One of the most tangled films I've watched all over the holiday.
During the movie watching, there are two emotions of wanting to watch and not wanting to watch. There are several interruptions, several fast forwards, and several replays, just to skip some uncomfortable scenes and see some metaphorical pictures. In the end, I struggled for a long time between three stars and five stars, and gave four stars.
It is obviously a concept first movie, from killing to saving, from saving to killing. The movie is full of messianic and Christ metaphors. The shadows of Moses and the false Jesus are present throughout the film.
But can it be said that if there is a religious connotation in concept, it must be a good movie? Can't say that either. The cheap plasma, the rough editing, and the sharp separation between the front and back parts keep the whole movie in a wobbly state. And the narrative part of the film itself gave way to ideas and concepts, a religious film in the guise of a Western.
I would like to say what I think about this film, the first half of course has a rough thrill. The evil taste and malicious aesthetics make people feel happy. The duel with the four gunmen is a forcible process of creating gods. In the duel, the mole himself learned the skills of the four masters and also paved the way for the ending. This part is a very simple cult film, full of cult flavor.
But after the betrayal and death, the second half of the story takes a sharp turn. If the first half only leads to religion from the story, then the second half of religion becomes the dominant part of the whole film. Once religion has become the central thread of the film, the watchability of the film itself has dropped too much.
Start with the Mole Resurrection. Isn't that the new birth of Jesus? Then began his long redemption. The narrative space is almost the same as the first half, but the content is much less, and some parts even degenerate into simple boring vulgar and vulgar scenes. If there's a place where I can't watch it, it's in the second half of the film.
The ending is of course a sublimation. As long as the book itself becomes meaningless, the transition from killing to saving has also turned into a transition from saving to killing. The Mole, who had learned the skills of the four masters, became immortal, picked up the gun again, launched the final killing, and then ignited the fire and burned himself.
So, from the beginning to the end, this whole story is nothing but a story of lifting a person to the altar and then falling off the altar. This Western film dressed in religious guise essentially tells the story of a person who seeks, loses a lot in the process of searching, and finally finds nothing. From the perspective of Christ's resurrection, this is also a story of Christ dying and resurrecting, and then choosing to die again. This is a story of a Messiah who ultimately cannot save the world, and a story of a Messiah who ultimately cannot save himself. It's hard to say how much religious significance the director has told through this story, because it's just a replica of a failed religious template. From this perspective, the film wears a religious veneer on top of the cult and western shell, but a layer of the emperor's new clothes.
So back to the beginning, how do you talk about the honey flowing from the tomb of the first Gunslinger Master? How are the snake eggs found in the desert and the water splashing from the rocks related to sex and nudity? Of course it could be said that this is a parody of Moses, or even a reconstruction of Exodus, but the religious meaning itself is meaningless. I can rewrite a story about the Last Supper, I can rewrite a story about Jesus Christ dying and resurrecting, I can rewrite a story about Judas' betrayal, I can rewrite a lot of Levi Matthew stories, I can imitate many, many stories of the Gospel of Mark, but after all, it is only a kind of imitation and reproduction, and has no meaning of its own.
So take off this religious skin, and you will see that after taking off this concept, the film itself becomes lackluster. In order to describe the concept completely, the director filled the entire skeleton with wanton jokes and grotesque pictures. Take off the skin of this religion, all kinds of reproductive worship, all kinds of ugliness, all kinds of loss of humanity, like mercury pouring down the ground, sand scattered everywhere.
Of course, I respect the director very much. The concept of religion is already very great. It is also worthy of respect to use multiple films and dramas to repeatedly construct my own pursuit of religion. So I tossed between five stars and three stars and ended up giving four stars.
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