film is a medium that has strict control over time and space. In film works, "people are the foundation of narrative, and the basic characteristics of human beings include both the individual "person" and the collection of people. To grasp the existence of people from the timeline alone will lead to one-sided search from the deep level of personal consciousness. The existence of human beings is the essence of the two sides of human existence. Therefore, the multidimensional analysis of space corresponding to time must be found at the same time to be complete. The
movie "Last Night on Earth" looks back on the past by reminiscing the past and constructing the future in dreams, and finally completes the relief of life emotions. The circle-shaped space form is used as the narrative structure of the film to accommodate the past, present and future. The time dimension presents "real space", "recall space" and "dream space". Today, the editor will interpret "The Last Night of the Earth" from the perspective of space narrative, and discuss the internal logic and theme meaning of the film from three aspects. Let's take a look together next.
First, the real space: the documentary narrative of the imprint of life
All human narrative activities are carried out in a concrete space, and only the space that is perceived and used has its own power and meaning. Film as a kind of visual "transcendental" "Form", elements such as pictures, sounds, and text are visually presented on the screen. If a creator wants to tell a complete story and narrate in a limited film time, what he needs first is the choice and expression of geographic space, and then it is meaningful. generate. For the choice of narrative space, we can find the "space" where the creator lived in his childhood in many narrative works. "The Last Night on Earth" uses Bi Gan's hometown "Kai Li" as the filming location for his film works. The green mountains and green waters, winding mountain roads and small towns are different from the natural scenery of Kaili seen by tourists, but his reminiscence of his hometown and the original and emotional “original” of Bigan created after reconstruction. landscape".
In the film, the three geographic spaces of "Kaili, a dangling wheat by the sea" are the real spaces that run through the text of the movie. The characters are displaced in the three geographic spaces, the past overlaps with the borders of reality, and time is continuously decomposed and reorganized. Decomposition and reorganization...So Bi Gan uses a wealth of object images to express the relationship between people and the environment, so that the object images constitute a spiritual force in the space to carry the theme of the film.
Second, memory space: subconscious immersive narrative
In narrative activities, "memory" can be said to occupy a central position, because the narrator must use memory to introduce "the past" into consciousness to complete the narrative. Memory means "all the facts that happened in the past time and space are stored in the human subconscious." Therefore, memory is not only related to time, but also becomes more stable only after the space is solidified. In "The Last Night on Earth," Luo Hongwu embarked on the road of "returning home" in order to resurrect the "past events". At the beginning of the film, Luo Hongwu held the clock left by his mother and opened the cover on the back to find a picture, flipped the picture to see a number. Here, Bi Gan fully presents how to store the selected "image" in the "place" of memory. The clock is a spatial container and is regarded as the "place" of memory. Various "places" are placed in the "place". "Image", with the help of this "place", re-approach to the unfathomable memory of the characters. In the scene of
pushing the car into the tunnel in Luo Hongwu, the two spaces of reality and memory overlap in the shortest time to achieve the effect of space synchronism. Through the transformation of different viewpoints, the creator has developed from a single pilot with only one lens to multiple Multi-viewpoints of the lens combination: Luo Hongwu pushes the car into the tunnel in the real space. The viewpoint is objective and the sound is subjective: after the sound of rain enters, the two spaces of reality and memory begin to switch; the wiper wipes off the rain and the viewpoint becomes Luo Hongwu From the subjective point of view, Wan Qiwen's back appears on the screen, the same tunnel, thoroughly outside, subjective and objective voices are intertwined but different from each other. Obviously, compared with real "places", fictional "places" can better present the spatial construction of memory.
Third, dream space: the potential narrative of overlapping identities
Freud believes that dreams are closely related to reality, and dreams are "subliminal narratives" of reality. In Luo Hongwu's dream, the boundaries of time and space are broken, and multiple identities can overlap. Bi Gan used the special expressive power of his dream to show the family, friendship, and love of Luo Hongwu's real space. Before the start, Luo Hongwu lined up to buy tickets at a long-distance station. His back camera showed a blue boy and a white cat. Appear on the same screen. Then Luo Hongwu met in the mine of the dream spaceA teenager was also wearing a blue sports suit. The body of the white cat was also found in a mine 12 years ago. The three appeared in the same place in different spaces: the teenager had a racket with an eagle pattern on his chest, and the white cat There is also an eagle tattoo on his chest. The "eagle" image links the relationship between the two characters; the boy said to Luo Hongwu, "Play with me and take you out if you win."
He promised to teach his unborn child to play table tennis. When he left the mine, the boy handed his father's overcoat to Luo Hongwu. Later, the boy told Luo Hongwu that he was twelve years old. A series of clues all pointed to the parent-child relationship between the two. Luo Hongwu pointed out The child lied. In Luo Hongwu's monologue, he also repeatedly said that "white cats love to lie since childhood". The identity of the boy and the white cat were contacted again. When the boy and Luo Hongwu were separated, the boy asked Luo Hongwu to name him. Luo said: " I'm not your father, so how can I name you casually, or a nickname." Then he gave the nickname "little white cat" to the teenager. Luo Hongwu uses other identities in his dreams to break the limitations of time and space and the identity of father, son, and friends, and obtain supplements in behavior and thought.
It is precisely because of the jumping nature of the dream that Luo Hongwu realizes that he travels through time and space and changes his identity. In the dream, he follows a red-haired woman with the same appearance as the white cat mother holding a torch to an apiary. Luo Hongwu once talked with the white cat mother and said that her mother Xiaofeng would light a torch every time he went to the apiary. When the white cat's mother asked him, "What color will your mother dye?" Luo Hongwu replied: "Red." The two space scenes coincide. In his dream, he witnessed the presence of his mother and the beekeeper elopement, and personally "participated" in the reproduction of this missing emotion. In addition, the identities of Xiaofeng and White Cat’s mother overlapped, Luo Hongwu and White Cat became one, and the signifier of identity moved. Bi Gan's narrative style here is the same as Marquez's narrative style. The film is generally about the past, and the narrative starts from the "future" of the past.
can be rolled up from any point on the circle. In this dream narrative, the creator uses symbolic codes in many places, and the "past" is pulled back to the scene when the time and space are fissioned. Later, Luo Hongwu used the "flying racket" given by the little white cat to lead Kaizhen to escape in space. The scene where Wan Qiwen told Luo Hongwu twelve years ago, "If I can find wild grapefruit, you will help me realize a wish." Later, military commander Luo Hong gave him the watch red-haired girl gave him to Kaizhen, and on the train Luo Hongwu was following Wan Qiwen, it was clear that Wan Qiwen was also wearing a watch. Finally, Luo Hongwu wanted to kiss Kaizhen. Kaizhen said that the house could rotate. So, he recites the spell in the green paper that Wan Qiwen gave him, and the house spun around. A kiss with Kaizhen made the short-lived beauty For eternity, finally get a kind of perfection.
Conclusion: Bi Gan once said: "Time is an invisible bird. In order for fans to see it, I need a cage to hold it. The long shot is this cage." This is the creator's time management A technique for the narrative, because for the narrative subject, all the "past" has already happened, but in fact, the narrative subject itself stands in the "present" of the past, narrates the "future" of the past, and looks back from the "future" The "past", the long lens just solves the space-time problem of "past-reality-future". The use of this circular structure mode breaks the linear structure of traditional time narratives, and expounds the concept of "circular" time through the body movement of characters in real space, memory space, and dream space, and finally fully expresses the time cycle and cycle of individual life. The theme of reciprocation and eternal return.
