This is the second time I have watched Steven Soderbergh's movie. The first time is "Never Compromise."
How did I learn about this film? At the end of 2012, some media people on the Internet commented that "Tai囧" was vulgar, but the box office was very high. The Chinese audience had very little taste, while the American audience had low taste and was young. The girls are crazy and pay to watch "Magic Mike" Richard N. Tatum and Matthew McConaughey sell meat.
After watching it, I thought this film was amazing. I paid attention to the director. I rely on it. It was Soderbergh.
I don't know the director Soderbergh, I haven't watched "Sex, Lies, and Videotapes" and "Drug Network", nor have I watched the Lohan series. I don't admire him, and I won't admire this film because of the director's big name. "Magic Mike" is indeed a film worthy of reading, an artistic aesthetic, and a profound connotation.
(1)
The complex of the narrative film is divided into three parts: June, July, and August. It seems that the director is carrying out a chronological naturalistic narrative, but it is actually a three-act structure in Hollywood. When we carefully figure out what happens every month, we can easily realize that three months are one scene.
1) June. Mike met Adam, took him into the striptease industry and became friends. Then I met Brooke, Adam's sister. There is a sexual partner Joanna. The loan for Mike Rann's handmade furniture store failed.
2) July. Mike takes Brooke to the National Day beach party for male strippers. Send Adam home to find Brooke's boyfriend Paul. She wanted to develop a relationship with Joanna, but she was very cold about it. Owner Dallas announced that he would expand his business to Miami, but Mike had a disagreement with him on the split.
3) August. Mike and Brook talked about the professional ideal of making handmade furniture, and Mike and Brooke had no success at dinner. He messed up a business with Adam, and Adam lost a large bag of drugs. Mike and Joanna are completely separated. The conflict with Dallas escalated. Bring Adam to drug abuse and have a big fight with Brook about it. Use savings to pay off Adam's debt. Apologize to Brooke. Exit the striptease industry. Win Brooke's love.
"Magic Mike" has multiple clues (the action line of Mike training Adam as his successor, the action line of earning money to open a furniture store, and the emotional line of Brooke), which overlap each other. The separation and re-weaving of each line in the film, in my opinion, is a kind of softening the theme and removing the interference of the creator through grinding and "granulating" the dramatic structure of classicism without reducing the drama. The narrative strategy of traces is to make the film look more like a non-written, happening story.
Since the director chooses to tell the story in this way, we better stop reading the film linearly. I choose to extract the following narrative elements to analyze the ideology of the film through relevant key scenes.
(2) Striptease Money Friendship
Adam could have taken a rugby scholarship, but dropped out of college. He had no social experience, so he had found a job as a construction worker and quit. He was poor and couldn't afford shoes. The help Mike provided him was more than just a job.
At the age of 19, he was energetic and energetic. However, the frustrated past, the unknown future, the confusion about life and the confusion about life are like a cage that imprisoned the boy's passion. It is conceivable that Mike once had such a moment. The feasting nightlife, the encounter with a strange woman, and the passionate striptease are extremely fresh and exciting for Adam. Adam was not forced or reluctant to follow Mike's striptease, but rather willingly and willingly to accept it. The carefreeness of drinking late at night, the unruly striptease, and the sense of identity gained on the stage made Adam forget the sadness of yesterday, his anger, curiosity, impulse, wildness, and desire, all these energies were released.
In the context of "youth" and "young", none of the above is wrong, but a normal phenomenon, natural and ordinary. This is what Mike gave to Adam, a world of freedom to stretch. The movie interprets youth in this extreme form of eroticism and portrays the true and delicate life state of young people.
Nevertheless, when Mike found Adam, Adam was grateful to him and said that Mike was his best friend, changed his life and made his future bright, Mike must have felt a huge ridicule. Because people cannot be young forever, people must grow up, become stable and mature, be able to tolerate and take on more things, and know how to give while gaining.
The money that satisfies greed and material desire, and the pathological sense of accomplishment favored by audiences of the opposite sex makes Mai Adam's mind become dizzy and unable to distinguish right from wrong. Dallas used these temptations to manipulate Adam's mind, just like how he manipulated Mike back then. In the gym scene, Dallas demonstrated to Adam how to show his body to seduce the audience. He used words to confuse Adam's thoughts and control Adam's body with movements.
In Dallas' minds, friendship is worthless. Mike, Adam and other dancers are just his pawns. They are the objects of his use to promote the striptease show business and earn a lot of cash. Remember that scene? After Mike settled the account, Dallas took away the books and money, and told him to leave Miami alone and teach Adam well. Reading is useless. If you can come back to life, you still have to be a stripper. For Dallas, life is about making money, owning a yacht, and a luxurious house.
