Why do we love Wes Anderson's films so much? This is a particularly difficult question to answer.
Afraid of the lack of his own language, he is not qualified to describe the exquisite picture composition and color in his films, and shallow the deep meaning and feelings behind the exquisite scenes in his pictures. So the color palette, the symmetrical composition, the photographic angles, and the fairy tale-like story, these are some fragments of his work, which are taken out and said.
The Great Fox Daddy
《Grand Budapest Hotel》
But how to mix these together to create the beauty and sorrow, warmth and pain that are exclusive to Anderson's films is like a mysterious incantation that is difficult to tell.
His latest stop-motion animation "Isle of Dogs" is also such a movie, the details can not be faulted, the music and colors are also very enjoyable, but overall, it is not a certain element that is remembered, but under the background of all these elements, the sense of history that the overhead background cannot hide, and the sad feeling between the "master and the domesticate".
Fashion gurus like to nod to Anderson in their works, and Alessandro Michele, who runs Gucci, unabashedly recreates the clues in Anderson's films again and again.
But Anderson also has his own master, and when he saw "Isle of Dogs", he must have misunderstood that he had lived in Japan for many years, because whether it was the architecture in it, or the traditional ukiyo-e illustrations, or even the details of ramen shops and sushi restaurants, there was no sense of authenticity that Westerners looked at the East.
In such a stop-motion animation in which every frame comes from the hand, the characters move their eyes and change the puppet model, and the animation directors and designers have created 240 sets of scenes and 44 stages for the film, and they have captured the highlights of Japanese culture - the mayor's house Brick City was inspired by the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo 90 years ago. The garbage island is illustrated by traditional ukiyo-e from the Edo period in Japan.
Anderson has always been known as an "obsessive-compulsive" director, and when he represents the "obsessive-compulsive nation" of Japan in the camera, he seems to have found his own space destined to play. However, what attracted him to write about and understand Japan was none other than two of Japan's great masters of cinema, Akira Kurosawa and Hayao Miyazaki.
Fortunately, we not only saw the film before the official screening of "Isle of Dogs", but also conducted a remote interview with Wes Anderson, listening to the director who let us brush several times every time about his own "big god" Kurosawa Akira, listening to him talk about his going to the Ghibli Museum, watching Miyazaki's films like us, listening to him talk about his experience of working with Yoko Ono, and suddenly there was a wonderful feeling that the world's fans are all family.
WHY
It's like a Japanese movie
The drum beats that can be seen everywhere in Isle of Dogs remind us that these may all come from Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai. In fact, Anderson told us, their first thought for the film was to make a movie about dogs on an island full of garbage, predates the Japanese backdrop. It's just that a few people are probably veteran fans of Japanese movies in their bones, so the proposal to take Japan as a background is definitely a coincidence.
"Jensen Shuvazman, Roman Coppola, we often discuss that we can make a film set in Japan. Because there are two filmmakers in Japan that we like, Akira Kurosawa and Hayao Miyazaki, who are also important inspirations for this movie. ”
Jensen Schwartzman and Roman Coppola are old partners who have worked with Anderson more than once, and the former has often starred in his films before, such as the younger brother who got involved with the female conductor in "Crossing Darjeeling", and the voice of the fox father's own son in "The Great Fox Daddy" also comes from him.
On the far left is Jensen Schwartzman
The two screenwriters, along with Anderson, three Japanese film fans dragged Nomura, who had appeared in "The Grand Budapest Hotel", and put the story of the "garbage dump dog" in Japan.
Since the inspiration for the film comes from two Japanese film masters, Anderson is completely in line with the master from the beginning, for example, the age of the story of this film seems to be in the future, but the sense of history cannot be ignored, it turns out that this is deliberately set by the director to "let the audience in the 60s of the last century see a movie with a story that takes place in 2007, just like Akira Kurosawa made a movie about the future in the 60s." ”
Anderson's films are never less than the past, in "The Grand Budapest Hotel", that is Zweig's past; in "Genius", it is the past laid out with the joys and sorrows of the family; in "Crossing Darjeeling", it is the past flashed back in the minds of the three brothers. The past in "Isle of Dogs" is the 60s in Akira Kurosawa's films.
Akira Kurosawa's "Wild Dogs", "Heaven and Hell", and "Sweet Dreams of Evil Men", Anderson mentioned these three films that were released from 1949 to 1963, and he said that the sense of the times in "Isle of Dogs" comes from them. But we feel even more trance-like that the wild dog "Chief" voiced by "Old White" Brian Cranston, like Kikuchiyo (Toshiro Mifune) in Seven Samurai, wanders between different classes.
