Traditional Culture Encyclopedia - Traditional festivals - 'The Aviator': a lonely soul saves itself behind a gorgeous narrative chapter

'The Aviator': a lonely soul saves itself behind a gorgeous narrative chapter

In February 2020, the 92nd Oscars were announced, and The Irishman, which was nominated for nine awards, failed to win. The Irishman, however, has been hailed as the "cold movie of the year" and has brought Martin Scorsese back into the public eye. As an internationally acclaimed director, Scorsese has made almost every film a classic, but his unique approach of focusing more on marginalized characters has led to most of his works becoming niche films, The Aviator, released in 2004, being one of them.

The film The Aviator is a drama film directed by Martin Scorsese and starring well-known Hollywood actors Leonardo DiCaprio, Cate Blanchett and Kate Beckinsale. In the same year, the movie won Scorsese Best Director at the 77th Academy Awards and Best Director at the 62nd Golden Globe Awards, and has won many prestigious awards internationally. The movie has been in theaters for more than ten years now, but the Douban rating is still maintained at 8.1 points, and its classic is thus evident.

The storyline of the movie is very simple, focusing on the legendary experience of Howard Hughes, a mega-rich American. The director focuses on the early life of Hughes and his love of flying, using his dream as an entry point and showing the narrative from two threads: career and marriage, thus describing his struggle and the romance of many legendary Hollywood actresses.

For this movie, the theme of "chasing a dream" is obvious, including its title, "The Aviator," which makes clear the hero's ambition to take to the skies. But beyond the theme of dreams, I also saw the directing skills of ace American director Martin Scorsese. The movie, as one of Martin Scorsese's masterpieces, is hidden among his many excellent works, making it a niche and highly rated cold movie. So today we might as well change the angle, combined with Martin Scorsese's creative approach and thinking to dig the charm of the movie "The Aviator", so in this article I will be from the creative approach, visual art, thematic connotation and the value of the embodiment of the four perspectives of this movie to interpret the deeper meaning and thinking.

Throughout Scorsese's films, the protagonists of his works may come from different social strata, but they are invariably marginalized characters who are y disturbed by the spirit. The director used the narrative technique of going deep into the hidden world of the characters, focusing the camera on all kinds of characters with mental problems, and revealing the state of modern people's existence with a small view of the big picture.

First of all, reflecting the reality from the psychological point of view, showing the causes of the main character's psychological problems, to see the big picture in a small way

The movie The Aviator opens with a young boy, Hugh Hughes, standing in the bathtub, being bathed by his mother, and the narrative begins. The narrative unfolds. The mother repeatedly tells Hughes that there is a cholera outbreak outside and that it is not safe. Under his mother's instruction, Hughes closes himself off from the outside world, refusing to make contact with the outside world and always hiding inside his house to work on dismantling machinery and research. His childhood experiences left Hughes with psychological problems.

As an adult, despite Hughes's ambition, he is described in detail throughout the film as a hygienist, constantly washing his hands, refusing to allow the waiter to open bottles for him, and reluctant to shake hands with others. With Scorsese's plotting, the audience learns that a lonely, fearful heart lurks behind Hughes' neurosis, bringing the audience closer to the character and capturing their attention.

In An Introduction to Psychoanalysis, Freud stated that

The movie The Aviator is precisely the role of its humanistic concern to the extreme: Hughes is suffering from a lifelong lack of security due to the seeds of insecurity planted by his mother's childhood, and can only appease himself through obsessive-compulsive behavior. Despite the fact that he is a wealthy man, his heart is like every ordinary person in the modern society, his spiritual home is facing great challenges. Through the movie, the director looks at Hughes' psychological problems and presents the mental state of modern people. The irrational behavior of Hughes in the film can sound a siren in the viewer's heart, making the viewer reflect on his daily behavior and focus on the needs of the spiritual world.

Secondly, the loose narrative rhythm strengthens the characters' personalities and contradictions, and a large number of loose events accumulate emotional outbreaks

Scorsese's films favored a loose narrative rhythm, with narrative clusters linking up to form a completed narrative chain, and the individual plot fragments have their own themes and are independent of each other, eventually piecing together a chain of events. Each piece of the plot has its own theme and is independent of the other, and ultimately, the pieces fit together to form a complete story.

