This film tells the story of an extramarital affair in a classic narrative mode. An ordinary housewife and a photographer accidentally met, then fell in love and separated.
This paper attempts to analyze the storytelling routine of movies from the perspective of narratology, which may help us understand the movies we will see later and make our own interpretation.
Routine 1: Three narratives.
One of the characteristics of the classic model is convention.
The narrative of classical structure always advances linearly in chronological order, maintaining the unity of purpose and the consistency of story development.
Ask questions at the beginning of the film to make the audience expect the film, and then describe the development and conflict of the problem in detail, gradually enhance the audience's appetite and raise the conflict to the peak. The conflict between men and women, or the pros and cons, has heated up and is heading for their own endings. And this ending, generally speaking, the audience can guess. This process is like a symphony, which starts first, then spreads, reaches its peak, erupts, and then slowly eases and enters the ending.
To put it another way, if a film is narrated in a classic mode, it will generally be divided into three acts, the first act is laid out, the second act is conflicted, and the third act is solved.
Generally speaking, the first scene is completed in 1/4, the second scene ends in 3/4, and the third scene occupies the last 1/4.
Sometimes when I watch a movie in the cinema, I will pay attention to the film scheduling time, but coincidentally, it is always around 1/4. The ending always starts around 1/4.
The first act is usually to explain the background, the characters begin to meet and the story begins to unfold. If the character is the protagonist, then the character, state and relationship shown in the first act will be completely opposite to that in the third act. If the story is the main theme, the first act will often explain the protagonist's event goal, why he pursues this goal, the difficulty of completing this event, and analyze all kinds of impossibilities. In a good film, the audience will inadvertently enter the film in various explanations, or guess the development of the plot, or analyze emotions, completely drawn by the role and expecting conflicts.
Full length of Bridges of Madison County 135 minutes. Francesca meets Robert in 17 minutes. After that, the woman followed the man's car, went to the covered bridge to make preparations before taking pictures, and then returned. 1/4 of the film is when Francesca invites Robert to have iced tea at home. This time should be regarded as the time when the woman has the idea of love for the man.
Francesca at the beginning and Francesca in the third act, although seemingly ordinary peasant women, have undergone tremendous changes in their feelings.
The conflict in the second act is the soul part of the film, and there is usually a turning point in the middle, which usually lives in 1/2 of the film. This is an important part of the film that complicates the plot, causes conflicts and deeply analyzes the characters' personalities. The audience is most concerned about this part, and the director's skill is displayed here. How to take the audience's emotions and meet their expectations is unexpected to the audience. Nervousness, panic, fear and sadness, the audience substitutes their own emotions in the plot, thus having a * * * sound with the role.
In the second act of this film, women and men fall in love, talk about Ye Zhi's poems, talk about their experiences in photography, date in bars and cook at home together. The following two screenshots were taken in the 99th minute, and the woman is ready to run away from home and elope with the man, which is exactly 3/4 of the film. Do you think this is a coincidence? Then, the farewell scene followed.
In the 67th minute of 1/2, Robert took a picture of Francesca on the covered bridge. And this photo is one of the important relics left for children. At that time, there was no sexual contact between men and women. Is this a turning point?
Act three, solve. If it is a romantic movie, there will be a happy ending here, or where you will go. If it is an action movie, the second act will end with the highest effort, and the two will start to scold each other, and then the third act will start and go to the final ending.
In this film, at the100th minute, the man and the woman ate their last meal, said goodbye, and the husband, son and daughter came back, and the woman re-entered her daily life. At the first11minute, Robert stood in the heavy rain and said goodbye to Francesca. Then there is a line, children's interpretation of their marriage.
Do you think the above syllogism analysis is reliable?
Now the dividing line between scenes is not so clear, and it will not be so timely, but it is generally the same. If you don't believe me, put on your watch next time you walk into the cinema.
Routine 2: Time element.
There is always an element of time in the film to increase the sense of rhythm, create a tense atmosphere for the development of the story, draw the audience's attention slightly from the conflict, and leave a little emotional gap for another kind of nervous mood. The time element of this film is four days. Francesca's husband took the children to an activity and went out for four days. Then Francesca's free time is only four days. The relationship with Robert is only four days.
Because it was only four days, on the first night, when I saw Francesca lose her temper and let Robert leave, I couldn't help worrying about their love. There are only four days left. Don't waste on quarrels and misunderstandings. And when their feelings are getting deeper and deeper, when I am immersed in their life is sweet, there are always four days of alarm bells there, approaching there hour by hour, adding anxiety and sadness to the sweetness. It is this rich emotion that forms the tension and beauty of the film.
The four-day time element is so important in the film. As you can imagine, without these four days, everything will be timely, the story will inevitably move towards a loose structure, the characters will become hesitant and the behavior will be delayed.
We can expand our thinking. In the movies we have seen, most of them use the time element. Captain Wolf Warrior 2 told Lengfeng how long he could only wait. "wrestling! Dad ",explained the game time. Needless to say, The Fast and the Furious used the time element to the extreme. Passengers will design the final explosion time of a spaceship and start the countdown.
Routine 3: The second line.
If there is only one love line in this film, it will be too monotonous, so the second line is specially added. The children's reading of their mother's diary triggered their reflection on their marital status.
It is by joining this second line that children think and ask questions instead of the audience, from extreme incomprehension and disapproval of their mothers to gradual understanding of their mothers, and then to reflection on their own marriage and making their own actions. The son went home and held his wife, determined to communicate well and live together. My daughter realized love and self-awakening from her mother's life and decided to divorce her husband and start a new life.
The use of the second line, "Titanic" is almost exactly the same as this, and it also started from Ruth's memories. Some films will talk about several love lines, in addition to the hero and heroine, they will also add a pair, which will cross in parallel.
In order to increase the entertainment of movies, a funny character is often added, such as Nate in Wolf Warrior 2 and Wrestling! Cousin in Dad and Liu Fei in Nirvana in Fire.
If you know this routine, when the characters in a movie get together, you can easily tell who is the main play and who is the joke.
Diamonds are attractive, of course, not only in appearance, but also in quality, just like the two leading men in the movie.
The Bridges of Madison County is an old story. It also analyzes its narrative, which is totally routine, but why did it capture so many audiences and still occupy the 250th place in the Top250 Douban film? The important reason is the appearance of the two protagonists and their wonderful interpretation in the play. Knowing each other for four days and falling in love for 40 years is an extramarital affair that has been repeatedly criticized, and it is a lightning extramarital affair. Because of the excellent performances of these two stars, they fully demonstrated the entanglement of desire and rational despair that love can't get, and let the audience fully understand the purity of their love and the impossibility of meeting again, thus generating sympathy and deep understanding for them.
Robert is played by 62-year-old Clint Eastwood. As early as 365,438+0 years ago, Clint Eastwood was famous for making a lot of money. Eight years ago, he was elected mayor of Carmel. Two years ago, he won the Oscar for Best Director.
Francesca is played by 36-year-old Meryl Streep. This film was released 1977 years ago, that is, when she became famous for her first film Julia. Since 1994, she has established her position in the world film industry.
Although The Bridges of Madison County is a narrative routine, I still want to watch it again because of the wonderful performances of the two protagonists. And many movies, especially American movies, can't escape this routine. If I refuse this routine movie, I also refuse many possibilities.