Starting from 2015's "Right Now, Wrong Then", Kim Min-hee and Hong Sang-soo have been collaborating for almost ten years. Kim Min-hee is to Hong Sang-soo, just like Liv Ullmann is to Bergman and Uma Thurman is to Quentin. Hong Sang-soo's movies are like a miracle, finding a new t

Kim Min-hee and Hong Sang-soo have been collaborating for almost ten years, starting from 2015's "Right Now, Wrong Then".

Kim Min-hee is to Hong Sang-soo, just like Liv Ullmann is to Bergman, and Uma Thurman is to Quentin. Hong Sang-soo's movies are like divine help, finding new themes and expressing them. The best way to theme.

Before meeting Kim Min-hee, Hong Sang-soo was concerned about the complex relationship between intellectuals in spirit and body; after that, Hong Sang-soo was no longer so stubborn. Although the movie story could not escape the common problems of intellectuals, he found A more metaphysical proposition uses the erotic relationship between men and women to explore a series of contradictory phenomena in human nature, such as hypocrisy and frankness, ambiguity and clarity, good and evil, etc.

The new film "By the Stream", co-produced by him and Kim Min-hee, is such a masterpiece that is as plain as water on the surface but actually intriguing.

Jin Minxi's accurate and delicate performance also won her the Best Performance Award at the 77th Locarno International Film Festival. In the film

, a university lecturer played by Kim Min-hee is worried about the short play festival held by the department. The short play program that was originally rehearsed could not be advanced because the young male director was secretly dating three female students at the same time.

In order to let the other four girls in the class pass and rehearse a new show, the heroine invited her uncle, whom she had not seen for a long time, to come to the scene to help. The latter was a well-known director and actor.

But during the rehearsal process, the professor who had mentored the heroine repeatedly made secret glances to his uncle to express his love. Can the new show successfully pass the short play festival? How will the ambiguous relationship between the uncle and the professor develop? It seems that the heroine can only watch all this and cannot influence the direction of development.

On the surface, the dramatic tension of "By the Stream" is extremely weak. It is just a campus romance interspersed with some idle moans from intellectuals.

But once you carefully study the film’s internal narrative logic, you will find that what Hong Changxiu is trying to convey is the futility of understanding other people’s true inner thoughts, the inability to speculate on the good and evil nature of others, preconceptions caused by prejudice, and emotional breakdown caused by misunderstandings.

In other words, "By the Stream" seems to reiterate Sartre's classic statement - hell is other people.

The first scene of the film opens with the heroine painting by the stream. This scene will appear again and again in different scenes. On the one hand, it explains the heroine's working process, but more importantly, it hints at the heroine's attitude towards the world around her: watching with cold eyes and trying to record.

The heroine is like our "eye substitute" and "heart substitute", to examine the various characters in the movie and to speculate on everyone's inner world.

This is why the heroine did not participate in all the events that happened in the movie.

Whether it is female students rehearsing a short play, the emotional entanglement between a young director and three girls, or the love affair between an uncle and a professor, in scenes related to these plots, the heroine is always at the edge of the picture.

Therefore, when the uncle appeared, on the surface, he came as a savior, but in fact, he was a potential threat.

Although the uncle is a well-known director and actor with excellent professional abilities, through the subsequent plot, we know that the uncle has already "collapsed" due to a certain public opinion incident and has fallen from the altar. Now he only runs a small bookstore.

Not only that, the young director replaced by his uncle was expelled precisely because of his "Aquaman"-like misdeeds. This made the heroine be respectful in front of her uncle, but in fact, she was already on guard.

Are all these worries just the heroine’s delusion? Not so. The female professor who was kind to her quickly became passionate with her uncle after expressing her love sincerely.

Here, I have to mention that Kim Min-hee’s precise performance allows us to follow her emotions and fall into confusion and depression.

When the three of them met in the professor's office, when the uncle stood up and gradually approached the professor, the heroine's face became gloomy, and then she put her hands on her forehead, showing her sadness.Jin MinxiThrough this change in expression and movement, the subtle emotional fluctuations of the heroine are reflected, and she also tells us quietly that she has noticed the fishy relationship between her uncle and the professor.

Especially when the uncle was admiring the moon at the professor's house, the two later confirmed their relationship. Although the heroine did not object to this, she asked her uncle about the specific situation that night in a sinister tone.

The most interesting scene is that after the uncle met the young director, not only did he not make any accusations, but in front of the heroine and a group of female students, he invited the young director aside and started chatting privately.

Uncle was criticized by public opinion for what reason? Is the relationship between him and the professor really so bad? Did he ask the young director for advice on the "Aquaman" technique to use against female students? Hong Changxiu did not give these extremely critical information.

In other words, "By the Brook" only shows slices of the character's life, while hiding his true inner thoughts. Even though he was a young director who dated three girls at the same time, Hong Changxiu still did not portray him as a weak scumbag. In the scene of the night date, he told us through the mouth of one of the girls: "If a person's If you can't really impress another person, what else can you do? "

So much so that in the climax of the film, when the heroine asks her uncle face to face, if he and the professor are together, will they get divorced? The answer given by the uncle turned out to be that he and his wife had separated last year.

In other words, when we, like the heroine, make assumptions based on superficial phenomena, we naturally conclude that the young director is a scumbag, the female student is too brainless, the uncle has no moral bottom line, and the professor is too frivolous, what are the facts? Hong Changxiu does not intend to give the answer. He just uses these scraps of information to truly restore our inner feelings when getting along with others.

Not only that, Hong Changxiu also told us through two symbolic passages that evil may not exist at all, and there may be nothing at the end of the truth.

One is that the heroine recalled her "supernatural" experience. Her eyes suddenly bled for three days, and the doctors were helpless. After putting on a bandage, the heroine actually saw a few floating objects in the blue sky on the third day. Duoyun.

The other one is at the end of the film, when the heroine walks upstream of the river and disappears from the screen, the uncle calls her name hastily. After a while, the heroine returned to the camera with a smile on her face. She happily responded to her uncle: "There is nothing there."

Immediately afterwards, Hong Changxiu ended the entire film with a "400 Blows"-style freeze frame. Movie.

seems to have stopped abruptly, but it makes people think deeply.

Whether the heroine sees a blue sky after putting on a bandage, or realizes "nothing" at the end of the river, they all point to the theme of the film - we cannot fully understand the hearts of others.

This is the fun of "By the Brook". Hong Changxiu uses a series of plots that are explicit or implicit, bloody or sincere, straightforward or profound, and uses a game-like narrative logic to constantly break, reorganize, overthrow, and subvert his pessimistic attitude. Reconstruction, thus presenting a film text with rich connotations.

Today, the biggest hurdle before Hong Changxiu may be how to extract a more concise and rhythmic language of life from boring conversations.

In the film, whether it is the professor's flattery and pursuit of his uncle, or the uncle's drunken conversation with four girls, it still seems trivial and wordy, and loses its sense of compactness.

We can understand the daily atmosphere and realistic style that Hong Sang-soo wants to pursue, but chattering without emotional concentration does not mean superb artistic standards. This is also one of the gaps between Hong Sang-soo and top film masters such as Ozu Yasujiro and Rohmer.

If the dialogue between characters can be designed more efficiently and the emotional concentration can be more compact, Hong Changxiu's movies will inevitably reach a higher level.

huawuyan

Editor-in-charge Chai Yingrui