A sorrow for the mechanism of "conspiracy" in life

Kole 2022-01-06 08:02:28

(Published in "Scars of Light and Shadow", Film Workshop 2012, Peking University Press)

Use the words of a report in the famous British film magazine "Vision and Hearing" to describe "Sacred Cars": this is undoubtedly the best in 2012 "Controversial" nature of the film. Although at the Cannes Film Festival in May, this new work by Caraxes was very popular but lost by one vote to "After the Light" in the "Best Director" section (Director: Carlos Rega Das) came home unfailingly, but the mystery whirlwind it set off around the world far surpassed the latter. The audience after watching the film showed a polarized reaction: the lover was deeply impressed by his deep emotions and grotesque form; the bewildered person was completely incomprehensible like falling into the clouds; and the hater was denounced as a grandstander See the craftsmanship with no content in the form. Karaks himself maintains a consistent attitude towards his own films-refuses to interpret or even comment. Faced with an interview that tirelessly asked him to explain the plot, Karax replied: "People talk about art, and artists make art, but do artists have to open their mouths?"
Karax's attitude poses a proud challenge to the audience. In the divergent interpretations, which ones are over-explained, and what are the essences that are close to Karax’s original intention? Is this a huge fable carefully constructed, or is it as Karaks said: "The more you bother to watch my movie, the easier it is to get lost in it?" In this context of contradictory and ever-changing and interesting texts, our intentions may not be there. Pursuing the literal answers that accurately explain the mystery of the entire work, I intend to sort out the different elements full of metaphor and symbolism in order to integrate several different levels of understanding of the film.

Karax's "Butterfly Transformation"
Like the profound literati background and tradition possessed by the older generation of French directors, the inspiration and nutrients that Carax drew from poetry is the starting point in his film creation. Although he was young, he once took a film class at the Seventh National Congress of Paris and briefly wrote a review article for the "Cinema Manual", but he never really got involved in the practice of filmmaking. And the unique poetic context of his debut novel "Boy Meets Girl" is essentially derived from the strong literary tradition in French films-its cruel youthful phantom blends the final appearance of perverse restraint and repression with Jean-Cocteau’s literary surrealism. And Allen Raynay's private literary expression full of signs and symbols are closely linked. It was on this basis that Karaks created "Bad Blood", a screen impressionist literary work full of visual intuition and rich emotions, presenting personal feelings and passions with the avant-garde visual means at the time, and at the same time Closely relying on personal romantic literary feelings. It now appears that "Bad Blood" is still the most brilliant culmination of Carax's film career. At the age of only 25, he had already brought his personal emotions full of innocent idealism to the pinnacle through situations with a tragic literary atmosphere and innovative film methods (film language deeply influenced by experimental films). Karaks confidently extended this core almost intact to his later work "Lovers in the New Bridge" or even "Paula X", and did not seem to have expected that the huge scale and content of the former had already been flashy empty. , And the latter is caught in a whirlpool of self-fascination and appreciation. This is probably why Karax has been in silence for eight years since the defeat of "Paula X" in 1999 and almost disappeared from the French film scene.
In 2007's "Tokyo! "In ", Karax finally made his appearance again with a shocking short film "Madman Dmitry". In addition to being shocked by the madness and destructive rebellious consciousness of the characters in the film, the attentive audience will also discover the ideological change that Caraxes has produced: he is almost exclusively concerned by the extreme personalization of the first four films. The filmmakers in the inner emotional world began to portray the contradictions and confrontations between the individual and the surrounding environment. This is shown in "Mad Man Dmitry" as a playful dislocation interaction between the extreme individual arrogance and the misunderstanding of the mobsters. The overall core mood of the film has also shifted from emotional idealism under the background of tragic poetry to a mocking gray pessimistic tone. This transition marks a certain socialization tendency of Karax in his creation: he is likely to realize that the ultimate contradiction to the individual cannot be completely completed within the scope of personal expression, and must be completed on the basis of determining the relationship between the individual and the world. Describe the problem. Although he still insists on his unruly and unruly personality, the "Dmit" in the film has been transformed from a single emotional releaser into a rebel in the category of sociological significance. The successor of this image-"Mr. Oscar", the protagonist of "Sacred Cars" is also the replacement of Karax on the screen, and he also began to be very different from his previous incarnation "Alex" ("Boys" The co-protagonist of "Meet Girls", "Bad Blood" and "Lovers in the New Bridge"), became a tragic character who "living" with the deepest and most arrogant pain in the existing system. The character's emotional distortion, introspection, and brief and gorgeous release form a sharp contrast with the system that suppresses him. This is undoubtedly a primitive metaphor of the relationship between Karax himself and the world around him, and also the original motivation for the filming of "Sacred Cars".
In this sense, after thirteen years of thinking, Karaks has completed his own path of "transforming feathers and butterflies": from showing the heart of a tragic unrestrained and gorgeous emotion releaser to an emotion facing invisible social pressure Rebellion and accusation. For ordinary viewers, realizing the importance of this transformation in him is the starting point for understanding the inner meaning of "Sacred Cars".

