Jessie is a CCTV monitor operator whose daily job is to face dozens of drama-free screens and, when she finds something unusual, to call the police near the place of occurrence. In this silent world of hers, a variety of not very interesting stories are played out every day: a middle-aged man with his bloated bulldog hanging out in a store window, a fat girl who likes to stand in the window and gawk, two young men having wild sex in the grass behind a wall, some high school girls stabbing their peers…After work, Jessie returns to her dead-end apartment, where the only “fun” is to pick out a few of the day’s videos and watch them again! She closed herself off in a corner of the world that no one knew about, until one day, a criminal on early parole appeared on the monitor, she seemed curious about this man, for whatever motive, she even began to go out of her way to get close to him. She found out that the man had moved into the “Red Road” apartment and followed him to.
About the influence of the Danish “Daugma 95”, the film camera is always in a strong mood of unrest, this zero distance scene also provides the audience with a subtle voyeuristic and participatory psychology, we follow Jessie’s “tracking” Clyde (the criminal) step by step closer to the wretched life – he and the same unemployed inmates and inmates from London girlfriend living together, three months did not find any work, the initiative to come to the door and repeatedly backed out of Jessie makes him very confused. Finally, one night, Jessie entered his apartment, the two made love intensely, but after she immediately got up and left, and then, the police came to the door to throw Clyde into prison again.
Clearly, it was Jessie who orchestrated the rape, but why did she do it? Until Clyde’s angry cellmates came to the door to question, we were able to solve the mystery: the original six years ago, it was Clyde a traffic accident caused the accidental death of Jessie’s husband and daughter, the accident completely destroyed Jessie’s beautiful life, but her thrilling revenge, but not to make its heart completely at peace. When she finds out that Clyde also has a daughter, she calls and drops the charges. The two met again in the cold street, she realized that he came to be just a fragile and ordinary man, her hatred, resentment and repression finally got dissolved.
The last shot of the film, Jessie met the man with the dog on the road, after his beloved pit bull died, he replaced it with a new, young and strong pet, Jessie happily greeted them, six years, this is the first time she took the initiative to greet people.
In fact, this is not just a story about revenge and redemption, it is fundamentally different from the Korean film on the same subject, “Kindly Gold”, which has a flashy legendary drama at its core, while “The Red Road” reveals the omnipresent communication barrier between people in modern life, as a strong symbol of the “monitor ” has this clear symbolic meaning of the communication divide. Although the film’s director, Andrea Arnold, had not made a feature film before, her debut film is a rare, cold and slow rendering of a heartbreaking journey of understanding, and the film won the Grand Jury Prize at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival in one fell swoop, which is indeed well deserved.
