Chapter 1596: Telling a desperate story in the gentlest tone
"Father Trapped in Time" has very high requirements for the acting skills of the male protagonist.
It can be said that Anthony Hopkins in the original version really made people forget that he was an actor, as if he was the old man suffering from Alzheimer's disease.
Judging from the feedback from the audience, some viewers said: ""Anthony, that's a good name." At the end of "The Father" (The Father), the 83-year-old British actor Anthony Hopkins said
When I murmured this line, it was difficult for us as the audience to distinguish between the people in the play and the people outside the play."
There is an original work for this movie, but the narrative choice of the movie version is entirely from the father's perspective to express the world in the eyes of Alzheimer's patients: Anthony can't always figure out whether he is in his own apartment or the apartment of his daughter and son-in-law.
, can’t figure out whether this is a clinic or a nursing home, unsure whether his watch has been lost or stolen, almost paranoid - the metaphor here undoubtedly points to the elderly losing control of the world they live in, the dimensions of time and space.
Dissolving...
Secondly, the film attempts to convey the confusion and helplessness of Alzheimer's patients through editing, which is enough to make everyone who empathizes feel frightened, because it also means that the audience will also slide into uncertainty.
abyss.
"I believe the audience is intelligent. I want the audience to feel like they're in a maze, trying to figure it out, trying to understand it, as if it's not just a story but an experience - to experience a sense of disorientation means
What." The director put a lot of thought into the indoor setting. Although it is a single scene, he constantly makes subtle changes in the apartment environment and perspective, creating a psychedelic feeling: the room is filled with doors, corridors
, forming a large number of symmetrical compositions in the layout of the house and the placement of furniture.
As the old man's consciousness becomes confused, the furniture will become different, sometimes in terms of position, sometimes in color. The little daughter's painting placed in the living room at the beginning of the film disappears out of thin air, leaving only a deep mark on the wall, waiting for treatment
The plastic chairs in the room one day appeared very incongruously in the warmly decorated home; even the door at the end of the corridor, which opens to the hospital ward one day, becomes an ordinary storage room behind it the next.
As the director expected, "It's so unsettling, like a puzzle with one piece constantly missing."
That kind of panic about strangers invading one's room and the struggle for ownership are very strange and absurd!
It can be said that the concept of this movie is really amazing.
Even Li Yi was amazed.
Even if you don't read it several times, you may not be able to discover many details.
More than that, a movie depends on more than just plot and footage, but also many things. For example, the film also uses other audio-visual means to further exaggerate the confusion and panic of the first-person perspective. For example, the apartment decoration has a relatively sharp contrast between warm and cold tones, which implies
In Anthony's mind, his own apartment and his daughter's apartment are confused; in a relatively dark interior, a relatively single light source is used to outline the clear outlines of the characters, with expressionistic lighting colors!
Except for the father and the actress who played Anthony's daughter, most of the other actors played two roles: sometimes the son-in-law, sometimes the doctor of the nursing home, sometimes the eldest daughter, sometimes the nursing home nurse, and private caregivers, who were also
The old man repeatedly mentioned that she looked like his little daughter...
People can only roughly piece together some of the truth: the younger daughter was deeply loved, but died early, the eldest daughter took care of her father for many years, and was exhausted from the torment of family and love, and her father's Alzheimer's disease became more and more serious, forcing him to
The eldest daughter finally decided to send him to a nursing home and entrust him to professional care.
The entire film lacks a reliable perspective from beginning to end, let alone a linear narrative. Is it a bit mystical?
For viewers who follow Anthony's chaotic perspective, if you find yourself stuck in a maze in the first ten minutes and still haven't gotten out of the maze after watching the entire film, then you will look back and wonder if you should have stopped at ten minutes.
?
This is of course a point of view, but Li Yi feels that if you look at it carefully, the overall narrative has evolved.
What's more, the truth is broken, but the remaining emotions are very real: the eldest daughter Anne's complex emotions when faced with her father's unabashed preference for the younger daughter, and her perseverance and struggle on the issue of whether to send her father to a nursing home; Mr. Anthony
He is trying to show that he is in control of everything, but more and more often he reveals his inner self-doubt, dependence on his eldest daughter, self-blame, and the trembling words "I feel as if I'm losing"
"all my leaves...the branches and the wind and the rain" vividly displays the fear of the old man in his dying years; and at the end of the play, the scene where the old man breaks down emotionally and cries to find his mother can be called a "great performance", needless to say
The audience's attention is doubtfully pulled from the dismantling of the narrative maze, back to the core of perceptual emotion. The complete catharsis of that emotion makes us stare at the dark corridor in the apartment again, like a time tunnel, where we came from, where we came from.
The journey back is also the end.
Therefore, this movie is actually very challenging.
Including the way of telling stories, including the control of timelines, etc.
For a director, first of all, the script must be more than that.
As the controller of the film, the director must know what kind of story he wants to tell, and then make arrangements according to his own ideas.
Because of this movie, someone once asked a question: "Without memory, is it spiritual death?"
No one can give an answer to this question, or in other words, anyone can give an answer, but even if you know this, it is impossible to discuss the result.
Why?
If "Amélie" shows loneliness in all aspects, Emily's loneliness stems from the misfortune of her native family, which has caused her to live in her own fantasy world.
But Emily's response was undoubtedly positive.
But "Father Trapped in Time" is actually also telling a story about loneliness.
What's even more cruel than "Amélie" is that this movie shows a person's deepest loneliness.
What is the deepest loneliness?
For the old father, his daughter wanted to hire a caregiver to take care of him, but the father not only refused, but also got angry and drove away several caregivers.
