The following are some brief viewing records, very unprofessional and extremely subjective, for reference only.
My wish is world peace, and the director of Refn will not take the plot and concentrate on flying.
The first is the problem of thin portrayal. However, I don’t think this is a weak place. The characters created by Refn usually have a strong representative meaning. For example, the actor of Drive represents faith, liberation and ultimate freedom. He is perfect. No shortage, so deep for love. But he, who represents idealism, must be immortal, so he finally drove away. I believe that this ending will give the audience a great shock and a sense of identity, which is rare in the works of the same period, so he won great praise.
And Jesse is another extreme of identification, which is the pursuit of human beauty. Little Elle is naturally lovely, but it is far from perfect. It should be said that no one in the world is absolutely perfect. Everyone has their own appreciation of beauty, but Jesse in this film is symbolic. Yes, it represents the ultimate "beauty" recognized by everyone, while Ruby and Gigi represent two attitudes towards beauty, that is, love and jealousy.
I personally think that if this film has to suppress a theme, it is to explain the essential response of human beings when they encounter the most straightforward and flawless beauty. Objectively speaking, there are two kinds of love and hate. Dean and Gigi's girlfriends are just representatives of the roles under these two branches.
However, even if these attitudes are more obvious at the beginning, a piece of white cloth and a few labels, Refn can completely empty the plot, and the characterization is completely redundant.
The only thing that has been carefully shaped in this film is the transformation of Jesse itself. It is not so much a transformation, as it is the true self after the layers have been stripped off. There is also the description of the role of Ruby. I personally like the image of this woman very much. Here I want to mention the extremely simple and effective images used in this film, animals and neon lights.
Let's talk about animals first. Jesse signed a model agency. After returning to the Motel for a night tour with Dean, a lynx (or lynx?) appeared in the room. It was obvious that Jesse was not so stupid enough to forget to lock the door. She also used the key when she came back. Then I opened the door and saw the lynx. So, this animal appeared in white and appeared in Jesse's room, and in the subsequent plots, we can also see that this small room is actually a kind of impression of Jesse's heart. She first entered the fashion circle, and she was very popular at a young age. Everything was like a dream, and she seemed to have a chance to win. The previous conversation with Dean also showed that she is not ignorant of her beauty. So the lynx represents the awakening of Jesse's ambition.
And when she was adopted by Hank as the finale of the catwalk, wearing a beautiful black dress, those neon lights turned from blue to red. When the red Jesse awakened, she could see that there were hickeys in the mirrors on both sides. Jesse had kissed her past self goodbye against the blue lights before, and kissed and welcomed the real red demon inside.
The colors of these two lights and shadows also echoed the show that Ruby took Jesse to watch at the beginning. Although the show was extremely curious at that time, Jesse was not scared, but liked it very much. She was not so innocent from the beginning. Characters. In the end, she evaded Gigi’s pursuit and escaped from the red promenade. Ruby was pushed down the swimming pool in the garden illuminated by blue spotlights and fell to her death. She returned to the pure beauty in the end, but this beauty was distorted. His love and jealousy are bound to die.
Animals are also used to shape Ruby. After Jesse defected and put on makeup, Ruby painted a strange face on the mirror in pain and hatred after Jesse refused to make her. In the mirror was a leopard. Ruby didn't want to play the role of a friend anymore, she had desires, she couldn't ask for it, and she felt distressed. So Jesse’s direct refusal made her extremely desperate. After that, she cooperated with Gigi and the others to kill Jesse and eat her (here I tend to be that only Gigi and the others ate Jesse, Ruby should only be bathed in her blood, or fucked before. Afterwards, she sat alone in front of the sofa, and the animal behind was no longer a leopard enjoying food exclusively, but a wolf.
She finally got Jesse, but she had to share it with others, she only got Jesse's pieces.
But she was very satisfied under the moonlight. Jesse's blood flowed from her lower body. I like this erotic image very much. There was an allegory about looking at the moon and making a virgin pregnant. Ruby looked at the moon, and Jesse inside her The part of her also gurgled, indicating that she had indeed had sex with Jesse (the corpse).