Toshiro Mifune in The Seven Samurai
Sure enough, Anderson told us in one breath about the three male actors that Akira Kurosawa loves to work with: Toshiro Mifune, Tatsuya Nakayo, and Joe Shimura, saying that the character design of "Isle of Dogs" can be inspired by these actors.
Tatsuya Nakadai
I didn't ask him how many times he brushed Akira Kurosawa's films, but it was certainly a rhythm of three times, because even Anderson himself admitted: "Some scenes in 'Isle of Dogs' I think have similarities with Akira Kurosawa's films, but we didn't realize it until these scenes were filmed." We're not imitating, but we're completely inspired by his films, because when shooting, we think 'what's going to happen next, what's going to happen to the characters', and at this time, Kurosawa's films will affect us more or less in unseen places. ”
As for Hayao Miyazaki, Anderson began to pay attention as early as the preparation of the 2009 stop-motion animation "The Great Fox Daddy". Like our fascination with Ghibli, he went to the Ghibli Museum (which had to be ticketed in advance) and bought and watched DVDs of all of Miyazaki's works, so he summed up the characteristics of Miyazaki's works particularly accurately: he had his own ecological view, the proper presentation of nature, and the theme of protecting nature was always in it.
Valley of the Wind
One of the themes of "Isle of Dogs" is the harmonious coexistence of people and dogs, and Anderson has learned the spirit of Miyazaki's grandfather, and he can also learn to use it, using the inner tranquility of nature on the garbage dump where pet dogs are abandoned. In the movie, the five finger islands of the junkyard, the pagoda slides, and even the gravel environment have a unique aesthetic.
Don't translate Japanese lines for us
To wake up, a considerable part of the Japanese lines in the movie is not Chinese or English subtitles, at this time do not panic to think that the theater is wrong, the movie is like this, but also the director deliberately.
Among them, the mayor's Japanese speech in public speech or election will be translated into English by the simultaneous interpretation in the movie, at this time, the English translation of the Chinese subtitles, will let us know what the mayor said; there is an exchange student from the United States in the movie, studying in a Japanese high school, when the Japanese classmates communicate with her, they can also speak English, this part can also let people know what it means. These very special designs were carefully arranged by Wes Anderson and the screenwriting team:
"It was a real problem for us because it was determined at the beginning that the humans in the movie were going to speak Japanese, but it wasn't like we wanted to translate all the Japanese lines into subtitles, because we wanted to make the audience's attention look at the characters on the screen, focusing on the visuals, rather than reading the story from the subtitles."
Simultaneous interpretation in the film
So, apart from having the simultaneous interpretation and TV commentary in the film explain the mayor's policy and the impact on the fate of the dogs, most of the remaining Japanese lines do not see any translation, because those lines have no effect on the plot of the movie, and Wes Anderson uses the recently very popular "Mike Tompkins Music" as an example. Mike's popularity lies in the fact that he can make guitar, pad, snare, bass, beatbox, beeps and other sounds with his mouth alone, extremely realistic, and then mix them to make videos. Anderson uses The analogy between Mike's music and these Japanese lines that don't need to be translated, may be to say that those Japanese lines are a form in the movie, which has no substantive function, and can be listened to as music.
However, the Japanese lines that have not been translated in the movie, as well as the words spoken by many little boys Atari to several dogs on the garbage island, and the words between him and the "dot" he lost, at this time, we can only guess from his expression and tears that his words should be similarly touched or unwilling, which is probably Anderson's "don't want the audience to read the story from the subtitles".
Yoko Ono is also called Yoko Ono in the movie
Wes Anderson has always been a highly tasteful director, not only in the art performance, his choice of music in the film, but also can be called a condensation of the golden age of the last century's music circle, Rolling Stone, Underground Velvet, David Bowie, The Beatles, The Kinks, Bob Dylan's works, have appeared in his films. And this time, he actually directly cooperated with Yoko Ono, the widow of Beetles lead singer John Lennon, and the role she gave her voice in the movie was also called Yoko Ono.
Yoko Ono
"I've always loved Yoko Ono, and in my previous film, Young Boy, I used John Lennon's Oh Yoko! That song, to me, between Lennon and Yoko Ono, is like Romeo and Juliet, not just two simple people, but symbolic people. We asked her for the right to use Lennon's songs in the film, and she very kindly agreed, so later we used Lennon's songs in "Genius.". ”
The character of Yoko Ono is an assistant scientist in the film, who holds the truth of the facts and is the clue to the final revelation of the villain. But Anderson actually selfishly let another important character be stained with the shadow of Yoko Ono, the American exchange student who bravely exposed the mayor's conspiracy, cared about the political events in the area, told the truth, protected the dogs, Anderson said, "That maverick girl, to me is very much like Yoko Ono." ”