Four years ago, Trey Edward Shults won the praise of film critics and audiences with a subversive "Christmas". ) He even chose this as his best movie of 2016, and Schaltz is hailed as the most talented one of the new generation of independent film directors in the United States. In 2017, his second work "Visit in the Night" came out under the expectation, but unexpectedly failed to please the thriller and horror genre fans. Criticisms such as mystery and formalism are endless. The new film "The Wave" premiered at the Toronto Film Festival last year. It also suffered a polar response and failed to attract too much attention during the Oscars season.
Throughout the three works of Schaltz, they belong to three different types: family comedy, horror and youth growth, but the core of these three works is inseparable from the topic of family relationship between parents and children. In the first two works, the accidental intrusion of "outsiders" caused a devastating blow to the whole family, while this new work went the other way. It was not "outsiders" but internal problems that caused the family relationship to fall apart. Earlier, Schaltz mentioned in an interview that the stories of "Klixia" and "Night Visit" were inspired by his father, and this new work even pointed the finger at home change at the father in the play, which surprised me a bit. Because of this kind of rebellion against the authority of the father's generation, although this may not be the original intention of the director to shoot this "wave".
Schaltz is ambitiously experimenting with the theme of youth growth this time, matched with an endless stream of pop music, his photography skills and highly saturated colors, all of which are the result of the popularity of Instagram in recent years. In terms of narration, the plot of the two main characters is broken into two completely different rhythms and styles. The front part of the son is full of fanatical and sensational atmosphere, and the noisy electronic and hip-hop soundtrack dominates, showing the son's restlessness. The mood is ups and downs; while the latter part of the daughter turns into a gloomy mood, and the music selection becomes soothing, which sets off the daughter's psychology after the family change. This technique of using music and sound editing techniques to portray the psychological emotions of the characters is most prominent in the debut work "Krisia".
It seems that the surface work is quite adequate, but it is hard to dig into the inner feelings of the characters. On the one hand, it is the reason for the script, which is full of stale plot designs of TV soap operas, conflicts between sons and girlfriends due to pregnancy, daughters’ boyfriends and fathers who are terminally ill, and so on. On the other hand, the director has not considered the cohesion of the two parts of the plot. From the intense emotional conflict and rushing rhythm in the first half, to the depressed and depressive atmosphere in the second half, the gap between the two is difficult to adapt to. The slow-moving rhythm makes the relationship accumulated in the second half of the relationship insufficient, and it cannot be pushed to the climax of ending catharsis and reconciliation. It is difficult to rely on the experimental trick of changing the frame in a signature style.
As the most talented director of the new generation of independent film directors in the United States, Schaltz is very conscious to construct and maintain a unique author style (sound editing, frame change, genre experiment deconstruction), and his audiovisual skills have always been surprising and shocking to the audience. . However, it is the Achilles’ heel in the creation of the script. Whether it’s "Night Visit" or the new work "The Wave", they often discuss old-fashioned topics, failing to dig out fresh angles or viewpoints, and dazzling pictures and music. It was expected that Li gradually became tired.
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