Reading and interpretation
Regardless of its controversy, "Sacred Cars" is undoubtedly the film with the most special structure, the most complex coding system, and the most important emotional content and ideological level among the world's films in 2012. When entering the analysis and summary of its several different levels, it is especially necessary to sort out the various details presented in the ten different segments of the film. Let's start with the prologue of the film, and carry out "what you see" description and "question" questioning-maybe not all meaning questions will have clear answers, but this kind of thinking process will still help us make a comprehensive judgment on it .

1. The prologue The
prologue begins in a movie theater full of audiences. After the film title jumped out, Karaks himself in his pajamas climbed out of the bed and walked through the room, pushing a door open and into the theater where the film was being shown. Many of the details here are considered by the critics to be full of metaphors and origins: the review article in the magazine "Vision and Hearing" confirms that Karax walked through the room to a secret door and listened to the passage from Jean Cocteau. "Blood of the Poet"-the poet in the film walks through the hotel room to the door and spies through the keyhole, and the dynamic situation of this peeping is closely connected with the movie watching mechanism; and the "Cinema Manual" and "Listen" all quoted Karax’s own explanations and linked the forest murals on the door and wall with Dante’s verse "At the midpoint of the journey of life, I found myself in a dark forest" .
In addition to these relatively clear sources, other details are more interesting and challenging: for example, the black-and-white silent film clip that appeared at the beginning of the film-a naked man smashed an object on the ground (Several Karax’s previous works will be used at critical moments) The silent film clips shot in the early birth period of the film are intended to continuously compare the unique methodology of the film with the magical impact of the screen on the audience’s psychology during the film’s birth period); another example is the audience sitting in the dark with both eyes Close tightly; what Karaks uses to open the theater's door is a huge iron key attached to his middle finger; while the babies and monsters that stagger past in the theater are mysterious and abnormal. What attracted me the most was actually the sound and picture misalignment carefully designed from the beginning of the movie: from Carax passing through the room, to the plane landing in the gliding outside the window, to him entering the theater through the corridor, the background The cooperating sound has always been the seaside (probably the dock), the waves caressing, the seagulls croaking and flying, and a few long steamer whistle sounds, but the audience has never seen a picture that matches the sound in their vision. In fact, none of the spaces that Karax passed through in the prologue had anything to do with the background sound!
There is no doubt that Karax intends to present the connection between the dream and the essence of the film, but we can’t help but wonder: In addition to this obvious opinion or even the old-fashioned metaphor, what kind of language is he in? Is there such a connection in the environment? The experience of dislocation of sound and picture gives us the entrance to understand this prologue and even the entire movie: we all know the power of sound montage and image montage on the screen-their combination can produce physical pictures and sound that they don’t have. The meaning of, can also take the audience's sensory consciousness away from reality and introduce it into the sensory situation constructed in the virtual space. In this abstract appearance, Karax seems to deliberately "abuse" the sound and picture combined with montage with skilled techniques. The latter became the vortex-like tone of the prologue to this superficial fascination, in line with other contemporary movies. The most common omni-directional means used to attract audiences — metaphors, long mirrors, spatial transformations and even those 3D computer-synthesized images — draw the audience in the theater into the scene preset by the filmmaker like a magnet. When these silent audiences (they even closed their eyes willingly and lost their ability to discern) follow the film situation without resistance, does it mean that the film has successfully achieved the goal of capturing the public senses? Or when the film itself has become a medium of discourse authority and audience awareness, does the harmony between authority and audience also constitute an impeccable "conspiracy" performance (with the silent film fragment of the film's birth period demonstrated in the film's opening) The intuitive internal mechanism that attracts the audience forms a strong correspondence conflict)? When we saw Karax appearing on the second floor of the theater and looking expressionlessly at the "harmonious" "compulsion" between the movie and the audience, he was neither excited nor engaged, but maintained indifferently and arrogantly. silence. A questioning context with deep irony comes into being here. We have a foreboding that what we will see is neither a lofty hymn nor a moving remembrance full of homesickness, but a cold perspective. The rebellious deconstruction of the things and emotions we know.
After clarifying the inner texture orientation of its context, this prologue that lasted only a few minutes has pointed directly to the core content and levels of "Sacred Cars": it starts from the individual (the creator), the film (the medium), and the carrier. (Life) Three levels of interrelation between questioning and questioning are the operating mechanism. The latter two have a clear manifestation in the prologue, and the former will soon constitute the subject who introduced this question-the creator. Caraxes once again incarnates himself as an image in the play of actor Danny Lawan, as an emotional guide, guiding us into the metaphorical space of the movie he intends to construct.

