Original | Book Shadow Jun
The fiery National Day file has passed, and "My Motherland and Me", "Captain China" and "The Climber" are three-legged.
The three tribute blockbusters have grossed a total of 5.2 billion yuan at the box office, and the National Day of 2019 can be described as the most profitable holiday for Chinese films.
Among them, "Captain China", adapted from the real incident of the diversion of Sichuan Airlines flights to Chengdu, has a good reputation and box office.
After watching it, the audience generally believes that the plot is tense and exciting, the picture is exquisite, and the aviation expertise is rich, which makes the feeling of a domestic blockbuster.
And in 2009, an American film released, "Captain Sully", is also the story of how a heroic captain used his experience to save 155 passengers from danger.
Next, Shuyingjun will dissect this "Captain Sully" in detail from the four dimensions of story background, narrative structure, character shaping, and theme.
Captain Sully is based on a real aviation accident that occurred in the United States on January 15, 2009.
An American Airlines Flight 1549 from New York's LaGuardia Airport to Charlotte took off just two minutes after it collided with a team of Canadian grey geese, causing the plane's twin engines to lose all power.
Captain Cheslie Salemberg (known as Sully in the film), who was in charge of the flight, with more than 40 years of experience in driving, finally forced the plane to land on the Hudson River, and all 155 passengers on board were rescued.
From the time the plane was hit by a flock of birds to the time it landed safely, it took only 208 seconds, and the event came to be known as the "Hudson Miracle."
After the accident, Captain Sully became a hero to the American people, but the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) believed that Captain Sully could have returned the plane to a nearby airport and launched an investigation into him.
The film "Captain Sully" does not focus much on the aircraft's aerial distress, and the larger part is about Captain Sully and his co-captain, who repeatedly confronted the safety committee during the investigation.
Is Captain Sully a hero or a deceitful liar? This is the most central point of the dramatic conflict of "Captain Sully".
The background of the story is introduced, and then the narrative structure and techniques of the film are introduced.
The narrative structure of "Captain Sully" is like a complex and exquisite vertical volume, and the camera cycles back and forth in the timeline of Sully's youth and old age, dreams and reality, the time of the accident and after the accident.
A number of judgment questions, such as whether Captain Sully is correct or wrong, whether he is a hero or a liar, whether the flight control requires machine precision or rich human experience, etc., increases the complexity and delicate texture of the film's theme.
With that in mind, the film also praises new York City's emergency departments, who safely rescued more than 100 passengers on the river in just 20 minutes, creating another human miracle.
The orange life jacket worn by the lifeguard finally renders the main color of a black-gray disaster film into a warm orange-red color.
To be able to centralize such a messy and complex scene and unify it into a creative theme, it is more necessary to have the director's experience and rich experience, and the 87-year-old famous American director Eastwood deserves a big job.
From the grasp of the rhythm of the plot, "Captain Sully" is also crisp and clean, without dragging mud and water.
10 seconds before the film begins, against a black screen without any footage, through the background of Captain Sully's dialogue with the ground command station, the audience already knows the beginning of the story: a flight has just taken off.
Immediately after, a strongly stimulating picture appeared in front of the audience, Captain Sully and the co-captain desperately controlled the lost power of the plane, but the plane flew lower and lower, and crashed into the towering buildings of New York City, accompanied by the screams of countless passengers, and the plane instantly caught fire and exploded.
The audience's heart, within a minute of the beginning of the film, has already been mentioned in the throat eye.
After the plane crashes, the camera immediately switches to a sweaty Captain Sully waking up from a nightmare, and the audience understands that the plane crash was just a nightmare.
All of this happens within two minutes of the beginning of the film.
Within two minutes, the director not only explained the background of the accident, but also came to a major plot reversal, and also portrayed the psychological state of Captain Sully after the crisis, killing three birds with one stone.
Eastwood, who was 89 years old at the time, was worthy of a piece of old ginger, and the audience was instantly stimulated.
Nearly 30 minutes after the film begins, Sully talks to his wife on the phone, and when she asks him why he chose to land on the Hudson River, sully's recollection allows the audience to see the whole process of the plane from take-off to accident to final forced landing.
This seemingly fragmented narrative structure, the audience's viewing experience is very complete, because the director is always following the inner emotional changes of Captain Sully, and choosing when to interject, flashback or sequentially show the storyline.
Making a movie is like making a girlfriend, as long as it does not violate morality and the law, all means and techniques can be used. When Eastwood filmed Captain Sully, he was like an old playboy who was familiar with every trick of coaxing girls (audiences) to be happy.
1. A demonstration of human weaknesses
In Captain Sully, the film begins with Sully's nightmare. The plane he was piloting crashed into a building lined with New York City, caught fire and exploded, killing people. Sully woke up from the nightmare and was sweating profusely.
