How did MEL Gibson convince you of the truth of the story in four slow motion shots?

Hacksaw Ridge is out, and despite the recent release of a number of blockbusters, the movie is still in theaters, and the box office is still growing.

To be honest, watching this movie, a lot of social members were scared by the war scenes, but they still asked me when to talk about this movie.

Scanning a circle of articles, Forrest Gump found that said this film, either in the true history, or in praise of special effects shots.

"Hacksaw Ridge," from my point of view, is a very formal American hero movie, and of course it's a Oscars movie -- real people, biography, the main message.

It does not break away from the classic hero story structure of "call, trial, adventure, trial, rebirth, triumph".

The special effects scenes, which are the icing on the cake of the film, are not revolutionary overflights.

So why do so many people find Hacksaw Ridge so refreshing?

Why?

Because the hero of Hacksaw Ridge, Dawes, is so different from the hot-blooded heroes of the past who killed bad guys.

He never touched a gun, never killed anyone, and saved 75 lives by going into enemy territory without a companion or using any weapon.

So that many people can not help but praise: Nima, the hero does not rely on the fist to speak! By faith!

What is faith?

Faith is a relatively "virtual" element that is not easy to be shown in movies.

The most common expression of faith in Hollywood superhero films is to objectify it as a super power. For example, Rogers, the hero of Captain America, gets his super power through painful body modification out of his loyalty to his country and his sense of duty as a soldier.

So the faith embodied by Captain America Rogers is loyalty and duty. Superpowers symbolize some kind of faith, which makes sense, but in real life, no one has superpowers like Captain America.

Dawes in Hacksaw Ridge, however, is a real person. He has no scientists or aliens to transform his body, no master to teach him magic, and even though Dawes is extremely religious, God never shows up in his life.

What about his faith as an ordinary man?

MEL Gibson does this conviction so convincingly that he takes only four slow-motion shots of his protagonist's conviction.

Dawes' beliefs are simple -- go to war as a medic, save lives, don't kill people, don't touch guns. Now let's analyze how these four slow-motion lenses explain the formation process of Dawes' belief:

First slow motion: soil

Dawes fought with his brother when he was a kid, knocked him unconscious with a brick, and he was intimidated by his own behavior.

In slow motion, Dawes walks slowly into the room from his childhood. The focus of the first half of the scene is Dawes' stunned expression.

When one is in shock, time becomes thick and slow. The world around us is isolated by a transparent wall. Even the voice of the people around us seems distant.

Slow motion is perfect for showing this mental process.

Dawes walked slowly into the back room as his father's voice played in the background: Look what you've done. I'm going to kick your ass!

But he ignored his father and kept staring at the wall. The camera then cut to a picture on the wall with commandments written on it.

Following Dawes's gaze, the camera stops on the belief that killing is sinful.

The viewer learns that Dawes's inner guilt is probably more powerful than his father's rage, so he ignores his father's threats.

Dawes' self-sin and his father's punishment completely present an ever-new drama conflict: crime and punishment

At this moment, the mother appears and persuades the angry father to leave. At the same time, she tries to remove Dawes' sense of self-guilt. The slow motion stops here, symbolizing that the mother solves Dawes' self-guilt psychological state with forgiveness.

In five minutes of slow motion, MEL Gibson throws out the two propositions of "murder is guilty" and "forgiveness".

If Dawes chose "murder and guilt", then the enemy who killed his companions on the battlefield was undoubtedly a more guilty sinner than himself. He killed these people, and his father beat him for it, and deserved it.

If Dawes chooses to forgive, then even the enemy who kills his comrades on the battlefield is still a life to save if he is wounded.

This antithetical force is precisely the ground for "saving lives" belief, depending on which way Dawes chooses.

Second slow motion: catalyst

The moral of the second slow motion is much more subtle than the first slow motion.

As a grown man, Dawes successfully used a belt as a tourniquet to administer first aid to a repairman who had ruptured an artery in his leg. When he arrived at the hospital, the doctor praised Dawes, "Well done. You saved his life."

Dawes was stunned by the praise, and MEL Gibson still used slow motion to show Dawes's facial expressions.

Dawes looked around at the injured patients, the busy doctors and nurses, the white coats and nurse's uniforms... Different from the childhood panic, this time Dawes expression, more scrutiny and thinking.

"Can I save people too?" That was the question in Dawes's mind.

"You saved his life," was the encouragement from the doctor,

Dawes's early family life was overshadowed by his alcoholic, violent father, one of his previous managers. He and his brother have not studied for many years and now work in a paper mill.

"Can I really save people?"