For example, in The Aviator, the movie opens with a story about the causes of Hughes's psychological problems, and then cuts to his adult experience of making movies. Hughes goes through three twists and turns in making the movie, each with its own conflicts and cracks, and instead of bridging the plot with causality, the director gives each episode its own centripetal nature. Afterwards, Hughes moved from making movies to developing airplanes, acquiring airlines, and so on, and each piece of the story continued to be listed, accumulated, and linked into a complete narrative chain.

In my opinion, taking the experience of Hughes, the hero of the movie, as an example, it is because of the hidden psychological problems buried in his childhood, so his heart longs for strength, and he pursues perfection and extremity in both his life and his career, and that is why he has had setbacks and conflicts over and over again. And each conflict gradually aggravates his inner insecurity, leading to the worsening of his neurosis. Director Scorsese uses the accumulation of a large number of loose incidents to gradually push the character into extreme situations, resulting in his emotional outbursts.

Overall, the movie's loose plot has a hidden logic behind it, and the scattered fragments continue to build up emotionally, pushing the characters to explode emotionally. This is the first time that a movie has been released in the United States, and it is the first time that a movie has been released in the United States, and it is the first time that a movie has been released in the United States, and it is the first time that a movie has been released in the United States, and it is the first time that a movie has been released in the United States.

The movie "The Aviator" Howard Hughes character image is so y rooted in the hearts of people, Scorsese's superb directing ability is indispensable. He is good at expanding the language of film, using a unique visual language to show the inner world of the protagonist, portraying vivid and vivid characters.

① Lens language: using subjective lenses to show the inner world of the characters, and close-ups to highlight the mental state of the characters

In the later stages of the movie, Hughes' neurosis became increasingly serious, and he even produced imagery and hallucinations. At one point, when Hughes is discussing his work with an employee, the director uses a subjective camera to show Hughes' perspective, through which we can see a sneaky figure wearing white gloves staring at Hughes, and then a group of white-gloved figures pressing in. At this point, through the close-ups, we can see the anxious tension on Hughes' face.

But then the scene shifts, and we see Hughes asking his employee Noah if he's one of them, and the employee looks in Hughes' direction, and the scene switches to a close-up of Noah and the nearby employees, rather than the suspicious characters in Hughes' eyes. This is proof enough that the group of suspicious characters existed only in Hughes' imagination from start to finish, suggesting a mental state on the verge of collapse.

The director uses a combination of subjective and close-up lenses to present Hughes's state of mind. The subjective lenses show Hughes's imaginative world, illustrating his inner turmoil, and then the close-ups of the supporting characters assist in presenting the real world, highlighting the absurdity of the imaginary world, and then the close-ups of the main characters visually express their inner fear and anxiety. anxiety. In this way, the audience can follow the camera to experience the inner emotions of the characters and feel their struggles and helplessness.

② color rendering: the use of color gradient as a metaphor for the protagonist's increasing mental illness

Scorsese used color as an adverb of degree, and through the gradual change of color, the protagonist's mental outlook is set off gradually. At the beginning of the film, at the peak of Hughes' career, the film adopts cheerful and vivid colors to set off his positive state of mind:

However, as Hughes's neurosis becomes more serious, the red color of the film gradually turns to darker colors:

Scorcese skillfully uses the shades and areas of colors to render the character's state of mind:

Scorcese uses colors as adverbs of degree. to render the characters' mental states. The unconventional colors exaggerate the process of disintegration and collapse of the character's inner world, which is highly expressive. This treatment can make the transformation of the movie characters traceable, guide the audience to immerse in the inner world of the characters, draw the distance between the two and cause the audience to think.

Transcending oneself and chasing one's dreams have always been the common narrative theme of all Scorsese's works. The movie "The Aviator" adheres to Scorsese's consistent narrative theme, and the director depicts Hughes's legendary life with big scenes and big productions, and portrays a character who constantly meets the challenges of destiny, precisely in order to elaborate on the core theme of chasing dreams.

