Hello everyone, I'm Shi Zhenxiang. After watching "The Voice of Joy" last time, I feel that there is still a big gap between us and foreign cartoons. Yesterday I came home and talked about it with my friend, and he said don't worry, the current students have two shots. Then he recommended this little short film to me.
"One Finger City"
Douban score 8.4, better than 80% of the short film, good results.
Most importantly, this short film is one of the graduation works of the 2015 class of animation majors of communication university in China, that is, this animated short film that received good ratings was made by a group of students. It's a really pleasing thing. I will say so, and all the friends who have not seen the film certainly have no concept. So let's talk about his content.
The picture begins with a towering building, the top of which is still under construction. The camera slowly moves down the top, and what comes into view is the crumbling building, and after a minute, the camera reaches the bottom of the building.
As soon as the picture turned, a dilapidated square courtyard appeared in front of people, which was completely different from the high-rise buildings just now. In the courtyard stands a statue of a bodhisattva in a simple shed. The statue's index finger points upwards, as if to tell something.
There is also a persimmon tree in the courtyard, fiery red. But the opposite of this fiery red color is the unconcealed desertion of this courtyard. There was only one old lady in this yard, not very tall, wearing a pair of glasses with large lenses. The first thing to do every day when you push open the door is to sweep away the small rubble that fell from the construction site.
Because it is possible to be hit from time to time, it is necessary to wear a hard hat in the open air. Not only the old lady, but the people living below are the same, the pedestrians also wear hard hats, and even the street food trucks have roofs.
After sweeping the yard, the old lady would put a few persimmons on the front of the bodhisattva statue, insert a few sticks of incense, and pray.
Afterwards, listen to old dramas, fiddle with the flowers and plants planted, and then lie back in a rocking chair and bask in the sun.
Looking at these cold-hued pictures, as well as these lonely scenes, there is some sense of pain for the elderly living alone. Just when I thought the story was going to follow the theme of caring for the lonely elderly, the picture turned again, and the construction machine on the roof was still working. At this time, in the courtyard, the small stones of the past began to be mixed with slightly larger stones.
This was really just the beginning, when the old woman woke up the next day, the ground was no longer a small stone.
The old woman did not say a word, still starting to clean from the bodhisattva, but unexpectedly a large object fell from the sky and almost hit her, and an iron bucket fell from the sky on the road and smashed the rain canopy of the breakfast stall.
The short film is very well handled in terms of both graphics and rhythm control. The picture is bright and dark, the rhythm is gradual but not delayed, and it hits the audience's heart step by step. The tranquility of the opening and closing credits echo each other, and the protagonist of the film, the old woman, represents the people whose rapid development of the city seems out of place. The uncle of the breakfast stall represents the ordinary poor who want to hold up a worn-out umbrella in the cracks to survive, and it is only a matter of time before the way of survival is destroyed and replaced. The film is still very realistic, and some of the current projects are indeed like this. Regardless of blind repair and blind construction, especially in some villages, such as setting up a signal tower in front of the door, building a cement factory on the edge of the village, what is commonplace, what impact does not affect health, the impact does not affect life will not be considered at all. In the lonely night, the old woman stared blankly at the pictures on the wall full of memories, including his deceased wife and his two sons who were engaged in the construction business.
The above freeze-frame picture has the remains of the old woman's deceased wife, has its own photo, and has a family portrait. A huge engineering poster in the back makes us have to start speculating about the relationship between the old woman's son and the tall building. While there is no explicit indication, her son is more like the leadership of the new building company. The following story reinforces this. The son's family came back to persuade the old woman to move away, and first helped him take some of the furniture with him.
The advertisement for "Ultra Quiet 1500-story Apartment" also shows a special irony after the son's family left, and the old woman angrily threw the poster on the ground, and she was reluctant to leave here. There was no way, she packed her luggage before leaving, and even wrapped up her own persimmon tree and loaded it into the car. The only thing that did not know what to do was the statue of the bodhisattva, and the old woman silently fastened her hard hat on the head of the statue. Just as she was about to turn away, a strong wind made her decide to take the stone statue with her.
She picked up the shovel, but the deeper she dug, she couldn't dig it out. Exhausted, the old lady sat down in the doorway and looked back, and the head of a big Buddha had been dug out of the ground.
(The music in this part of the film is very in place) Helpless to move away, the old lady was reluctant and prostrated herself to the big Buddha and left.
As the old lady's car went farther and farther, a board fell from the sky, smashing the finger of the bodhisattva statue.
The topmost floor also collapsed, and at this time, the original appearance of the building was also revealed.
The whole film tells the story of the change of times in just a few days. From the beginning of the short film, when larger and larger stones fall into the old woman's yard, it heralds the collapse of the building. That Buddha symbolizes the root of mankind, and modern people forget the root in a hurry and eventually eat the bitter fruit. A city will collapse at the first finger of Guanyin, and it is conceivable that a huge Buddha under the ground indicates that it is about to bring about a catastrophe. Perhaps, those who have not forgotten the fundamentals can be fierce.
So, what exactly is this? After reading it, it is easy to think of people's beliefs. Yet we have become a generation without faith. Without faith, there is no reverential heart, without reverence you can act recklessly without scruples, and you will not even care about removing everything that is in front of you. But in the film, the Buddha statue metaphor is more like culture. Most of the people have lost him, and only a small number of people like xiang laotai have only maintained a reverential heart and have not deeply understood (did not understand the bodhisattva image).
When that small group of people go to know because they are reluctant to give up, they will find that he is far from what you see, and his role cannot be underestimated. Over the past thousand years, the cultural connotation of our country has long been deeply imprinted in the hearts of every Chinese. However, more and more people are going astray in "reality" and "matter". However, if we neglect or even abandon our culture, then even if we have a strong material civilization, it will collapse with the lack of culture like a finger city building.