The adaptation of masterpieces into films and televisions usually fails to please the audience. If you don't read the original work, this movie is quite satisfactory. After reading the original work, you can only feel disappointed in the movie. The plot and the characters are faithful to the original, only faithful; the images are very good, the colors are dull, the light is dim, the lens is lazy and slow, and it introduces a decadent troubled world, the old dream of a foreign country; the performance of the actors is not too critical, even if two The image of the male protagonist felt unimaginable at first, and it's not bad when he gets used to it. Michael Kane’s big belly and double chin, drooping cheeks, slow movements, and dim eyes, occasionally flashes a sharp light, whether it is the expression of the English's meanness or the desolation after middle age. The unique decadence of literati is very well done. And Brandon Fraser, the American boy who has played in many popular commercial films, although the hairstyle in the film is not as "scratch hair" as written in the book, he is a little bit fatter again, and he is stupid. The strength of the brain is also in line with his role. There is also Feng'er, she is just like in the book, the Eastern woman in the eyes of Westerners, innocent and indifferent, always seeming to be outside, soft but indestructible. And the actress is very beautiful even from an Oriental perspective.
So why am I not satisfied? Because, in the movie, what I see is the reality of the image, a story with a clear and even too clear context, but underneath it, there are many things that are missing and empty. It’s like walking on the street, I can see the expressions of passers-by or they are tired or calm or smiling in a trance, but I can never know what they are thinking, nor can I see the hearts of the characters in the play, and in the book, those souls The fullness and chaos, those sorrows, those despair, captured the reader, quietly.
What the film does is just tell the story of a love triangle, a political conspiracy, and a murder case. In fact, the situation is so complicated that it can only tell the most obvious things. Films cannot be criticized. The nature of text and images are very different. The meaning of images is more often conveyed by intuition. If you understand it, a thousand words are no better than a shot, but in many cases, it tends to appear ambiguous. The expressiveness of the text is easier to be sharp and clear, pointing to the deep twists and turns. As a war correspondent, Fowler, lying in the crisis-ridden night of Vietnam after being injured, accepts Pyle’s extra rescue in distress. He thinks that he still dodges his beloved death out of instinct, and has nothing to do with it. There is no reason to seek death in a foreign land... Never believe in God but pray for avoiding physical pain. Here, the boredom of life, the fear of coming to an old age, the helplessness of a bystander of war, cannot believe in acting, only words can convey it.
Green's works, especially political novels, are difficult to adapt because they are four different, and they are too contradictory. It is neither popular nor pure literature. It does not play with skills, but it is also arrogant. It is calm and mean, and full of pain. As for the director, its biggest trap is: if you follow the natural and wonderful plot closely, it will deviate from its inner meaning-although in the book, the author combines the two almost seamlessly.
"I remembered that first day, at the Continental Hotel, Pyle was sitting next to me, his eyes fixed on the cold drink shop across the street. Since his death, I have been doing everything well, but how I look forward to the world. There is one person, I can say to him that I am sorry."
I always remember this last paragraph in the book, whether it was just after reading the novel four years ago or today, four years later. And the impression of this four-dimension was written three and a half years ago. I remember that afternoon, in the gloomy weather, I walked to Vietnam, next to the middle-aged white man, he was blessed, looked indifferent, and held a cup of black coffee. , Sitting behind the window, looking at the dust on the street, and the yellow face in the dust. I felt a desperate throb in my heart. He is a quiet person.
Maybe one day, some of us will become so quiet.
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