Olivier Assayas is not well-known internationally, but he is still relatively well-known in the Chinese circle. After all, the name "Maggie Cheung's ex-husband" has won him a lot of Chinese media pages. "Summer Time" launched by Assayas in 2008 is a small-scale sketch work. The biggest promotional selling point of the film is that the big star Juliet Binoche joins the show, but Binoche's role in it is different from The importance is actually not very high. In terms of shooting methods, this film adopts a simple one-line and direct narrative method. Although there is a little warmth in the soothing, the overall tone tends to be calm.
From the point of view of the story, "Summer Time" is just an ordinary family ethics film, telling a family story that has already spread. There are special and prominent places in the analysis of topics or issues. As a film invited by the art museum, "Summer Time" is naturally the core theme of "Public Art", but director Assayas did not take it for granted to promote the social significance of "Public Art" and cultural value, but disassembles "public artwork" into two elements: the public and artwork, and explores the hidden behind through "people", the most basic perception subject, and the way of thinking of binary opposition. Life/Death and Legacy Meaning.
A work of art belongs to an individual before it is collected by an art gallery. It belongs to the creator at the earliest, and then is passed on to the successor, and then it may become a private collection or a public exhibit. In the process of inheritance, in addition to its own artistic beauty and practical value, artworks are also attached one by one with personal emotional significance, historical significance of the times, and realistic monetary value. Just like the precious antique vase handed down by the grandmother, as the heir to the grandmother's love, should it be used as a vase? Save it as a nostalgia for your grandmother? Trade it as a treasure that preserves and increases its value? Or as a representation of beauty and the significance of the times to be displayed to the public? And among these kinds of choices, what is passed down between the grandmother and the heir, and what is abandoned? Is there room for coexistence between people's subjective emotions and the objective value of things?
■The plot of "Summer Time" is very simple. It tells the story of an old woman who passed away and left her inheritance to three children who had already started their own families. Although the old woman cherished these inheritances during her lifetime, she spent most of her life waiting for them. , but the only last word she left was to let the children decide how to deal with it, whether to sell it or keep it, as long as the three children agreed. These legacy include an old manor where children were born and raised, a number of valuable works of art of historical and artistic value, and several precious hand-painted books left by a well-known painter, and This well-known painter is the uncle of the old woman and the uncle of the children. The legacy that the old woman left to the children is all from this uncle. Although the uncle has been dead for decades, the old woman has always loved him deeply in her heart, and it is this deep but taboo love that supports her. Years of waiting.
The old woman's three children have very different personalities. The eldest son is a nostalgic economics professor, the second son is a practical businessman, and the only daughter is an avant-garde modernist designer. Except for the eldest son who lives in Paris, France, the other two children live abroad for a long time, and because of their age, only the eldest son has memories and personal feelings for his uncle who has passed away for many years. As for the legacy left by his mother, the nostalgic eldest son hopes to keep it all and pass on the old house and the objects in it to the next generation as the common property of the family, but the second son and the only daughter would rather sell the entire inheritance and realize it. After all, the two Neither of them live in France, and think it's not worth paying a lot of maintenance costs every year just for an empty nostalgia. The eldest son deeply regrets and saddens the choice of his younger brother and sister, but still respects their opinions rationally.
■The main content of the film revolves around the process of heritage disposal. Different people hold different views on different things because of their personality, or because of past experiences, or because of different future lives. The difference and even the opposition between them, the complexity and contradiction of the proposition of "the meaning of life and inheritance" are highlighted. Although the propositions discussed are complex, in terms of presentation techniques, "Summer Time" has handled it extremely well. In a smooth and concise narrative line, it is analyzed and discussed through many opposing states.
》The old woman protects the inheritance for most of her life for love, but does not ask the children to inherit such a belief, but handles it according to their own living conditions - in the days of protecting these heritage works of art, the old woman feels lonely And loneliness, although these artworks have emotional meanings, they are inanimate things and cannot warm people's hearts.
》The children of the old woman made careful arrangements for her burial, hoping that after her mother passed away, there would still be a place to pay tribute and remember her, but the mother's cemetery is a place with a long history, and the burial person can no longer be traced. , The land that is about to be torn down and rebuilt - no matter how hard you try, no matter whether the things that can be remembered are passed down or not, after people die, they are destined to be forgotten in the long river of time.
