How to become a film critic?

Image and text. I have always been curious about how to calmly move between the two through a beautiful movie review. Can the rich details hidden in the movie frames resurface in the smooth and concise lines of text, and gain another kind of power that penetrates time and space? How can a film review be persuasive yet vivid? I tried to find the answer in the library.

"Memory of Light and Shadow", 222 pages, published by Sanlian Publishing House. The cover design of a typical petty bourgeoisie book is vague and bright. It is placed on the library bookshelf next to "On Cinema" by the great French genius Cocteau. After flipping through it, I found that the line spacing is 1.5 times, and the black and white photos interspersed in it have a coherent style and elegant layout. The narrative language is somewhere between academic style and magazine style. The passages in it seem to make you imagine the author holding the mouse and revising the wording between the lines of the first draft. His expression is serious and his mood is at ease... Finally, a few familiar movies are glimpsed. The name made me finally decide to take it back from the library.

The author speaks emotionally about each of the 23 directors he thinks are worthy of leaving their names in film history. Fassbinder, Wenders, Bertolucci, Almodóvar, Akira Kurosawa, Hou Hsiao-hsien... spend three to five pages on each person's name to outline their lives and portraits, and two or three pages to analyze and review their works. History, coupled with three or four selected photos: deep eyes or chic turns. It's very beautiful - like a small but well-organized specialty store.

The professional background of a researcher at the Film Research Institute of Beijing Film Academy enables the author to brush away the layers of dust on those art films with obscure themes and broken images, and show us the soft light cyan flowing under the surface. Blood vessel. The plot, characters, theme, structure, his logic is so clear that it seems like he is solving a difficult math problem. From time to time, I, who had been a mess in math since I was a child, felt like an enlightenment: Oh my god, so that’s what that movie wanted to express. ! Those image narratives that seem to me to be loose in form actually contain a rigorous structure with profound meaning. Behind those tasteless plots and weird images that I can't stand are all the director's painstaking business designs. ——I finally understand why movies can be regarded as objects that cannot be ignored in the field of cultural studies, and gradually understand how to turn film criticism into a kind of knowledge.

Like any subject, film analysis has its routines.

Just like when people in literature talk about novels, the purpose is to talk about the author of the novel, when people in the film circle talk about movies, the center is the director. The performance of actors is very important to the success or failure of a movie at the box office, but on an artistic level, actors are just pawns of the director in a certain sense. Of course, the director has the final say on how to lay out a game of chess. The two most important questions for any movie: what to shoot and how to shoot them all need to be answered by the director through his work. Therefore, whether the director, rather than the actors, is familiar with everything is the primary indicator to judge a person's understanding of the movie. Understanding the director's contemporary background, educational history, career path, image style, preferred themes, and even circle of friends and sexual orientation are important assets for commenting on his works. ——Do you know why Almodóvar is good at creating gay-themed films? Because he himself is a homosexual. The theme discussed in the chapter about Almodóvar in "Memory of Light and Shadow" is: Is there any relationship between an artist's artistic creation and sexual orientation? The author's answer is very definite: of course.

After the meta-question of "director", we move to the next level: the discussion of "what to shoot" and "how to shoot" just mentioned.

As for the definition of the theme, professional film critics never discuss matters - that is the performance of beginners. Do you think "Once Upon a Time in America" ??is about the intertwined emotional experiences between the three protagonists? Film critics will tell you: On the surface it looks like this, but in fact the director is showing a dual tragic theme: the tragedy of friendship and the tragedy of love, which is full of tension about the goals and meaning of life. The film critic's analysis of the film's themes not only comes from the film itself, but also relies on his familiarity with the film director and film history. What professionals have to do is to always remind themselves to treat movies as a kind of knowledge and pay attention to expressing its depth and breadth.

"How to shoot" is a question of the film's structure and shooting techniques. To make a unique and accurate analysis of it is not only to accumulate the number of movies watched, but also to learn the skills of watching movies.

Systematically watch some films with the same theme and try to figure out the different effects brought about by their different expression techniques. Doing a few more sets of these intensive exercises does not require a high IQ, and you will soon be able to talk fluently with professionals.

In addition to these macro-level thoughts that test your basic skills, a solid film review also requires a careful review of a certain shot or segment in the film being reviewed. This job serves many purposes: commenting on the performance of the actors and gossiping about the flaws in the film can not only reflect the reviewer's familiarity with the work, but also arouse the reader's interest in the film - some people really do it because they are attracted to a scene in the film. People who watched the whole movie out of interest and then were disappointed, like me.

At this point, we can summarize some of the homework that must be done to become a seemingly professional film critic:

1. Read a relatively thick film history. Keywords: director, style, genre.

2. Analyze several groups of videos related to the theme. Keywords: structure, technique, technique.

3. Watch the film to be reviewed several times with different psychology and perspectives. Keywords: patience, enthusiasm, rationality.

In this way, film becomes your major and no longer just a hobby. The danger is that you might lose interest in the movie. When you can memorize the film history of only a hundred years, and know the few themes of the film well, when dream-like hallucinations no longer patronize your movie-watching experience, when the moving dialogues in the movie can no longer trick you into tears. ...You will lose yourself again while "conquering" the movie.

Repeat Cocteau’s words: Don’t reach out to stop the car, you will lose time while gaining time.