one-man shows are not common in dramas or movies. One person has to undertake the whole work, the difficulty is imaginable! But there are always some crazy directors and actors willing to challenge themselves!
remember the one-man show "Buried Alive"? Relying on one actor to support the entire movie, I have to say that this is very crazy! If you want to make a one-man show good-looking, you need a solid script to support it. It is the fundamental link that can drive the audience's emotions, so that the audience will not feel bored and have the desire to watch it.
Of course, the more important thing is the performance of the actors. The average person can play for 10 minutes or 20 minutes if there is no opponent, but when the whole film is against himself, it is strange that he is not crazy!
But Ryan Reynolds did it. His brilliant performance in "Buried Alive" earned him a nomination for the best actor at the 25th Spanish Goya Awards and a nomination for the best horror performance at the 20th MTV Film Awards. The movie
I'm going to talk about today is also from Europe. It is a suspenseful film "The Sinner" from Denmark. Although the physical space of the film is not as narrow as buried alive, there have been several supporting roles similar to group performances in the film, but it is undoubtedly a one-man show like "Buried alive".
In this film supported by dialogue throughout the whole process, suspense is stacked, sacrificing the rules of the genre to ensure the rigorous script and the credibility of the characters. The audience needs a large number of self-repairing pictures to stimulate the interest of watching the movie. This is done. Very in place.
First look at the achievements of the film: the 31st European Film Awards in 2018 nominated for best actor (Jacob Kedgen), nominated for best screenplay (Gustave Moeller/Emil Nigard Albertson); Nominee for the Fabisi-Discovery Award; 2018 90th National Critics Association Award for Five Best Foreign Language Films; 2019 23rd Golden Satellite Awards for Best Foreign Language Film in Film Division. Of course, "The Sinner" is still a nominated film for Douban's high-scoring foreign language film.
"The Sinner" sets the movie scene in a 112 alarm center in Copenhagen. The protagonist is an operator of the alarm center, and his activities are in the two rooms and corridors of the police station. At the beginning of the
movie, the male lead Asge was following the call to the police calmly, all kinds of trivial alarms were slightly boring. Even so, Asgar continued to call in an orderly manner, dispatching the police.
And from here, we also know that this is the last shift in the alarm center on the last day of Asger.
Suddenly Asgar received an alarm from a woman, and after a few conversations, the woman's foreword was not followed. Occupational instinct made Asgar immediately suspicious, so under Asgar's guidance, he learned that this woman named Ibn had been kidnapped and was currently in a car. (This paragraph is very similar to some alarm tutorials on the Internet)
But Ibn didn't know what the car looked like, and Asgar got her home phone number through Ibn. After calling Ibn’s 6-year-old daughter Mathilde, Asgar got a call from the child’s father Mikel, and the child learned about what happened.
According to the daughter's statement: Father Mikel and mother Ibn have divorced, Mathilde’s younger brother cried in the house, and the father yelled at the younger brother and mother, and then the father took the mother away and brought it with him. Got a knife.
According to this, Asgar believed that Mikel kidnapped Ibn. It was found from Mikel's phone that Mikel was driving a white truck. Asgar immediately contacted the dispatch center patrol car to capture Mikel. And arranged for the police to go to Ibn’s home to protect the two children.
did not expect that because it was late at the time, the patrol car followed the wrong one and did not catch Mikel. When they arrived at Ibn’s house, the police found out that Ibn’s youngest son had been cut open and died.
This made Asgar even more shocked and vowed to catch Mikel. Even if his boss thought the case had nothing to do with him, he still insisted on staying in his post after get off work.
From this plot, we can see Asgar's jealous character. But it was this character that allowed him to kill a 19-year-old gangster. This incident forced him to be investigated by his superiors, which is why he came to the position of operator.
Asgar and his partner Allard confessed that they went to Mikel's house to search for clues and see if they could find out where he wanted to take Ibn. From the conversation between the two, it was learned that Aled would testify in court for Asgar tomorrow, and this testimony is perjury.Asgar is defending.
Just when the audience was anxious about how to catch Mikel, the plot suddenly reversed when the film was on for one hour. Ibn called again. This time Ibn said inexplicably about the snake, and then said that there was a snake in Oliver's stomach, so Oliver was crying, she took the snake out and Oliver was quiet.
The whole thing shocked Asger. There were no lines in this film for nearly 1 minute. Asger’s body language expresses his emotions at the time. It can be said that the director is quite bold, and Jacob Kade Gern's performance is also convincing, showing the audience the shock, helplessness, and deep thinking about the whole thing. Perhaps there is also his reflection on the shooting of the punks.
Since it was not Mikel who killed, it was Ibn. Then why would she kill her son? Asgar hurriedly called Mikel. After the call was connected, an angry Mikel told the truth that Ibn was a mentally ill patient.
Then, Ibn called and said he was about to commit suicide. When Persuading Ibn, Asgar told him that he shot the punks out of self-defense. At this time, Asgar no longer believed that what he did was right. He realized that he was the same as Ibn, except that Ibn was a mentally ill patient and thought that there was a snake in his son’s belly, and he thought that the gangster deserved to die. Just as Ibn believed that his son had a snake in his body, that was the sin of his subjective judgment. At the end of the
film, the police successfully found Ibn and Mikel, and Asgar picked up the phone and went to the end of the corridor. This film is over. Although
is just a one-man show by Jacob Kedgen, this movie brings constant surprises to the audience! Although the scene was limited to a phone call that took more than an hour, it didn't feel boring at all. In
, Asger is a policeman with a sense of justice, a very strong professional ability and a keen sense of professional smell (a few phone calls from the beginning of the film), and he is also very arbitrary and has a bad relationship with his colleagues. Apologizing to the fat uncle), a dictator whose family life is not happy (wife has separated from him). What he thinks is right, that is right, and no one can replace his subjective perception.
But it was Ibn’s incident that made him realize that facts are often not what he thought. Before legal approval, those bad guys are nothing but snakes in Ibn’s fantasy, and he has no right to decide anyone’s life or death. He was a sinner for shooting the punks and he needed atonement. Therefore, at the end of the film’s open-ended ending, it is not difficult for us to imagine where Asger will go, and believe that he will complete self-salvation!