Dawes' eyes finally stopped on a nurse's face outside the glass window.

The angel in white was Dorothy Shute, Dawes's future wife.

If the encouragement of the doctor is the first affirmation of "saving lives", the feeling of love at first sight is the second encouragement of Daos.

These two encouragement, let Dawes a step closer to "forgiveness".

Third slow motion: Trial

Dawes joined the army and was court-martialed for refusing to hold a gun.

No matter the squad leader or the sergeant, the soldier who has no fighting power is considered a liability in the field.

They gave Dawes an ultimatum to plead guilty and be dismissed from the team, or plead guilty and be sent to jail.

This time in slow motion, it started when Dawes entered the courtroom and ended when Dawes entered his plea of not guilty.

The footage of the trial and the slow-motion footage of Dawes after he stuns his brother as a child have a very similar core -- crime and punishment.

Dawes' crime as a child was that he almost killed his brother. It was his father who punished him.

Adult Dawes's "sin" is sticking to his own belief, to "punish" him is the collective.

Dawes looked down at his feet, walking step by step toward the judge.

Dawes looked up and saw the men he had trained with as accusers.

From the beating of his heart, Forrest Gump knew that this scene was all about Dawes's own inner state.

Look at the foot, meaning Dawes thinking about his choice - the road is their own choice.

Looking at his comrades, it means that Dawes is looking at the collective will he is facing -- is it wrong if the collective will decides that he is wrong? Do you want to stick to what you believe in?

Dawes saluted the judge earnestly, and when the judge slouched back, he sighed and whispered in the lawyer's ear, and the lawyer looked surprised. Dawes chose to plead not guilty, that is, to stand alone against the collective will.

The "sin" of Dawes in his childhood was that he almost accidentally killed his brother. Dawes believed that he was guilty because of external commandments -- God said "murder is sinful"; Adult Dawes's "sin" is sticking to his faith. Adult Dawes does not think he is guilty. The outer precepts are finally internalized into inner beliefs: God says "murder is sinful", and I will "save life".

Fourth slow motion: Done

After a battle baptism, Hacksaw Ridge was taken, and Dawes, shot in the leg, was sent down Hacksaw Ridge in a hammock, Bible in hand. MEL Gibson uses slow motion again here.

Dawes's relaxed expression, as if to tell the audience that his conviction has been achieved.

The shot slowly changes from depression Angle to elevation Angle, but the composition remains stable in the shape of a cross.

MEL Gibson's message to the audience is clear -- Dawes's faith is inseparable from his own.

With the sun shining on Dawes and the smoke of the battlefield in the background, MEL Gibson is no longer photographing an ordinary soldier, but a religious man, even a saint.

But even for non-believers, the sight of Dawes, who has single-handedly rescued 75 men on the battlefield, will not be too disconcerting.

In four slow-motion shots, the director fully foreshadows and renders the shaping process of Dawes' belief, and finally lands it. But why did he have to use slow motion?

Slow shot is like a director's thought blank: film is the language of images. When expressing the inner mind of characters, Forrest Gump always thinks that directors who use narration are lazy. A good director can create atmosphere and hint the audience through actors' performance, lighting, environment, sound and other audiovisual effects.

In a normal timeline, the viewer captures the atmosphere and is immediately carried along to the next scene. When the time line is lengthened by slow motion, the audience can better immerse themselves in the atmosphere created by the director and come to their own thinking.

"Hacksaw Ridge" protagonist Dao Ge, is a devout Christian, he has the habit of praying, the film usually shows the way to pray, is to film a person with hands clenched fists against the forehead, mumbling a wish.

This is a ritual prayer. But most Christians live by the habit of "praying to God in their hearts whenever and wherever possible".

In contrast to "ritual" prayer, it is difficult to visualize prayer anywhere and anytime.

MEL Gibson wanted to convey the glow of faith in Dawg, and his way of doing so was to show in slow motion a semi-trance in which Dawes appears to be in a state of mental stagnation but is actually in a state of silent prayer.

I think directors use slow motion for two purposes:

1, elongate the time, highlight the performance of the actors, play the effect of emotional rendering or achieve a certain moral

2, used in action scenes, to make the fighting effect more cool

The four slow-motion shots analyzed above basically belong to Objective 1.

Many of the beautiful slow-motion shots Forrest Gump remembers are actually goal 2.

Take, for example, the Matrix:

In terms of the use of slow motion, I have to mention Hong Kong director John Woo, whose violent aesthetics cannot be divorced from this:

Such a marvelous use of slow motion, in many movies have, free, Xiaobian to talk to you.