"Mid Summer": Music and Fantasy Video

Christopher 2022-01-24 08:07:18

1Music and musical

It is of great significance to distinguish between music films and song and dance films.

In the former, music appears as an important element or theme; in the latter, taking Hollywood classic musicals as an example, song is always closely related to dance. In other words, the music as the auditory image is closely connected with the dance as the visual image in the song and dance film, and the combination of this kind of song and dance does not occur on the stage, but in life; in other words, in the song and dance film In the middle, the whole world is the stage.

For example, in the famous song and dance film "Song in the Rain", the protagonist was still talking in the previous second, but the next second he walked down the street, singing and dancing cheerfully. Perhaps a better example is "An American in Paris." When the protagonist was chatting with his friends in a restaurant, he couldn't help but sing and tap dance; as the protagonist changed, it was amazing Yes, the surrounding world has also fallen into "singing and dancing": restaurant guests, bosses, and even passing pedestrians all stopped to watch, some even joined in, the whole world has entered a dreamlike world, and with At the end of the singing and dancing, the whole world once again restored order and tranquility.

In this sense, singing and dancing is the key to entering the dream world: with the emergence of singing and dancing, images transition between real life and dream life, seeming to complete the transformation of different worlds. But this is not a simple process of world transformation, because fundamentally speaking, the so-called plural world is still a singular world, and those dreamy images are nothing but potential images in this singular world.

The so-called potential images are relative to the actual images, referring to those images that have not yet become reality or are becoming reality, like the part of a glacier under the sea surface, and the real existence in the stretch of time. The latent image is closely related to memory. When we perceive a certain stimulus, we may recall the related image memory under deliberate recognition. If this perception is clear and clear, then we may recall the image that echoes one of them. ; If it is fuzzy, we may continue to circulate in the relationship between perception and memory, evoking a series of images, and the final effect is like in a dream, obtaining a dreamy image with free time and viewpoint.

2 Two types of music in "Midsummer"

In "The Midsummer", there are two completely different types of music.

The first category is the real music in the story, including those rock music that Victor Choi and Mike sang on the stage, the room and the beach. In these musical passages, no potential images are shown, and the songs only exist as pure music. Of course, these songs and lyrics have certain narrative and structural effects, such as "You are trash" that Mike sang at the beginning and "You are a rock star" when he sang to Victor. In short, the function of these music comes from its own power.

The second type of music is songs in several surreal passages. For example, songs that appear on the train, on the bus, and Mike and the woman in red next to a taxi on a rainy night. This type of song not only has the emotional power from the music itself, but more importantly, with the cooperation of the stick animation, what we see here is completely different from the effect of the music film-what appears here is exactly The transition between real and dreamy images in musicals.

If we pay more attention, we will find that the "sleepwalkers" and "singers" in these surreal passages are not only our protagonists (more often they are even speechless), but Those passengers and passersby. The citizens sang dreamy rock songs nervously in public, but the actors as the protagonists kept silent. This dramatic contrast showed a kind of collective madness. Compared with restrained rock singers, who are the people who fall into sleepwalking?

In addition, another meaningful musical passage is the song sung by the striped man at the chaotic party. Here, not only the lyrics are quite interesting (such as "I want to have the right to do this"), but in terms of his identity, he is not so much Victor and their true partners, as he is with the black clothes. Men are similar to the symbols from the director. After the party was over, he woke up from drunkenness, so we witnessed a wonderful scene: between half drunk and half awake, he learned the sound of seagulls on the ground, and the screen behind it came one after another. Music of seagulls. Here, we witnessed the moment he entered the screen, and then his farewell on the quiet seaside: naked body embracing the new life of the rising sun on the sea.

In this way, a series of video cycles and connections become possible: the director in the audience arranges men in black and striped men to enter the world of video, and Victor and others witness the transition between reality and fantasy in the world of video. The director's messenger once again passed through the door of the image in the image world... At the moment when he waved goodbye to us, we knew that what he achieved was true freedom.

3 "Mid Summer": Love and Freedom

If there is any theme in Midsummer, it should be about love and freedom.

When Victor made his debut on stage, Mike gave him a song "You are a rock star." When recording an album for Victor, Mike persuaded him because of the simple facilities, "Only when one day children can sing When, that’s the song.”

Regarding music, the two of them have different understandings, but the love that sustains them is the same.

At the end, Victor asked the new drummer to stop and wait for the Mikes to enter the arena. The lyrical singing of "I planted a tree" witnessed Mike's exit.

Here, instead of thinking of it as a music biography about real characters, it is better to regard it as the director’s personal expression and song-and-dance-like thought writing. If there are certain political factors here, it is because, on the one hand, those horrors are so powerful that they cannot be eliminated even if they try their best; on the other hand, because this horror still continues in reality.

As Mike said at the party, "This is a swamp, and I'm just the number one toad in the swamp."

We can see the compromise of rock music here, as well as Mike’s clear and cold positioning of himself; but what is clear is that terror may deprive them of their artistic love and freedom, but after all, only those who have love and freedom in advance can do it. Realize what it's like. And it is these that bring them together.

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Extended Reading
  • Mazie 2022-03-16 09:01:08

    #Cannes71# This is the "Drunk Country Folk Song" of this year. Although the filming is really too clean, it makes up for the political aspect that "Drunk Country Folk Song" lacks. It's as beautiful as the rain in summer. I really want to send Palme d’Or directly to this one... to lock in the personal top ten of the year.

  • Bertha 2022-04-21 09:03:28

    When the music disappears, the rhythm also ceases, and the subtitle card is used again to forcefully kill the audience's "sense of presence". Even if the animation special effects paragraphs are exciting and fun enough, they are not integrated into the atmosphere of the whole film as an integral element: they are divided rather than supplemented. I vaguely feel that this film is the biggest misjudgment of a film critic in recent years.