An analysis of Andhadhun's ending (an analysis of the mystery of ending from the audio-visual language of the film)

Number of words: 3726 suggested time: 6 minutes

Friends who have seen the Indian version of Andhadhun must remember to watch the original French version 13 minute microfilm Andhadhun. Compared with the adapted Indian version, the French version is superior to the Indian version in terms of film theme, audio-visual language and suspense!

After all, this is a short film with only 13 minutes of narration and audio-visual presentation, but it was scored 92 points by more than 200,000 netizens! At the same time, this short film also won the Best Short Film Award at the Leuven International Film Festival in 201/and the Best Short Film Award in César Awards in 20 12. And ranked third in the highest short film of Douban.

So what makes this short film so successful? Many people are wondering after watching the short film, was that person finally killed?

The following six scales will combine the audio-visual language of the film to talk about their understanding of the ending, suspense setting and theme of the film.

End of the movie: Is Andhadhun dead or not? Liu Heng's understanding is: You must die! Although the director set an open ending, he hinted at Andhadhun's ending through at least three details.

Details 1: Andhadhun's monologue.

"She won't kill me when I perform!" At this time, Andhadhun was still playing the piano with trepidation, while the owner's wife stood behind him with a nail gun.

Previously, Andhadhun had realized that his notebook full of customer contact information might have been exposed, which was the key for the owner's wife to believe that he was "pretending to be blind". The reason why there is such an unreasonable inner monologue is because he is already very flustered at this time, and his brain has lost its ability to distinguish!

Andhadhun can't play forever. Once he stops, it means the end of his life. This monologue is just his self-deception, and he is still addicted to his own fantasy! So according to common sense, the music will stop and he will be killed!

Detail 2: Conversion of background music in movies

The main melody music of Andhadhun's entrance is a main line of the whole movie, and it also carries a very important narrative component. At the beginning of the film, there is music playing the piano, and then flashback narration is carried out in the form of the protagonist monologue, and finally the music returns to the performance site.

From beginning to end, the main theme has not changed. However, at the end of the last movie, after the appearance of black subtitles, the music was quietly replaced by a kind of music similar to decorative sound.

This piece of music echoes the monologue lines in the detail 1 mentioned by Liu Heng above. It is intended to inform the audience that the songs played by Andhadhun have stopped, he has been dealt with by Mrs. Rent, and Mrs. House is treating the scene with decoration tools and materials!

Detail 3: The last picture of the movie.

This picture is fixed between three pictures in the mirror. In the mirror, the master's wife is standing behind Andhadhun with a nail gun, occupying a big picture, while in the upper right corner, the dead husband of the master's wife is strangely sitting on the sofa.

The Last Photograph

Some netizens infer from the peaceful death of the owner's wife's husband that her husband should be really blind, which I agree with. Otherwise, he could not accept that his wife's nail gun passed through his left temple so calmly.

At this point, the owner's wife's nail gun is aimed at the back of Andhadhun's head. Andhadhun is not really blind. He pretends to be blind, but he has no eyes in the back of his head. At this time, he heard the sound of the shopkeeper's wife's high heels buckled on the floor, but he didn't know what the people behind him were planning. At the same time, because of his timidity, panic and "superstition" about his acting skills, he believes that as long as he does not move, his master's wife will remain as "quiet" as before.

So, Andhadhun is probably the husband of the shopkeeper's wife. She silently got rid of the back of her head with a nail gun, and finally sat in front of the piano strangely, just like the wife and husband of the owner on the sofa!

To sum up, whether from the inner monologue of the protagonist in the short film, the background music or the final picture, we can infer the ending of Andhadhun's murder. This is inferred from the sound elements and picture information in the audio-visual language, and it is also a hint made by the director.

Although this short film is not as suspenseful as the Indian long version, the suspense here is more compact and clever. Especially in the first two minutes. Let's give an example of the camera language of flashback in the first two minutes of a movie.

Example: foreshadowing and hints of many close-ups

Close-up 1: The speaker vibrates when playing the piano. The piano is the most important prop in this movie, which is related to the piano from the identity and occupation of the protagonist to the development and ending of the story.

Close-up 2: Close-up of Andhadhun's body parts, including bare legs and waist, partial close-up, bare shoulders and facial close-up. The unreasonable "nudity" when playing the piano here has set a suspense in the audience's psychology.

Multiple close-ups

Example 2: A combination of three roles appears.

The whole short film enters by sound, accompanied by the sound of music and the monologue of the protagonist. The first person in the picture is an old man sitting on the sofa.

Housewife husband

This is a close-up shot. The old man is on the right side of the picture, looking to the left. The conventional Nine palace map composition is adopted here, and the characters are placed on the right side of the picture. At the same time, use eyes to guide the audience's line of sight, and lead our line of sight to the left, which is the position where Andhadhun will play the piano next.

The lens follows the line of sight to the position of the leading pianist, and the picture shows a close-up above the shoulder, with symmetry in the middle. At the same time, there is a character background behind him who can only see black clothes. Most people's close-ups usually have a small amount of blank space at the top of their heads, but there is no blank space here, which on the one hand draws the audience's attention to the tense expressions of the characters, and on the other hand makes the "black background wall" behind Andhadhun more prominent and mysterious.

