In the last article, I mainly emphasized the difference between the original book of "Murder on the Orient Express" and some details of the old and new versions of the movie, and made some simple definitions for such books and movies to distinguish the two - the new version and the old version. The distinction and how books and movies are differentiated.
In this article, I try to dig into the deep consciousness of the film, and find some clues buried in the original book and the film that are easily overlooked by readers and audiences.
I'm going to choose one of "Crimes in the Sun" and "Murder on the Nile" as an extension of the movie "Murder on the Orient Express" with the intention of finding some commonalities in such detective films - not just structural , as well as conceptually, and interestingly, the two films I mentioned, like Murder on the Orient Express, are the work of Agatha Christie , and in the process of telling the story, the films also have The same thing works.
In this way, we can not only complete the given task of: exploring structure and concept, but also have a preliminary understanding of the writing routine of the original author Agatha Christie - even the writing routine of detective movies.
In this way, we can make a thematic generalization of our task: the ideological discussion of film.
Based on the above, I thought again and again, and chose a "Sin under the Sun" as the backbone of this article to talk about the reasoning movies and novels we are familiar with. Apart from suspenseful stories and details, what other places are worthy of us to explore.
Of course, there will be some plot details of "Murder on the Orient Express" and "Murder on the Nile" interspersed in the article - we will mainly talk about the movie initially, or "Sin under the Sun", but the ultimate goal is to Find out what the three films have in common -- that's the point .
Suspenseful inference film
Maybe many of my friends are not familiar with this movie. In fact, before watching "Murder on the Orient Express", I didn't watch this movie. I only watched this movie to have a deeper understanding of Agatha's works. , In addition to "Evil in the Sun", I also watched a movie, that is, "The Massacre on the Nile" mentioned above.
The story structures of these three films are similar. Let's take "Sin under the Sun" to explain in detail why I say these works are similar, and where are they similar?
First of all, "Sin under the Sun" takes place on a small island, so the characters are fixed, and it is impossible for a large group of tourists to suddenly appear in a short period of time, so the suspects are fixed.
The story of this movie mainly tells about a murder case on a small island, but at the beginning of the story, he did not tell the life on the island, but showed us a murder case , the deceased was Alice Lupo lady.
Of course, only this one thing cannot form a causal relationship. At the beginning of the movie, we show us a murder case that seems to have nothing to do with the subsequent plot. So does this case really have no effect on the subsequent events?
Obviously, there must be a reason, and the woman who died in the opening case was the ex-wife of the man who murdered another woman on the island, a man named Patrick Rainford.
The movie only reveals the mystery at the last minute. Obviously, this way of revealing is reasonable enough, because it makes sense logically, but do you think this way of revealing is a little familiar?
In the movie Murder on the Orient Express (referred to here as the 1974 version), the beginning was also the beginning of the case, only this time it became a kidnapping case - known as the historically famous Armstrong kidnapping.
If you think about the plot carefully, you will find that the movie only begins to link this case with the murder on the Orient Express in the middle and later parts. I mentioned a concept before, which is to trigger an event. The first case is the triggering event. A triggering event leads to countless characters, and these characters form the main line of the story.
At this point, it seems that we can define the creative concept of this type of film , but if you try to analyze "The Nile Tragedy" again, you will find that it is not so easy to define the concept .
We are just trying to define the concept of film based on the few films we know so far, but this is not enough.
In the previous article, I mentioned that when Agatha wrote "Murder on the Orient Express", she did not put the triggering event - that is, the Armstrong kidnapping case at the beginning, but at the back of the novel, so that This kidnapping should not be called the triggering event, but the enlightening event - it inspired the readers and the characters in the book, and opened up the thinking of the case.
Compared with such carriers as books, film carriers are more suitable for the presentation of events - it is enough for the audience to understand the beginnings and turns of time, and the logic is clear enough.
But we have to know that not all reasoning movies begin to tell the story from the triggering event, the most typical example is the new version of "Murder on the Orient Express".
It chooses to use the presentation of a case investigation to highlight or strengthen the protagonist, rather than to strengthen the story. This method actually appears in many modern movies - such as the well-known "The Devotion of Suspect X" At the beginning, Galileo did an experiment to strengthen the reasoning ability of the protagonist, and then turned to the main line of the story.
In this way, we can make a rough distinction between the above films. As long as we understand what is the main core of the story they tell, and what is the important weight that drives the whole story forward, then we really know this film. Or how should the ideology of this type of film be defined?
In general, we can divide the above films by era:
The main style of reasoning films in the 1970s and 1980s was event-based, emphasizing stories, and the characters were dramatic and fixed.
In the 21st century, reasoning films have undergone changes, and a big change lies in the strengthening of characters, while stories are second, emphasizing the diversity of characters and open-ended scenes.
Regarding the open scenes, we can find the answer in the new version of "Murder on the Orient Express" - in the episode showing the avalanche, the scene shown in the movie is much bigger than the scene of the main story that takes place in the train. Much more, and let's look at the old movie again - the biggest environmental presentation happens in the last segment of the movie - the scene where the train is moving away - this is also the biggest environmental presentation in the movie.
Explore the truth and the unknown
Of course, let's start by admitting that the CGI adds a lot to the new version of the film in this regard, but aside from CGI, the dramatic strength of the story also speaks for itself.
Even if it's not a reasoning movie - a closed scene like "Birdman" is shown, the process of the camera's performance also needs to enhance the depth of the space, as is the same movie "La La Land".
Perhaps we can summarize it according to such characteristics: with the progress of the times, the film began to emphasize the characters while weakening the story.
It seems that it is indeed the case. There are so many characters in "Sin under the Sun", but each person's character and image are very fixed, so we can recognize at a glance who these characters are and what they are doing when watching ?
But in today's movies, it seems very difficult for us to do this - while the movie strengthens the characters, it also gives them a certain initiative, and we can't judge whether this initiative is good or bad, because It is a progress - a progress of thought.
At the beginning of the article, we are going to try to dig out the ideology of the reasoning movie itself, but when I wrote this, I discovered that the ideology of the movie presents a habit- we have been emphasizing the story above. the drama, and whether it is "Crimes in the Sun" or "Murder on the Nile", or "Murder on the Orient Express", they show a solid sense of existence - let's call this feeling presence.
And the second category of movies—that is, the films of the new century we mentioned, they all express some conceptual things, whether it is in "The Devotion of Suspect X" or "Murder on the Orient Express" In the movie, the movie goes round and round, and it still returns to human nature, and the only place where the old version of the movie mentions the concept problem is this "Murder on the Orient Express" - and it is also the original author Agatha. 's most famous works.
Because it refers to a grey area, neither yes nor no , the truth is hard to determine, it is not as clear as the structure of the story, nor as clear-cut as the characters of the comedy - a thrown out of "Murder on the Orient Express" The question is about this black area, and in the new version of the movie of the same name, the protagonist asks directly: Either it is right or it is wrong. Now that I have you, I don't know how to judge.
I think you can think about this question carefully, because it emphasizes ideas rather than cases, so "Murder on the Orient Express" is enduring, why "Gravity", "Interstellar", "Arrival" and other films can trigger us I think the reason is the same as that of Murder on the Orient Express.
I remember there is a sentence in "Seeing": The essence of thought is restlessness. Once a person sways from side to side, a new bud of thought will appear, and it will peel off the soil and reveal itself.
But in the process of growing up, we should not break away from the solid soil and emphasize the idea . The reason why the idea is strong is because it is rooted in the soil. Similarly, the movie story itself is the solid soil of the movie. If we can't even justify the story, then Obviously the quality of the movie will not be too high.
Finally, thanks for watching.
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