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几百个柳条
silkwaydreamer 发表于 2008-08-17 15:16:13
七月以来我是礼乐皆废，诗书不兴。满腹心思，一边装点新家，一边与英文鏖战。多少个夜里，一个字一个字地磨出长篇大论的英文论文来！
学期看看就要结束，今晚，刚赶完了最后一篇学业的论文。明天，要去看同性恋游行，还有一篇creative writing课要求的小说收一下尾，再把没写的课堂作业通通补上，之后，方可轻松。
说起来，从来没有这么辛苦过。只能劝自己：先不想值不值，总归技多不压人便是！回今今晚写完回头读过这篇影评作业，觉得，磕磕碰碰下来，自己的英文进步还不小，现在总算勉勉强强，像个样子了。写完睡前发上博客来，算作纪念。也当鼓励自己，再接再励吧。
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A critical essay about Days of Heaven
青衿 9395059
Days of Heaven has universally been acclaimed as a cinematographic masterpiece, however, a normal spectator will still get confused because of the obvious weak points of the film: We may feel the speed of the narrative is too slow, and the characters’ personality haven’t fully developed, even the film’s continuity of narration is sometime questionable. In general, this Cannes-award-winning film is complicate and confusing to us , for it doesn’t follow the narrative routine inherent to a classic Hollywood film.
To interpret the intension of the director, we should first take a look at the theme of the film. It can explain why certain forms are chosen by the director.
1. The theme: metaphoric story
Following by its metaphoric name, Days of Heaven tries to tell a metaphoric story: A story of the eternal theme for human-being, at first one may search hardly for a paradise, a heaven, yet after it come true, the greedy of mankind in him often commit sins, and destroy everything. As the film trailer’s narrator described: “Each one oddly, blindly searching for the days of heaven….. but how long could it last? ”
“To be exiled from paradise”, it is an rather old metaphor that shows the paradox of humanity. I believe that in Days of Heaven, the writer-director Terrence Malick tries to reproduce the metaphor at an American farm in 20th century, to carry out a clear-headed judgement of the “American dreams”.
The film begins with Linda’s narration. With a man (Bill) and a woman (Abby), they fled away from the industrial city to a farm in the western America. Far away from the rest of world, as if Bill and Abby were Adams and Eva in Eden. They even faced temptations as well. The fortune of the farm’s young owner was just like the snake’s persuasion in Eden. Bill agreed Abby to marry the young farmer with the hope to get his fortune after his death , after he knew that the farmer had an incurable disease and was not going to live for very long. Like Adams and Eva, they have been exiled from their paradise because of their greedy as well. Bill has been killed by the police, and Abby has wandered alone at the end.
In my opinion, Malick’ s tension to show the metaphoric meaning of the story is so strong, that he chose a poetic cinema language to enhance it, regardless the inadequate of such elements as character’s development, narrative speed and continuity, and so on. It doesn’t follow the role that a classical film narrative inherent to: make the spectator feel psychologically close to the protagonists. Instead, Malick used a detached, impartial style to tell this thoroughly metaphoric story.
Before to discuss about the details of the film’s style, let’s first take a look at how this style functions in terms of serving the theme.
2. The “detached perspective”: How the style functions
While watching Days of Heaven, the spectator may feel detached from the protagonists for many reasons: First, we don’t know if we should “stand by their side” as we used to do with other films. As Linda told us in her narration: “There was never a perfect person around. You just got half-devil and half-angel in ya.” There is no heroic events or sublime virtue in the film. The protagonists appears to be beautiful lovers when they played around in the farm, but they also has cheated the innocent young farmer together (Bill even kill him out of an accident). Therefore we are confused whether we should feel compassion for their miserable ending or not .
Furthermore, the protagonist’s psychological states seem detached to us. The spectator get to know what going on in their minds more from Linda’s rather motionless, detached narration than from the actions that actually take place. Not only the protagonist’s psychological statements in the story haven’t been fully expressed, also there are very few remarkable close-up of them. Most of the shots of their actions is taken by medium long shots or long shots, take place in the wide scene of the land. Therefore it is hard for us to watch them carefully and get to know their emotions.
Why should the director choose this detached style to tell the story? In my opinion, it is because that the director tries to use the perspective of “nature” for his metaphor, not the perspective of any human being. Nature is impartial and invincible.With its greatness, it seems to be cruel and emotionless, regardless the suffering of human-being. The nature in Days of Heaven plays the position of justice, as the God does in Eden.
A prove of the “perspective of nature” could be the tremendous blank lens in the film that shows simply the scenes in the nature. The nature, where most of the events happen, play very important role in the film. More than just being the background of the story, it also has crucial effects on people’s fate as well. In the season of harvest, the farmer fell in love with Abby, happiness and hope were around; in the end of the film, grasshoppers brought tragic punishment to the land and change everyone’s destiny.
In general, the film tells a story of nature and its judgement rather than a story of human’s fate . What dominate the story here is the impartial, cruel nature, including both the nature of the wide land and the nature of human-being. That is where the detached style of the film functions.
