In the long song, he also slowly raised his arms and completed the tribute to his beloved and unforgettable aunt!
The movie "Masterless" is being broadcast live on the whole network of the happy premiere app, come and watch it~