From "Sister Ada" to "Cold War", many fans believe that the director Pavlikovsky has made a leap forward. The author disagrees with most people, thinking that "Cold War" is a huge step backward in the director's creative process, a failed modern film creation attempt, and even an opportunistic flattery to mainstream Western audiences.
Many people criticized the director's previous work, calling it a collection of still photos, "PPT movies". I don’t know if they will have the same answer when they evaluate the films of Chris Mark’s "Dyke", Bresson, Antonioni and Godard. We are deeply influenced by Hollywood commercials and are accustomed to accepting the classic narrative mode of movies. It is easy for us to misunderstand movies: movies must be filled with sports all the time. The essence of movies is of course sports, but movies should be more rhythmic. It can tend towards "movement" as a whole (for example, the movement where Akira Kurosawa maximizes the creation of images), it can also be towards "static" (for example, movies by Ozu Yasujiro, Cai Mingliang and others), and it can also have alternating rhythms of movement and static. Unity (the characters in the long shots of Bella Tal's films autonomously complete the alternation of long periods of silence and long periods of walking). In addition to the extreme long shots, modern movies also actively create "breaks" to achieve the effect of alienation and complete the transcendence of the (Hollywood) classic narrative mode, so as to get rid of the audience's dreamy and immersive dependence on the film. But these films are still fluid as a whole. They fill in the gaps in the image through other means: the connection of actions, the creation of space outside the painting, and the construction of emotion (mental space). "Sister Ada" has achieved this kind of filling. The author's film review aims to talk about how the new work of "Cold War" creates image breaks and omits these fillings by comparing with this previous work and those successful modern films. , So that the rhythm of the film is out of balance, making it a real "PPT movie".
Omission of action cohesion
The best way to fill up the gaps in the image with action connections is undoubtedly the French director Robert Bresson. His mature film shots are almost fragmented, and the scenes are constantly changing. However, there are a large number of characters opening and closing doors in his movies, close-ups of the steps of the characters walking from one scene to another, and close-ups of the hands of the exchange of objects. It is these lenses that connect the front and back images, scenes and create ideographic relationships, allowing image fragments to flow. The same is true in "Sister Ada". Whether Ada walks out of the monastery, takes a bus, a car, or walks in and out of a room, these scenes of action connections have been filmed. In "Cold War", every time the scene changes, every time the director cuts hard, the characters are already there, still there. The scene is reduced to a place for character dialogue, and the image is reduced to a carrier of narrative running accounts. The reason why PPT is PPT is not because every page of it contains text or picture content, but because the action of PPT "turning pages" brings the inevitable "sense of fracture" and "sense of stagnation", one for each single page PPT that is all video content is still PPT, and cannot be a movie. The alternation of static and dynamic characters in "Cold War" is brought about by the director's external intervention in the scene, rather than being completed by the characters. This is the imbalance of the rhythm of the image inside and outside, and this is also an inevitable drawback caused by the omission of action linkage.
Omission of space outside the picture
Robert Bresson was also a pioneer in the creation of space outside the painting. In "Film Writing Notes", he wrote: "Pictures and sounds should not support each other, but should work in turn in a relay manner." Jane In other words, it is necessary to make the sound an independent "auditory image" and complete the connection with the visible image. He undoubtedly implemented his film theory, and his successor, Godard, carried forward this modern film technique of separating sound and picture, and even developed a set of corresponding video teaching methods. "The Sister Ada" is also very well done. Often we can only hear what Ada is listening to, but not what Ada is watching. The space outside the picture displayed by the sound separated from the screen leaves us unlimited imagination space and becomes the movie. White space has also become the driving force for image convergence. The voice-overs in "Cold War" are not used much. Most of the scenes sound and the picture are matched, and a few voice-overs are used. The director unexpectedly filmed these off-picture content in the next shot of the same scene, achieving repetitiveness. The effect has made the rhythm of the film disorder. As for the film as a whole, in addition to the hard cut, the director also used a few black screens to show the scene switching with a relatively large time span. However, the short black screen time, the lack of sound, and the lack of soundtrack are not enough for us to experience. This is the omitted narrative content.
Omission of emotional construction
The leader of emotional construction in modern movies is undoubtedly Antonioni. He de-dramatizes, does not completely rely on actor performance, relies on accurate photography, and portrays the emotions of characters through the relationship between characters and space, such as the disjointed and purposeless characters in his movies. Wandering has also become a manifestation of the character's mood. Photography has become the top priority of Antonioni's films. Many people comment that the photography of "Cold War" is also a good film photography, but the author disagrees. Regarding film photography, whether we want to pursue exquisiteness or precision, I think it is the latter. Antonioni’s film photography is like this, either highlighting the characters, or highlighting the space, or highlighting the relationship between the characters and the space. In this regard, the photography of "Nun Ada" is also excellent. Ada is in the corner of the lens. When Ada was in the car, she focused on her mid-range shots, which were all expressions of her state of mind. In "Cold War", we can neither see the characters (often engulfed in group portraits, lighting does not highlight the protagonist), nor the space (more on Eastern European song and dance shows, Stalin's portrait paintings, and exotic street scenes). , Let alone see the relationship between characters and space (space is only used as a place for dialogue between characters). I can speculate about the director's intention: trying to create an image effect where the characters are swallowed in the torrent of the great era. But if you can't even "see" the emotions of the characters, how can you "swallow" them? Without portraying the hot emotions of the characters (even if they are alienated), how can the coldness of the times be reflected? The “engulfing” in the image makes this “engulfing” in the text impossible.
"Cold War" did not use any effective means to stitch the broken images together. It was a failed modern film attempt. At the same time, as a character film, not a political (event) film, it aims to show signs of the times without constructing character emotions. This omission of film movement (whether it is action or emotion) is not worthy of appreciation.
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