Film Review after Watching The Veil

I have watched this film for a long time. I watched it again during my return to China. I came back and watched it again. I didn't write anything, because this film gives people a feeling of being slow, calm and calm from beginning to end. I like it after reading it, and I am not in an urgent mood to tell others. At that time, there was a conflict between Shangdang and Jinhua in China, and there was also a small-scale media movement to defend the veil for a while. Lost the election, but the Edward Harrison Norton Film Festival was quietly held in Shanghai. Norton (! Time flies. At first, he was gentle enough to pinch water in primitive fear. He is not as arrogant as the role he plays. He politely participated in the publicity, approved the program in the DVD tidbits, praised the crew, praised China and thanked the audience. Then, like this movie, it quickly disappeared out of the focus of media attention.

He has been preparing this play for six years, and he is also a producer. He personally invited naomi watts to play the role of Katie, although Nicole Kidman was also considered. He studied the background of the original novel and made full preparations for the location of the story-the southern town in the 1920s, including the political environment, human environment and so on. If Mao Mu, the original author of the novel, knew it from the spring, he should be gratified. Mao Mu's novels are sharp, but also delicate. The Veil is not Mao Mu's most famous novel, but he is obviously good at writing the story of personal salvation in catastrophe, and the ending of his story is often sour and impressive, which is related to his personal experience and embodied in the character Walter in the Veil.

It's all done easily. This is not the love of the whole city, nor the love during the cholera period. As I said, the pattern of this film is actually not big. In the face of plague and life and death, love can only be comfort, and the ending may not be satisfactory.

Katie's fast marriage is similar to Bai Liusu's, except that she didn't really fall in love with Walter in the end. Walter's love for Katie at first sight is the same tragedy. He doesn't know what she wants, what he can give and how to love. But he is not a weak man. On the contrary, his decision to take Kitty to the cholera epidemic area is actually quite cold. Especially at that time, he already knew that Katie was having an affair, and Walter didn't show his cards to Charlie outside the wall. Even when he passed the room where they were having sex, he just walked over instead of pushing the door to catch him (Katie later asked him why, and he said, "It's not worth it, and he also said," Maybe I'm too proud to fight "). He is a Woodenhead and a bacteriologist. He has his own way. The scene where Walter talks to Katie is particularly beautiful. Walter's anger and pain were masked by a calm and ruthless tone. He even agreed to let Katie see Charlie and promised that if Charlie agreed to divorce and marry Katie, he would let her go. He dared to say so because he knew that Charlie would never divorce for Katie. The world is much more complicated than Katie imagined. He coldly watched her accept the reality of heartbreak, and returned to the epidemic area in southern China with him in despair and embarrassment. Walter won a great victory, and the two men took to the road scarred.

Guilin's plays are more interesting and exquisite. Characters appear slowly, and then slowly uncover themselves, from unfamiliar to familiar. Including guards, doctors, residents, wet nurses and servants. I remember the first time Walter visited the water source under the guidance of Huang Qiusheng. A roadside man told him to "go back to England" in Chinese. Walter looked back in confusion, and Huang Qiusheng, who was leading the way in front, showed an imperceptible smile. By the well, Walter was eager to explain to Lao Huang that the well water was polluted by cholera bacteria and he couldn't drink any more. Lao Huang didn't pay much attention to him either. Walter was even more anxious and asked, can you speak English? Lao Huang rolled his eyes slowly. Yes, Dr. Finn, I received military training in Moscow. If you don't like English, we can speak Russian. Norton praised Huang Qiusheng as a good actor, and Lao Huang was really good. Ha ha.

In the epidemic area, Walter is busy with medical research. Kitty has nothing to do all day, and her heart is miserable The only English friend she knows locally can only drink together. After the cold war, armistice, boredom and serious epidemic, this town is not like Shanghai. No dancing, no playmates, no comfortable life and even no music records. Only riots, unfriendly residents, germs, death and extremely boring days. This is also Mao Mu's indifference. An excellent environment of mutual punishment, like purgatory, makes people long for new comfort or re-examine people and things around them. Kitty met her mother by accident in the orphanage and later began to help in the orphanage. Many nuns died of cholera. Kitty saw a piano there. One day, she took the children to play the piano. Walter stopped by the door and thought back to the night when he first met her in London. Later, the two occasionally sit together and chat every night, or they can talk calmly about the past, the expectation of love is too different, and the stupid things they did.

