The predicament of the college entrance examination
"Youth of You" has a very beautiful opening. The camera is close to the face of the protagonist Chen Nian Suyan. The background and ambient sounds are all blurred as she puts on headphones and listens to her listening movements. We return to the countdown to the college entrance examination in a flash. In the tense atmosphere of 100 days, but the wonderful thing is that at that time we tried our best to escape the environment of the college entrance examination and go to an independent and detached void. This simple scheduling "wrapped" the characters and formed the most basic dilemma of the characters.
Immediately afterwards, the incident of jumping off the building happened. We saw that other students in the crowded scene were restless, escaped from the control of the frame like a light leak from the camera, and fled outside the space. The movement of the crowd aroused the attention of the audience and the protagonist. The ambient sound began to be enriched, and the space outside the painting was expanded at this time. The analgesia under the high pressure of the college entrance examination began to occur, and the paralyzed body of society revealed its cruel scars under the appearance of "time is quiet".
"Youth of You" uses a large number of shallow focus lenses to limit the audience's field of vision, but the layout of the environment and details highly restores the real high school situation. The audience's eyes are like returning to a corner of the high school classroom, but we absolutely It is impossible to break through the protagonist's perspective and learn the deep causes of "jumping off the building" and "school violence", just like the "corpse" that did not appear when the jumping off the building occurred. In this way, the film allows the audience to enter the hearts of the protagonists of high school students by limiting the amount of information, laying the groundwork for the occurrence of subsequent episodes on the basis of cognition.
"Jumping off the building" is just a prelude. Liangen investigates the topic "campus violence" that has been hidden underwater for too long and has not been talked about by Chinese people. The deeper level is the suppressed physical impulse and unknown growth prospects under the background of "college entrance examination". resulting invisible dilemma.
Those who have experienced the high school entrance examination may admit that the third year of high school is like an illusory experience. Just when we heard the bell for the final exam, any goal we fought and fought for before disappeared in vain. At that moment, we are very close to the nothingness of life. In essence, just when we were looking forward to another exciting graduation speech, what we ushered in was that the students bowed their heads and packed their bags and hurried to go home. From now on, no one will go to detail which subject and which question is not good or not. Value If it is cleared, the rules will be reset. The college entrance examination is a death experienced in advance, so all romantic sorrows, pains and pleasures are infinitely magnified in front of it.
It is this nihilistic dilemma that breeds violence that shields morality, as well as the negative attitude of doing everything to escape/escape from the predicament. In a sense, both types of people are waiting for the "clearing" after the college entrance examination, as if all sins and history will be restarted, and everything can start from scratch.
2. Individual emotional confrontation with "school violence"
In the late 1980s, Hong Kong filmmaker Lin Lingdong, after the commercial success of "Prison", followed up with "School" with a strong "social" temperament. "School Situation" inherits Lin Lingdong's ferocious and violent video style, and paints the environmental symbols of "youth and purity" on the campus with different colors of murder, violence and exploitation, which seems to be filled with commercial elements Instead, it is a representation of the real situation, so that the plots with the color of "exploitation film" everywhere in the film become a powerful fulcrum of "anti-exploitation". It stands in the context of sociology and exposes the infiltration of the underworld. Horrible phenomenon on campus.
"School bullying" seems to be a manifestation of hormonal impulses among teenagers, but it is essentially a problem of social structural decay. Every gangster and bad student in it is full of swear words, bosses, power, and arrogance to justice, order, and women. The attitude of disdain and disdain is the most accurate capture of the phenomenon of "school violence". It can be said that Lin Lingdong has completed a gangster film-style rewriting of "school violence", or that he presents a dangerous trend in which the logic of the underworld is being poured into the ideology of contemporary students. The crux of "school violence" is the corruption, the exploited situation of women, the cowardice of intellectuals who keep their voices silent, and the hostility that continues to intensify social class contradictions. It can also be said that "school violence" is the epitome of social problems. .
Going back to "Youth as a Teenager", it is undoubtedly difficult for us to see the systematic and structural presentation and criticism of "school violence" such as "School". Zeng Guoxiang also seems to be deliberately avoiding the crux of the problem and trying to put this huge issue. Decomposed into small individual narratives, starting from emotional drive, to find a way to fight against the chaotic violent structural network between individuals.
One of my favorite passages in "Youth as a Teenager" is that Chen Nian was walking to school as usual, the camera pulled from the close-up face to the other side of the road, focusing on the face of Xiaobei who was following closely with the hood, let me Reminiscent of Gus van Sant's "Gary", the pace and frequency of the two people's walking are the same, which creates a sense of harmonious rhythm. Self-sufficiency and ambiguous "lover" relationship. The lens has also been adjusted from the shallow focus and close-up of the face, which has always been tight, to a deep focus lens that accommodates two faces at the same time. This time, the construction of the spatial position of the characters is a metaphor for the formation of a battle line against social and institutional injustice, and the audience can't help but feel Shocked and infected by the emotional energy of the "lovers". Or from another angle, it is not so much that the camera scene is "loose", it is better to say that the emotional tension supported by the interweaving of the character identities of "protecting and being protected", "loving and being loved", and "being abandoned together" is "shocked". The camera, isn't this kind of "shock" Chen Nian and Xiaobei's resistance to social and school violence?
3. Symbiotic relationship and juvenile love
It can be seen that young directors, who are also Hong Kong creators, have presented presentations in different contexts in different years. "School" stands at the height of sociology and digs into the social crux of "school violence", and the tone is suppressed and negative. , contradictions and conflicts are always in a situation that cannot be protested or resolved, and irreversible violence erupts from this, and then forms new scars of the decaying body of society, waiting for the next rupture.
"Youth of You" starts from individual emotions and focuses on the restoration of the inner feelings of the "bullied" person. It no longer analyzes and throws problems calmly, and then kicks the ball of the problem into the trash can and ignores it, or, in other words, It knows that throwing social problems to the audience will not help, so it "privately" found a symbiotic relationship in the name of "love" for the two teenagers.
Although the word "love" has long been polluted by too many fancy impressions, it still attracts countless people's fascination. It contains the inner potential and sacred belief that can break through all constraints and difficulties, and has become the ultimate solution provided by many artists to eliminate the suffering of the world. The answer is the same as Dostoevsky's final redemption at the end of "Crime and Punishment" for the protagonist who has been tortured by heart and prison - Sonia, Raskolnikov's lover.
The key word to understand "Youth of You" is "youth". Only by following the director's close-up shots into the hearts of the protagonists (high school students) can we understand the emotional logic of "juveniles" that are different from adults - this is not a logic familiar to the Chinese, who have been treated by too many precocious variants "Youth film" blurred the eyes. As the policeman Zheng Yi reminded in the movie: "You and I will not (completely sacrifice for each other), but they will, they are teenagers." This sentence reveals the "innocence, fearlessness, bravery, "Immunity" has long been placed in the old barn by adults and forgotten, familiar and unfamiliar, but it gathers the most charming characteristics of human beings. This is the reason why "youth" is beautiful and worthy of memory. Teenagers are the age at which energy can explode the most, and it is also the inner logic of the film's operation. It is "juveniles" who can simply sacrifice themselves for the other party to escape the abyss; Controversial symbiotic relationship. The atmosphere of innocence permeates the whole film. Only by following them in retrospect can we appreciate the sincere emotional choice of the so-called "juvenile" and retrieve the romantic desire for "love".
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