After this year's Oscar nominations were announced, audiences around the world discussed the most heated discussions on social networks about the works, directors and actors that were nominated for "missing out". The Oscars, whose influence has gradually faded over the years, returned to the focus of public opinion overnight, but the reason is that it successfully angered people from different camps and ethnic groups. Neither Greta Gerwig nor Margot Robbie, the director of the movie "Barbie," appeared in the nominations, which means that "Barbie" has lost its competitiveness for best picture. Ironically, their early elimination made them the most talked about topic - who cares about the remaining Best Picture candidates?
"Barbie" has determined the position of "The Uncrowned King" in advance. In the Oscar selection system and the entire Hollywood industry, this movie is like the child in Andersen's fairy tale who shouted "The Emperor has nothing on." Even though the artistry of "Barbie" is limited, as a reckless intruder, she made people see clearly that Hollywood in this era cannot respond to the new expressions and new pleasures that the audience desires. The conservative aesthetic mechanism is exacerbating the industry. The tear between the audience and the wider real world.
Mainstream cinema lags behind contemporary drama and literature
Among the various previous predictions about this year's Oscar nominees for Best Director, Nolan, the director of "Oppenheimer", and Scorsese, the director of "Killers of the Flower Moon", have no suspense. Although "Killers of the Flower Moon" was produced through streaming media, as usual, it went through a lot of debate over whether to "online" or "release", but from the creator to the screener, "Killers of the Flower Moon" is not defined as a "cutting-edge" movie, and the industry The consensus on this work is that it is a "traditional masterpiece" from an experienced director. In this regard, "Killers of the Flower Moon" and "Oppenheimer" are of the same kind. They are both works by mature male directors, and they are dignified and orthodox serious films.
Correspondingly, these two films create the impression that existing film language expressions have reached a critical point. In the non-linear narrative with circuitous time, Nolan gave up "representing" Oppenheimer and tried to "enter Oppenheimer's perspective and inner world", using broken situations to reshape the mind of a scientist whose mind is full of paradoxes. picture. Oppenheimer in the movie emphasizes that "quantum physics has changed the way humans understand the world." However, "Oppenheimer" has not changed the way movies understand and express the world. This film pays more attention to literature and human culture. Directed by Nolan, who at best takes cinema into territory that modern drama has explored for a century, "Oppenheimer" ruthlessly reveals the lag behind mainstream film as an entertainment product behind contemporary drama and literature. As for "Killers of the Flower Moon", it even exposed the "powerlessness of expression" with its old-fashioned expression. The core of "Killers of the Flower Moon" is "love". A creator first fell in love with a culture he could not truly understand out of guilt. He used the introspection of an "accomplice" to express his long-overdue repentance, but all The narrative cannot escape the white man’s standpoint and the white man’s narrative. Scorsese is a clear-minded old artist. He realizes that as a white man, it is impossible for him to substitute the perspective of an aboriginal person. Among the various reviews surrounding "Killers of the Flower Moon", critic Richard Brody hit the nail on the head: "Molly, the Osage, and the Osage reclaim their subjectivity in the image, but their sense of subjectivity is For deafening silence." Facing the history and culture of others, film narrative, as a product of modern and contemporary Western culture, abandons its armor.
Like two different mirrors letting light in from different directions
In this sense, it was "Barbie" whose "artistic quality is very problematic" that truly broke the deadlock. The book review editor-in-chief of a well-known New York media recently wrote an article "I'll put it bluntly, "Barbie" is a bad movie." The author believes that "identifying with the concept of a movie" and "identifying with a movie" are two different things. In her opinion, , "Barbie" is simply terrible in terms of cinematography. If the "orthodox" and "serious" aesthetic mechanism is followed, the problems of "Barbie" are too numerous to list, such as "childish narrative of playing house", "plastic characterization", "simple and crude slogan-like performance"... and other criticisms of this movie. Sharp arrows, every arrow hits the target. However, the particularity of movies, especially popular movies, is that talking about "creation" in isolation without the feedback of the audience group may be a disregard for the important value of movies. "Barbie" and similar entertainment movies in a broad sense play an extremely important role in allowing ordinary people to "easily" "discover" issues related to themselves in the process of entertainment consumption. "Barbie" is a huge, absurd "joke". She deconstructs heavy issues related to gender politics. Using the measurement of "serious" "art", she is a superficial show that is practiced in a joke. "Women are the first sex", and it is precisely because of her "not profoundness" that she subverts the old and habitual movie pleasure experience with punches and kicks.
Replacing director Gerwig and being the only female director to be nominated for Best Director is Justine Trier, the director of "The Fall" who won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival last year. From the first image and first sound, Judgment of the Fallen is the kind of film worthy of entering a film school course and being studied intensively in class as a positive example. At the same time, this is a movie with a hidden edge. The heroine Sandra Wheeler used her performance to create another dangerous undercurrent for the movie. She and Trier secretly completed a match made in heaven.
This is exactly like the dilemma of women’s writing summarized and analyzed by Elana Ferrante: “When I feel that I am writing well, someone is telling me how to write, it is a male voice, he is invisible. I imagine myself She is a girl, but she has become a man." Female writers came to a painful conclusion: to write well, they must write like a man, strictly within the tradition of male writing; but if they cannot break through and learn from the male creative tradition stuff, you can’t write like a woman—it’s a vicious cycle.
The same is true for movies and literature. "Falling Judgment" and "Barbie" verified this conclusion through different routes. Even though neither of these two female directors created a "new language," Trier found Wyler's performance, and Gerwig's playful approach. Their films are like two different mirrors that let the light shine from different directions. It shines in and reveals: the existing film language is not enough, and there is an imbalance between too many living things in contemporary life and the existing film language dominated by white men in Hollywood. This "inequality" has reached a point where it can be seen clearly, but Oscar still seems to turn a blind eye.
Wenhui Po reporter Liu Qing