Growing up in a violent family, Mickey (Woody Helson) has a wild nature, while his girlfriend Mallory (Juliet Lewis) is naturally rebellious and rude because she was harassed by her father since childhood. * * * After killing Mallory's parents together, they began to escape. The crazy couple killed countless people on their way to escape. Due to the constant reports and hype on TV, the two became news figures of national civilization and even idols of young people. Soon, they were finally captured by the police. In order to improve the ratings, TV host Wayne Gail went to prison and interviewed Mickey live. At Mickey's instigation, there was a riot in the prison. Mickey took advantage of the chaos and took Wayne and others hostage, rescued Mallory and escaped from prison. ...
1994, the famous American director oliver stone put quentin tarantino's play natural born killers on the screen. The film quickly caused great controversy because of its exaggeration of violence and satire on American news media. Although it doesn't meet Quentin's original intention, natural born killers is still an excellent film. Oliver stone has greatly stimulated the audience through MTV-style shooting and editing techniques, the comprehensive application of soap operas and cartoons, and a large number of novel audio-visual languages such as alternative music. These advanced post-modern movie techniques in natural born killers have become a fashion in today's movies.
This film re-examines crazy criminal behavior and equally crazy media behavior from a fresh perspective. The protagonist in the play is a couple who like blood and violence. Their greatest pleasure is killing people. Their action caught the attention of a reporter and was reported in his own program. As a result, their popularity has increased rapidly. Even after they were arrested, the reporter's report did not stop. All crimes seem to be different in the eyes of the media. Should we feel sorry for this?
Oliver Si Tong, a controversial director in Hollywood, always analyzes human nature to the audience in a cruel and bloody way again and again, and shocks the audience's brain and mind with various extreme visual wonders again and again, raising it to the peak of shock. In his famous film "The Assassination of Kennedy", the director, through Kevin Coster's role as a lawyer, shows his exploration of a huge historical lie and his query and resistance to the United States government, the most powerful opponent in the world. When we wander in the world of black and white and color, we strongly feel the evil and powerful power of lies and fantasies. The live video of Kennedy's assassination was repeated in the film, and the silent treatment made the gunshots even more creepy. In "natural born killers", it seems that Si Tong will once again challenge the limits of the audience's ideological and visual acceptance, so a crazy killing and rebellion finally caused a doomsday carnival in the film, full of scars and blood. In reality, this crazy thing probably didn't happen, so what is the director's intention to arrange such a horrible killing? Throughout the film, we will find that killing is only a symbolic means, and it is in this way that the two protagonists resist the evil and hypocrisy in this society.
From resistance to melee
At the beginning of the film, a close-up of a snake occupied the whole scene. Snakes have represented evil and poison since ancient times, and its sudden attack will kill any living thing in an instant. The wedding rings of Mickey and Marley are wrapped around a snake. They are like the embodiment of a snake, and they don't hesitate to eject their bullets into people's chests. They started killing people and killed 50 people in three weeks, and this is just the beginning of the journey. When they were put in prison, even this iron wall failed to stop their strength. A year later, they finally broke out of this hellish cage (from the mouth of the warden) and lived a happy life.
Mickey and Marley are actually two deformed products of society. Mickey was born in a violent family, and his grandfather and father were both killed at violent gunpoint. When he was young, he witnessed cruel and bloody scenes, so these horrible scenes often appeared in his dreams. But this murderous madman is afraid of Mr. Rabbit in his dream. His childhood experience made him regard fate as his own truth, and killing people is a privilege given to him by God to end the lives of hypocritical people who shouldn't live. Mickey thinks he has such power. When he proposed to Malai in the canyon, he used the tone of God and gave Malai the right to kill. Malai grew up in a chaotic family. Her incestuous father and deaf mother suppressed her body and mind, which eventually led her and Mickey to kill their father and mother in extremely cruel ways. While she was violent, she kept cursing and laughing heartily, showing her excitement and joy when she was about to be free. When she left, she said to her brother, "You are free!" The little boy even smiled knowingly. Mickey and Marley's original intention is actually very simple. These two people who love each other enough just want to live their own lives. However, in real life, violence is rampant, hypocrisy and lies are overwhelming, and even the simplest life is as difficult to realize as a dream. When people are desperate, they have to take up arms to fight and kill, paving a broad road to happiness with blood.
