Original link: https://imzm.im/barry/
Barry is already the first drama in my mind. From the first season of 2018 to the fourth season of 2023, each season has 8 episodes, and each episode is only 30 minutes long. But it’s such a small size. I started watching the first two episodes of the first season on June 25, and I couldn’t control it. I skipped all the other episodes I was chasing and watched the whole season in one go. It only took less than a week. However, this drama also brought me a strong stamina, like drinking a pot of strong wine, the depressive plot, the black humor and reversal beyond ordinary people’s acceptance are hard to slow people down.
Bill Hader Shi Xiaofang is the director, screenwriter and lead actor of this dark humor series, this guy is definitely a comedy/drama genius, I suspect he really has severe anxiety and schizophrenia symptoms, I don’t know what mental state he is writing in With such a script, several extremely twisted characters were created. The superb acting skills of the actors (a large number of close-to-face large aperture close-focus lenses reflect the rich emotional ups and downs of the characters), the script full of dramatic tension, smart editing (often switching scenes and narratives in unexpected places is very reasonable), photography ( I am fascinated by a large number of fixed empty shots, tracking perspectives and panning shots, so that the film is often pulled repeatedly), camera angles, and long shots of the soul. The setting of a play within a play is the core of this play, and the core is the masks collector (masks collector) and the famous monologue in “Macbeth”:
To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow, Creeps in this petty pace from day to day, To the last syllable of recorded time; And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle! Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player That struts and frets his hour upon the stage And then is heard no more. It is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury Signifying nothing.
There have been many stories of veterans adapting to modern society, such as the most successful First Blood No. 1, which is a seriously underestimated humanities film. Rambo in the first part did not kill the Quartet as he did later, but as an individual retired soldier, he confronted the bureaucrats in the modern jungle, and then confronted the warlords in the primitive jungle. This template was applied several times in later movies, and many excellent works were born.
It should be the first time for Barry to combine the two unrelated occupations of veterans and theater actors, resulting in an absurd, humorous and twisted plot, but it is not lacking in its rationality, and can even be interpreted in a deeper level. life issues. For example, the entire series discusses a core question from beginning to end: Can a person completely escape from his past and open up a future unfettered? The answer is obviously no. Immediately after this issue is another issue: if he cannot completely get rid of the past, can he have two social identities without interfering with each other at the same time?
*The following content is almost completely spoiled*
Bill Hader expresses both in a very darkly humorous way. A certain identity of a person will definitely affect another identity from one or more angles to varying degrees, and the opposite is also true. Barry, who had just retired from the Marine Corps, couldn’t find his place in society and suffered from severe anxiety, so he could only rely on the support and help of his uncle Fuches to take on private jobs for killers. Until one time he stumbled into a theater in Los Angeles, met his mentor Cousineau and his lover Sally, and started another life for him.
I would like to add that the acting skills of several main characters in the play are quite superb, and even completely overwhelm Bill’s performance in some episodes. Compared with ordinary characters, these roles have a difficulty. In addition to acting in a play, they also have to perform performances that are not good at acting and performances that are inspired to act. In some plots, they need to deceive the audience and convince the audience. This requirement It’s no small challenge for any actor, and the show’s main cast pull it off perfectly. Because if the performance is not in place, once the audience plays, it will be a fatal blow to the performance of the drama.
In this series, almost all the main characters have two faces. A veteran who thinks he is kind, a third-tier star who thinks he has top acting skills, a clown who thinks he can strategize, and a clumsy actor who thinks he is a master of acting. In the finale, the other three characters finally tore off their masks, revealed their true colors, and achieved a (relatively) good death. Barry, on the other hand, lived his entire life behind the mask for so long that he thought the mask was his true self, and had a tragic end.
In the play, Barry has many moments of making choices, and every choice he makes pushes him into a deeper abyss. In the first and second seasons, he repeated “Starting, now” several times after making a choice. In the last season, he knelt in front of his former friends and cried bitterly, always making wrong choices. His fate was doomed in his first Starting now, and the later choices were just a footnote for his tragic ending. Barry always thinks he is a kind person. Whenever he kills someone close to him or an innocent person, he will always say to the other party: “Please, don’t do this”. Later, he kidnapped Cousineau and gave him Looking for a script, saying “I love you, you know that right?” to his son while threatening his life, is not only a reflection of his hypocritical nature, but also the source of his twisting. While trying to keep his secrets from being discovered, Barry “protected” him by kidnapping and threatening people close to him, just like using his identity as a theater actor to cover up his identity as a perverted killer, so Barry has never been courted.
