In the usual sense, movies with an entertaining nature can always be widely accepted by the public, but Ultraman is not a blockbuster director. He was able to shoot one by one because the cost of the work is not very high, and the profit and loss is basically guaranteed. Flat or a little surplus is enough. When it comes to the spread of Ultraman's works, it is limited to popular ones such as "Gosford Manor", which is indeed not popular compared to its long list of works. In fact, Ultraman’s movies are not that you will fall in love with them at the beginning. The large number of characters may block some impatient audiences, but when the relationship network is straightened out, the story will be played as smoothly as life, and sometimes you may not even notice it. The existence of a camera.
The film is still a model of multi-line narrative. The story is based on the novel of American writer Raymond Carver. The screenwriter mixes several groups of characters in different short stories that are not related to each other to form a picture of the middle and low-level Americans. Ukiyo-e of the family. The general plot of the film is: News anchor Howard (Bruce Davison), his wife Ann (Andie Macdowell), and his son Casey are a happy family of three. Unexpectedly, Casey was in a car accident on the way to school and entered the hospital. At the same time, Howard had not seen his father for many years. Paul (Jack Lemmon) suddenly appeared to tell him his heart. The driver, Doreen (Lily Tomlin), was a waitress at the restaurant, and her husband Earl (Tom Waits) was very upset that the horny diners spied on his wife's skirt. Swimming pool cleaner Jerry (played by Chris Penn) became disgusted by his wife Lois (played by Jennifer Jason Leigh) as a porn phone operator. One day, with his friend Bill (Robert Downey Jr.), a special effects makeup artist, and his wife Lois (played by Jennifer Jason Leigh) Wife Honey (Lili Tyler) meets for an outing, and Jerry does something unexpected while carrying his wives to strike up a conversation with the girl. At a concert, doctor Ralph (Matthew Modine) and the painter’s wife Marian (Julianne Moore) met a couple Stuart (Fred Ward) and Claire (Anne Archer). They decided to share dinner on the weekend, before the party Stuart A female corpse was found while fishing with friends, but they didn't call the police immediately. This behavior seemed cruel to Claire. Police Gene (Tim Robbins) is a grumpy guy who has no patience with his wife Sherri (Madeleine Stowe) and three children. There is also a lover Betty (Frances Mcdormand) and Betty's husband Stormy (Peter Gallagher). ) After learning of this, he smashed the house all over in a rage. The jazz singer Tess (played by Annie Ross) who sang in the bar and his daughter Zoe (Lori Singer) who played the cello depended on each other for their lives, but the latter always had a hard time letting go of his father's death.
Listening to me repeating the plot in this way may not feel the excitement of the film, on the contrary, there will be fragmented impressions, but what can be presented through the hands of Ultraman is a whole linked together, he I used my superb narrative skills to smooth out the bumps at the nodes of the story. Makes the film lubricate like a piece of silk. Faced with such a large number of characters, Altman seems to have the ability to manage everything since he was born. He fully knows what to do next, and you might even think that his thinking must be different from ordinary people. Obviously those superb edits. In this film, the medium of television plays an important role in the transition. It is like a scene where mother Ann tries to wake up her son Casey. At this time, the camera gives a close-up of milk on the table, and then Switching to the milk advertisement on the TV of the perpetrator Doreen’s house, the line was accompanied by "accidents happen every day, fortunately no one was injured." This is obviously ironic, because Casey is lying in the hospital dying. , But it is also Doreen's comfort to her heart. She is not the kind of person who can feel at ease when she hits a child. The film also uses the information conveyed by the screen to make some kind of predictive editing, like jumping from a floating female corpse in Hanoi to a girl playing a cello, and the breath of death is shrouded like a prophecy. Such exquisite editing abounds. In addition, the lack of synchronization of sound and picture is also a trick that often appears in the film. The sound of the previous picture continues to the next picture, or the sound of the next picture appears in advance, which undoubtedly avoids the story in the future. The sense of abruptness when jumping.
The three-hour duration of the whole film will not make you feel bored at all. The chaotic and uneasy background provides the audience with an unreal feeling from the pest control war at the beginning of the movie to the earthquake at the end, but each character itself is so real. The earth exists. Although the movie only intercepts a part of their lives, the audience will complete the outline of the character through their own brain supplements. This is very similar to Carver's novels. They all require the audience or readers to participate in it and use their own imagination. Fill in the white space. Carver can always use the most concise brushstrokes to achieve the effect of penetrating the back of the paper. Most of the time the background of the characters in his pens is vague. It may be through a quarrel or a conversation at the table that all the characters are ready to come out. It seems that Ultraman is indeed the best candidate to visualize Carver’s novels. There is no fancy dazzling shots (occasionally through zoom to emphasize the psychological changes of the characters), and the plot is advanced with intensive dialogue, and the narrative is completely invisible. No wonder Ott Man can grasp the essence of Carver's works, and the realism that blows over his face is as exciting as reading the original novel. Of course, the omission of some of the plots in the novel is explained in the film, such as Casey's death. The book does not explain this, but it stops abruptly at the moment when the doctor is about to inform Casey's mother. This is also the novel even more disturbing. a little. In any case, Ultraman’s work was extremely successful, as evidenced by the fact that he won the Venice Golden Lion Award.
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