This reading has delved into the realness of scenes presented.
Movie creates a world. If it is a world that imitates our real life, keeping the scenes real while maintaining the pace within 2 hours could be the most challenging part for both plot design and filming.
In The Way We Are (天水圍的日與夜), it describes a story that lasts for a decade in 2 hours. The movie subtly depicts the lapse of time through the transformation of lights upon time on the same architecture. Time is further visualised by letting the audience view Tin Shui Wai and architectures through the eyes of the main characters. We have never been to everywhere of Tin Shui Wai, but we could know so well about the time and space there through the fragmental yet authentic scenes in the movie. This is the art of balance, of which people could never really get into the real story and go through all the scenes one by one, but the highlights are just enough to present the whole picture on such a basis. Similar approaches such as multiple exposure photographs, which try to get themselves out of the constraint that only one single moment could be captured. Numerous layers are combined in one photo to show a movement.
I would say these are a kind of “revolution” of the creators, who are so ambitious that they intend and insist to compress and present the realness of scenes in different methods on the “fake” platforms. Movies and photographs are two “fake” platforms, which could never genuinely and flawlessly represent anything we have gone through in real life. Yet, the creators are just trying their very best to do so. It is a kind of revolution from “fake” to “real”. Although we are so immersed when watching the fragmental scenes in movie, the fragments keep reminding us it is just not real. So I indeed appreciate Empire (1964) which somehow arbitrarily yet authentically shows the realness of scenes.
By Amy Fu (UID: 3035779650)
I doubt that The Way We Are is a story that spans over a decade, but it certainly is longer than two hours. Ann Hui is known to be one of the masters of documenting the ordinary; “Repetition, private time, the unfolding of ordinary temporalities, the rhythm of the everyday” (2004, 88). With long shots of the actors and actress indulging in mundane activities in the city – “the rhythm of the city coincides with that of a person’s own internal clock […] This cinema represents place, minimally, as a subjective space, a mental state – an atmosphere.” (2004, 88). You may wish to cite your examples with closer reference to the text – the notion of time, long durée, temps mort, and “zero-degree” cinema.
It would be great if you could possibly elaborate more on you points in the second paragraph and their relevance to Bruno’s text. What is the “revolution from fake to real” you are talking about? What is the “fake platforms”?