1
I watched a movie called "Titanium" the other day. It's a very heavy-handed, absurd movie. Only later did I find out that it was this year's Cannes Palme d'Or winner.
The director is a French woman. Before "Titanium", it gained fame with a film called "Raw". At the same time, it is also very controversial - when it was screened in Europe, some people fainted while watching it.
Because "Titanium" won the grand prize, "Raw" became hot again. Yesterday, a friend recommended "Raw" to me.
I didn't really catch a cold after watching "Titanium". Recommended by a friend, I still watched "Raw".
2
Both films are very heavy, and the plot is typically in the B-movie category, full of cult flavors. B-grade films are usually also a type of commercial films, satisfying the heavy taste needs of a small audience. However, the directors of these two films have won the European Film Laureate Award, so it is not easy.
Of course, those who identify with these two films will say that the films are full of metaphors and reveal profoundly the problems of this society.
It's like Kafka's "Metamorphosis," about a middle-class man who wakes up one morning and finds himself transformed into a giant beetle. The great metaphor contained in it made Kafka a forerunner of modern literature. The two films "Titanium" and "Eat Raw" can also be understood as metaphors. But this is relatively advanced, and I can't really understand it. I will only talk about my intuitive feeling.
3
After watching these two films, my first intuitive feeling is that this female director has a huge element of opportunism. She knows what attracts the audience, she has mastered the audiovisual language, and she also knows what attracts the attention of the European intellectual class, so she uses the audiovisual language quite contagious, using the cult, the usual It is a very curious theme and content adopted by B-grade films, which attracts audiences, and at the same time seems to allude to social issues, such as the totalitarianism alluded to in "Raw" and "Raw" and "Titanium". Women take a strong stance against the "feminist" perspective of violence against women, which is "politically correct" in the metaphysical sense by grafting serious social issues into the content of B-grade films. With such extreme content themes and audio-visual language, it can also arouse the attention of the intellectuals to their social problems involving "political correctness". The so-called sword is slanted, and both ends attract attention.
In that sense, the director is smart.
4
However, since it has been certified by Cannes, it shows that no matter what the director's subjective intention is, whether it is opportunism or whether it is a violent way to attract attention and discussion on serious social issues, it has become a cultural phenomenon. become the new wind vane.
In fact, some signs of this kind of weather vane can be found in the early years.
From American director Gus Van Sant's work "Elephant" in 2003, which intuitively presented campus killings, to South Korea's Bong Joon-ho's work "Parasite" in 2019, which used extreme methods to express the gap between the rich and the poor. "Extreme imagery" in the sense.
Whether it's "Raw" or "Titanium", it's just going a little further on the "extreme" road.
When I say "extreme", in other words, the content of the video is obviously anti-social.
In "Eat Raw", it shows the hobby of cannibalism or patients with physical diseases. In 1991, the Oscar-winning "Silence of the Lambs" immediately depicted a cannibal doctor, Hannibal. The filming process of that film was extremely tortuous, because the existence of such an ogre character made Hannibal a There was a huge controversy in the film, which led to twists and turns before the film was finally made. In fact, in that film, the "cannibal" hobby of the ogre doctor was revealed in a suggestive way, and there was no direct cannibalism. In "Eat Raw", there are detailed depictions of eating people's fingers, and there are close-up shots of people's thighs being eaten to expose their femurs, which lasted for more than 10 seconds, which seemed to test the audience's extreme endurance.
In the film "Eat Raw", the existence of a cannibal family is revealed, and it is basically outside the social and legal monitoring (except for the death of a sister who gnawed off a person's thigh and went to prison).
The heroine who obviously won the sympathy of the audience in the film was not punished by any actual punishment at the end of the film, nor was she treated as a psychopath.
In "Titanium", the heroine fights against sexual violence by killing a man who wanted to forcibly have sex with her in an extremely cruel way, and then kills a series of people, also in a cruel way. In order to get rid of the police wanted, the heroine pretends to be the son who has been missing for many years by a father. Later, the "father" who was too lonely and wanted to have a relative by his side was always caring in the face of the "son" who was full of doubts. Even in the end, the heroine's identity has been seen, but "father" still loves "him". It turned out that what he needed was not the lost son, but a person who could accompany him - even if it was a fake with ulterior motives. If the truth of loneliness in the hearts of modern people is reflected here, and the Palme d'Or won by this, then the gold content of the Palme d'Or is too low. I don't understand why it won the Palme d'Or, so I won't make any false comments. But in this film, the heroine, who has taken many lives, actually changed her identity and lived a "happy life" that she had been asking for before.
I'm upset, I can eat people, I'm bullied, I can kill. Then, there will not necessarily be any consequences.
If this is not anti-social, then what is anti-social.
5
From another point of view, "Eat Raw" and "Titanium" both show people's original desires in a surreal way. The desire for human flesh in "Eat Raw", the strong desire and physical and mental satisfaction in "Titanium" to have sex with car mechanics. Fetishes and cannibals are not tolerated in civilized society. Even if it is an internal impulse that cannot be eliminated, it can only be sneaked, or simply suppressed. Man thus becomes a disciplined, "civilized" man.
Of course, the consequence of "civilization" to a certain extent is the variation of human beings. Either a man becomes a dry, lifeless person, or, with the help of some inducement, repressed desires are brought into revenge, such as crime, or he becomes a powerful dictator and launches terrible actions that endanger the world.
In these two films, this desire to be either suppressed or secretly carried on is positively depicted, making it grand.
In this sense, it is also anti-social.
6
Of course, both films also show the warm side of the protagonist as a human being. In "Eat Raw", the heroine's unbearable love for her roommate and her roommate is quite touching in "Titanium". But it only serves as a display of one aspect of human nature. Another aspect of human beings, such as cannibalism, the mad revenge murderous impulse, and the mechanophobia, are also displayed with the same intensity.
Almost all of our literary and artistic works are based on the collective discipline of civilization, such as being kind to life, being kind to others, restraining desire, and so on. As far as Western society is concerned, this is also the basic dogma of biblical instruction. is the foundation of modern civilization.
These two films, objectively speaking, are actually subverting some of these dogmas.
It becomes extremist. It ignores some ethical basis.
Therefore, excluding the possibility of the director's opportunistic motives, if it is elevated to a cultural phenomenon, I think, from "Raw" to "Titanium", such films have risen to be a prominent cultural phenomenon in the Western world, and they are not Recognized by the mainstream, it actually represents a new value that is subverting the world.
The existing Christian-based humanist values of the Western world are being shaken.
The first is that the level of social reality has shaken, and this shake has been captured and displayed by literary and artistic works. Literary and artistic works, like an amplifier, in turn act on social reality.
At the level of social reality, the power of the devil may become stronger and stronger.
The devil, who was suppressed and imprisoned for two thousand years, gradually awakened from the human body.
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