3. cinematography and non-diegetic sound: spatial techniques
One of the most spatial technique that was used by the director to evoked the poetic meaning and detached style of the film was cinematography. The film has win one Oscar awards for its great cinematography. It is astonishingly beautiful and powerful, and it function well in serving the film’s style. I agree with Roger Ebert in his review of the film: “it places its humans in a large frame filled with natural details: the sky, rivers, fields, horses, pheasants, rabbits. In the first hour of the film there is scarcely a scene set indoors. The farm workers camp under the stars and work in the fields, and even the farmer is so besotted by the weather that he tinkers with wind instruments on the roof of his Gothic mansion.”
The shots of the actors mostly is medium long shots or long shots, and the frames always filled with natural details. A significant technique of cinematography is the black lens, it has been remarkably widely used in this film almost like never before in film history. These black lens show the wideness and greatness of the nature significantly, indicate that human-being’s world is trivialness comparing to the nature’s role.
Other examples are abundant. Malick set many of its shots at the “golden hours'' near dawn and dusk, when shadows are muted and the sky is all the same tone. With its astonishing beautiful light effect, humans and nature seems to be in great harmony.All these beautifully settled frames build up the image of “heaven”.
When grasshoppers came as a disaster, cinematography plays a different role.There are many close-ups of grasshoppers eating crops, show the cruel of nature. The shots that take place in the night bring a uneasy, nervous mood, indicate the downthrow of “heaven”. And the shots of the big fire, along with majestic background music, indicate the coming of the “final judgement”.
Obviously, the cinematography is thoroughly “metaphoric”.As I mentioned before, the film has a metaphoric perspective of nature, and Malick try to use a detached, emotionless style to enhance it. Cinematography has contributed a lot for this purpose.
However, there are too much emphasize on the portrait of “nature”. In some level, it has harmed the continuity of the narrative. Also, there are too much blank lens in the film. We can also find a big amount of shots which show the relationship between human and nature while have nothing to do with the story that is going on.These kind of shots are very distracting to a spectator, and they slow down the narrative speed.
The non-diegetic sound, especially Linda’s narration, is also a spatial technique of the film. It bring to the film a literary, poetic dimension. Its emotionless and metaphoric traits contribute a lot in the film’s style. It is the most convincible evidence of the film’s metaphoric meaning.
For example,at the beginning of the film, when Bill, Abby and Linda still on the train to the farm, Linda’s voice said:
“I met this guy named Ding-Dong. He told me the whole Earth is going up in flame. Flames will come out of here and there and they'll just rise up. The mountains are gonna go up in big flames, the water's gonna rise in flames. There's gonna be creatures running every which way, some of them burnt, half of their wings burning. People are gonna be screaming and hollering for help. See, the people that have been good - they're gonna go to heaven and escape all that fire. But if you've been bad, God don't even hear you. He don't even hear ya talking.”
It is the first long narration Linda ever made in the film, and it is totally metaphoric. It is only after we have finished watching the entire film that we can realize, she has actually foretold the entire story here, and expressed the theme of the film in a literary way. She has foretold Bill and Abby’s fate: they have been to the heaven-like farm to escape from the cruel world outside, but their own greedy has brought the frame of justice to come.Heaven has been destroyed, and judgement is cruel.
While the story goes on, Linda’s narration not only helps to explain the situations, bring the narrative forward. It also helps to explain the character’s psychological statements (For example, she explains how the farmer fell in love with Abby: “This farmer - he didn't know when he first saw her or what it was about her that caught his eye. Maybe it was the way the wind blew through her hair.”), which will remain to be very ambiguous if we only watch the actions.
Moreover, it points out the relationship between human-being and nature poetically. When human-beings and the nature seems to be in great harmony, she says:“I could be a mud doctor, checkin' out the earth underneath.” When they have to hide in a boat to escape, she said: “The sun looks ghostly when there's a mist on the river and everything' s quiet... We seen trees that the leaves are shaking and it looks like shadows of guys coming at you and stuff. We heard owls squawking away, ooning away…” It shows the greatness of nature and the trivialness of human, enhance the detached perspective the film has.
However, Malick tried to use the non-diegetic sound to take control of the narrative speed, yet the narration of Linda is highly literary and very hard for a spectator to follow. Moreover, by use the help of literature, he tried to “explain the story” through Linda’s narration rather than “to act the story” through the actions. It seriously weakens the cinema language of the film,and harms its completion as a film.
4. Conclusion
Terrence Malick tried to reproduce an old metaphor in 1970s’ American through Days of Heaven: Search for heaven - commit sin - exile from heaven & punishment. To enhance the metaphoric meaning of his story, he chose the detached style to build up a detached perspective, regardless the inadequate this style may bring of many elements that build up a successful narrative.Cinematography and non-diegetic sound (especially Linda’s narration) are the spatial techniques that contribute to this style.
In my opinion, Days of Heaven is a great movie according to its explore of cinema’s language.It has great cinematography and scriptwriting as well. But, it lacks of careful descriptions of the protagonists, and don’t have a good speed of narrative.These weak points make the film “incomplete” in some level, and confusing.
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