2. The banker, beggar, and special effects man
first aroused the intense interest of the audience, and the only prop that runs through the first three very different scenes is this long Cadillac with logo meaning. It is not only "a dream machine that makes contemporary fables, and Danny Lawan can switch among the countless roles in his life" on it, it is also the only space of "Mr. Oscar" that truly belongs to his own personality— -Getting out of this car, he can only vividly interpret the illusory life of others; only when he steps into the car can he recover his original appearance in a short rest. But the tragedy is that, just as Karaks described, such a precious real space looks like "a moving coffin with no end" in appearance and function, which tightly seals the spiritual world belonging to the true self within it.
The image of the banker in the first act of the film comes from the leader of the French Socialist Party Strauss-Kahn (the latter withdrew from the 2012 French presidential election because of a sex scandal in a New York hotel): "His body language, The image of suits and leather shoes and the discreet and secret charm of being a senior banker" are the source of this screen image. Similarly, the image of the old lady begging on the Pont au Change bridge in Paris across the Seine in Act II also comes from an archetype in life: Caraxes once observed several different female beggars on this bridge. The same costume appeared, and I even wanted to make a documentary about the experience of one of them. If the huge difference in the identity of the characters between the first two acts ignited the curiosity of the audience, then the dazzling body movements of the stuntman in the third act in the "action capture" studio conveyed a deep angle for the first time. Irony breath: The gorgeous actions and scenes that are exaggerated to the extreme bring not only visual and sensory viewing satisfaction, but also a deep inner emptiness. The contrast between the strong and dexterous physique shown by "Mr. Oscar" and his exhausted and weak heart (two falls after exhaustion) strongly conveys the inner contradiction of the character. In Karaks’ words: "This third act is a bit like Chaplin's "Modern Times" in my eyes: workers with special skills are trapped in parts and huge industrial machines. The difference is that (in this film) there are no machines and engines. Danny -Rawan III is struggling alone in a huge virtual system."
The total duration of the first three acts of "Holy Car" is only a dozen minutes, and there are few effective dialogues that can promote the development of the plot. But it relies on the incredible setting-the constant conversion of identities-to set the overall tone for the film: this is an unconventional narrative film that uses an emotional contradiction from the inside to the outside to set off the absurd context The coldness, endurance, expectation, pain and disappointment of the characters in the middle. After the end of the third act, the conversation between Danny Lawan and the driver Selena about the forest revealed the former’s potential desire to escape. At the same time, we suddenly realized that the state of "schizophrenia" that kept changing identities was exactly " "Mr. Oscar" desires to get rid of the normal life that he cannot abandon. The expectation expressed by Danny Lawan’s gentle and gentle tone is in stark contrast with the cold, wild and strange erotic scenes he participated in at the end of the third act, and the motion capture, which brings out an unspeakable heart of the character. Tragic state. The continuous enrichment and development of this character's inner contradictory state, and the continuous intensification of the conflict with the surrounding environment is the core expression of this film.

