As one of the new forces in the German film industry in the new century, Fatih Akin has successively handed over "Go Forward", "On the Other Side of Life", "Mind Kitchen", "Cut", "Cheek" and "Out of Nowhere" in his creative career. In works with very personal characteristics such as Coming, his Turkish identity seems to be subconsciously flogging his persistence in the exploration and vocalization of history and society in his creation.
In 2019, Fatih Akin unexpectedly brought an extremely heavy taste to fans all over the world-"Golden Gloves".
In addition to the sensory impact, in this new work of Akin, we can still see his unique understanding of the traditional indoor melodrama of German films, as well as his consistent thinking about society and history.
1. Recreating the "reality"
For a film like "Golden Gloves" adapted from a real case, we need to discuss its "authenticity" first. For this point, the director has also inserted spy photos of the real case and the real scene of the "Attic" at the end of the film. The photo shows the audience clearly.
It can be said that the director directly clarified the importance of "authenticity" in this film to the audience. In addition to the almost perfect restoration of the real scenes, props, and the protagonist's amazing imitation makeup, the director still focuses more on scheduling and narration. The “reality” is being recreated in the past.
The opening scene of the film "Golden Gloves" is a representative segment, under several fixed long shots: "Honka" puts a dead woman in a plastic bag in a dirty room, and then drags it to the stairwell.
On top of the screen content with strong visual impact, it is accompanied by the simplest "mechanical" lens scheduling. The camera here is like a continuously opened eye, forcing the audience to witness this disgusting and depressing scene. From the beginning of the film, the audience is forced to "discomfort", making the audience "disgust" in the senses. a movie.
The director tried his best to restore the reality of the crime scene and present it in the most intuitive way. It can be said that it boldly established a "non-mainstream" image tone. The camera does not seem to act as a "brush" in this film, but rather exists as an indifferent bystander.
Whether it is fen corpse, pao corpse, or various atrocities against women, the camera never escapes, let alone any visual beautification, it only focuses on conveying the truth. The small motion of the camera during most of the film is also like an imitation of Honka's subjective line of sight or movement. These movements of the camera are a reflection of Honka's will. It follows his attention and uses a slight smooth movement to focus on the new prey.
As for the indoor scheduling, the director may be deeply influenced by Fassbinder's "Fear Eats the Soul". The diagonal composition is the main theme on the bar counter, and the multi-angle front and back fights are used to create a visual vision. The sense of oppression and the alienation between the characters. In the apartment and on the stairs, the method of tilting the camera against the obstacles to block the edges of the composition is also used. The height difference is used to extend the distance between people and highlight the sense of indifference.
In the attic room, the director mostly used mid-range double shots, and basically gave up front and back shooting, in order to capture the flow of suffocation and indifference from the violence, silence, and muttering between the characters. These people appear in the double shot every time, but it seems that they are so repulsive, disgusting, and unable to communicate with each other.
As for the narrative structure, the director, on the basis of following the traditional melodrama narrative, separates the main part from other minor parts more fragmented. Most of the time, the narrative is switched back and forth between the attic room and the Golden Glove Bar. The Golden Glove Bar is the number one on the stage. New narrative elements such as events or characters appear here in a concentrated manner. The camera follows Honka’s sight. Select narrative elements according to the will of the characters.
The attic room is stage number two, which is also unique to Honka. The pornographic posters on the wall, the gin in the locker and the "smelly" elements are all symbols of Honka's dominance in this space. . In this space, the "social cloak" disguised by Hongka completely faded away.
The attic room has become a space where Honka conflicts with the external factors entering this room, and due to the 100% violent nature conveyed by the "reality", the so-called conflict has completely turned into a complete conflict between one party and the other. Domination, and thus continue to stage killings and abuses.
The orderly alternating narrative based on two large spaces is essentially a depiction of Honka's real life to the greatest extent. The director consciously made the audience feel Hongka's "real existence" through this simple opposition and the separate structure. The narrative is quietly integrated with killing and tyranny, and everything seems to be proceeding "in a logical way."
Under the large structure, there are still many small fragments of the film's narrative, such as Hongka's work scene, the doorway of a high school, the street, and the downstairs of his apartment building.
The visual images of these fragmented scenes are mostly bright and even somewhat "rich in color", forming an intuitive contrast with the dark, shabby, and smoky visual images of the two main narrative spaces. It is obvious from this that these fragments undoubtedly acted as a visual buffer, neutralizing some excessive "greasy and nausea" feeling to a certain extent.
Returning to the structure itself, these fragmented scenes are like the various people and things in the Golden Glove Bar. They serve as an important narrative function in the film. They also directly bring out several important side characters and some side events.
But here, we have to emphasize a special point, that is, there is no intersection between the main line and the branch line of the narrative in this film that is actually enough to constitute a dramatic conflict, and some of the multiple lines are actually just "passing by." So what is the significance of setting up these branches?
To investigate its meaning, we still have to return to the word "real". As mentioned in the previous article, Honka has both the "own side" and the "social" side that appear completely in the attic. If the main narrative space is focused on discovering the truth of the character's heart, then these fragmented branches are the contrast to the character's sociality.
Among these fragments, male and female high school students, passers-by, and the Greeks downstairs are all distinctive symbols of normal society. And through the contact between Honka and the normal social incarnation in the branch narrative, Honka's reflection on the normal society is accurately displayed, and the "sociality" of this character is limitedly supplemented. The main line and the branch line each perform their duties and contribute to the character of Honka from different perspectives.
The fragmented details coincide with Honka's "schizophrenic" multi-faceted image. Perhaps in a sense, the director is like directing the narrative power to Honka's "personal will". All the plots are not necessarily what the audience wants to see, but they must be what Hongka wants to see.