In fact, Mickey and Marley also have values in their hearts, including right and wrong, good and evil, but the result of their judgment is to decide their life and death. Along the way, the people they killed had no respect for them. For example, the killing scene at the beginning of the film is actually caused by the man's lewd flirting with Marley. When one of Mickey's bullets was fired at his opponent, the director processed the camera at high speed. We felt a sense of sacredness when we saw the bullet slowly approaching the frightened crowd. At this time, Mickey stood at the height of God to punish those who were disrespectful to women. When Mickey accidentally killed the Indian chief because of his dream, he was upset with regret, and Malai kept pointing at him, saying that you were neither good nor bad, which showed us that they were not bad people in the traditional sense.
However, just killing all kinds of evils around us may never reach the other side of happiness, because there is a more powerful national ideological machine that controls the operation of the whole society, which is the root of evil. There are three characters in the film who are representatives of the national ideological machine: Czech police chief, warden and journalist Wayne. Czech sergeant is actually a villain who loves blood and women. When he caught Mickey and Malai, he took possession of Malai, who was weak at that time. A year later, he tried to seduce Malai in prison. He became famous for catching the murderer, and he wanted to further his reputation by disposing of Mickey Mouse. In this prison, the warden seems to be the god of hell, in charge of the prisoners' right to life within his jurisdiction. He is also a hypocritical villain, working hard for his career step by step, but he didn't expect a chaotic war to break out in his own jurisdiction. Wayne, a journalist, is one of the most satirical figures, greatly mocking today's media. As the greatest invention of post-modern society, television has changed human life at an incredible speed since its birth. So far, it has shown you a strange scene. Whether what we see is true or not has become a question in everyone's mind. Wayne is a challenger. He will show you an absolutely true live broadcast. He wants to create a miracle. But at the last minute, Wayne was still not thorough. It turns out that he is still the same as his peers, and he made this program just to improve the ratings of the program. Truth is not important to them. On the one hand, the media kept shouting slogans to eliminate violence, on the other hand, it created terrible scenes of violence and pushed society to the edge of violence. It is these three figures: the police chief Czech Republic represents the judge of social value, the warden represents the ruler of the state violence agency, and the journalist Wayne represents the mouthpiece of the state ideology.
What should Mickey and Marley do when society becomes such a scene? They only have extreme resistance, so there will be such a scuffle between prisoners and prison staff at the end of the film. In the civilian society, Mickey and Marley also have countless supporters and advocates, and they even surpassed many celebrities to become the cover figures of magazines. People like Mickey and Marley, who are also civilians, also feel the absurdity of society, so these advocates express their inner cries in the same absurd way. They expressed their reverence for Mickey and Marley and their admiration for this way of killing before the interview, and even put up a banner saying "Kill? Me! " In this way, they want to identify with Mickey's pure value judgment.
Challenge the traditional film style
In natural born killers, the director not only made a bold anti-traditional move in content, but also reflected the director's unusual thought and skill in the style and expression of the whole film. This kind of challenge to the traditional film style has publicized the passion of postmodernism and become a more powerful means of expression for directors.
Through quick editing, the whole film inserted many shocking fragments, which not only stimulated the audience's visual feeling in the form of expression, but also explained the instantaneous psychological state of the protagonists Mickey and Marley in the content, making the audience's psychology close to the psychology of the characters in the film and achieving the effect of empathy.
In addition, in the film, when Mickey and Marley are driving, the killings in human history, jumping flames, flowing blood, and holding high butcher knives appear on the roadside and street walls. These are our common memories with Mickey and Marley-when can life continue in a peaceful and peaceful environment in past lives where human wars are in dispute?
The most obvious thing in the whole film is the alternation of black and white colors, which may be a common technique used by Si Tong. This black-and-white photo usually shows the disgraceful side of life. Because in the long river of life, truth and falsehood, reality and illusion, beauty and ugliness may be interspersed in minutes. Violence itself is not beautiful, but when violence eliminates ugliness, it will also present a beautiful scene. After the first angry and chaotic killing, Mickey and Marley embraced and danced. Under the light and shadow, they are as pure and light as a pair of holy angels, and even fireworks bloom for them. Later, under the starry sky, Malai's image was really like an angel. She said, "There is no death, because you and I are both angels!" " "
The last article mentioned the director's application of post-modernism, and there is an interesting passage to confirm this point. In the whole film, cruelty and blood did not completely spread to every corner. The director tells the story of Mickey Mouse and Marley's acquaintance with an indoor drama called "I Emma Lai", which shows Marley's greedy and incestuous father's tyranny and timid mother. This humorous way not only alleviates the violent color of the film, but also endows the film with profound irony.
At the end of the film, Mickey drove his beloved wife and a group of lovely children to a bright distance. At this time, the bright colors of the film are in sharp contrast with the dark and bloody style in front. In fact, the life they long for is as simple as that. Why do they and we deserve this?