If you want to choose the most literary American director (right), I would recommend the Coen brothers first (brother: Joel Coen; brother: Ethan Coen):
Starting from the debut "Blood Simple", the Coen brothers' films have a very strong postmodernity and black humor. The plots are intertwined, step by step, and many coincident "snowball-like" stories have brought people together. Remember this pair of sharp-edged filmmakers.
In "Barton Fink" (Barton Fink), the brothers incorporated their existentialist views and stream of consciousness techniques into the work, telling the story of a playwright’s creative anxiety, the vague and complex text nesting in the play, the real world and The overlapping of the worlds of consciousness allows people to see the depth of the Cohen brothers' thoughts. This work also brought the first Palme d'Or for the brothers.
Later, the title of "No Country ForOld Man", which won an Oscar for Best Picture (No Country ForOld Man), came from Yeats's long poem "Sailing To Byzantium". This film is called "the end of westerns": the murderer has escaped, the stolen money is scattered, and the police are old. It is a complete anti-genre. The original film comes from "Hemingway and Faulkner's Only Heir" Cormac McCarthy (Cormac McCarthy). The Coen brothers perfectly reproduced the wild and desolate western world he wrote about.
Nowadays, the Coen brothers have become well-known directors in the United States. The elements in their work sequences are also enriched, including song and dance ("Drunken Country Folk Songs", "Long Live Caesar", etc.), religious elements ("Three Kings Escape", "Old Woman Killer", etc. ) And various types of films have been covered. But one thing that has always been implemented is their thorough insight into the impermanence of life.
The new work "The Ballads of Buster Scruggs" (The Ballads of Buster Scruggs), which appeared at the Venice Film Festival this year, was produced by Netflix. It combines six independent short stories into one feature film and won the best film in Venice. Good original script. The six stories all took place in the western United States in the 18th and 19th centuries. The mysterious and lawless western world is the best stage for the Coen brothers' story to unfold.
The six stories have a clear tone, showing the western world from all levels and perspectives. Unique performance style, precise editing rhythm, and familiar sudden changes of the world. Every story is full of the Coen brothers’ whimsical ideas, and every story is a fable full of black humor.
In the next article, I will talk to you about my personal understanding of these six stories, so it will really be spoiled, and I suggest you to watch the original film first!
1. The Ballad of Buster Scruggs
You see'em, you play'em. You see'em, you play'em.
Story introduction: Buster Scruggs, the wanted cowboy in a white coat, is a well-known sharpshooter. Although he is a criminal, he implements his own principles and does not cause trouble, but he also does not bear to swallow. He wandered one by one, and bloodshed was inevitable along the way. Finally he met another sharpshooter and died under his gun.
At the beginning of the story, Buster had a monologue like this:
This is Buster's creed. He believes that "willing to bet and accept defeat" and it is unnecessary to get angry with things that he cannot change. After he was in a bar, he sat in a game that was waiting to be vacant, but the cards he put down were really bad, and Buster repented after seeing it. This is his "unwilling to gamble". But the rest told him: "You have to play when you see the cards." Someone even threatened him with a gun (this violates the store's regulations on weapons storage). Without the certainty of winning, Buster would rather quit. He said:
The man who pointed the gun at him (named Joe Joe) disagreed, and relied on the lewd threat of the weapon to persecute Buster. But in the end he was overwhelmed by Buster's Tianxiu operation. The brother of the deceased clamored for Buster to come out for a duel, but he was quickly killed by Buster's superb shooting skills.
The cowboys who appeared next also demanded a duel. Buster readily accepted it. In his opinion, it was just another defeater:
But this time it was him who was downed. The soul after Buster's death and the cowboy sang a song When The Cowboy Trades His Spurs For Wings ("When The Cowboy Trades His Spurs For Wings").
This story uses "card game" and "duel" as an irony: people often fail when they think they have a winning ticket , just like Joe holding a weapon and Buster who is very confident that he is heading for the duel. In many cases, there is no choice in this kind of "card game" . All you can do is choose to be open-minded and relieved, just like Buster's monologue at the beginning. By the time he embarked on this road, Buster was already conscious.
What is interesting is that the Coen brothers used two lenses with exactly the same composition, implying the passing of this fortune :
This cowboy dressed in black will also meet the next sharpshooter faster than him.
