▲The main visual of the Venice Film Festival
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Venice Film Festival films are said to be luxurious every year, but they are not necessarily really luxurious. This year, he said that the film list is luxurious, but he smiled and did not speak.
Take a closer look, eh? ! Isn't this Roy Anderson? "About Endless"? Luxurious, with him is really luxurious.
Roy Anderson , a talented Swedish director, studied under Ingmar Bergman. Bergman said he was a well-deserved film master, but he said that Bergman had no sense of humor. One sword is sharpened every seven years, and so on, four swords are sharpened, and the sword is at the key point.
▲Life Trilogy
"Singing from the Second Floor" was shortlisted for the Palme d'Or at Cannes and won the Jury Prize;
"You're Alive" was shortlisted for Un Certain Regard at Cannes;
"Quiet" won the Venice Golden Lion Award;
"About Endless" won the Venice Golden Lion Award ... Oh no, it was a finalist, and I accidentally exposed my heart. But it is definitely the most anticipated work of the year. Since it has not been released, maybe we can make an endless guess about "About Endless" through the information disclosed by the director.
▲"About Endless" was shortlisted for the Venice Main Competition
"It's going to be a protest against the way traditional films talk about morality and sexuality, it's a protest." In the documentary "Life Is Like", he described his work, "The camera is so realistic that it will look like A normal movie."
The producer next to him complained, "Your film is far from normal." Everyone burst into laughter.
It is not difficult to see that his work is different. A surreal drama of absurdity, minimalistic Nordic frigidity.
▲"Quiet the Birds in the Cold Branch" (2014)
1 year ago we wrote an article about "Han Zhi Que Jing", which described in detail the style of his works (hyperlink), as charming as his personality, always smiling, with real talent hidden in his smile It's true, and you would never have thought that he was also a young man who made realistic youth romance films.
▲ "Swedish Love Story" (1970)
Roy Anderson focused on realism and natural aesthetics in the early days. He was nominated for the Golden Bear Award at the Berlin International Film Festival with his debut feature "Swedish Love Story" . This work is very different from the "Life Trilogy" that followed. The traditional youth plot Film editing, close-up, long-range, close-up...
At that time, he realized the problem, "After 18 years of filming, I feel that I have fallen into a dead end."
▲ "The Detention of Love" (1975)
In 1975, he changed his style and filmed a second film, "Traveling in Love" , which was more loyal to him . Unfortunately, the audience didn't buy it at all. Coupled with the budget overrun, this work was a complete failure. This hit him hard, and he hasn't made a movie since.
"The Bicycle Thief by Vittorio de Sica will never be surpassed. As far as I'm concerned, it has it all."
▲ Vittorio de Sica "The Bicycle Thief" (1948)
It wasn't until 1985 that he was ready to abandon film as a means of expression because he found Desica's neo-realistic work "The Bicycle Thief" insurmountable, with artists such as Luis Bunuel and Federico The highly abstract cinematic language of some of Federico Fellini's later works made Anderson aware of his own lack of talent for it.
In the next 20 years, Anderson's curve saved the country and moved to the commercial film industry.
▲Roy Anderson's early advertising highlights
Gold always shines, and he almost became the number one commercial advert in Sweden, shooting nearly 400 commercials.
Perhaps because of the high degree of freedom in shooting commercials, or because of a change in mentality, he began to try to use non-traditional and surreal film language to play commercials, and since then he has found his own position.
▲Roy Anderson's early advertising highlights
"It was a great liberation for me to plunge into the surreal world. I was able to have the living and the dead talk and meet in 'Song from the Second Floor', and it also gave me a complete freedom of expression."
These "impossible things in reality" became the hallmarks of Anderson's films.
▲A funny scene in "Hanzhiqujing"
For example, a scene in "Quiet the Sparrow": the picture is a modern bar on the outskirts of Sweden. Suddenly, outside the door, King Charles XII of Sweden led the army to fight in Russia. The army stopped briefly at the bar because the king was thirsty. Patrons watched in bewilderment as Charles XII finished his drink and hit the road, and returned after the Poltava fiasco to borrow the toilets, which unfortunately were occupied by the bar toilets.
The trip through 1708 was completely unreasonable, but it was extraordinarily absurd and funny, and I couldn't help laughing.
▲"Quiet the Birds in the Cold Branch" (2014)
After talking about the author's style, let's talk about the new film "About Endless" .
As we all know, Roy Anderson likes to work slowly and work carefully. Each of the "Life Trilogy" is 7 years apart, and the fourth "About Endless" is two years faster than the original, only 5 years. Just in time for this year's Venice Film Festival.
▲ "About Endless" (2019)
Doubts are naturally there. When everyone is accustomed to Roy Anderson's author style, they will inevitably become aesthetically fatigued with this "frigidity". So will "About Endless" change?
Earlier in the interview, he revealed, "Don't worry, there is a fourth part! It will be even wilder than this movie ("Han Zhi Que Jing"), exploring charm, respect and voice, and a dialectical attitude towards beauty. "
▲ "About Endless" (2019)
In About Endless, Roy Anderson joins in a reflection on all the good and the cruel, the grand and the banal of human life, it presents a kaleidoscope of eternal humanity, it is an ode, an elegy, a The Endless Story of Existential Vulnerability:
"We wandered dreamily under the gentle guidance of a Scheherazade narrator. Moments of insignificance and Historical events have the same significance: a couple floating in war-torn Cologne; a father stopping to tie his daughter's shoes in pouring rain on the way to a birthday party; a teenage girl outside a cafe Dancing; a defeated army marching towards a POW camp."