Teacher Cousineau is the core character of the main storyline. He is Barry’s second life mentor, and at the same time Barry is his worst enemy, which makes the interaction and identity transformation between the two characters full of drama. In the first season, Counsineau discovered Barry’s “(actually non-existent) acting talent”, which made Barry grateful. But things are unpredictable. Barry’s inner monologue to Cousineau’s “interview” is a true story. After Cousineau retells the monologue, he is keenly noticed by Cousineau’s girlfriend, the police detective Moss. Barry killed Moss in order to prevent his identity from being exposed, and Barry began to twist since then, which was also the first time “Starting now” appeared. After Cousineau learned that Moss was killed by Barry, he tried his best to avenge his girlfriend, but he couldn’t do it because he was too weak. At the end of the fourth season, the conditions for Cousineau to be able to achieve anti-killing are based on the fact that Barry has let go of his guard and is ready to take responsibility for killing Moss, and after Cousineau loses the opportunity to make the story between him and Barry into a movie. By the way, it is also a great irony that Cousineau played Barry for two full seasons, almost the most successful performance of his failed career, but was finally played by a former student actor of his own.
In addition to the main line, there are several branch lines, namely the drug lord gangster line and the Sally line, interspersed with several other charming characters: Barry’s uncle Fuches, Chechen gangster Noho Hank and his gay lover drug lord Cristobal. Fuches and Barry fell in love and killed each other, experienced various betrayals, betrayals, and reconciliations in the four seasons, and finally ended the pull at the last moment. Fuches, a character that people love and hate, is extremely full, as if it is the other side of Barry. The love story of Noho and Cristobal is touching, but each has a tragic ending, one is executed by his lover’s own orders, and the other dies because he cannot face the reality of killing his lover.
The one with the best ending is Sally, the most annoying character at the beginning. Selfishness, jealousy, violent emotions, lack of empathy, arrogance without self-knowledge, lack of respect, almost aggregate and magnify all the shortcomings of an ordinary person. However, such a character has experienced the struggles of four seasons. After suffering from schizophrenia in the fourth season, she no longer became hysterical. best ending. Sally accepted her fate peacefully at the end of the episode, telling her son about the past and apologizing to him. At this time, the son is a blurred foreground and back, and the hug to Sally at the end is also an expression of Sally’s reconciliation with herself. The irony is that after Sally accepted her inevitable fate, she escaped her fate dramatically and went to a different life. I think this is also a kind of black humor that Bill Hader wants to express.
Apart from the script and acting skills, what Barry attracts me the most is editing, photography, and camera scheduling. The video appeared in different places at the beginning of each episode. The most impressive one was the appearance of Sally’s ex in one episode. The three exchanged greetings. The ex called Barry’s name by mistake. Barry corrected: “My name is …” Suddenly a big red popped up The opening title says BARRY , accompanied by the ancestral opening title song, which is full of joy, and then stops abruptly and returns to the story in less than a section. Such a design is particularly eye-catching, and therefore the complete opening song will never be heard.
In terms of photography, the series has worked hard, because there is a play within a play, so you can see that there are many filming methods related to drama in the play. The most obvious is that a close-up shot hits the actor’s face for several minutes, after a long monologue, and then turns to the audience. This kind of photography is a great test for the actors and a great enjoyment for the audience. This shooting technique makes it easy for the audience to get into the mood of a play within a play. When the actors in a play within a play finish their performance, they will wake up like the audience in the play, and then wake up again after watching this episode. This experience is unprecedented.
In terms of camera scheduling, the main creator should have referred to many old movies and modern game scenes. There are many plots in the play. First, an empty shot is given, then actors or other objects enter, and then the camera moves slowly with people or things, and then connects to other people or things. I don’t know what this technique of expression is called professionally, but the special thing about Barry is that the empty shot before the camera starts, which will present a unique sense of surrealism, which is especially obvious in the third season.
There are also many descriptions of characters, plots, and film/drama history in the play, which cannot be further explored due to lack of talent and learning. Obviously Barry isn’t a show for everyone, but it’s definitely mine.
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