*[The Royal Hotel Murder] Spoilers
"What kind of hotel are you? Is it a porn theme?"
Dakota Johnson asked with her signature gasp tone.
When my mother filmed "[Fifty Shades of Grey and Black Flying]", you didn't know where it was.
This question is because this is a "voyeur hotel":
Mirrors in all rooms are double-sided mirrors.
You are scratching your head in the mirror, stripping naked, or indulging in smelly socks, or stripping smelly socks off, unaware that someone is snickering on the other side of the mirror.
Of course there are more unspeakable pictures.
It's like a joke on Weibo: a ball of paper was stuffed on the ceiling of the bathroom in the hotel, and it was pulled out to reveal a small hole...
Through the deep porch of the concierge's room, you can see the most secret side of everyone.
Some people, like Dakota, have a hoarse voice, but they kidnap a loli behind their backs.
Some people turned the house upside down as soon as they entered the house.
Some people can sing K all night without accompaniment.
And the concierge's job is to record all the unknown aspects into videos and send them to the boss.
In [The Royal Hotel Murder], one is omniscient and the other is ignorant.
The peeping side has some kind of God's perspective and is more curious.
But the peeped party can only let others look at his chest and buttocks, and pay the housekeeper to the little brother.
In a sense, this is close to the act of "watching a movie" itself.
In a box, joys and sorrows, killing and salvation are being staged, and in the theater, we are peeping recklessly.
[Royal Hotel Murder], what kind of devil setting is this?
01
A reporter asked director Drew Gouda, unless you are Gay Talese (a famous American writer and journalist), it is difficult to find a real voyeur hotel.
Drew pretends to be mysterious:
In fact, there are many perverted hotels, you just need to look for them. In reality and fictional works, there are many. I just stole some of the best concepts from it. When looking for a hotel, you can have a snack.
And that's about a book written by Guy Tales called The Peeping Hotel.
On January 7, 1980, Guy received an anonymous letter.
The writer confessed that he was running a motel for the purpose of spying on guests.
There are 21 rooms in the hotel, of which more than a dozen, he dug out "vents" in the ceiling, so as to observe and record the "social behavior and sexual behavior" of others.
In 2017, the documentary [Voyeur], reproduced this story.
Even before building the "vent," he considered installing double-sided mirrors, just like in [Murder at the Royal Hotel].
He took Guy with him, and climbed into the narrow passage, while the passengers, right under their noses, ate, slept, and banged unknowingly.
Guy felt guilty, but the innkeeper said:
Bought this motel to satisfy my voyeurism and interest in people's social behavior and sexuality... It's all out of curiosity about people, not just because I'm some kind of crazy voyeur .
He also conducts statistics on these records: where the passengers come from, how old they are, whether they are fat or thin, what personality, what occupation...
And from time to time makes anthropological conclusions that are close to field observations:
Most tourists spend their time in misery. They quarreled over money and where to play. This aggressiveness was inflated again and again, and finally they found out: we are not suitable at all! It is especially difficult for women to adjust to the environment and their husbands. Holidays create anxiety and the worst emotions.
And with their public side, you never know if their private lives are hell.
He has seen quarrels between husbands and wives, veterans wounded in war, and their wives never give up. He has also seen wives who lost their husbands on the battlefield, calling male prostitutes in loneliness.
He was originally a voyeur, but as a result, under the surface of human debauchery, there is endless emptiness and loneliness.
But don't get me wrong, he didn't shut down the hotel because of mental torment—
In 1995, arthritis made it impossible for him to climb the ventilation tube.
The entire building was razed to the ground, permanently closed
02
Voyeurism certainly crosses moral boundaries. No one wants to be peeped.
But in the film and television works, they take the trouble to express voyeurism.
In fictional stories, this behavior can be forgiven for a second.
Gradually gain peace of mind while spying on tenants
Ultimately not content with just peeping
You find these voyeurs, always portrayed as mentally tormented .
[The Royal Hotel Murder] was no exception.
The porter's brother repeatedly asked the "priest" for confession because he had done something "worse" than peeping.
The film unfolds in a Quentinian non-linear narrative. The same event is retold from the perspective of different people, but the time and space are slightly shifted; and a shocking history is interpolated from time to time.
The structure itself is like a "voyeur hotel".
In each pane is a cross-section of a person's life, and the next moment may be another scene before the subversion.
In the other pane, another person is lonely with different loneliness and suffering with different pains.
The audience has become a real "voyeur" and has a panoramic view of everything.
Guy was still struggling before he went to visit the voyeur hotel, but he thought of a sentence in his previous book:
Most journalists are restless voyeurs who can see the blemishes of the world, the imperfections of human beings.
Those of us who watch movies, those who watch live broadcasts, those who spy on Moments and Weibo, are not disturbed and secretive at the same time.
Humans all have varying degrees of prying desires. However, most people chose the legal way, and also allowed the person on the other side of the double-sided mirror to know, allowing them to disguise to a certain extent.
In this movie, the privacy that the hotel illegally spied on is so bloody and naked.
Not to mention the scenes dictated by the concierge, all of which cannot be filmed - once filmed, the movie rating will be up again.
What MPs beat up prostitutes.
What addict committed suicide after writing "sorry" in feces.
What kind of people and wolves sleep together [Of course it's not as simple as literal.
In [Royal Hotel Murder], the "voyeur hotel" built on the film, you see the same fragile soul.
So the past of the concierge's brother became the magic stroke of the movie, which injected a boost of strength into the slightly procrastinating narrative.
At the critical moment, he needs to pick up a gun to save himself and others.
But he murmured: I can't kill anymore.
The battlefield left him with indelible wounds.
Hateful people are also pitiful.
03
Director Drew deliberately set the time in the broken 60s:
This is a turbulent time in the United States. Kennedy was assassinated, Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated, Nixon took over as president, the art world, the music world, the movie world, there were revolutions going on.
Society is pulling everyone like crazy until they fall apart.
Another prototype of the hotel in the film also carries this kind of fragmentation.
This is also an archetype that Drew singled out to emphasize: Cal Neva.
It's a casino that, like the hotel in the film, straddles California and Nevada.
This prototype is even more legendary.
Frank Sinatra bought the place.
He has always been suspected of having an affair with the Mafia.
Judy Garland has performed here.
You know she was deeply troubled by the Hollywood pedophilia and feminism of the time.
Marilyn Monroe is also said to have taken drugs here, just days before her death.
There are even conspiracy theories that Monroe actually died here.
She has always been objectified as a tasty gadget.
This makes one can't help but imagine how many crazy images it would see every day if it was also a voyeur hotel.
But it may not be so crazy.
They are no different from the tenants in "Voyeur Hotel", they are desperately trying to grab the straw that shouldn't be caught because of loneliness.
They are also no different from the various characters in [Murder at the Royal Hotel], who are always pulled and drifted by circumstances, and even their souls are twisted.
Maybe they are just like us.
Human suffering is generally similar, so why peep at it?
References:
[1] Unraveling the musical neo-noir Bad Times at El Royale with director Drew Goddard | Polygon
[2]The Voyeur's Motel | New Yorker
[3]EXCLUSIVE Bad Times At The El Royale Interview With Drew Goddard | WhatCulture
[4]The El Royale Isn't A Real Hotel, But 'Bad Times' Is Inspired By Some Shady Haunts Of The Rich & Famous | Bustle
[5] The Incredible History of the Cal-Neva Lodge on Lake Tahoe | SnowBrains
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Text: Jiang not stop
The article comes from WeChat public account: Movie Detoxification
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