Hit Man: Crossing the Outer Boundaries of Film

Hit Man: Crossing the Outer Boundaries of Film

It wasn't until the school's mock jury simulation that I vaguely remembered Gary's profession as a university teacher. Although this was mentioned in the opening scene, where he enthusiastically lectured on Nietzsche's philosophy of life (only to be mocked by his students), the movie almost ends on such a tempo, creating a contrast to its themes. However, the film unintentionally fails to show the personality changes between these two aspects because Gary’s role of a teacher is not prominent at the beginning of the movie. Instead, the prelude of the story focuses more on Gary's life as an undercover agent, even though American movies are not adept at portraying the rhythm of "daily life" as seen in Japanese films. In "Hit Man," the roles of a part-time killer, the courtroom, and university teaching still form a simple harmony. It is not until a real event disrupts this harmony (encountering and releasing the female protagonist, Madison) that "American cinema" makes its appearance and a resolute and transformative will slowly emerges. The story that remains after the shattered illusion at the end becomes the only means of solid and powerful plot development. Perhaps, this is the foundation of the movie's rhythm. In this sense, it is not a typical "rabbit hole movie." Gary does not subscribe steadfastly tohis regular life, but rather finds escape and eventually reshapes his life as a part-time undercover worker.

Gary (mentally) stands before the abyss... Before becoming a ‘performer’ (undercover agent who performs his various identities), he was first an “Obsessive”. The Obsessive is a modern escapist, just like Marx's theory of alienation—in modern society, workers cannot control their labor, assimilated by the modern apparatus connected by capitalism, and labor becomes a tedious, identical motion. Obsessives do not view labor negatively but have a fatal enthusiasm for it. Of course, this cannot be confused with the so-called "workaholic," but interestingly, they still go against the common logic of modern society, driving towards the margins of society together with their labor. Therefore, the film first narrates an obsessive, and the grafting of the creative labor of pretending to be a hitman with filmmaking is an inseparable but secondary attribute. There is no lack of praise for obsessives in modern works. Almost all of Herzog's films are about this, like the gold prospector in Aguirre, the Wrath of God and the bear cohabitant in Grizzly Man, as well as Bresson's ‘A Man Escaped and Pickpocket’, which contain this theme of prison escapees and marginal thieves. Hayao Miyazaki's ‘The Wind Rises’ is about an aircraft designer away from modern politics... For the film Hit Man, a plausible ending is replaced by a comedic one, but we can still easily imagine its ‘gray side’ (that ending of driving out of modern society).

" gary…ron…I get them mixed up sometimes. Do you?" Jasper bluntly exposes the façade of Gary’s role as Madison’s lover, or does he?. That's what a role playing ‘performance’ is. At times, the characters overlap, like those stories about soul swapping or body switching—the soul and body are talking simultaneously. Whose is it? The performer's or the actor's, or everyone's? The energy keeps rising at this moment. Gary (ron) is like a director mobilizing Matthysse, and the lighting also exposes itself, dramatically backlighting the characters' faces. Perhaps we don't need to separate who it is, just let the film maintain its mysterious shape. Hit Man offers many textual analysis and entry points, whether it's Freud, Lacan, Althusser, or American morality and deviant pornography. But what did Nietzsche and Freud provide for the film? Are they the keys to interpreting these fragments or the theoretical foundation, or are they like those fragments themselves, reflecting those mirrors but also participating in a cycle of mirror reflections, like symmetrically arranged hallway mirrors or those optical illusion games, or those Möbius strip shapes that form strange paradoxes? Abbas carefully named his new century film ‘Copie conforme’, hinting at just such an ostensible structure. Metafilms possess an up-and-down bouncing energy (like a reservoir), mesmerizing yet often arriving at being lost. Because this power is often not within the film itself—it surrounds the film, forming scattered parasitic vines. This is not a positive life force, unless one definitively states that we live in metafilms (Carax's Holy Motors makes such a declaration), with films cut into shattered mirrors all over the ground. All the reassembly is just monotonous agglutination, ultimately presenting a homogeneous reactive surface.

Hit Man remains the paucity of characters and the negativity of structure. Metafilm forces us to gaze outside of the film—perhaps the exterior is often negative, involving structure, hierarchy, systems, always associated with some repulsive vocabulary. This is not a negation of all plot dramas or relationship dramas. On the contrary, we can see how outstanding creators present the exterior of relationships as charming. For example, Hitchcock's films depict non-professional killers, so the execution relationships are not devoted to a unified exterior quality but oscillate between the characters—the killers, murderers, and innocents are constantly being imbued with charm. Meanwhile, Garrel places characters at the center of action, so the relationships are compressed between scene jumps. " L'Amant d'un jour" has a highly concrete and concise structure, with the daughter's appearance and the lover's disappearance, leaving only a lonely spinning star whose satellite has been taken away. The appearance and disappearance of characters constantly drives changes in the film's structure. They internalize relationships within the characters' attributes. Symbols and icons are interesting in this respect, providing a constantly shifting field and nurturing the eternal mystery belonging to cinema.

In some ways, a Hitman is undoubtedly skillful and powerful, like an experienced operator. Many creators in their middle and late years choose to showcase their skills, relying on a set of habitual paths. For them, especially those working within the industry, their art may no longer be a form of creation but a self-indulgent job. Are they still obsessives? Can those things still arouse their most primal interests? Or is the so-called fate of the creator to " found the proper cocktail of Gary and Ron."?

escrito por Orange