3. From the madman Dmitry to the dying uncle
, "Sacred Cars" has entered a new model from the fourth act: it borrows the movie as a carrier, starts from this, and then goes back to examine the film's body and treat it. A series of brilliant cuts are made in various forms.
Madman Dmitry from "Tokyo! In "Sacred Cars", he performed a ridiculous "Beauty and the Beast" legendary humorous satire; but the atmosphere of the film was reversed immediately, and "Mr. Oscar" turned into a solitary man. The father and the young daughter who have not seen each other for a long time staged a heartbreaking one-act play of emotional exchange; after the passionate church accordion ensemble echoed as the interlude, the audience saw the gangster in the huge container warehouse in Paris Chinatown. Horror murder. "Mr. Oscar"'s series of jump performances with the help of identity change made us suddenly realize what Caraxes hopes to achieve in the form of the film: he is familiar with the history and theory of film and borrowed the shell of different types of films to become "Oscar." "Mr." provides various performance platforms to show the latter's frequent switching of roles that ordinary people can't imagine. What we need to ask is, what kind of ability is needed to complete such a high-density investment of different types of emotions? Does it really have no effect on the executors themselves? "Mr. Oscar" sits behind the frosty appearance in the Cadillac. What does he think of such a life? The answer was revealed in his dialogue with his "boss" (played by Michelle Piccoli): When the "boss" asked him what beliefs supported his work, "Mr. Oscar" replied: for the beauty of his posture (his own beliefs) , And the "boss" reminded him: "beauty" only exists in the eyes of the audience (it seems logical to adapt to the requirements of the times and consumers), Oscar finally asked: What if the audience stops watching? (Here is a close link to the scene where the audience closed their eyes in the theater at the beginning of the film). The core theme of the film is gradually revealed in this dialogue: an art form carrier that was once full of confidence, belief and ideals, under the premise that the external form continues to evolve with the changes in the surrounding environment, its core is also irretrievable The beginning of the qualitative change, and the people who struggle for it on such a carrier, will their value disappear with such a change? Will they evolve into a zombie with an empty shell? The indifference, suspicion, exhaustion, and inner pain shown by "Mr. Oscar" have found their metaphorical meaning in this mysterious dialogue.
After a short interlude that broke out suddenly (this one is closely linked to the banker's paragraph in the first act, and at the same time is a postponement of the previous one, it is also a thrilling plot about a person being killed by his own substitute), What follows is the most emotional rivalry in the film (adapted from the chapter of Henry James's novel "Portrait of a Lady"): a pair of uncle and niece who love each other deeply with a hint of incest in the former Farewell before the death. Danny Lawan not only contributed the best performance of the film, but also fully embodies Karax's intention: to use such deep and complex emotions to contrast the hidden sarcasm in the previous horror plot. This contrast also responds to the previous dialogue between the "boss" and the "Oscar": For an actor (a dedicated devotee of acting career), what is really valuable is a passionate performance that moves the audience, or Use the "beauty" in the eyes of the audience to standardize and examine your life's career? In this scene, the audience is like a director sitting in front of a monitor, witnessing the actors entering the filming site, cultivating emotions, engaging in the performance, releasing their passion, indulging in it and being unable to extricate themselves, until the end of the play, they leave the scene sadly-two plays in the play In the end, the actors who devoted themselves to the performance didn't even know the other party's name. The roles they play become the only link that connects their relationship. At the end of this scene, we see how much consumption and pain the two performers have gone through, both mentally and physically, who have devoted themselves to the emotional life of the other. This also introduces the film into a deeper core discussion: Can a person's true self-emotions endure such consumption for shaping the spiritual body of the other forever? Can the self-spiritual subject of actors who are constantly consumed in order to fulfill their responsibilities and bring perfect performances to the audience survive such a seemingly perfect "comlusion" between the media and the audience? These questions lead us to the end of the film.