They are together again, but it can't be said that this is a successful relationship. In Kitty's words, it's more like duty. However, the mother of the orphanage said: When love and responsibility become one, grace is on you.

Love again may not have a happy ending. Soon, Kitty found herself pregnant, but she was not sure whether the baby was Charlie's or Walter's. In the past, she always came back to haunt her, but now they are calm. Walter said it doesn't matter now. One day, when Walter went to the orphanage, Kitty was taking a nap with the children. The sun shone softly on her. He leaned down, kissed her on the forehead and left. A few days later, Walter was unfortunately infected with cholera, and Katie was at his bedside when he lay dying. He said "forgive me", she said "nothing to forgive", and finally she said "I'm sorry". In fact, it doesn't matter whether you forgive or not. It's too late to apologize.

Five years after the last performance of the film, one day in London, Katie took a child to buy flowers, where Walter proposed to her for the first time. When they went out, they met Charlie again, and Katie was already quiet inside. Grace is with you when love and responsibility become one.

That kid still looks like Walter to me.

The film was taken patiently, the music was great and the photography was great. In the song Bridge of Dreams, Kitty and Walter spent the only and last quiet time. They have never had a passionate love. Norton said that this film has more freedom than the original, and Mao Mu's indifference turned into regret and sadness at the end of the film, and there was also calm warmth. The movie itself may take a little patience to finish.

I like the performance of everyone in the movie, especially naomi watts. Ironically, naomi watts was born and raised in England, and moved to Australia at the age of 14, and was accused of having an impure British accent. It seems that everyone has their own standards for pure and impure British accent, whether it is true or not. British accents vary from light to heavy and vary from place to place. Many people hear a strong British accent and say that it is a bad Australian accent or a deliberate forgery (for example, Peyton's British accent is incorrect), but they don't know that there are mountains outside the mountain. Do you think you know all this? You don't know. Norton's English accent is flawed from time to time. Norton's performance is all details, which is quite different from his usual big contrast performance. Or Norton, who is neither arrogant nor impetuous, makes people uncomfortable, but, in the final analysis, what you see in the theater depends on what you can see in your heart.

Supplement: I wrote this because I saw a blogger I like very much somewhere and criticized the film without watching the whole film. If I have only seen half of the film (and the second half), I absolutely dare not criticize it. At least, I can't comment until I have read it completely. Perhaps, others and my standards are different. Without the scenes of London and Shanghai in this film, the meaning of the story is almost gone. However, the performances of characters in epidemic areas have lost the support and coherence of logic and emotion. In addition, I don't know the original context of the novel, which is completely incomprehensible, and even misinterpreted as the drama of Kitty begging her husband to change his mind, but I don't know the twists and turns.

Norton said he didn't have the ambition to be a great actor, but he made this movie that I respect. Six years of preparation, a little-known novel, a writer who is slowly forgotten. Norton, who graduated from Yale history department, carefully screened novels and made such a beautiful movie. Of course, this is not a touching, epic and epoch-making film, but it can also be seen that the filmmaker has fulfilled his wish and told the audience a story that makes people sigh, smile and know again. It was also the result of a group of people's intentions that the film was transferred to Warner's independent film until it was completed. Movies made with my heart will look good, and I will watch them with my heart as a reward and a tribute.

(2)

The Veil is a good film, but unfortunately, due to poor publicity, it didn't cause much response, and many people didn't even know that the film had been released in China. With the strong recommendation of my colleagues, I finally finished watching the film. After reading it, I have an inexplicable feeling that it is difficult to express it in words for a while. What is this? The first thing that caught my eye was the beautiful and quiet scenery of Guilin in the film. I have been to Guilin ten years ago, and I still remember it vividly, so I have a special affinity for such a picture. The Lijiang River in the movie is filled with ancient colors, just like an old photo in the sun. At first glance, it will evoke infinite memories of vicissitudes.

I think the whole movie gives me a feeling like the river covered with rust. Although it is calm, it brings endless aftertaste.

Calm means that the film does not deliberately exaggerate contradictions to promote the plot, everything goes with the flow, and the production is exquisite and not extravagant.

First of all, the hero's love at first sight is so clumsy that even the heroine is talking about bacteria when enjoying flowers, and there is no romantic mood at all. The next proposal is even less common in love movies. She holds a golden ball and bows to the pomegranate skirt. The heroine agreed to get married because she only wanted to get married rather than fall in love because of family pressure. It is such a pair of internationalist fighters tied together by Chinese-style arranged marriages who came to China thousands of miles away.