The role of Ruby is very thorough, and this is what I said about the director of Refn as always. Ruby is a crazy person for beauty, but he is very cold, even a little masculine. Her abdomen was covered with tattoos, she was only wearing trousers, and she was holding a hose to water the flowers. Lie half-naked and smoke in the empty tomb dug for Jesse. She not only puts on makeup for the living, but also decorates the face of the dead, missing the tactile corpse of Jesse's skin. She is a completely wild, purposeful and aggressive female character, which is very rare in movies.
Back to Jesse, she is actually a very simple character. A young girl in a small town knows her own beauty and is more fortunate than others. She is clean and presents herself. She is absolutely right, even if she finally becomes a spoiled monster, then she is also beautiful, because her beauty brings happiness to most people. In the more advanced stage, the unsuccessful woman asked her in the bathroom, what's it feels like? Like walking in the middle winter, and you are the sun.
Jesse replied, it's everything.
Yes, beautiful people know how to be What kind of life can be achieved by beautiful things, they will never understand the thoughts of unbeautiful people. And vice versa, people who are not beautiful enough can never understand what a beautiful life is. This is human nature. The world is inherently unfair. It emphasizes the inner beauty, the strength of the soul, and so on. In the end, it is impossible to deceive oneself.
At the end of the film, Jesse is alone in the winter, and the sun gradually goes down. With Jesse's death, the world loses its brilliance.
Refn knows what he is shooting.
In the first party, in the bathroom, women talked about food and sex. Both of these are related to the word "beauty", because they are things that mobilize the five senses and even imagination. The only thing that can make the whole body feel is mobilized, it's fun, and it can be turned into one's own nourishment. Eating food will not die, and sex is the source of art and inspiration.
Not long after Jesse came into contact with photography and fashion, her feelings were also mobilized. As a sixteen-year-old girl who had never experienced sex, she began to have a basic desire for sex like food. After quarreling with Dean, Jesse dreamed that the janitor came to her room and used a knife to penetrate her mouth. Jesse is very thirsty. The knife seems to hurt her throat from thirst, but it also represents her ignorant fantasy about sex. She doesn't know what sex is like, but she knows the shape of a man’s sexual organs, and she also knows that it will probably hurt. , So instinctive associations were produced.
After waking up, Jesse locked the door and escaped, but the poor girl in room 214 next door was raped by the uncle. Jesse didn't run away in a panic here, but leaned on the wall fascinated and listened. The director even gave a shot of her lying prone from the next door. Yes, everyone in this circle desires and admires Jesse, but it is hard to say that Jesse does not yearn for their depravity and liberation.
Finally, let me talk about the light and shadow of this film. From the beginning, except for a few shots of the day, all are neon flashes in the dark night or large areas of darkness. Refn used this nerve-stimulating light and shadow and quirky music to maintain the uniformity of the film’s consistent style. It is actually difficult to achieve this, but Drive did it with large areas of horizontal light and cloudy days, the neon demon Also did it, this is the talent of Refr. It's just that this film is more mean and one-sided than Drive, and it's harder to be accepted by the world.
But it is still an ultimate presentation of idealization, and for me it is a rare and beautiful film.
There are also a few interesting places in the film. When I first watched it, I didn't pay much attention to it. Later I thought it was very interesting. One is that Jesse said that my mother used to say that I was a dangerous girl. It sounds really funny, like a student girl with a fantasy attack, but when you think of the character's sixteen-year-old age, you can understand it a little bit.
There was also the scene where Gigi vomited Jesse's eyes, and the whole movie theater laughed. She vomited so badly, but her girlfriend had nothing to do. It might be because her artificially modified body can't digest the so-called "natural" beauty. Humans discriminate against man-made objects everywhere. Here I want to understand it as the cold humor and malice of Renn, just like the director is telling the audience that now you all know what is going to happen, but the laughter is presented so disgustingly and distortedly, do you laugh or not.
Do not laugh.
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