Sunday Surprise: dark beauty in green & red with dragons

I thought of calling this post “Entertaining the heart’s eye” because it’s the emotions that respond to this sort of (formal) care in detail — the film maker is fully conscious of such things, but the viewer’s mind’s eye is preoccupied with narrative (content) and barely notices them. That’s skillful means, that’s the artistry of the medium, that’s how we’re subliminally engaged and move, that’s how it’s done.

And if narrative is of any interest, as I suggested recently it should be, in terms of trategy, then “how it’s done” — with an emphasis on form rather than content — is key.

Okay, I had my six screencaps and the tale I’ve just told, and I thought that would be enough, tgether they would make a fine Sunday surprise for ZP. And i thoughy, maybe I can sit back and watch the rest of the film without having to constantly stop and start for screencaps, always a somewhat tedious process.

**

But then, as the film proper got under way, there was this shot of —

a deceased gangster in the dumpster, for all the world as if it was in one of those viewing coffins used for more warmly appreciated mobsters —

but again featuring the film’s characteristic coloring, green, oozing the dark, dark red of blood.

**

I was enjoying the film a great deal now, and sat back an allowed myself to move through it as, what, “the speed of film”? But I was in for another shock. There’s a narrative within the narrative, you see, a story told by one brother to the other — and as with all such matrioshka “plays within a play” it is the key to the whole. The elder brother explains to his younger sibling the nature of reality, of strength:

When I was six, my father took me far into the forest and left me there. Without food, without water. First two days, I cry and I cry. Then, I started to understand the beauty of forest. How big it was. How small I was.

Soon I come to road, truck take me home. Neither father or mother say anything to me. Not a word.

I loved them even more after that, because they show me how strong I can be.

**

That tale is what the movie is all about, and it is told in forest green.

The city is left behind, and in otherworldly green Steven tells Sonny this tale as an act of brotherly love —

as they are approaching the glade where Sonny’s love, Tina —

Page 2 of 3 | Previous page | Next page