This story incorporates the most elements of Cohen, with a sudden plot, genre parody (cowboy duel), black humor, religious sentiment and singing and dancing bridges, so this short story can lead the entire film. I believe the brothers also made it very enjoyable. .
2. Near Algodones
Story introduction: A desperate cowboy decides to rob the bank, but fails and is arrested. When they were about to be hanged, a group of Native Americans intercepted and killed the law enforcement; the cowboy was rescued by a passing cowherd, but the cowherd was actually a cow thief. The cowboy was framed and sent to the town to be executed.
The structure of this story is very simple. It is a typical "suffocating the enemy and losing the horse" mode. It uses a sudden turn to show the blessings and good luck. On the last gallows, the cowboy said to the crying person beside:
Before he died, the cowboy met a girl in the stands. This is really a cruel thing. After you are ready to accept the fate of death, you have a thirst for life again, which is really a torture for death. But anyway, the executioner used a sack to help you close your eyes.
3. "Meal Ticket"
The quality of mercy is not strained, it droppeth like gentle rainfrom heaven.
Compassion is not out of reluctance, it descends from the sky to the world like rain.
Story introduction: A man depends on a disabled speaker with no limbs to make a living. However, his increasingly fragile income made him no longer trust this teenager, especially after he saw a "counting chicken" attracting the attention of a large group of people, he decided to replace his "actor".
This is the most literary article in the whole film, especially reflected in the lines of disabled speakers, quoting Shelley’s "Osmandis", "Bible Genesis", the story of Cain and Job, and Lincoln’s The Gettysburg speech was interspersed with Shakespeare’s Shang Lai poems and "The Tempest" lines . Such speeches are destined to be puzzling pieces of text, but the vivid Russian interpretation of the speaker still made many listeners awe.
The story develops in an increasingly cool blue tone, and the relationship between men and teenagers is constantly undergoing subtle changes. In the end he abandoned the boy and harvested a "genius capon."
The quotation at the beginning of this short story is from Shakespeare's "The Merchant of Venice" . This may be a self-excusing word for profit-seeking businessmen. Here, it is a true portrayal of the heart of a young man, as well as an exhaustive picture of the man. What's interesting is the irony of the title "Meal Tickets". Men and teenagers actually depend on each other and provide each other with what they need. They are each other's "Meal Tickets". He bought the chicken, but didn't understand how the "numerate" was done, and he was bound to be greeted by a cold and hungry winter.
Four, "Golden Valley" (All Gold Canyon)
This is the emerald green heart of the canyon. As soon as the rigid cliffs arrive here, they suddenly open up and change their rough style to form a small hidden world filled with sweet, plump, and soft taste. Everything here is resting in peace, even the narrow creek has contained the turbulent rush, gradually turning into a quiet pond. A crimson male deer with many branches on its horns, with its head down, half-closed eyes, standing in the knee-deep water, was napping.
Story introduction: The old gold digger came to a land with excellent scenery, hoping to find his own gold mine. Just when he finally found the mineral vein after working for countless days and nights, he was attacked with a gun from behind...
This story is not original by the Coen Brothers, but is adapted from the work of the same name by the famous American short story writer Jack London . The sentences in the film are also quotations from the original work.
Jack London used his vivid and timeless writing to show his own ecological concept: "Fluttering sounds and erratic colors seem to weave a delicate and invisible veil together, and it is the spirit here. This is the spirit of peace. There is no death, only life that throbs peacefully, tranquil but not dead,... the spirit here is the spirit of peace with a breath of life, everything is intoxicated in the ease and satisfaction of prosperity, and is not disturbed by rumors of war from afar."
But the arrival of the gold digger broke all of this. He dug the land, fished for silver fish, and stole a bird's egg. He disturbed the creatures here, and then the piece of "light yarn" was torn apart. The nature that is not disturbed by war also ushered in a battle between gold prospectors and sneak attackers. We will naturally generate associations. This is the habit of human beings since ancient times: fighting for resources, triggering wars, and destroying nature; in the age when we have not yet separated from the worship of natural order, we will be awed and grateful, and when we After gradually grasping the laws of nature and wanting to transform nature, we become invaders and destroyers of the spirit of nature .