There is no blank space above the head.

In the first two minutes of the short film, the suspense setting in the whole story goes far beyond this. For example, the protagonist's monologue lines are also suspense, and the cooperation of lines and camera language and pictures makes the suspense of the story more and more intriguing and thought-provoking. These skillfully combined, in the audience's mind appeared layers of suspense and puzzles.

The theme of the film saw a high evaluation of the theme of this short film:

Life is not a disguised loss of faith and hope. Being smart is another kind of suicide.

In the film, after losing a piano exam, the protagonist did not look for reasons from himself, but went to a road of "self-deception". He disguised himself as a blind man from Andhadhun, showing that he was a weak man. Use people's sympathy and psychological compensation for the weak to gain benefits. He changed from physical "false blindness" to psychological "true blindness"!

He deluded himself that he was an Oscar winner. But he doesn't know that there are mountains outside the mountain and people outside. Finally, I met a housewife who knows the blind better than he does.

In front of the house girl, he exposed himself and paid a cruel price for it. This is a punishment for giving up his real life and living a false life with peace of mind in self-paralysis.

He is a cowardly and timid wretch. He lost himself and gave up himself for profit, which is the reason of his tragedy.

So how to create such a character image in the short film to express the theme of the film? Let's start at two o'clock.

1. The first-person narration creates an arrogant, timid and selfish character in the form of the inner monologue of the main pianist.

First of all, he is a very arrogant person. The main advantage of first-person narration is that the characters can enter the audience's heart more truly, and the audience's attention will closely follow the protagonist's narrative, be nervous because of his nervousness, and be secretly pleased because of his snickering.

But at the same time, he is strongly subjective because of the first person. His monologue and self-evaluation are not necessarily objective, but he may be self-modifying or exaggerating his piano playing skills. Imagine that if you are really a "genius" as he said, you should also have enough psychological quality to cope with the exam. However, he didn't, but was defeated by his inner tension and timidity. At the same time, it also exposed his personality characteristics of not being proficient in learning arts and boasting.

The protagonist's nervousness

Of course, the details of his arrogance are far more than these, such as embarrassing the waiter and what he said to his grandmother when crossing the road at the traffic lights, all of which show his arrogance and selfishness.

2. Close-ups, cross-use of wide-angle lenses and unconventional composition methods.

In the scene where the protagonist enters the auditorium for an exam, first of all, the vision is taken as the fixed lens of this scene. Under the wide-angle lens, the pianist looks small and humble. The next scene is the protagonist sitting in front of the piano ready to play, followed by a flash of the middle and close-up background, followed by a close-up of the hand stool, wiping the keys, white face and trembling hands, depicting a nervous and timid figure.

The next scene is directly a close-up of the protagonist lying on the bed at home, and it is also the perspective of overhead shooting, while the protagonist turns from the symmetrical position in the center of the picture to the sideways position on the right. The scenery composition of this scene is also ingenious.

The pillow on which the protagonist lies on his back is composed of two black and white keys. At this time, because the protagonist is located in the center of two pillows, it gives us the feeling of a complete piano keyboard. The keyboard pillow has a diagonal line. When the protagonist leans sideways, the keys of the pillow split in two. The "tilt" and "split" here show the protagonist's inner state at the moment, and show the heavy blow to him by the failure of the piano competition.

Tilt of piano keyboard pillow

The angle of the next camera changed from the vertical angle of the head to the horizontal angle of the front. In this picture, the actor's refusal gesture with his hands crossed, the distorted eyes shot through the fish tank, and the goldfish scenery trapped in the glass fish tank. Show the protagonist's inner state and personality characteristics in many ways.

Among them, the distorted eyes are very smart. This creative vision shows the hero's "abnormal state", and "distortion" implies the transformation and distortion of the hero's values and outlook on life, and he begins to be in an illusion and self-fantasy. The human eye is the window of the soul, and the deformation and concealment of the eye means the distortion and closure of the soul. Starting from here, it implies that the protagonist begins to put himself in a false world. In order to satisfy his voyeurism and vanity, he cheated others' sympathy with the attitude of the weak, gained benefits, and finally set himself on fire.

Twisted left eye

Before meeting his master's wife, he was complacent, but after meeting his master's wife, he died because of his inherent thinking mode and his own personality weakness. He cheated himself to death in the fantasy world he created, indulged in the self-made world, and lost the ability to recognize the truth and resist. Like a goldfish trapped in a fish tank, it can only swim around in its own glass jar.

Pretending to be blind was the beginning of his self-destruction. His dishonesty, deception, hiding himself and indulging in nothingness are also warning the world. The life experience of such a failed nobody has also aroused our emotional resonance. This is the practical significance of this short film.

One cannot live in nothingness. If you want to change your destiny, please live a real life, face it bravely, and use your own efforts and diligence to get the fruits of labor, instead of deceiving yourself and using your own cleverness to get small favors!

Written at the end: 13 minutes, the micro-film Andhadhun has been skillfully arranged and created by the director and creative staff in the aspects of script structure, film line design, sound elements, lens design and editing, scene layout, and detail handling. Finally, a wonderful suspense and profound theme short film is presented, which brings people audio-visual enjoyment and emotion, and it is very worth seeing.