Cinemyths

事件“拼命”地在叙事中寻求发生；影像运动的生命力于其中被尽显。可以直观感受到的是，PTA在这里把庞杂的关系梳理成了一场交响曲；起落成序却不是悲欢和鸣（观众或许更希望见证的）。但这并不能成为过分求其成的指责。且另一方面，交响结构的模式在这里呈递了更深刻的方法论，作者竟真正完成了大部分可行性的展示，即情绪的强度具有代替时序承担关系牵引的可能。我们会发现，在《木兰花》中，时空往往在“等势”（这也就是为什么说PTA拥有精湛的叙事策略）的情感投射里自由游弋。而最终的结果是看似被时空制约的分立场地依然在划归“统一”的力量。更简洁来说，PTA在尝试为影像运动结构里的动能和势能找到相离的附着平面。而结尾不可思议的蛤蟆雨借助异质性地引入重新留出建构去综合两者关系的余地。

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Magnolia’s profuse dynamism is built with PTA’s attentive demand that things must take place and must take place in a telling form. Viewing the intricate interplay of the characters’ relationships is no less intriguing than beholding a majestic symphony, where the logic of rhythmical undulation is established yet accompanied by its subtle emotional articulation. The blatantly unresolved “final note” might boggle the mind of a doctrinaire who gets accustomed to the mainstream heroes’ immediate determination. But points taken, Magnolia’s quasi-synophonical structure effectively reveals itself as a deeper methodology.

Indeed, in a large portion of Magnolia, PTA has delved into proliferating psychological tensions that are not necessarily proportional to any objective bearing. The plot nonetheless develops reliably across diverse circumstances. In this respect, PTA manifests the potential of this kind of presumed strength that one becomes capable of replacing the actual temporality to write causality for relational buildup. Such is an innovative overtaking, which privileges the energetical transferability between scenes rather than the succession of time and space. As a consequential practice, we can see in Magnolia that several separate grounds have constituted an equipotential entity in togetherness, allowing their seamless alternation with one another and the presence of a kinetic union greater than any scrupulous form of cartographic planning.

PTA’s skill reveals itself accordingly, in his collecting of each scene’s essential register and then orchestrating their conformity. While as of today, it’s certainly no longer a moviegoer’s jargon that PTA is good at merging kinetic sequence and potential variety (One Battle after Another serves as the most conclusive evidence), the surreal rupture in Magnolia’s ending also indicates his deftness in disjoining the two matters, thus retaining the cognitive myth of things’ alignment.

—— 2024.09.05