As the saying goes, twisted melon is not sweet. Shortly after marriage, the wife found that her husband, who was rigid and reserved and devoted to his work, was not the right person in her mind. Soon she fell into a boring life that was hard to pass away. At this time, a morally corrupt third party appeared at the scene, giving her a helping hand in time to soothe her lonely heart. An affair with an "affair" came as scheduled. The cuckold husband also arrived on schedule at the live broadcast of their love affair, and the first climax of the movie "Play Point" also arrived as scheduled. This play should be an opportunity for directors and actors to give full play to their talents. There are many designs that are easy to shine, such as rushing to the crown and catching the rape in bed; It was still a slap in the face that resounded through the sky, but the lively scene above did not stop as scheduled. The director chose to suppress and restrain this content-the protagonist did not expose them because of face, but quietly left, coercing his unfaithful wife to go to the town where cholera spread in a very unmanly way, which made the seemingly inseparable couple embark on the road of "eccentricity".

In this picturesque but lifeless town, the couple have devoted themselves to "fire fighting and disaster relief". By fighting side by side, they gained new understanding, more understanding and tolerance, and their previous grievances gradually dissipated, and the fire of love reignited. They saved the marriage while saving the refugees, and created a love mode of "marriage first and then love" serving China and the West.

It stands to reason that this process of ideological transformation should be another "drama point", but the director can still exercise restraint and give up his usual fancy skills. The wife learned from her husband's anonymous interview that the workaholic husband was originally engaged in the lofty cause of saving the people; When the wife plays the piano for the orphan, the husband casually glances at the door and finds that the wife is not a person who enjoys ease and has no love; Their inner harmony is only a brief encounter when riding a bamboo raft on the beautiful Lijiang River, and it is no exaggeration. Just like the waterwheel that her husband built for the villagers, it is a trickle and comes naturally.

This love story should have a happy ending. At this time, the biggest scene of the whole film appeared. Her husband is infected with cholera, and his life is about to dry up. Where Are You Going is a climax drama that no filmmaker will miss. See the hysteria in Qiong Yao's drama and the tears in Korean drama.

But the director of this film seems to be interested in carrying out the tone of forbearance to the end.

In front of her husband's bed, the two held hands. The key words of the last communication were "please forgive" and "sorry", and their spiritual salvation was completed in a few words.

The death of her husband did not show the spectacular scene of the local people's grateful funeral, but was buried on the spot according to the rules. The wife, with a faint sadness on her face, stood in front of the grave and watched the mud spill on her husband. Black toes exposed to mud are no different from ordinary cholera patients.

"I walked through the clear spring, which is so beautiful. I took a bath in the water. I love you for a long time, and I will never forget it ... "

This sad folk song quietly sounded, and the wife grabbed her husband's belongings and sobbed in a low voice, and finally burst into tears. Seeing this, I can't help but feel a sense of sadness. I suddenly realized that I had been unconsciously moved by this calm and sad story.

Having said that, I also want to compare Korean dramas. In Korean dramas, the terminally ill is full of exaggerated and deliberate "Where are you going", which really makes many women cry. But this kind of tears is cheap and can only stimulate the senses, and the plot will be clean with the tears, leaving no trace. After reading the veil, you may not cry, just a little sad, but it will stay in your heart for a long time, making people think and remember, leaving a deep impression. The Veil reminds me of two other Korean classic films with similar styles, Photo Studio in August and Spring Gone and Spring Came. I like such a quiet movie.

At the end of the film, many years later, the wife led a boy to meet his former lover in the street. Although the child looks like a "third party", he still takes his husband's surname. I don't think it matters who the child is. What she really wants to keep is the unforgettable love for her dead husband.

(3)

Edward Harrison Norton said that he had been preparing for this film for six years. The initial passion gradually evolved into meaningful fine water, criss-crossing in every winding path, and transpiration like fog between picturesque Guilin mountains and rivers.

If you ask me which version I prefer, books or movies? I will be ambivalent and tell you that if the protagonist is not Norton, then this book.