The father was suspicious, stubborn, and plausible. He believed that the nurse had stolen his watch, and he was even worried that his daughter would know his secret base where he hid valuables.
The helpless daughter finally told her father that she would leave London and move to Paris, France.
At this time, my father suddenly realized:
You are leaving me.
This is the starting point of the story: a stubborn old father and a daughter who is about to leave her father.
In fact, this is what old people or fathers fear most nowadays!
Because for every elderly father, especially the old father suffering from Alzheimer's disease, in fact, at this moment, he is not even as good as a child.
Insecure and desperate for loved ones.
But for daughters, or for children all over the world, it is undoubtedly painful to take care of such an old father.
The chaos of time and space shown in the movie is actually a true portrayal of the old father, and this is how his world is.
In the movie, immediately after a plot, the story of the movie seems to suddenly enter another time and space.
The father suddenly met a stranger in his apartment who claimed to be his daughter's husband.
Not only did the father not recognize the daughter after she returned home, but her appearance was also completely different from the daughter who appeared a few minutes ago.
Not to mention that the father was confused, even the audience had a hard time telling the truth from the lie.
At this point, the film almost brings the audience into a suspenseful atmosphere. Is it traveling through time and space? Or is the daughter plotting to deceive her father and find someone to pretend to be herself and her husband?
Gradually, the audience will suddenly realize that it is just like the previous experience repeated again and again. It turns out that this is originally a chaotic time and space, and a chaotic relationship between characters.
And this is actually my father's world.
Because all the confusion of time and space and the confusion of characters have no reason at all. They are all chaotic images in the mind of the father who suffers from Alzheimer's disease.
All the chaos makes no sense and has no logic. It's just a confused memory in the mind of an old man with dementia.
Understanding this, it is not difficult to find that the film unfolds the narrative from the father's perspective.
Therefore, the audience is on the same channel as the father, and the audience is shocked by the sudden and complicated strange environment along with the father, just like living in a suspenseful horror movie every day.
Why is this movie a movie that allows people to "immerse" into the world of an old father with Alzheimer's disease?
Because when the audience is on the same page as the father in the film and accepts this chaotic time and space without logic and reason, they will gradually become immersed in an indescribable one-person movie-watching experience.
It's like in the movie, no one can really understand why his father's temperament suddenly changed.
Because no one can understand what a father suffering from Alzheimer's disease is going through.
In the film, the most frequently asked question to the father with Alzheimer's disease is: "How long do you plan to spend to piss everyone off?"
This is a question that is both hurtful and cruel.
But this sentence will be the voice of all children who care for Alzheimer's disease.
Without him, for normal people, even watching a movie is like a thriller, and some of the chaos seems so illogical, let alone taking care of the children of such an old father.
As the saying goes, there is no filial son in bed for a long time, let alone a "sick" person who cannot be treated with common sense.
There is a huge gap between the problems. On one end are the children who are tortured by their fathers, and on the other side are the fathers who are tortured by Alzheimer's disease.
And there seems to be another meaning behind this question: "When do you plan to die?"
When this question was asked, you could see the surprise, shame, and even remorse on the father's face. He seemed to have seen what he had done at a certain moment, and lowered his head in shame like a child admitting his mistake.
It even returns to the question raised by previous netizens: Without memory, is it considered spiritual death?
If you don’t want to live like a zombie, lingering for a few more years without dignity, can you end yourself early and decently?
This is cruel, but it is a problem that has to be faced.
At the end of the film, the daughter finally sent her father to a nursing home, and the daughter left her father and went to France.
As a bystander, no one can blame her daughter for being cruel and irresponsible, because even the audience watching the movie has seen Anne's exhaustion and helplessness as she was tortured by her father.
And she also has her own troubles and her own life.
My father sat alone on the hospital bed. He was confused and helpless and didn't even know who he was. His mind was filled with chaotic memories and lost time. In front of him was a road leading to death.
People, you come alone, you can only go alone, you will always be alone.
"Father Trapped in Time" uses an immersive creative method to lead the audience to truly experience the troubles caused by Alzheimer's disease to the elderly.
Just like the name of the movie, they have become people who are trapped in time and cannot get out. They have no future and cannot go back to the past. They can only be trapped in their own chaotic memories.
Normally, we look at such elderly people more from the perspective of others.
Maybe he would be like Laura, the caregiver, who just treated him like a child; maybe he would be like his daughter Anne, who would be more helpless and sad; or maybe he would be like his daughter's husband, who is full of resentment and wishes he would die soon.
Regardless, as we learn more about my father's experience with Alzheimer's disease, we can better understand his loneliness.
This kind of loneliness is the loneliness that no one understands and no one can help. It is the most profound loneliness of being alone and helpless when facing illness, aging, and death.
In the face of life and death, people are always alone. One comes alone and leaves alone.
Li Yi did a lot of preparation work, but this movie was really difficult to shoot.
Not only are the requirements high for actors, but the requirements for directors are also high.
It doesn’t mean that you can reproduce it perfectly just by having the original version. As a director, you must know the specific function of this shot and what you want to express in this movie, and then you can make these shots have a soul.
Otherwise, it's just an empty picture.
This is completely different from the related movies Li Yi made earlier.
What is captured in "Dumplings" is the most persistent love of a father suffering from Alzheimer's disease! The deepest and most profound love.
In "The Best Goodbye in the World", the same thing was just shot, the appearance of the mother-in-law with Alzheimer's disease.
Why is "Father Trapped in Time" so special?
Because this is the first time a film can make the audience feel so clearly what the elderly suffering from Alzheimer's disease are going through.
It can be said that to some extent, it is telling a desperate story in the gentlest tone!
Yes desperate!
Or to put it in one sentence, my father's state at that time was truly "life is worse than death"!
