The ocean is an excellent expression image of the film. In Luc Besson's "Blue Sea and Blue Sky", the sea is a mixture of happiness and sadness. The plot and lines are stripped of emotions. The camera follows the endlessness that makes Renault indulge in the sea; in Zhang Zuoji's "Dark Light", Li Kangyi faces The room in Keelung Harbor, the coast where Fan Zhiwei ran across, accompanied by the waves breathing, if there is no rhythm, let the picture be silent again, silence, frozen language and blank empty mirror; in Rohmer's "Story of Summer" The sea breeze in Brittania is the catalyst of love, moist and sweet, the coastline outlines the minds of men and women, that parting, that encounter, and then repeatedly swallowed by tides.
The "Atlantic" by Mati Diop also uses the soft image of the "sea". The solo take of the "Atlantic" has appeared countless times in the film. The accumulated emotions stopped abruptly, the narrative of the camera was interrupted, but a stronger and more sudden turn was brewing secretly. Unlike the large-scale neon hues in other times of the movie, whenever there is an empty shot of the Atlantic Ocean, it is always gray, alternately invaded by loss and loneliness. Like the mountain in Ouyang Feng's mouth in "Evil and West Poison": striding over may mean escaping from a tragic fate, or falling back into another "status quo."
Mati Diop’s poetic expression seems to be cynical, but it does not represent the weakness of his position. This is also what I like most about "Atlantic". It breaks through the past intellectuals’ perspective of compassion and compassion when discussing severe social realities. The sad aria of cliche; "The Atlantic" is full of a hodgepodge of spirits, ghosts, and revenge. There are even a few fragments that remind you of police detectives in ancient films, and Resurrection has such a cult film spirit. When we get used to the Darnet brothers, or Ken Rocky's bitter history of shooting the low-level characters, Mati Diop's "Atlantic" seems to make the heavy issues of class, poverty, backwardness and secularism less unbearable.
The film opens with a group scene asking for salary on a construction site in Senegal. In the chaotic scene, the camera sweeps across tall buildings built on the desert, creating a strong sense of constriction, and it also indicates that the act of asking for salary is destined to end in no time. For Souleiman, the future is confused, black and white. The Atlantic Ocean, broken fish boats, bumps and turbulence, everything is frustrating. But when he met Ada on the street and smiled, he briefly solved the mystery of life. The cars went back and forth, the stillness in the fast moving, the trance of pulling away, and the distance began to be uncertain.
The two had a tryst at the beach, facing the Atlantic Ocean, and the ambiguous composition in the viscous air suddenly increased. The camera zoomed in, the close-up shot was a close-up of the two people's ears and temples. The distant sea was blurred until only the sound of the waves were heard, and it was enveloped by a certain commotion. Although anxious, the camera was still cautiously tentative, as if the third party was not present. This flirtatious shooting technique has a top-notch effect.
That night, Souleiman did not attend the appointment. He boarded the boat bound for Spain, away from Senegal. The necklace given to Ada meant farewell. The ship wrecked on the way, and the vision of going to another country to start a new life vanished. Ada, who lost her lover, continued to fight against the old world. Her fiancé Omar is a wealthy businessman. This marriage seems to have been driven by external forces. Ada has no real feelings for him. In other words, Omar's material satisfaction for Ada cannot be transformed into spiritual satisfaction. The miss of Souleiman completely broke the bank at the moment of receiving the latter's text message. This is the humor of the screenwriter. She is determined to let ghosts become spoilers and break the shackles and restrictions of local culture. Omar's family learned that Ada cheated and was furious and asked her to go to the hospital to verify whether she was still a "virgin." This was the key point of Ada's awakening. She unilaterally canceled the marriage contract. For Omar, Ada is not an irreplaceable thing, his The anger comes from the fact that this lowly cognizant woman dared to choke with him so much, which made the luxury mattress he gave Ada look like a joke. If the mattress (external factor) burned by the ghost Souleiman was the fuse that ruined the wedding, then Ada's gradual control of her own destiny (internal factor) is the prelude to liberation. Ada was once the object of mad jealousy of friends. They took photos in the wedding room bought by Omar to pose on the social network. Here, the ideal life of every girl’s dream is to find a rich husband who owns a luxury house. After the money, feelings take the second place. Love does not become a cheap product in the world of money. Only if you care about it can it be valuable. The relationship between Ada and Souleiman is precious because the good times that reside in memory can make people get rid of barrenness and depression. In life, the rising, falling, stagnant, forward or backward, every moment. Being enslaved by a certain state, there is no one hundred percent happiness and freedom.
The supernatural style of "The Atlantic" determines that it embraces reality and indulges in the past, dancing with memory, and memory itself is an erratic thing, just like the surging Atlantic Ocean. A wave of waves symbolizes a layer of memory, covering each other. , Sink, and then form a new memory again. Human beings can't escape the sea to express love. The memory of Ada and Souleiman's love gives people the feeling that they are fluid, hazy, and soft like bubbles, which burst at the touch of a touch. It is a dream, a search, a remembrance, and shelving. Obstacles produced by reality: money, identity, secular conventions...Although the setting of human beings and ghosts is clichéd, it is built into grand issues (immigration, women's liberation, etc.), but it has a wonderful chemical reaction. You will not be reconciled that it is just a love story, but fortunately it is not just a taste of it. The film blurs the two worlds of Yin and Yang, and life and death have become a state that can be possessed by a body at the same time. Regardless of the purpose of resurrection (to ask for a salary or for the sweetheart), "The Atlantic" is covered with a coat of teasing. When we thought that the tone of the story should be tragic and sympathetic, it used supernatural phenomena to subvert the audience’s expectations. With the occurrence of a series of situations such as the inexplicable illness of the detective, this magical reality gradually rationalized and did not make the movie degenerate. It is a B-level film full of loopholes, although some passages still cannot be justified.
The director's narrative is fragmented, like the same poem, the preface does not follow, and there is no inevitable connection of inheritance and transformation, which often confuses the audience. The rupture of the text does not mean that the picture is the same. The poetry of "The Atlantic" flows into lines, and the connection between the lens and the lens is endless. It is necessary to enter such a movie, because the dislocation of the text and the picture will lead to such a situation: When you are still fully emotionally engaged in those dreamy bar scenes or the chatter of lovers on the Atlantic Ocean, the director has already stepped out and focused on another theme in full swing. In addition, the run of the story is relatively monotonous, resulting in a script that was originally full of dazzling elements and became a form, with a framework and ideas in place, but it was like a rush to work.
Some people complained that there were too many magical elements in this Cannes film, which turned into a hodgepodge of genre films. But I actually don't like this kind of rough division of movies. It seems that for a high-ranking, formal, and exquisite film festival, throwing blood and talking in a playful tone has become a matter of putting the cart before the horse. Someone described the 72nd Cannes like this: "...think of it as a zombie in a tuxedo, muttering "cin-e-ma" from its cold blue lips as it lumbers down the red carpet outside the Grand théâtre Lumière." (like A zombie in an evening dress, walking awkwardly on the red carpet outside the Lumiere movie palace, mumbling the word "cinema" from its cold blue lips while walking) But don’t forget, THE DEAD DON'T DIE, it just changed another way and continued to exist. And we who are self-righteous, while chattering endlessly, have become another stereotype like the Cannes Film Festival that has been complained about?
ps. In the movie, did the black people roll their eyes... I thought it was the reason why the shooting was done indoors at night when the light was thin. The white part of the black eyes would be more obvious? But I compared it later. It seems that sometimes it doesn't show up like this, so should it be the director's intentional operation? It really adds a lot to the weird atmosphere of the movie!
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