The introduction to this film is confusing, but it makes sense after careful study.
inspiration
There are many sources of inspiration for "About Endless", and the stills that have been exposed give a glimpse of its homage to Marc Chagall's "Lovers in the Air": "A young couple floats over war-torn cities and landscapes . . . ."
▲Marc Chagall "Lovers in the Air" (2019)
The film will also have three scenes inspired by Marc Chagall. Of course, Roy Anderson also disclosed two other important sources of inspiration.
The first is a story from "One Thousand and One Nights" :
When the Persian king Shahryar found out that his wife was unfaithful, he wanted to take revenge on all the women by taking a bride every day, but only beheaded them the next morning. Eventually, a young woman named Scheherazade became his bride, but he didn't kill her because she started telling him a story on her wedding night that he absolutely wanted to hear. So, Shehrazade postponed his execution for a thousand and a day, when the king had begun to like her and wished to marry her.
▲ "One Thousand and One Nights" (1974)
"In About Endless, my hope and ambition was to make the scenes so interesting and engaging that people would want to see more of them as soon as they saw them, and hopefully never stop."
In short, we should be like kings when he hears through Scheherazade what seems to be inexhaustible, which is all the meaning of human existence.
▲Abuentia, the Roman god of fertility (painting by Rubens)
The other is from Greek mythology :
There is an item in Greek mythology called the "horn of abundance" . It is the horn of a goat, and it is filled with objects that symbolize wealth. It is often portrayed as a land of abundance filled with a wide variety of produce and fruits, which, as myths describe it, never diminishes, which is the embodiment of "infinity" .
Anderson believes that art, art history plays a "fertile corner" that embraces what it means to be human.
▲The Corner of Plenty
"My source of inspiration, more and more, comes from painting, and I must admit that I often feel a certain kind of envy for this colorful work of fine art. Of course, there are films that can almost be compared to great masterpieces of art, but in my view Very few come.”
▲ "The Glorious World" (1991) pays tribute to Edvard Munch's "The Scream"
After the transformation, Roy Anderson began to draw more inspiration from literature, art and painting, which is also reflected in his previous works. For example, "Silence of the Birds on a Cold Branch" was inspired by the famous painting "Hunter in the Snow" by the famous Dutch painter Borugel; "Singing from the Second Floor" was partly inspired by Peruvian poet Cesar Vallejo's "Hunter in the Snow". Eternal Dice.
▲ The source of inspiration for "The Quietness of the Birds": Pieter Bruegel's "The Hunter in the Snow" (1565)
narrative
In the past, in terms of narrative, you would see extremely fragmented film structures, such as the combination of dozens of short commercials, each of which does not interfere, but there will be a main story line.
And this time, Anderson revealed that "About Endless" will make a change in the narrative structure, and it will be driven by a storyteller , the young woman who tells the story of "One Thousand and One Nights" Shehrazad. .
▲ The characters in "About Endless" don't say a word to the camera, but they are communicating with "you"
My guess is that there will be one person who will be the "viewer" of the whole film, always narrating to us in front of the camera, and this way of breaking the fourth wall has always appeared in his previous works, but not the whole film. . And Anderson himself revealed that a voice-over may be used to narrate.
▲ "About Endless" director's manuscript
The narrative of "Never Ends" is supposed to be done by a young woman, but her voice exudes life experience and wisdom, like the voice of a fairy. She recounted what she saw. But she's not telling one specific person, she's telling those of us who are watching the movie.
▲ "About Endless" director's manuscript
"Her voice is bright and calm. She doesn't want us to believe anything. She describes what we see in the scene, but she uses the imperfect tense, that is, what we see on the screen. , she describes as if she had witnessed it. But she also tells us something we can't see. For example, if we see a man waiting for a bus, she might provide additional information about the man's occupation. She Can tell us there's a guy waiting for the bus. But if she says there's a shoemaker waiting for the bus, then the perspective gets wider, the scene gets richer, and it's usually more humorous."
style
The cinematic language of "On the Endless" remains pared-back, abstract, what Anderson calls the abstraction of expressions, the character of his striving to realize our memories or dreams.
It's difficult, but not impossible. To achieve this, Anderson still shoots completely on location as before, with the so-called "shooting on location" aesthetic .
▲ Behind the scenes of "About Endless"
Rent a studio and build scenes one by one. This method will give people the illusion that they are only focusing on vision. In fact, Anderson is just doing "breaking away", reducing unnecessary dialogue and refining the sensory stimulation brought by the scenery. , to highlight what happened in the scene.
▲ Behind the scenes of "About Endless"
Since "About Endless" is largely driven by a storyteller, a narrator, it's possible to reduce the role of dialogue. So the film becomes more visual.
▲ Behind the scenes of "About Endless"
"I never set the dialogue in my film until I knew who was going to actually say it. Dialogue should be short and precise and have a unique side that sometimes makes us feel even in the most serious of situations Not sure if there is a sense of humour."
▲ "About Endless" director's manuscript
After this description, you can roughly imagine what kind of movie "About Endless" is:
Luo-style cold humour without speculation, visual spectacle as elegant as oil painting, like the gentle woman in the movie "Her" who has been telling you stories, plus some funny bridges crossing the ancient and modern times, of course, there is no shortage of it. Opposition to war.
In a nutshell: "We wandered dreamily under the gentle guidance of a Scheherazade narrator. .
Looking back, it doesn't make sense. After "Endless Conjectures About "About Endless", you don't have to watch the movie anymore.
This year's Venice's highest honor, the Golden Lion, I will first buy a hand of "About Endless" to win, how about you, or not?
"and!"
—End—
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