Such values are not Mike's life pursuit, nor the main theme of the film. That's why Mike used his savings to pay back for Adam. Some things are more important than money, such as friendship, commitment, and responsibility. Why did the screenwriter make Dallas the last dance? Mike didn't say a word when Dallas was sweating and stripping on stage, and cash was flying around him. What is he thinking? It definitely cannot be the next Dallas. In the end he chose not to go to Miami and quit the striptease industry. Money can make people own something, but it can also make people lose and lose more things. This is what the film tells us.
(3) Sex, alcohol, drugs
However, both the sense of identity on the undressing stage and the happiness brought by money are shorter than imagined. It cannot suppress the sense of emptiness brought about by the lack of ideals and struggle. So something is needed to fill the void in the character's heart, and Adam's method is sex, alcohol and even drugs.
Throughout the film, Adam has been drinking with a glass or bottle in his hand. Without an ID, he followed Mike in and out of the nightclub for a one-night stand. At his home in Dallas, he had sexual contact with his wife under the instruction of another choreographer, and met Nora, a drug addict.
There is no love between Joanna and Mike. Mike's girlfriend cannot be called her. Their relationship is only sex. While Joanna is bisexual, the second scene of the film introduces them to have sex with another girl. When Mike chatted with her about life after having sex, Joanna was repelled. When Mike called to ask her later, Joanna refused. Mike accidentally discovered that Joanna was dating other men on the street. When she greeted Joanna, she lied that it was her fiancé. Obviously, she wanted to stop the relationship with Mike.
Through the development of the relationship between Mike and Joanna, the film shows us a very American way of life-only making love, not talking about feelings. Terminate the relationship as soon as the signs of emotion appear. Joanna is about to graduate, she will become a psychologist, which means that she can no longer live in this way, and Mike's identity as a stripper obviously cannot enter her future.
For Mike, sex, alcohol and drugs are paralyzing and relieving the unsatisfactory status quo.
When Mike discovered Brook's boyfriend Paul, he must have had some psychological change similar to loss, and in order to paralyze this emotion, he called Joanna to come home to have sex and chat. When he was dissatisfied with the proportion of accounts given to him by Dallas, he called Joanna again. Then he failed about Brooke, messed up the business of bidding farewell to the bachelor party, broke with Joanna, and escalated his dissatisfaction with Dallas. After these decline incidents, he took Adam to take drugs to the nightclub to find girls for sex.
Of course, the film does not think that such anesthesia is an outlet to solve the characters' life problems and psychological contradictions. That’s why Adam messed up his business by kissing a girl, giving people drugs, and losing drugs, causing Mike to postpone his life plan in order to pay him back. That’s why Mike committed a series of negative emotions. The mistake of taking drugs with Adam led to a conflict with Brooke.
(4)
The ultimate dream of a man in love in a handmade furniture store is often a happy family. The premise of a family is love. How does the movie "Magic Mike" think a man can win his love? First of all, you can't have a messy sex life. The scene on the beach was very interesting. Joanna interrupted the conversation between Mike and Brook, and Joanna wanted to share Brook with Mike. Second, you must be enterprising, a stable and decent job. Brooke always mocked Mike's career as a stripper. She approves of his career plan to make handmade furniture. Third, you are a sincere, kind, decent, trustworthy and responsible man. It was the first time Mike saw Brooke. Brooke must be very disgusted with the man who fooled around with his brother. When we met for the second time, Brooke's thoughts became complicated. He complained that Mike taught his brother to striptease, and hoped that he would take care of Adam and be attracted by Mike's dancing style. The third contact was on the beach. Mike's persuasion made Brooke accept Adam's job. At the same time, Mike promised Brooke to take good care of Adam. But due to Mike's negligence, Adam messed up his business and lost drugs. And Mike's drug abuse with Adam is a negative and irresponsible behavior. After Mike helped Adam pay the debts, he realized his fault and assumed responsibility. When Mike went to apologize to Brooke, it was actually a reflection on his own life attitude. He waited until he recognized his direction and quit the striptease industry, and finally won Brooke's love. Soderbergh used the tortuous and gradual emotional development between Mike and Brook to express the film's true value orientation.
(5) The latter word
"Magic Mike" is erotic but not pornographic, attracts money but does not worship money. The narrative structure is rigorous, the expression is natural and delicate, the theme is clear, and the connotation is deep.
On the other hand, the bad domestic films released since June this year have almost no plot, no logic, divorced from reality, extremely luxurious scenes, empty and false characters, kitsch, distorted and inferior values, and money worship.
The profundity of a film comes from the reflection of life experience. The story must not only be logical, but also true and delicate, but once it does so, it will cause pain when it touches reality. This is to satisfy the audience’s obscenity and fantasy, especially for weaving. The big enemy of the daydreaming of teenage girls in third-tier cities.
When the hearts of Chinese film creators and audiences are strong enough, we will be able to narrow the gap between us and Hollywood films.
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