Scorsese himself once said,

Taking the movie The Aviator as an example, Hughes inherited a large inheritance from his parents in adulthood, and could have lived a life of peace and security, but he chose to take the plunge and make a movie at his own expense. The movie spends a great deal of time talking about the challenges Hughes encountered in making the movie, which seems irrelevant to the title of the movie, The Aviator. But through Hughes's words, we understand what the director meant by this.

Hughes once told a media relations manager,

a statement that reveals the impetus for all of Hughes's behavior, which was to gain a foothold in the Hollywood of dreaming. As an outsider to dream-maker Hollywood, Hughes scrambled to make epic war movies to gain recognition so that he could realize and experience his dream of flight with all his might, unfettered by the very dream-chasing theme Scorsese was trying to convey.

The movie follows Hughes from his earliest days:

Throughout his life, Hughes has made movies about aerial combat, designed and test-flown airplanes, and purchased TWA and turned it around - all of these seemingly disparate and unrelated things, but none of them are related to "flight. "But they all had something to do with flying, and at the same time they each corresponded to one of Hughes's three dreams. Overall, Hughes's pursuit of his dream is the central theme of the movie, and it serves as the spiritual core of the movie, linking Hughes's life closely together and building a logical and smooth narrative framework for the movie.

In addition to the unique filming techniques and the eternal dream theme, I think the value of Scorsese's direction is also worth exploring. With the rapid economic development of the times, people's spiritual home is also facing serious challenges, the movie "The Aviator" demonstrates the theme of pursuing the dream at the same time also reflects the main character's mental state of suffering, profoundly exposes the common diseases of the modern people, and has a certain value significance.

First, the social value: anti-hero image close to life, thought-provoking

The movie "The Aviator", the main character, Hughes, has a lot of money, and has made great achievements in the movie industry and the aviation industry, which is a high character image according to the reason. However, under Scorsese's lens, we can see that Hughes, who suffers from neurosis, is just an ordinary man suffering from a disease.

Unlike Hollywood's traditional heroes, Hughes is not perfect; he has fatal flaws and vulnerabilities. This kind of anti-hero image is closer to life, thus bringing the audience closer to the protagonist and prompting them to identify with him.

In my opinion, the gradual deepening of Hughes' neurosis is a true reflection of how modern people gradually lose themselves in a complicated world. Scorsese's magnificent story of the protagonist's mental alienation allows the viewer to reflect Hughes' mental state and life experiences into his own reality, thus realizing his own mental distress and reflecting on himself.

Secondly, the value of viewing: revealing the inner world of the protagonist captures the audience's emotions and arouses ****songs

Scorsese focuses on deconstructing the protagonist's spirituality during the creative process and focuses on the audience's participation. While providing the audience with a visual feast, he also gives the audience the shock and touch of the heart, injecting ornamental and aesthetic value into his works.

For example, in the movie "The Aviator" about Hughes and Hepburn's family to meet the scene, the director did not intentionally describe the conflict between the two, but to fractured fragments presented to reflect Hughes in the face of this big family out of place. This includes the flirting between Hepburn and her ex-husband, the bloody cutting of raw beef, the Hepburn family's expressed disdain for money, and so on, culminating in Hughes blurting out, "You don't care about money because you don't need it." This statement shattered what had seemed to be a cordial atmosphere and turned the mood into one of gravity.

In the director's camera, the audience can easily relate to Hughes' words. After a series of previous shots and scenes, combined with Hughes' spot-on commentary, the audience can appreciate the antagonistic situation between the two. Scorsese's ability to express himself through the accumulation of visual impact and arouse strong emotional ****, this is undoubtedly not one of the highlights of his work.

The movie "The Aviator" is a profoundly classic film that shows the legendary life of 20th century tycoon Howard Hughes chasing his dreams. In my opinion, in addition to the distinctive theme of chasing dreams, its storyline, visual design, and profound social connotations are all worth savoring and exploring.

The director presents a magnificent blueprint of destiny for the audience, digs deep into the vulnerable and lonely inner world of the protagonist, and pushes the audience to think about their lives with the movie, and leads the audience to complete a self-redemption in the movie, which is the classic of the movies of director Martin Scorsese. Welcome to follow @FirstSeeCaviar

  • Related articles

copyright 2024 Traditional Culture Encyclopedia All rights reserved