Film Criticism in The City of Sylvia

Viewers who have not been baptized by long shots may find it boring to see a movie in Sylvia City for the first time. Those endless long shots have neither Hou Hsiao-hsien's homesickness nor Ozu's eloquence, nor Tarkovsky's philosophy of survival. On the contrary, there is a fledgling director who follows those long-shot masters like a toddler. Occasionally, it seems to challenge the endurance of the audience. If you watch this movie in the cinema, you may really fall asleep. If you watch it at home, you may fast forward to the end with one button. Therefore, viewers who decide to watch this movie at home must hide the remote control. If you really want to fast-forward the film, it will probably not exceed five minutes, because the story of the whole film is extremely simple. A handsome boy went to a strange city to find a girl named Sylvia. In an outdoor cafe, he noticed a girl in a red skirt and followed her all the way. When asked if the result is right, the handsome guy is at a loss and may continue to look for it. The film lasts one hour and twenty minutes. Although the director set the story in about three days and marked it in the film, this time division is of little significance to the film, and it is clearer to divide it according to the story. This film can be roughly divided into four parts. In the first part, the handsome guy sits in an open-air cafe, doodling in his notebook and looking for girls everywhere. This scene was filmed for nearly half an hour. In the second part, the handsome boy seems to have found a girl and walked with her for more than twenty minutes. In the third part, the handsome boy followed the girl on the bus and chatted with her. The girl asked the handsome boy why he followed her, and the handsome boy explained the reason. After talking for less than ten minutes, we went our separate ways. In the remaining 20 minutes of the film, the handsome guy wandered around the city and was at a loss. After reading its storyline, many people may wonder whether it is a movie or not. In fact, there is no doubt that there is a movie called Minimalism, and its basic structure is roughly the same. When it comes to this kind of movies, many people think of experimental films. Indeed, minimalist films were originally part of experimental films, but few people applied them to feature films. One of the most famous is Gus Van Sant, the director of The Elephant. His film Gary is a model of minimalist movies. Gary's story is simpler, like a cold joke: two people got lost in the desert, so they walked and walked, and finally got out of the desert. There is also the translation of the movie "Gary", "Rogue Wandering in the Desert". Although the word "wandering" doesn't fit the mood of the two protagonists in the photo, the translated title sums up the story of the film well. Later, gus van sant's films always showed obvious minimalism, which eventually became the style symbol of his films. In Elephant, the camera takes two high school boys around the campus. In the last days, the camera wandered around the Woods with the singer Ke Ben for ten minutes until the audience began to get bored. In Silvia City, the film was obviously influenced by gus van sant, especially in the part where a handsome guy followed a girl. The girl was shot from behind, much like the follow-up scenes in The Elephant and The Last Days, but not as unique as the one in gus van sant. It replaces the long shots in gus van sant with short shots that are continuously cut, thus enhancing the appreciation. This film is actually very interesting if I'm not so afraid of long shots. Although the film has a simple plot and a slow pace, it is still worth savoring after watching it. Quiet town, maze-like streets, men and women chatting in open-air cafes, the tram that occasionally shuttles through the town, the beautiful heroine in a red skirt walking leisurely through the street, and the preoccupied appearance of the hero from beginning to end all come to my mind, so the more I think about it, the more I feel that the movie is not so simple, and it seems that there is really a feeling that the elephant is invisible and full of people. The film does not explain the relationship between the handsome boy and Sylvia, or even why the handsome boy suddenly came to this town to look for her, nor does it give any special explanation. The simple explanation is that a few years ago, the handsome boy met Sylvia and her friends in a bar in another city. A few years later, the handsome boy came to this town to look for Sylvia. In fact, the theme of "seeking" often appears in movies and seems to be a motif of movies. According to the different goals, the theme of the film is also different. In this film, it is obviously looking for "love". Although there is no clear explanation in the film, it can be clearly felt from the atmosphere of the film and the expression of the hero that the handsome guy loves Sylvia. As for the story of him and Sylvia in the bar a few years ago, it is not so important. Maybe this is a beautiful agreement, just like the beautiful agreement between Gianna Jun and Che Taixian in My Wild Girlfriend. Looking, tracking, confession, disappointment, and continuing to look, this process seems to be the epitome of all stages of love. I think of the "three realms" that Wang Guowei must go through in Wonderland on Earth, and it seems reasonable to use it on the road of love, but the order of the three realms is different. In the first film, when the handsome guy was looking for a girl in a coffee shop, he looked for it for so long and couldn't find it. The figure of the girl in red is in the window glass behind the handsome guy, which really has the artistic conception of "looking for him for thousands of times, and suddenly looking back, the man is in the dim light". In the second part of the film, the handsome guy follows the girl along the maze-like town street, and occasionally loses her and anxiously looks for her again, but there is also a kind of helplessness that "the belt gradually widens and eventually he doesn't regret it, and people are haggard for Iraq". In the third and fourth films, the handsome guy confessed to the girls, and the results were not satisfactory. Handsome guys wander around the city in disappointment, just because there is a desolation that "the west wind withered the green trees last night, and the tall building looked at the horizon alone". Presumably, finding love is also a kind of "great cause and great question", which is just the opposite of the general process of "great cause and great question". The general process of Great Cause and University Question is from scratch, while love is from scratch.