written in front
I am writing this tonight -
"Green Night"
The title of this article is very vague, because for the mainland, this is similar to an underground movie that has not appeared in many years, and it is a movie that has nothing to do with our screens. , the reason is naturally the keywords that exist in it.
starring Fan Bingbing, has a passionate scene between a girl and a girl, and has same-sex attributes.
These words also make many people have more expectations for the movie itself. However, after recently being streamed, the score of this movie has dropped from the early 6s to 5.4 now. Visually, there is still room for decline.
I don’t want to complain about it. On the contrary, I understand it very well. After reading it for the first time, my mood was similar to that of many people. Although the two actors are beautiful, is the quality of this script really good? It's better to look at the static screenshots of Fan Bingbing and Li Zhouying and imagine the story yourself.
Maybe because I waited too long, I couldn't help but read it again, trying to make sure I didn't miss anything.
This time, I had a slightly different view. I realized two things. One is that this film is not actually a lily film, but a film about women. The other is that under this premise, this film has some Interpretability and the author's expression, these things can make it get a passing grade, but it only ends at a passing grade.
Today we just want to talk about some things in "Green Night" that are easily "missed", and why even if it is expressed, it is still not a good film.
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When you first read this story, you will probably know that it is about two women from a foreign country, Chinese immigrant Jingxia (played by Fan Bingbing) and Korean green-haired girl (played by Lee Joo-young) who accidentally met at the airport. , fall in love, and finally help each other to kill each other's partner and gain freedom.
But I am confused about all the emotional motivations and character logic in it, such as how the two girls were attracted and fell in love, how they got into bed, and why the green-haired girl suddenly wanted to help Jingxia kill her husband.
These issues will not be mentioned for the time being. If we look at it in conjunction with another hidden line of the movie, these things are actually not that important, at least they are not the core of the theme expression.
This hidden line is the original family line of the two girls, and it is the real key to decoding the entire movie.
Jingxia saw a TV news report that a family suffered an explosion after a gas leak. The mother was stunned and the girl cried, mentioning that she had witnessed the same accident.
At that time, she knew that her mother had done it to escape from her father, but because she was coaxed by the police uncle who gave her chewing gum, she couldn't help but tell it and betrayed her mother. As a result, her mother left barefoot and never returned home.
The green-haired girl once said that when she was a child, she saw a bus accident and several children died. Her mother said that she had never been very lucky, but she escaped because she was not allowed to take the bus. Her father watched the incident. Disaster "smiled" and said that he "will listen to him all his life."
This is the beginning of their escape as women, or the beginning of their defection from patriarchy in their minds.
The screenwriter also clearly wrote this as the potential motivation for their friendship. The specific method is to compare and echo the elements of their inner childhood knots with each other's emotional relationship.
Let’s talk about Jingxia first. Jingxia first noticed the green-haired girl because the green-haired girl simulated “bang” in her ear, which was the sound of a childhood accident.
When the explosive news report was played later, the film also relied on the victim's neighbor to recount "hearing a loud bang", which was confirmed in a double sense.
Including the green-haired girl in the back who kept going barefoot and caressing her head like a child, and even pushed the so-called husband who would bully Jingxia downstairs in order to resist the same oppression, all correspond to the characteristics of Jingxia's mother.
Why do we, like mothers, have to stay together? From the fact that Jingxia left overseas and still hasn't given up looking for her mother, it can be seen that she accepted the green-haired girl's approach because she felt guilty and wanted to make amends even on a spiritual level.
Facing the green-haired girl, she is a "spiritual mother" in a sense. She helps to find shoes, runs away with the girl, ties shoelaces, etc. These are all ways in which she stands with her mother in her heart to achieve this goal. Correction of juvenile errors.
On the contrary, the green-haired girl does not believe in inner reconciliation. She has been fighting against her parents, especially her father, when she grew up, doing the most dangerous things that require luck: helping her boyfriend sell drugs, and then helping the humiliated Jingxia kill her husband and help She dealt with the aftermath and helped her completely leave the so-called shelter area of men.
She wants to re-establish her self-identity through actual resistance and violation of secular rules.
To put it bluntly, their encounters and interactions may not have much to do with love, but with mutual rescue. The reason why
is portrayed in this way is to show how terrible the life and heart of women who seem to be peaceful are in a traumatic situation where they are oppressed and even internalized.
The screenwriter also added a lot of hints and metaphors to specifically explain the situation and reasons of women.
The men in the movie create difficulties for women and then forgive them for their resistance.
Obviously there is Jingxia’s husband. Jingxia married him in order to obtain the qualification to settle down. They were a contract couple, but he completely ignored Jingxia’s feelings, pushed her down and sexually assaulted her. The green-haired girl and Jingxia teamed up to subdue him, and in the end she was lucky enough to survive. He said to the girls: "It doesn't matter, I forgive you." This emphasizes the men's hypocritical status as a superior person.
What is more hidden is the police. The police give chewing gum to the victims. This action appears twice in the film, once in Jingxia's childhood self-report, and once when Jingxia's husband was judged to have died accidentally. The police gave candy and comforted her.
