Roy Anderson made two feature-length films in 1970 and 1975, respectively. For the next 25 years, he was silent and devoted himself to the work of advertising shooting. In 2000, he launched a film at a frequency of one film every seven years. Compared with the previous two works, the "Life Trilogy" has changed greatly in style. Under this premise, it is difficult to locate the meaning of "About Endless" in the sequence of Roy Anderson's works, and at the same time, it is impossible to get rid of the suspicion of self-repetition. Therefore, based on the text I see it as a popular interpretation of the life trilogy worldview.
"About Endless" has only about 30 scenes (shots), and the only thing that makes up the plot is five shots about a priest who has lost his faith and is in a state of panic, interspersed between other scenes, just like the two scenes in "Han Zhi Que Jing" A man with a suitcase selling small toys, this mixture of centrifugal and centripetal points to the small but uniqueness of unrelated individuals while suggesting a certain homogeneity of the human condition.
Also similar to the trilogy of life, "About Endless" is still composed of situations that have no logical connection or very subtle relationship with each other. Most of them use fixed shots, static scene scheduling, and a dark or shadowy environment, which is in line with northern Europe. The icy tones and minimalist setting of the climate feature, various characters with pale faces and action machines, stylized processing of the scenes of mediocre life to create a certain indescribable mood and comedy effect, to express the spiritual pressure of modern human beings and unfreedom, as well as the empty and lonely rhythm of life and relationships.
In order to strengthen the psychological effect of force, indoor framing often adopts a "triangular prism"-style spatial composition, that is, the camera is framing a corner of the wall, and the character is in the corner, forming a sense of depression. The second shot is a pair of men and women sitting on a bench with their backs to the audience and looking at the sky in the distance (although it is an exterior scene). Spaces, restaurants where men find the wrong place, etc., the director is using the visual shape of the "triangle" to construct the space.
In traditional movies, because of the inevitable deviation of the plot from reality, the director must make some instructions and regulations in the narrative in advance to guide the audience to understand the innate setting of the plot and characters, which is reflected in the arrangement of picture elements and the key Emphasis of information. In Roy Anderson's picture space, everything happens naturally, and there is no unique, pre-set viewing center of gravity, and any element has a reason to grab the audience's attention. For example, the scene of the seafood market is a "U"-shaped space with an opening facing the lower left. In the foreground is the fishmonger with his back to the camera, and opposite him are three or two customers standing scattered. One customer chooses a fish, and the boss cuts it for him. Fish, the audience's attention will be focused on the boss's actions during the whole process, until the man who is really concerned with the grand purpose starts to slap the woman in the center of the medium shot, the audience's attention will start to shift with the other people in the scene, this kind of use of depth of field to mobilize It indicates the randomness and disorder of the real world.
By means of the same nature, the scene at the train station, people continue to get off the train, until a man gets off the bus, meets his wife and child who picks him up, makes out with the child, and finally leaves. At this time, the platform is deserted. When it was about to end, another woman walked off the train and sat lonely on the bench.
The scene in the restaurant, a woman is sitting in the foreground, then a man comes in through the door on the right and asks if the woman is the person he is dating, the woman denies, and another man is drawn from the left sitting opposite the woman, the whole process, the background The corner of the wall is always sitting with his back to a very eye-catching man in black. This abrupt design will make the audience guess his experience, his mood, and everyone who appears in Roy Anderson's picture has a story. He intentionally breaks the hierarchy of characters in drama films (of course, this is normal in art films), and gives each character an emotional dimension. The waiter who pours drinks for customers in the ship's restaurant becomes a "person" here, and he also has When he has something on his mind, he will also be in a daze.
This kind of de-deviation is naturally not (and does not intend to achieve) absolute reality. Of course, they come from the director's ingenious design. They resonate with the overall nonlinear and discrete composition of the plot, and achieve a kind of understanding of all living beings and limited expression of endlessness. The style of the image is like in the last scene, the man's car broke down in the suburbs, and a group of geese flew into the distance in the sky, reflecting each other with the image at the beginning, and the cycle is endless.
Roy Anderson's films are a mixture of joy and sorrow. More importantly, whether it is joy or sorrow, these emotions are insignificant. The female executive faces the window and smells emptiness; the mother pushing the stroller simply Taking off the broken shoes in pairs; the boys at the door of the country store watching the girls dance as they arrive... a small sadness, a small embarrassment, a small joy, but they are not worth being discovered, been watched? In Roy Anderson's view, it is these insignificant things that make up life.
The reason why the embarrassing situation of "About Endless" can only be regarded as a shallow variation of the trilogy of life is because compared with the ambiguity and obscurity of the previous work, this film, both in terms of emotional expression and theme, is guided by the female voice narrator. There are too obvious directions and meanings, including the sigh of industrialized cities, the criticism of human indifference and selfishness, and an overly complete war logic (parents who sweep graves, people who were executed, Hitler's defeat, prisoners of war sent to Siberia) . Plots like public confession of pain are also repetitions of the previous work. If you watch it continuously with the life trilogy, it is difficult not to produce aesthetic fatigue.
Despite this, we will still look forward to the director's work and follow his creative trajectory. In addition to Roy Anderson's extremely low-yield creative rhythm, he is also able to capture some of the reality in reality due to everyday paralysis. The reality that is difficult to detect and ignored by consciousness, we seem to use a special absurd perspective provided by the director to look at our own life from the flesh, and we are in a state of numbness but unawareness.
View more about About Endlessness reviews