In this story, the assailant was a person who tried to get something for nothing, but was eventually killed by the old gold rusher; and when the old man left here, the generous gift of the gold mine was naturally only to return to peace without revenge. Looking at the devastated mine, we need to be vigilant: it's not that we don't report, the time has not come.
From a technical point of view, the battle between the old gold digger and the sneak attacker is not only part of the story, but also reflects the whole story: that is, the old man is weak and looted, similar to nature; the sneak attacker is strong , Violent, similar to destroying nature. Therefore, this story seems to be just a slogan propaganda film of "Green water and green mountains are golden mountains and silver mountains", and its inner layers are still very rich. This is the charm of the Coen brothers' story.
5. The Gal Who Got Rattled
Mr. Arthur had no idea about what he would say to Billy Knapp.
Mr. Arthur didn't know how to speak to Billy Knapp.
Story introduction: Miss Longeba will move to Oregon with the convoy for a potential marriage partner. On the way, her brother was infected with cholera and died. Miss Longeba decided to move on and the coach leader Billy Knapp took the opportunity to express her intention to get married. But Miss Longeba separated from the army for her dog and killed herself in an Indian attack.
In this short story, Miss Longeba has been in a state of "fright" , which is an instantaneous "fright" . For example, when she thought that her dog was shot to death, she put down her hand covering her ears, and then again Was frightened by two consecutive gunshots:
It is even more a kind of hesitation about what to do. For example, her brother was supposed to match her marriage with her fiance. After her brother died, no one introduced her to her, and she was unaccompanied. I wonder if she should go to unknown Oregon or It's time to return to the place where there is no help.
But it was Miss Longeba's last move that really got the name of this short story. She and the other team leader, Mr. Arthur, were surrounded by Indians. Arthur gave her a pistol and warned her to use this gun to commit suicide if necessary. Being caught by the Indians is definitely better than death. Just after Mr. Arthur exhausted all his hard work to repel the Indians, he found that Miss Longeba had committed suicide. So this is the time to truly "got rattled".
Mr. Arthur was very regretful, if he hadn't explained those words to Miss Longeba, maybe she would not die. So when he returned to the team, "don't know how to speak to Billy Knapp". In fact, the shot of suicide was due to Miss Longeba's character and situation. She herself was a conscientious and cautious person, and she faced the departure of her relatives alone, not knowing how to continue her life. Under this kind of mental pressure, her string was eventually cut off by the Indians.
Interestingly, if we go back a little bit, if Miss Longeba didn’t go to find her dog, it wouldn’t be separated from the army. It would be nice if Billy Knapp killed the dog. NS. This is the convention of the screenwriters of the Coen brothers: buy foreshadowing with seemingly trivial details, and the interrelation of events and events ultimately leads to an irreversible ending, that is, "extraordinary branches" and "snowballs."
The actor of Miss Longeba, Zoe Kazan, gave a very exquisite performance, expressing the unique mixture of sorrow and comical in Cohen's films with a natural and exaggerated sense of joy:
The writing technique of this short story is "the shift between the beginning and the end" . The opening quotation part is actually the end of the story, and the end of the story implies the beginning of countless plots: how will Mr. Arthur word it, Billy Knapp will What's the reaction to this and so on. The main line of the story is Miss Longeba’s frightened suicide, and the branch line is Billy Knapp’s proposal to her. After the main line ends, the branch line is left as the end to form a "polyphonic" story style, which greatly expands the reading space of the text. .
6. The Mortal Remains
Whether or not he heard, the coachman did not slow.
Whether he heard it or not, the coachman would not slow down.
Story introduction: Five strangers with different identities: a French man, a fur hunter, a lady, one fat and one thin, two bounty hunters (they will transport the body of the wanted criminal to the police station in town); together Take a carriage to a common destination. During this time, the lady had asthma. The French man asked the coachman to stop, but he turned a deaf ear. The coachman kept going until he stopped at the entrance of a hotel.
The structure of this story is very simple, but it is very exciting. It shows the extremely high literary attainments of the Coen brothers. There are only two scenes in the whole story: inside the carriage and the destination, but it has a lot of dramatic tension. The dialogue in the story is very complicated, rich in meaning and worthy of careful reading. Here I mainly want to focus on two interpretations of this story: (1) This story refers to the fact that five people go to a common destination together. With a clear identity and a clear destination (Fort Morgan is said in the film), the coachman’s unwillingness to stop may be just out of some will. They stayed at the same hotel last. (2) This story is a virtual reference, which symbolizes the whole process of human death . Two bounty hunters are equivalent to ferrymen, and the carriage that never slows down is "time" that never stays . The end of the last stay is "death" .