The focus of this book is entirely on the heroine Katie. In short, this is a process of female spiritual redemption. Full of love and betrayal, mixed with contradictions and struggles, a pampered woman saw the hypocrisy of human nature and the cruelty of life after this change, and finally gradually unveiled the veil of life, thus embarking on a road that deviated from the original trajectory. But the film shifted the focus of the story from the original track and made it a story about love. The biggest change is that Katie in the original is not in love with Walter. Even after Walter's death, she still didn't resist Townsend's temptation. In the film, she really grew up to be a strong woman. She deeply loves her husband and respects him. She thoroughly saw through the hypocrisy and affectation peculiar to the upper class like Townsend, so times changed and she met Townsend again in the street. This separation may be easier to attract the audience and more popular. It may be too artistic to amplify a woman's mental maturity on the screen. However, it is undeniable that Mao Mu's psychological description of the heroine is a classic, gradually indulging and degenerating, and then gradually understanding, regretting and awakening. However, it is difficult for a film to capture these abstract emotions with the lens, unless the actor's acting skills are perfect and countless long lenses are used, which is obviously too risky, so the changes of the film relative to the original work are understandable.

Their relationship is sometimes more like subject and object. He always takes off his hat when he meets her and is polite; When she was about to get off the bus, he did not forget to reach out and help; I always knock on the door before entering her room and get an answer. Maybe she didn't hate his kindness at first, but after a long time, she would rather he was casual and the distance was getting farther and farther in this strangeness. It was not until that day that he went to her room to look for her that he realized that his wife had walked with Thomson, and the rotation of the door handle was in line with his heartbeat. He didn't rush in after all.

In fact, this relationship was unhealthy and unbalanced from the beginning, and only Walter was paid from beginning to end. Katie never tried to fall in love with Walter, and their marriage was doomed to ruin because of this imbalance. In order to get back at his wife, he took her to Meitan House, where cholera was rampant and the confrontation sparks in the living room were everywhere. Yes, maybe she's not worth marrying. Like all girls, she is stupid, powerful, frivolous, vulgar, vain and empty. He really doesn't suit her. She is cold, self-controlled and lofty. They have no entertainment and topics to continue except playing bridge. She knows nothing about hydraulic engineering and bacterial research, but that's all he has. But what can she do? Thomson told her that he could not divorce, and she had only one way to go-Meitan House.

It doesn't really matter where the story takes place. The key is that there is a place where they can find the bright spot they have never seen before in their predicament. When he arrived at Meitan Prefecture, Walter tried his best to cure cholera and did everything himself. And his wife gradually found that she had more important and worthwhile things to do besides trying to save it. She joined the team to help nuns. It was this slow contact and adaptation that made her see the other side of Walter. He likes children and often stays in monasteries for several hours. He was regarded as a hero by the nuns, so they were modest and polite to her. His work is no longer as meaningless as she thought, but actually saves other people's lives. And he also found that she actually had a kind heart, so when he saw her playing the piano for orphans, his memory suddenly went back to the first time he saw her. She walked slowly down the stairs, noble and elegant, and at this moment he fell in love with her again.

She later joked that they were so stupid that they always found the missing parts in each other and ignored the others. Only this understanding and warmth didn't last long. Walter eventually died of cholera. Before he died, he begged Katie to forgive him. Katie told him that he was not wrong and that she should apologize and be forgiven. Katie once said that women don't fall in love with men because of their good conduct. But I still believe that she finally fell in love with Walter, and she will never love anyone else as much as she loves him.

Edward Harrison Norton's performance is definitely the key to unveiling the veil. This sentence may not have a particularly strong feeling after watching the movie, but once you read Mao Mu's original works, you will find that even those words that you missed without taking them into the camera are clear with Norton's image. He and he are so close. The same low-key, the same stubborn, the same like to hang a self-deprecating smile on the corners of the mouth, the same contains deep affection. They're like one person.

Norton played so without leaving a trace. Naomi watts obviously kept up with Norton's rhythm, and always thought that two Australian actresses, Biket Blanchett and Nicole Kidman, were more reserved, but the heartbreaking scene in 2 1 G was obviously a bit shocking and awe-inspiring. This time, as Katie, she has never collided with Norton, which is not belittling but praising. It is this sense of distance that makes us see the change of a woman's view of life. She learned a lot from him, so when she saw Thomson again, she dared to look him in the eye and tell him that the child's name was Walter. Although her son's biological father is Thomson, she hopes her son can be as upright, brave and strong as Walter, give his life for cholera as his father, truly love a woman as his father, and give everything for her.