4. Samaritan’s top floor and two endings. The
encounter with Kelly Milog in the abandoned Samaritan mall is not one of the professional "dates" of "Mr. Oscar". The identity observes another colleague (and once his lover) up close, and this observation is like a mirror effect, releasing one's own confusion through communication with another person.
Samaritan was once the most famous luxury department store in Paris, but gradually declined with the passage of time and eventually closed and was abandoned. In such a metaphorical space full of "no longer glorious", Kelly Miloge sang the ultimate questioning of himself: "Who are we?". This question coincides with the extreme perplexity of "Mr. Oscar". Under the impact of both emotional and physical exhaustion, he was in a trance and confused the boundary between play and life-facing the scene where the flight attendant played by Kelly Milog fell from the top of Samaritan and died in the play, He couldn't restrain his inner impulse and ran away, hiding his face and crying. On the way to the last "date", what appeared outside the car window was the "Pantheon", the famous French cultural celebrity cemetery. Its meaning is self-explanatory: a generation of artists (actors) whose spiritual value has lost their careers seems to be the Pantheon. They have a dignified home.
In such a state of mental exhaustion and almost collapse, "Mr. Oscar" ushered in his last "date" of the day, and he will return to his "home" to reunite with his "wife" and "daughter". In the sad song of "I want to live again and relive those glorious moments", exhausted, he had to force a smile to enter the role again—playing the chimpanzee’s husband and father—trying to use his emotions as his own. The plot that escapes common sense adds to the emotions of people. A strong tragic ridicule against the "pseudo-idealism" in popular dramas emerges-an outstanding actor enters the last "role" of the day in such a dumbfounding way. What's more heartbreaking is that his "other" life will not end this night, and the only thing that allows him to return to himself briefly is the Cadillac that greets him the next morning.
The end of the life of the "other" is not the end of the film. In the huge garage, the female driver Selena put on a white mask before stepping out of the Cadillac and returning to her life. This famous mask is definitely derived from the film "Eyes Without Face" by French director George François in 1960. The only sign of a daughter who lost her face in that film is this pale mask. In "Sacred Cars", it implies the endless emptiness after the disguise of human beings-leaving the luxurious "coffin" that carries the individual characteristics of people, everyone and even Serena are forced to walk into one. There is no end to the role playing. In the end, those "moving graves" (Cadillac cars) that carry the real lives of the actors express the ultimate meaning of the film in a anthropomorphic way: people no longer need "moteur" and no longer need "action"!
What needs to be explained here is that "moteur" and "action" are not just two French words with the literal meaning of "engine/camera" and "action", they are also two sentences that directors often use when shooting French movies. Filming terminology, meaning "turn on" and "start of (actor performance)." With the development of film technology and the change of shooting methods, the camera becomes smaller and smaller (as revealed in the dialogue between "Mr. Oscar" and "Boss" ), computer stunts are used more and more frequently, and these two traditional terms are used less and less frequently during filming. The signs that people use to distinguish between virtual and real life in movies are becoming more and more blurred, everything seems to be in In the play, and everything seems to be real life. This is a portrayal of the exhausting experience of "Mr. Oscar" in a day, and it is not the spiritual price that each of us has to pay in this unpredictable digital capitalist consumer era.
Until this moment , The real theme of the film suddenly appeared on the screen.