"The eldest son, an economics professor, published a book, which stated that the state of economic operation cannot be measured and should not be interfered with. Experts criticized this, saying that the eldest son denied the value of economics, and also denied himself as an economic However, this book is very popular among readers—a thing has multiple value meanings at the same time, the negation of one value does not mean that all values are negated, and a thing has different meanings for different people, and A person's worthlessness does not mean that they are worthless to all.
"The old woman published a commemorative picture album for her uncle to commemorate this well-known contemporary artist, but in the picture album there appeared a photo of a former deceased. The status and reputation of artists and works of art are extremely subjective and illusory, and it may be pointless to do everything in their power to maintain such status and reputation.
》In order to avoid inheritance tax, children have to donate works of monumental and artistic value to art museums, but art museums have to carefully evaluate and measure the artistic value of these works due to management costs. Commemorative significance and artistic value to the public are relative concepts, and both must be preserved or given up on the basis of reality.
"The only daughter hopes that her uncle's hand-painted books will be auctioned separately in the United States in order to expand the audience and increase her uncle's international reputation, but the local art museum hopes that the hand-painted instincts will remain in France and be sold in a centralized manner. For the French, there is emotional meaning—even a public art gallery inevitably puts the emotional meaning of the artwork above the creator’s reputation and the public’s shared value. Therefore, the social and cultural meaning of an artwork may not be higher than that of an individual. emotional meaning.
》The old woman loved a pair of antique vases in her life. When one of them was broken, she carefully protected and stored the remaining one. There is also a pair of glass vases that are not loved by the old woman. The old woman's housekeeper used it because she didn't know the artistic value behind it, and filled the old woman with flowers every day - it has artistic value as a work of art at the same time. When compared with practical value, artistic value often brings psychological burden to the holder, while practical value brings happiness to the holder.
》The old woman did not agree to leave a silver tray to her only daughter, because she knew that she never recognized and appreciated the historical significance behind the artwork. But after the death of the old woman, the only daughter insisted on keeping the tray for herself, because she felt that the tray was too beautiful to give up - when works of art are endowed with various artistic and historical values, the beauty of the works of art itself is often ignored. Cover up and ignore, and when various objective values are excluded, the beauty of artworks appears instead.
"The eldest son's daughter was arrested and reprimanded by the police for smoking marijuana. The eldest son did not blame his daughter for smoking marijuana, because he himself did the same thing when he was young - there are both good and bad things about blood. On the one hand, but whether the parties like it or not, it will always be passed down.
》The eldest son went to the art museum to visit the exhibition of artworks donated by his family. He saw that the attitude of the visitors was negligent and seldom stopped to watch. Discarding the objective value of artworks may not necessarily yield the corresponding emotional consideration.
"The eldest son's daughter returned to the old house that had been emptied, and remembered that her grandmother told herself in an emotional way that his uncle once painted a beautiful painting for her here, and now this painting has long been in a private collection. The collection of the family - even if the precious items left by the predecessors cannot be preserved, the beautiful memories in them can still be preserved in the hearts of future generations.
■In the traditional Chinese concept, it is always the pursuit of "the name of the dead and the skin of the leopard", and for Chinese people who pay attention to family ethics, the inheritance of family emotions and history often overrides the meaning of personal life at the moment . However, in "Summer Time", director Assayas used a series of dualistic arguments to highlight the illusoryness of the word "inheritance" and further affirm the importance of one's current life. No matter what the objective perception is, most people subjectively hope that even if they let go, they can still be remembered and missed. However, the reality shows that this kind of hope is impossible. There will always be many prominent figures in each era, but in the end, only a few of them can really be remembered for a long time. Even if they belong to the same family, how many people know who and what their great-great-grandparents are?
Since being longed for and remembered is an unrealistic desire, the will of the deceased and the emotional value of things are of limited importance, at least not worth sacrificing the well-being of the living to achieve them. After stripping people's subjective emotions about things, the value of things themselves should return to the source, giving priority to practical significance, intuitive beauty, and even monetary value, rather than based on various attached social, cultural, or artistic values. Meaning, after all, these meanings are extremely abstract and illusory, subjective and changeable, and will change with the position, time and environment. In other words, people should live in the moment, cherish and enjoy the things in front of them, and everything behind them has nothing to do with you!
"Summer Time" presents a very individualistic ideology and belief, and from the perspective of the Eastern way of thinking, it may not be possible to fully agree with the views in it. However, from an artistic point of view, there are many things to think about in this film, and I don't know if the Musée d'Orsay in France can appreciate it.
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