(Text/Yang Shiyang)
The moment Camille appeared with the wine bottle, the style of "Sharp Weapon" was already established. This female reporter was tired but still had sharp eyes that could not be concealed. She abandons everything around her and even herself, but she tears herself into tears. With another indescribable driving force, he pierced into this chaotic and faint world. Nowadays, it is no longer the era of original reasoning. Those sensational tricks and wonderful secret rooms have passed away with the golden age. People are more willing to see the vast space beyond those artificial, artificial and dramatic scenes through crime. , To witness the complex dimensions and profoundness of humanity and human heart, and to see the blossoming flowers and the holes under the devastated civilized world. A series of excellent social crime stories expand their boundaries on this basis. They use some important symbols as markers to let people remember that the sticky and hotness in "True Detective" is not continuous in "Murder". Absolute rain, the white snow that covers everything in "Seven Seconds", the boundless dark night in "Sin Night Rush"... "Sharp Weapon" upholds this tradition. To some extent, Carmel is all the gloomy and widowed before. The synthesis and modification of those detectives who are unwilling but beyond the perseverance of ordinary people. It makes people inevitably think of these excellent previous works. If you have to choose a work that can be targeted, "Sharp Weapon" does inherit the "True Detective" Mantle.
This story comes from Gillian Flynn, the original author of "The Lost Lover". "Sharp Weapon" is her debut novel. In fact, compared to the famous former, "Sharp Weapon" is not inferior at all. In the original work The heroine, Carmel, narrates in the first person. "I" is a little-known tabloid reporter in Chicago. Because of two unsuccessful child homicides in his hometown, the editor-in-chief sent back to the place where he fled for a long time and had to face it again. The snobbish mother, the pretentious stepfather, the bizarre half-sister, and every deceased in the closed town that loves crazy gossip, in the self-destruction of alcohol catalysis and mental illness, painful memories and cruel reality Intertwined with each other. The narration of the original work is very personal, and it often uses a humorous tone, pretending to be humorous and mocking, to write those cruel memories and helpless coldness. There is a strong force between the tone of the narration and the content of the narration. After being adapted into an American drama, the director chose to abandon those humorous presentations, and instead deepened the depiction of helplessness and isolation. For the heroine Carmel, the hometown town is more like a whirlpool, rotating evilly and devouring everything. She herself is a survivor who escaped from birth, but this time she returned to the brink of life and death.
Just like the reality in the first season of "True Detective" is intertwined with retrospect, "Sharp Weapon" keeps flashing back, but those flashbacks are too fast, it looks more like an instant connection and short circuit of the brain, Carmel In the crevices of crime spying and dodge, I was revived by the familiar environment again and again. Everything I faced as a child was like a sudden flash of sparks, which burned myself at any time, and then suddenly died, and for this suddenly The flames and condensation of the fire, the only way to bridge this tearing can only rely on alcohol, and-use a sharp tool to portray a string of babble-like words on yourself. This kind of self-destruction in the eyes of others is more like self-help for Carmel. , She has been doing this since she was young, letting scars all over her body, which is a way to confirm the existence, using blood and pain to hedge against some indescribable panic that is about to be obliterated and swallowed at any time.
"Sharp Weapon" is alluring because it has established a wonderful coordinate system. On the one hand, it leads to the present and explores the mysterious crime step by step. The murdered girl had her teeth removed and placed it like a doll. On the windowsill of the alley, who did it and what does it mean? What is the connection between this and another unsettled case before, and on the other hand, it leads to the past, and Carmel himself tried to forget the peace The past that I got rid of, the sadness that my dead sister brought to the family, the madness and gloom of my youth in the small town, what I thought was forgotten, faded, and faded are all coming back to their homeland this time. . The interweaving of these two clues gradually evolved into outward radiation and inward digging. The identity of a reporter is constantly inquiring. She went to the police station, to the homes of her former classmates, and to her mother's former best friend. At the same time, she was also asking herself what she had experienced, and what exactly was the haze and haze that had been suffocating herself? To a certain extent, these two kinds of outward and inward inquiry gradually become mirror images of each other, and then penetrate each other and are indistinguishable. The hometown town is like a magical realm that exists independently in the world. Stepping on this place will make people dizzy. It is like a entrenched monster waiting for certain creatures to take the bait. The chaos of Carmel's own mind can be explained as the end of long-term soaking in alcohol, and it can also be understood as the mysterious influence of the strange aura created by the town, the crowd, and the family on her. As a result, the story becomes more complicated and confusing, and the real and the false.
For some viewers who are accustomed to fast-paced crime dramas, the look and feel of "Sharp Weapon" is destined to be strange, because from the external form, the story has no reasoning at all. Suspense piles up there, slowly fermenting, it is calm and relaxed. Encircling the case, writing people and situations, drawing everyone's weird movements and the state of hesitation without hesitating pen and ink, it is extremely slow and hot, and even, it has a bigger attempt, and has always refused to make the story true." Get hot", the director effectively controls the heat and temperature, forcing everything not to reach the boiling point, but to hover only on the edge tangent to the boiling point. This is a kind of obsessive-compulsive precision, a kind of only hanging the orgasm at the far end. As a long foreplay of seduction. This narrative method complements the spiritual core of the story itself.
Therefore, everything has become more and more invented. In fact, "Sharp Weapon" is not even a crime story in the true sense. It is more like a psychological healing. With brutal shock therapy, Carmel forces himself to face what he is trying to avoid. While spying on external crimes, conduct a thorough spiritual baptism for yourself.
(This article first published "Beijing Youth Daily")
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