The police's behavior seems impeccable, but the movie also shows another side of the police. The green-haired girl sells drugs to help her boyfriend, and the airport police have drug dealers themselves, who will hint to Jingxia not to worry about the green-haired girl. It can be seen that the door has always been opened for her.
Therefore, the meaning of chewing gum is just as Jingxia said. It felt very sweet when chewing it, but "when I got home, the sweetness disappeared." It represents only a short-term and hypocritical comfort.
The hypocritical police represent the entire closed-run patriarchal social system itself.
Including patriarchy and religion, they are also integrated. Jingxia’s husband said that he was saved from poverty by the priest.
When her husband was killed, Jingxia passed by a Christian church, and the speaker singing hymns suddenly broke and fell down, emphasizing the identity of the two and implying the supremacy of patriarchy like faith.
These are all expressing that men have formed a collective of mutual help and created an environment that seems to be beneficial to women, but in essence is still exploiting women.
The movie criticizes this through the girls' resistance and self-rescue, and finally gives a more promising open ending, with Jingxia riding a motorcycle and leaving with the dog.
Dog is a symbolic symbol, which appears three times. Once when the green-haired girl said that she wanted to become a dog, and once when she met a stray dog while eating rice cakes. The green-haired girl said that the dog looked like the one she raised; One time, Jingxia killed the green-haired girl's boyfriend and saw her dog after taking revenge.
And the green-haired girl also has the same portrayal as her dog: without her own name, she will stroke or lick Jingxia's wounds.
It can be seen that the green-haired girl and the dog also have the same identity. The two do not refer to a specific person or creature, but to all people in similar situations, who are wandering and suffering and yearning for hope, a conceptual existence.
This ending refers to the fact that no matter whether the green-haired girl is an entity or not, or whether it is Jingxia's fantasy, as long as Jingxia realizes that she can transcend the constraints, she can start her journey again with hope.
All this can be understood, but a big problem with the movie is that it can be seen from these expressions that it is not a gay film. It has clear expressions of female issues and has little connection with love and erotica. But the director But it was shot in this direction intentionally.
That’s not to say that the two are incompatible, but the screenwriter seems to be unable to integrate the two into one, and is reluctant to give up either side. As a result, the emotional story with overt lines cannot express the hidden lines at all.
The overall impression is the kind of separation and inexplicable mentioned above. Why did the green-haired girl flirt with Jingxia when they met, why did she help her kill her husband, why did they suddenly fall in love, start kissing and go to bed, and their relationship is similar to that of their childhood. , what does religion have to do with dogs?
There is no foreshadowing or transition between these turns, including the sex scene itself, which has no erotic flow. Only the shaking of the handheld camera and the changing light of the scene create an ambiguous beauty, but the interaction between the two people seems It doesn't carry any emotional expression, it just means having the same sex for the sake of the same sex.
Secondly, most of the so-called expression of issues is not conveyed by sufficiently solid descriptions of characters or emotions, but by pieces of lines, symbols, and images similar to stream-of-consciousness novels.
It feels like the screenwriter asked the girls to fall in love first, while at the same time stuffing things they had already thought about into every pore without explanation, regardless of whether they could form an organic connection with the theme.
Even if you can guess and piece together what "Green Night" is about, this approach is difficult to impress people, as dry and boring as reading an overview.
For example, the summary about their childhood is told directly with their mouths. It completely relies on the actors' interpretation and the audience's imagination, and the rendering power is really lacking.
There are also those symbols, dogs, and religions, which are all illogically distributed in the dialogues of the characters. They are deliberate enough for the audience to discover, but not enough for the audience to form a connection and identification with it.
This lack of textual skills is also reflected in various thin and useless designs, such as the mixing of multiple languages. This design has a specific purpose in "Determination to Break Up", in order to allow the heroine to serve her inner desires. Self-consistency is also to distinguish the character's id and self.
But here, the meaning of language switching is not so clear and clear. I just feel that Jingxia speaks Korean for a while, Chinese for a while, and sign language with the green-haired girl for a while, which in turn deepens the gap between the two in a meaningless manner. feel.
And in order to emphasize the dramatic conflict, the real-time emotions of a single scene will be amplified, while the motivation and logic of the behavior will be ignored, causing the characters to become tools of conflict.
For example, why did the man who received the drugs laugh and call the green-haired girl a little bitch when he saw her? After the policeman gave Jingxia chewing gum, he smiled at her for several seconds. What did this smile mean?
There is no reasonable explanation or explanation for these. Even if it is understood as a critical portrayal by the screenwriter based on the female position of resisting oppression, it is not convincing enough.
The performance is also a big problem.
If the script is not substantial enough, it will inevitably require actors to supplement it with performances. Unfortunately, although the two protagonists maintain the beauty of their appearance, the performances cannot be said to be helpful to the characters, especially Jingxia, who is the central character.
This is most obviously reflected in the sex scene. Although it is redundant, since it was filmed, it should give us an answer to how we understand the relationship between two people.
However, Fan Bingbing had a single expression of pain throughout the whole process, until the so-called orgasmic gasp at the end. There was no immersion in desire, no relaxation under pressure, it can be said that there was nothing reflected except pain.
I can only say that it is beautiful enough, but far from good. Both the actors and the film.
with pictures / "Green Night"