The evidence for the second interpretation can be easily found in the film. For example, two bounty hunters call themselves "Reaper" and "Soul Harvester", in their eyes there are only two kinds of people: "living" and "dead"; The whole time period of the story is from the thin western hills to the completely cold night; the carving decoration of the hotel door is angels and demons (the ram's head represents Satan) and so on. But these evidences can have non-symbolic interpretations, and the intriguing implications of the story are here.
The more important passage in the film is the "The Midnight Caller" story told by the bounty hunter. This is a well-known story that we have heard from childhood, but we are still attracted every time we hear it:
The beauty of this passage lies in the level of nesting of textual meaning : the innermost part is the story of "returning people at night"; outside of this is the story of people who listen to the story, they like that this story is both related to themselves and has nothing to do with them; Beyond this is the narrator of this phenomenon: the bounty hunter, the object of the narration is the passengers on the opposite side, let them think whether they have the same experience; finally, we outside the screen, when we are listening to the whole story At that time, did we have the same idea?
Let's look at the title of this story again: the mortal remains, the original English name is the mortal remains, which is the remains of a mortal. When the characters in the film realize that their situation is not right, we should also realize that this "remains" refers naturally not to the remains transported by the two bounty hunters, but the three passengers——
To expand it a bit more, it is everyone: no one will be immortal, everyone is temporarily active "remains."
The Coen brothers are keen to discuss the uncertainty of life. This is not only reflected in their scripts, but also in their lens language. I can’t elaborate on it here, but I should mention a few points: internal reversal shots→single player The lens, the wide-angle lens → the relationship between the characters and the environment, the track shot → the emphasis on the beginning of the change, and the unique editing rhythm and increasingly refined tone make the Coen brothers' movies even more memorable.
What I want to focus on this time is where the allegorical nature of this film comes from and where it points to.
In this film, the Coen brothers used many shots that looked directly at the audience , that is, "breaking the fourth wall" , such as the cowboy Buster's monologue and the bounty hunter telling the story of "returning at night". The latter has a counter-attack object, and we can also think of it as speaking to the opposite passenger, and it is a two-layer interpretation of real and imaginary fingers. The "fourth wall" was originally a drama term. In a three-dimensional drama, there is an imaginary wall between the audience and the stage actors. This viewing mode emphasizes the authenticity of the theater performance and allows the audience to believe in everything that happens on the stage. Thus enter the story. In the movie, it is to allow the audience to enter the story on the screen. "Break the fourth wall" is to allow the characters on the screen to interact with the audience, to break out of their own story world, to let the audience fully understand that this is fictional and not real, thereby achieving a kind of "defamiliarization" of alienation Effect.
This alienation effect will make the audience think about the particularity of this character and the whole story, especially its symbolic extension, thereby completing the allegorical nature of the film and elevating a specific story to a more abstract level of numerology.
So where does the allegorical nature of the Coen brothers point? I think the point is to mock the audience’s God’s perspective . Because we can look at the whole event from the perspective of the omniscience of the bystander, understand its ins and outs, and sigh for the tragic fate of the characters in the film. Especially the Coen brothers like to repeat ingeniously, such as the overlapping composition mentioned in the first story. Such examples are not uncommon in Cohen's movies:
We can see, but the characters in the film have no way of knowing. They only have to wait for fate to tease and tease. We can use logic to clarify how everything develops to what point, but logic does not change due to people's subjective wishes, so the characters in the film cannot be predicted or reasoned.
However, back in real life, aren't we the same as them?
Only God can be on the sidelines this time, so religious elements often appear in Cohen's movies.
The Coen brothers used their stern and deep gaze to see through the absurd nature of this world, and showed it through the movie. Only by seeing this can we be considered to have actually seen the Coen Brothers movie.
So, when you are deceived by life again, you might as well sing "The Ballad of Buster Scruggs" to masturbate.
View more about The Ballad of Buster Scruggs reviews
