infinite image between two mirrors

Gertrude 2022-03-08 08:01:46

In August, he was crowned with the Golden Leopard Award, the highest honor of the Locarno International Film Festival, and a bonus of 90,000 Swiss francs, which is about RMB 500,000. "Right Now, Wrong Then" (2015) is in the hometown After "Our Sunhi" (Our Sunhi, 2013) won the Best Director Award two years ago, it further confirmed and affirmed Hong Sang-soo's status as a film writer. The simplest and most crucial point in understanding Hong Sang-soo's works is the self-reflection of his identity as a filmmaker as an author.
In this new film, the protagonist, as always, is a male director who loves to drink, and came to the film event site in Suwon for the exhibition and exchange of the new film. The day before work, he met a local female painter Xi Jing while wandering around, "Which director are you? Maybe I know." "What, can you have a cup of coffee with me or something?" The tried-and-true artist strikes up a conversation with his peers, and the sometimes dry dialogue and ambiguous subtext create awkward humor.
Hong Shangxiu took "Right Now, Wrong Then" to participate in Locarno or other film festival exchanges, and the content of the screened works is "Participate in film festival exchanges with works [In the film, the last film that the heroine Xi Jing sees]. , the voice comes from director Hong Sangxiu's previous work "Hill of Freedom" (2014)]", this wonderful intertext is rather the director's superb capture of the life around him. Thanks to the long-haired male fans dressed as the protagonist's literary youth, and the late-night cafe called "Poet and Farmer", all of which are exclusive to the Hong family.
What is even more absurd than the title of "Mountains May Depart" (Mountains May Depart, 2015) is that the title of "This Is Right Then Wrong" only appears after about half of the film, and the story returns to the original point. It was retold, and the previous day was titled "Right Then Wrong Now".

"Most of the time, we don't exist; some times, with you and without me; other times, with me and without you; other times, with you and me. At this moment, by chance, Chance brings you to the house; another time you walk through the garden and find me dead; another time I say what I am saying, but I am a mistake, a ghost."
Although "Right Then Wrong" only offers two possibilities, in this strictly limited story time, the day before the director's character's screening, even the same cafes and bars are obviously There are countless trails that branch out.
After "Freedom Hill" smashed the letter of time, director Hong Sang-soo, obsessed with structure and narrative, returned to a relatively clear two-stage contrasting story. Different from the morphing designs of Hong’s previous works that intersect or nest each other in repeated paragraphs, the two paragraphs of “Right Now or Wrong” are very similar in content, as well as the relationship between men and women without the intervention of a stable third party or surreal strange events. To show a pure mirror relationship.
What is puzzling is that the audience cannot tell who is the entity and who is in the mirror, just as it cannot distinguish the specific meaning of "this/then" and "right/wrong". In fact, the two narratives are not simply compared one by one according to the gender perspective. They are like mirrors with undulating, broken, and irregular surfaces. They are placed as a new installation in the narrative labyrinth of the director’s work series. An infinite number of similar and different images are produced.

Identifying the nuances between two stories is as interesting as it is meaningless to count the number of shots or the number of bottles in a Hong movie. Simple distinction, the scene has not changed, but the camera position is adjusted, there is a voice-over in the first paragraph and no voice in the next one. Reasonable logic can be understood as a vague memory, or reality and fantasy, but facts are more like theoretical deconstruction of everyday texts.
For the audience, repeating the same story is more akin to a postmodern game, where sliding subway doors and a homeless man picking up huge sums of money in the carriage can be the key to changing fate. But "Right Then Wrong" always, the elements in the set do not participate in the narrative, and there is no rescue mission until the end of the night. Therefore, the coincidence of reality does not play a role here, and it is not the butterfly effect that determines the relationship between the characters. People only meet at this time and then, even if they can make a difference at the same time, it doesn't matter whether it is sooner or later.
Unexplained emotions and reactions, through subtle nerve triggers, became the only explanation for the bifurcated path. Hong Sangxiu infiltrated the opportunity of choice into the characters' temporary language, and the accidental internalization may reverse the order of people's topics, so the misunderstanding brought about is the truth of eternal change.
Flickering, evasive desires can be the end of the journey if you insist on a motive. But in Hong's early films, it has been repeatedly reiterated that intimacy is not helpful. In recent works, the director has avoided or omitted sex scenes intentionally or unintentionally, making the desire not to be revealed more interesting. On the contrary, after the movie full of snowflakes ended, it added a bit of regrettable romance.

Such a rather self-delusional romance just came back to the filmmaker's self-reflection. The roles of Hong Sang-soo’s films are generally well-known art film directors, stuck between the high-profile and the unknown. Adhere to ideal words, face the temptation of reality, like to be praised, but rarely satisfied. It seems that they are always in creative crisis, and every woman may be a source of inspiration. It can also be understood that artistic pursuit can become a rhetoric for pleasure-seeking.
This is Hong Sang-soo's interest, and perhaps the heart of Hong Sang-soo's movie fans. But on the other hand, the constant role and relatively narrow space for activities may also be obstacles that limit Hong Sang-soo's ability to further compete with filmmakers such as Rohmer.
He and they wake up again and again in narcissism, hypnotized by some kind of affirmation at another time or time. It should be embarrassing to admit that the affirmation of niche or non-mainstream works/characters is effective and win-win, and it cannot and will not go extinct, so Yin Xijing in the film happily said to Xian Chunzhu:
"Director, I will watch it carefully. Your movies, I want to watch all your movies."

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Extended Reading
  • Hosea 2022-03-19 09:01:10

    Right now, how can it be. It was wrong then, so what. Between men and women, three inches below the navel. Hong's wretchedness and profound meaning.

  • Abe 2022-03-17 09:01:10

    Very very interesting! Jiyugaoka didn't like it very much, but I liked this one~ There are too many laughs. Two sections with different attitudes. The result was right then wrong and right then wrong. Zheng Jae-young didn't cry after getting drunk. The laughing confession is really too laughable to compliment the man and the sincere man. The woman's mind still can't be guessed.

Right Now, Wrong Then quotes

  • Ham Cheon-soo: Try to discover something every second of every day, from everything around you.