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When commenting on tragedy and comedy, Lu Xun said: Tragedy destroys the valuable things of life for people to see, and comedy tears apart the worthless things for people to see.
The interpretation and propagation of tragedy in the art world has always been higher than that of comedy, and the works of the three great greek tragedians have been handed down to this day, and countless people have studied their tragedies. In contrast, only Aristophanes left some complete works among the three major comedians.
If tragedy is an indirect affirmation of beauty and the revelation of the ideal of beauty, then comedy is a direct denial of ugliness and the debunking of hypocrisy, which seems to be the mission of comedy.
From the root cause, comedy comes from the inconsistencies and inconsistencies between the phenomena and essence of worthless and ugly things in life, and at the same time, it is also the inconsistency and incongruity between the audience's life experience and immediate feelings.
If you want to find a film in the history of cinema that is "the most inconsistent and the most incongruous", it is this "God Is Crazy".
"God is also crazy" was released 38 years ago, is one of the few classic comedies in film history so far, 50,000 of the 100,000 entries in the Douban community gave five stars, and the rating of 8.7 is better than 97% of comedies, in the pure comedy category, it is among the top three in film history.
General comedy films shoot the conflict between modern society and primitive society, and often find similar actors to play people from primitive social tribes. But this film finds the Bushmans who live in the heart of the Kalahari Desert to play the protagonist.
You know, the Kalahari Desert is located in the south-central tip of the African continent, the most water-scarce place, ordinary people can not survive at all, in the winter this land is so dry that even animals migrate away.
But in the depths of this desert, there is also a primitive tribe, that is, the Bushmans.
Their people have lived in the depths of the desert for generations, isolated from the rest of the world, living a primitive life of slash-and-burn farming.
By chance, the film's director, Jamey Uys, accidentally discovered The Bushman Lisu (real name N!). xau, the exclamation point is a symbol of the african mother tongue), so the director paid 300 yuan and invited him to play the role of Xixo the Bushman in "God Is Crazy".
As a result, the film was very popular after its release, with a global box office of 50 million US dollars (equivalent to about 400 million yuan on time), And Li Su was also well known to fans around the world, and continued to participate in "God Is Crazy 2" 9 years later.
Since then, Hong Kong film and television companies have also issued cooperation invitations to Li Su, and from 1991 to 1994, they have successively filmed popular comedies such as "African Monk", "Hong Kong is Crazy", "African Superman", and met Hong Kong film stars such as Liu Qingyun, Liu Jialing, and Ye Tong. After that, due to the dissatisfaction of water and soil, Li Su returned to Africa to become a farmer. In 2003, Li Su unfortunately died of illness in the African savannah.
Li Su lived a primitive life of nomadic gathering before the filming became famous, had little contact with the outside world, and even had no concept of money, and after the crew first gave him a salary of three hundred yuan, he actually let the banknotes drift away with the wind.
The encounter between primitive and civilization itself has the conditions for the production of bizarre stories, not to mention that in addition to the film, the director also found a real "primitive person" to perform. Whether in or outside the film, this collision and encounter is continuous.
In the story, primordiality is used as a useful tool to help civilization, and Xixo helps Andrew rescue the kidnapped child; outside the story, N! XAU helps Euis in his reflection on modern civilization.
In the final analysis, inside and outside the play is still looking at the world from the perspective of civilized people, and primitive people are still deprived of their right to speak, because they have no "civilization".
Xixo and his family live in the Kalahari Desert, they quench their thirst by collecting drops of water from the morning dewdrops, they live by hunting, there is no strife between them, in their eyes, God is watching them every day, giving them food to survive.
Until one day, their "god" brought them an empty Coke bottle, Xixo brought it back to the tribe, and his people found that this beautiful gift could both blow a beautiful sound and be used to grind snakeskin.
In short, almost every day can find its new uses, but there is only one bottle, the clan can always find countless reasons to use, so for the first time everyone has a feeling of not wanting to share with others, they all want to monopolize it.
Xixo saw that the people of the clan began to quarrel over God's gift, and even fought, and he decided to go to the end of the "world" and return the gift to God.
The film's jokes are born out of the comedic stories that take place between him and the modern people he meets while throwing bottles.
These people are:
A scientist who collects elephant droppings;
A female journalist who came to teach;
A group of anti-government militants;
There are no villains in this comedy, and even the opponents who hold female journalists and children hostage at gunpoint are clowns at best.
The film is not about the victory of modern civilization over primitive civilization, but to examine the development of modern civilization through Xixo's eyes.
Even when it comes to rescuing trapped female journalists and children, the way to do this is not to kill them, but to make them anesthetized.
The director does not have to shed blood, one is to harmonize with the atmosphere of comedy, and the other is to show that modern people should not be the object of criticism, but should be the object of sympathy.
They are all just trying to defend themselves from harm in this complicated world, to compete for what is called "security" in this materialistic world, rather than losing the good qualities that xixo still has, which are only temporarily hidden in their hearts, expecting a suitable opportunity to be released, so that there will be people like female journalists who give up their high-paying jobs and come to Africa to support education, and there will be people like scientists who live in Africa for science and live with wild animals.
I think that's what the director wants to tell people through this film.
After going around and through human civilization, Xixo still chose to say goodbye and continue to look for the end of the world to throw away God's gift.
In his opinion, no matter how precious God's gift was, it was not as valuable as a hug from the child when he came home.
Text/Pippi Film Editorial Department: Liu Lingli
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