Mayflies between Absurdities: A Double Metaphor in Eye of the Dragonfly

Dragonflies have 28,000 eyes.

Blink 40 thousand times a second.

This is the first narration at the beginning of Eye of the Dragonfly, accompanied by high-frequency monitoring pictures. The voice of the narrator is cold and full of mechanical feeling, just like the emotionless monitoring screen itself. The Eye of the Dragonfly was produced by a surveillance video clip directed by Bing Xu with more than10,000 hours. Dragonfly is undoubtedly one of the most important elements in the film, which implies the ubiquitous monitoring system in China's life and connects the stories of the hero and heroine.

Dragonfly is the best footnote to analyze this alternative film without photographers and actors.

Which is reality? Truth and Absurdity in Eye of the Dragonfly

There is no doubt that this film provides the audience with a "different perspective" to look at real life. People's control over life often comes from their own experiences and experiences. However, as dense as a dragonfly's compound eye, the monitor photographed everything in reality. We are familiar with chatting, eating, falling in love, and experiencing few disasters, violence and death. From the perspective of such a god, all sentient beings are just as small as insects and flies, and the viewer is inevitably in a trance: am I really familiar with the real society I live in? Lippmann, a famous political critic, once used the word pseudo-environment to describe the reality of media construction as not an objective reality. Perhaps compared with the real reality, the subjective reality experienced by individuals is also a kind of "mimicry environment" in a sense.

Blank lenses are another feature of Eye of the Dragonfly. The director inserted a lot of irrelevant realistic monitoring materials between the plots, which not only connected the plots in series, but also diverted the audience's attention to the pure feelings of men and women. The film incorporates more realistic words: the injured ran naked, the old man was swept out of the house, and the building suddenly collapsed ... The same is true. The audience on this screen sat watching the movie for a long time, and the chicken flying and the dog jumping on the other side of the screen were shocking and absurd.

The introduction of the police image in the film is also very interesting. On the one hand, he conforms to the audience's perspective and is the viewer of the monitoring screen. The audience is more likely to have a * * * sound with his image, thus entering the world of monitors. On the other hand, as the only unsupervised image in the film, the police are the "monitors" in the story. However, are the police really not monitored? In the fourth minute and 37 seconds of the film, as soon as the police finished saying that the monitoring screen was "stuck", the film screen was still for two seconds-the director's intention was obvious: wasn't the police in the film monitored by the audience? This "picture-in-picture" setting connects the reality in the movie with the reality of the audience-we live in a watched reality, and our words and deeds are recorded by cold instruments.

In fact, as soon as the heroine appeared, the director gave us enough metaphors: Dragonflies flapping their wings in groups in summer nights are like silently observing in the corner of life, recording tens of thousands of monitors. Perhaps people have long noticed the discordant noise in this life, but people living under surveillance can only do nothing about it like the protagonist can't see the dragonfly flying too fast.

Who is a dragonfly? Identity of "seeing" and "being seen"

The word "look" is the title of the eye of the dragonfly. The plot of this film basically revolves around the conflict between "watching" and "being watched". Dragonflies care about the value of being seen, so they choose to be small; Ke Fan likes the way dragonflies look at the world, so he chooses to be a dragonfly. "Watching" and "being watched" are also the relationship between the audience and the film world. Monitoring the material picture seems to set up a formal stage for the real world in the film, and the image of "dragonfly" is the only actor on this stage. Whoever can do it is a dragonfly.

Dragonflies are obviously incompetent. She was dissatisfied with the change of the temple, dissatisfied with what the elder sister said, "thousands of rivers share the same moon", and entered the WTO with the greatest unwillingness and the purest simplicity. After many twists and turns, there was nowhere to hide, so I had to recognize what the elder sister called "getting rid of the old and getting new." Before the operation, she said, "I figured it out. In this society, I must change my heart or my appearance ... "In fact, the dragonfly has changed from appearance to heart. She gave up the identity of "dragonfly" because she got rid of the rules of "seeing" and "being seen" in this world and chose to become Xiaoxiao with higher ornamental value. From then on, there is no turning point, only sacrifice to death. Contrary to dragonflies, Ke Fan, an earthly man, has been watched for half his life, and naturally his love for dragonflies is crazy beyond this rule. For Ke Fan, "Ke Fan" is his earthly shell. He wants to be empty and feels that "everyone has his own destiny"; "Dragonfly" is his true nature, which really makes the cow walk fearlessly. Therefore, after being released from prison, not only Ke Fan was rejected by the world, but also Ke Fan himself chose to alienate; When his faith, soul and body died, he chose to follow his heart.

Buddhism says that what is false is true, and that is true. Dragonflies tried to save themselves, but they lost cleanly. Ke Fan was rubbed several times, but he has returned to the truth.

"I didn't come back, but I haven't left yet." The ending of the film is full of philosophical meaning-Sisyphus returns to the original point again.

final result

The narrative of this film has to be said to be in the same strain as the sense of formal absurdity. The fly in the ointment is that apart from the formal creativity, the film narrative itself is flawed. For example, Ke Fan's infatuation is really abrupt, and the characters lack internal transformation logic, which is a pity.