The three levels of "sorrow"
Jean-Renoir once described his relationship with actors in an interview in the 1960s: "I am not shooting actors' performances, but moments in their lives." He is famous for his special method of guiding actors. French director Bruno Dumont explained in a lecture from another perspective: “We (filmmakers) are exploiting the emotions of actors in the cruelest way.” If the former is still dealing with Stanislavsky’s actors If the performance theory system makes an objective explanation, the latter is entirely a reveal of its negative effects. To a certain extent, "Sacred Cars" is a long-form interpretation of Du Meng's emotions-performance is a great technique and art, and it is the deepest consumable torture of one's own soul. When we saw Danny Lawan doing his best to give life to various characters with his own emotional and spiritual power, we also felt that his own spiritual power was declining slightly, and his true emotions gradually Entered into a state of inert blankness. But every actor has glory and brilliance, and has a sense of honor and pride for dedication to the cause, but the premise is that they maintain a firm belief in themselves and the cause they are engaged in. From the dialogue between "Mr. Oscar" and the "Boss" car, we can see that because of technological progress, the evolution of film production methods and the changes in audience tastes (the irreconcilable conflict between the audience's choice trend and the actor's professional ideals), "Mr. Oscar" lost his enthusiasm for his career, and lost faith in the film that gradually changed its essence. This is the real reason for his inner pain: the meaning of performance based on emotional dedication and talent creation is not only to constitute the film and the audience It is a link in the smooth "conspiracy" relationship (output content and reception content) between them, and it is also a means for him to achieve ideal value. And when this value gradually becomes empty due to the qualitative change of the carrier and loses its meaning, what is left to the pursuit of the value is endless emptiness, loss and pain. Finally in such a strong inner conflict, "Mr. Oscar" was unable to distinguish the boundary between reality and illusion. After seeing the tragic death of Kelly Mirog's drama, he lost his self-control and fell into the Cadillac with a desperate cry.
"Sacred Cars" does not stop at the individual level. In fact, when countless details suggest that "Mr. Oscar" is the incarnation of Caraxes himself, the contradictory relationship between film actors and film performances shown by Danny Lawan in the film has become Carax's conceptual film. A micro-fable of man in the world of movies. It is worth noting that in the ten fragments of "Sacred Cars", Karaks made a strong mockery of contemporary movie popular genres from an exquisite, profound and unique perspective. Behind the comedy’s ending is the increasingly superficial film driven by money, consumerism, materialized technical means and kitsch mentality. The impact and influence of the film’s initial birth on human senses, hearts, emotions and spirits is getting farther and farther. Evolve into an authoritative communication tool under the dual-track control of politics and business, relying on the control, anesthesia and catering of the public's psychology to achieve success and earn huge commercial profits, and bring the audience the most "blind" and shallow entertainment and sensory stimulation . All of this became an unreasonable and irresistible shackle law in Karax's eyes. So he created this allegorical strange situation so that his incarnation "Mr. Oscar" shuttled in different movie situations throughout the day. A day is the life of an artist, and the different roles that travel through it are the works that the artist is forced to devote to creating. Everything seems to be smooth, and everything seems to form an impeccable assembly-line production, but is there really no problem with the "conspiracy" relationship between the applicator and the audience? "Sacred Cars" is a concrete representation of the inner torment suffered by the producers on this assembly line-the artists-and the ruthless pressure of the external cruel world. This is not just an actor's complaint, but a filmmaker and artist's helpless mourning that the special existence of film, which combines the characteristics of art, commerce and industrialization, is constantly "degrading" in real life.
And when we once again use "movie" as the blueprint of micro-fables to magnify and perceive life, in socialized life, people are restrained, oppressed and tortured by the rules of the jungle of desires on which institutions, institutions, and capitalism depend for survival. Isn’t the tragic reality that has been hollowed out by the spirit on the road and missed my original intention, enthusiasm, and ideals, isn’t it the model that "Sacred Cars" focuses on? It is at this point that the film completes the tragic accusation in its grand concept from three basic points (personal, media, and social life).
"Sacred Car" is a rare film in the world today. It relies on a large number of meticulously constructed symbolic systems to complete a subjective description of the social operating mechanism, but what runs through it is the creator's deep and strong emotions that cannot be deposited and nowhere to release. It is rationally recognized and emotionally expressed. To some extent, this is a characteristic that French cinema and even French culture are proud of: it is always the best intersection of sensual romanticism and rational speculism.

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Extended Reading
  • Richie 2022-04-21 09:02:53

    I was a little confused at the beginning, the film is full of symbolic language, I didn't understand it at the end, I like this structure very much

  • Tamara 2022-04-24 07:01:16

    That nude solo silent film reminded me of the Balkan silent film that Anzhe used in "The Gaze of Ulysses." In the end, the dialogue between motors is of great significance to the times. The mechanized era is anti-mechanized, because it is inconsistent with the natural nature of human beings, but at least there is a sustenance of things. Seems to be a more serious crisis because the physiology cannot adapt in the short term

Holy Motors quotes

  • Angèle: I'll be punished?

    Mr. Oscar: Yes. Your punishment, my poor Angèle, is to be you. To have to live with yourself.

  • L'Homme à la tache de vin: What makes you carry on, Oscar?

    Mr. Oscar: What made me start, the beauty of the act.

    L'Homme à la tache de vin: Beauty? They say it's in the eye, the eye of the beholder.

    Mr. Oscar: And if there's no more beholder?