The most terrifying truth conveyed by the narrative lies in the harmony between the two sides of Honka. While doing perverted behavior, he still lives normally as a social person most of the time. If there was no last fire, perhaps he would remain in this state and live "normally".
2. The deceived society
Director Ah Jin still adheres to his consistent style in such a heavy-tasting film and maintains his social and historical thinking. This time he chose to shoot "society" directly to the audience, and the target was obviously the protagonist Hongka. Almost all the characteristics of Honka that we can see are negative: "inferiority complex, impotence, anxiety, misogyny, violence."
In the director's thinking, these characteristics of Honka are those of the Federal Republic of Germany in the 1970s. In the 1970s, West Germany's inferiority complex was quietly born out of economic and political setbacks. West Germany, which relied on traditional industrial foundations and the Marshall Plan, was re-developed, but in fact still failed to escape the post-war shadow.
On the one hand, as the European main arena of the "Cold War", Germany feels anxious amid the squeeze of the superpower and its split. On the other hand, although they became the so-called "economic giants" after the 1950s, the Germans still could not truly grasp the country's economic lifeline and had to play the role of victims in the struggle of the ideological camp.
Honka's low self-esteem represents the low self-esteem of West Germany in the 1970s, but his low self-esteem also originated from the social environment at that time. Under the circumstances of false prosperity and political vassalism, society is shrouded in a haze of despair and decadence. The impoverished material and spiritual lives of individuals make them gather at the "Golden Glove" bar day and night, using alcohol to paralyze themselves.
At the same time, some characters in the "Golden Gloves" bar also act as historical symbols, such as the prostitutes of the old SS and concentration camps. The old SS is like the incarnation of the shadow of World War II, suffering from the war (hearing impaired), but still obsessed with the war years, insisting on the "SS"-style rules of conduct.
After the zealous Nazi warriors burst the bubble of conquering the world, facing the depressed post-war society, they missed the "glory" of the war years more and more. They attribute everything to the failure of the war, and the desire for violence and revenge is accumulated in their hearts.
But in fact, in that era, it was impossible for them to put these "revenge plans" into actual actions, and no matter how grandiose they were, they were nothing more than illusions in their hearts. This group of people represented by the old SS can only curse the depression society while immersing themselves in the fantasy of "Great War", and quietly die in despair and madness.
Another fact that is reflected in the Golden Glove Bar is that the collapse of "contractual relations" to some extent, first of all, comes from the collapse of currency relations. Under false prosperity, currency depreciation and industrial reductions have brought about intuitive decline in living standards and massive unemployment. In the era of "economic giants", the monetary relationship established by the proletariat and capitalists tends to depreciate or even deteriorate.
The "Golden Glove" bar is a space for the "idle" proletariat to gather. Through their disappointed "currency relationship", they create a new relationship in this space measured by the number of wine glasses. Here, the value of the wine glass is far greater than the currency, and the wine glass can make "friends", gain respect, and even directly engage in sex transactions.
For Hongka, it also means that you can directly buy "prey" with a wine glass for your own violence. Disappointed by the external social rules, the unemployed and the lower proletariat chose to return to the most primitive system, draw the bar curtains, and experience the "night" forever.
As part of the social class, the middle class is not completely absent in this film. The Greeks in that family are the representatives of the middle class. What is interesting is that the middle-class Greek family is in the same apartment building as Honka, and like "Parasite", there is a visual contrast between the two.
Honka, as a lower class, lives at the top instead, but as a middle-class family is subordinate to it. This is an obvious and even too straightforward metaphor: there is still a parasitic relationship between the two classes. After being abandoned by big capital, the lower class chose to parasitize the middle class to survive; and the middle class chose to ignore it due to its self-protection and "cautious".
However, the final result of the director's deduction to the audience in the film was that the maggots in the attic could no longer cover up, and eventually swallowed the entire apartment. This seems to be the helplessness of the middle class of that era, unable to break out, unable to speak up, and in the end they can only lose their stable life in forbearance. What's more, this is an immigrant family?
In the film, Hunka actually thought about entering the middle class, but he met his female colleague, who was also on the middle class, in front of the middle class. Instead of finding the so-called hope of life in her, Hongka witnessed the same difficulties in life and the same repressed desires.
Honka was finally pulled back into the abyss by the same desire and despair on the road to middle-classification. What fell along with Honka's life was obviously the "class ascending channel" of that era. At that time, it seemed that most people were divided into two types, one was being deceived, and the other recognized the deception and chose to fall for it.
3. Conclusion
The director Ah Jin used an unconventional method to complete his creation in this film. In addition to being brilliant, there are also many problems. The first is the fragmentation of the narrative. Although the fragmentation has a multi-line effect, it appears that the connection between the scene and the scene is too blunt in the editing, especially the part of the two high school students. Obviously it could have played better. Narrative function.
Secondly, maybe this is a "no idea" film. From beginning to end, the director did not have a unique attitude towards the filmed image and the character of Honka that belonged to the author. The director has been restoring the truth, but when we watched this period of history, the film stopped abruptly and there was no follow-up. What is the purpose of restoring the truth?
If it is not for expressing, does the meaning lie in the truth itself? This is an issue that seems to be debatable. In contrast, last year's "This House Is Made By Me" by Lars von Trier showed a strong and even extremist personal expression of willingness, which was obviously endowed with more alternative charm.
On the other hand, this authorial charm seems to be nowhere to be found in the film. The director’s bold attempt is commendable, but can we explore more about the meaning of "recovering the truth"?
Author | Huang Moyu; Official Account | Seeing Death in Movies
Edit | Riding a Rooftop Boy; please indicate the source for reprinting
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