Similar crash hallucinations or nightmares appear three or four times in the film. In reality, Captain Sully did receive psychological counseling after the accident.
Americans believe that even the greatest hero will have his psychological fragility and smallness, which is both a fact and a disgrace.
2. Attention to the family life of the captain
In "Captain Sully", through a few short clips, the audience can clearly know that Sully's family economy is in difficulty.
In a scene where Sully talks to his wife on the phone, his wife complains to Sally that the vacant lot in the house has not been rented out for 9 months and that the bank's dunning order has been sent.
Sally comforted his anxious wife on the other side of the phone, but her expression was solemn.
In another scene, when Sully and the co-pilot are chatting before the plane takes off, the other party makes a good-natured joke about Sully's bragging, because looking at the advertisement on the safe flight consulting business website he set up, Sully has headquarters in three states and has more than a hundred employees.
"But actually," the co-pilot laughed, "you're the only one."
Sally also smiled and said, "Take your time, I'm just starting out." ”
These two plots seem to have nothing to do with the theme of the film, but they have two important roles.
One is that Sally is arranging his life after his imminent retirement, and it can also be seen that he does encounter some financial difficulties.
The second is that through this "false advertising" plot, it kindly shows the secular and ordinary little people side of Captain Sully.
Movies depicting heroes are easily shrouded in the aura of heroes throughout, and it is not easy or allowed to show the small and even flawed places of heroes.
But it is precisely such a small plot that makes captain Sully's hero more real and fleshly.
3. The focus on the character's growth experience is different
In Captain Sully, Captain Sully is an old pilot with 42 years of flying experience.
The film sets up two memorable plots, one is a young Sally who has just started flying an airplane for the first time, and the other is a soldier Sully who pilots a fighter plane and encounters danger.
The two plots stretch Sally's growth experience from the dimension of the timeline, thus explaining the source of his persistent and determined character, making the characters richer and more three-dimensional.
As I said earlier, whether Captain Sully is a hero or a liar is the most central dramatic conflict in the film "Captain Sully" and the theme of this film.
In order to highlight the theme, the film has a lot of background from both positive and negative aspects.
Let's start with the hero theme.
In the film, there are several appearances of people who worship Sally's heroic deeds.
When he was interviewed on the TV show, the makeup girl took the opportunity to kiss Sally's face quickly and smiled and said, "This is for my mother, who is still single." “
After the accident, the company temporarily arranged for Sally to rest in a hotel. When Sally asked the hotel staff to help him dry clean the only uniform on his body, the girl showed an unbelievable expression and asked, "Dry cleaning?" ”
Sally mistakenly thought his request was too much, and hurriedly said, "If it's too much trouble or too late, forget it." ”
But the girl said with tears in her eyes, "Are you kidding me?" I would love to give you the whole hotel. After saying that, he jumped over and hugged Sally.
Depressed by the investigation, Sally went to the tavern alone to drink, and the bartender recognized him and expressed his admiration to Sally in surprise, even telling him that one of the wines here was named after him.
This kind of worship, which spreads around the corners of the city and all kinds of people, sets off the greatness of the hero's creation of Sali.
Secondly, let's talk about the scammer theme.
Captain Sully woke up from nightmares several times, and also hallucinated many times, because of excessive psychological pressure.
This kind of pressure comes from the psychological stress response after the disaster, and the other is self-doubt about whether there are mistakes in their operations.
When he learned that the result of the computer simulation of the pilot's operation was that the plane could return safely to the airport, Sully fell into a constant state of self-doubt and even self-blame.
In the film, there are many pictures of Captain Sully running alone, staring from afar, thinking with his head down, and being silent, and this figurative picture is finally pieced together, which is the abstract process of Captain Sully's inner pain and reflection on memory.
In the end, it was the confidence that Captain Sully's more than 40 years of driving experience brought about, overcoming the confusion and self-doubt caused by the accident.
In the end-credits egg after "Captain Sully", the crew invited most of the passengers on that year's flight to the exhibition hall where the plane was displayed, and the passengers hugged the real Captain Sully one by one.
Captain Sully said, "Because of the experience of that day, the hearts of all of us will be connected forever." ”
Drawing on the film "Captain Sully", I hope that our domestic film creators will work more on narrative skills (to put it bluntly, that is, the ability to tell stories), and pay more attention to every living person in the story, what they think, hate and love, their joy and fear, sadness and anger.
Only if the character in the play is a person with flesh and blood and feelings and weaknesses, his image can be three-dimensional and full of true and credible, and the story he experiences will bring the audience the greatest sense of reality and shock.
Only in this way will "Captain Sully" filmed by our Chinese director appear as soon as possible.
You say not?