*Spoiler warning
City Wanderer's Heterotopia
When Liu Ai'ai and Zhou Zenong walked through the urban landscape built by the background board, they were loose and taciturn, as if they were two "urban wanderers". In the 1930s, Benjamin observed modern cities and expounded the concept of "flaneur", while in the urban villages of China in the 21st century, the flaneur presents a completely different and dark appearance through reconstruction and re-adaptation of experience. Consistent life texture.
From the beginning of the thief conference, Zhou Zenong has been involved and alienated. The camera remains steady when estranged, and uses a fluid perspective and quick cuts when intervening. There is an obvious alienation relationship between the city wanderer and the city. He does not belong to the city from the beginning, but is a "stranger" wandering on the edge of the city [1] . More importantly, the footprints of the rovers—the square, the railway station, the furniture city, the wild goose lake, and the small noodle shop, connect the unique and heterogeneous urban spaces; The neon plaque and the unstinting visual retention of the lens create a kind of surreal subjectively. During the production of the heterotopian space, the characters are melted.
body walking rhetoric
The roaming of urban wanderers is embodied in the presentation of body walking. Zhou Zenong's pacing, the pacing with Liu Ai'ai, and the neon shoes whose vision is delayed compared to the plain clothes figure after the square chase together constitute the film's focus on walking. If it is said that the body above the legs defines a person's appearance, class, and status, then when the camera is aimed at the walking of the body, the distinction between class and good and bad seems to dissolve and replace in the same space. Police and thieves—not only are they isomorphic when they hold an all-hands meeting, but they also refer to each other when they walk with the town they live in. Action through walking - behavior is transparent, psychology is elusive. For Zhou Zenong, who was fleeing in the package, the gradually larger shadow externalized the predicament he encountered at the moment, and for the audience who noticed this scene, the sum of the lagging actions could slowly penetrate into his heart. The heart of this black beast—breathing soft, punctate light in the breath of the night.
like a young dolphin
The space produced by walking is a huge zoo: here the predator and the prey are placed in the same space, in the shadow of each other, hunting and fleeing. The interesting thing about Zhou Zenong's Battle of the Trapped Beasts is that as a hunter, he has the eyes of a hunter. We can't know his inner activities, but we can feel a deep-seated, deep-seated, and penetrating action from the transparent and prophetic actions. Allegorically tragic, Zenon, wrapped in hopeless romanticism, is like the unwilling young son of an Italian mafia family, and like a lonely and melancholy knight in ancient China. Appropriately, Hu Ge provides a neutral performance for the film: the temperament of the actors and the film constitutes the form of the oil painting, and the colors are supplemented by the environment that is not blurred but focuses on performance; the neutral performance is built into the neon sound and color. At the same time, the environment reflects the external presentation of the character's heart. When the foreshadowing of forbearance and restraint ushered in a very impactful moment, the scene of Zenong eating noodles seemed to want to live, and then stopped abruptly. In a completely everyday scene, the violence lingers completely naturally, and when the line is broken, it falls to the ground.
Here we are: our "here"
The night's perspective ended with the sound of gunfire, and the end ushered in the day's perspective: Liu Ai'ai and Yang Shujun, two women who were inextricably linked with Zenong, looked at each other after a rain together and smiled, as if they had formed a victory alliance. However, after the screening, Gui Lunmei proposed the ambiguity of the ending. In addition to the coexistence of clarity and balance, the film is still dark and flowing at the price of a certain betrayal. There is no road ahead, and there is no worthwhile past behind them. They are walking "here": people who have to continue to roam for the same crime and the same punishment, and people whose whole body is barren and only one layer is left, are like "publicly lonely" like a village in a city. Just like when the movie "Beautiful Solo" sounded at the end, it seemed that these three people were together. However, Hu Ge's singing is gentle yet so alienated, jumping off and abruptly stopped, so it does not belong to the earth or the sky. There is no past in the night, and there is no future in the day. Following the kite string, we touch the bones of the city and find an experience that belongs to the present and "here": Here we are—we were once here. Movies prevent forgetting.
As if I was under a chair, As if I was lost in the night - so and so and not but I've stayed forever. I asked the people who came after, the women and the men, what they were doing with such confidence how they learned to live; they didn't really answer, they kept dancing and living.
--Neruda, "Solitude"
[1] Meng Jun. Small Town Wanderer: A Typical Image of Chinese Small Town Movies [J]. Film Art, 2019(04): 81-86.
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