Wen 丨 West Parker
It's hard to imagine that Tom Hanks hasn't been nominated for an Oscar for Best Actor in 21 years.
As one of the greatest actors in Hollywood history, tom Hanks, who won the Oscar for best actor in the 90s and has continued to be a masterpiece since the new century, has not received an Oscar nomination since 2000's "The Rest of the Desert Island", which is undoubtedly a surprising fact.
The Rest of a Desert Island (2000)
During this period, Hanks starred in "Charlie Wilson's War", "Saving Mr. Banks", "Captain Phillips", "Captain Sully", "The Washington Post", "World News", each of which was well received, but very surprisingly, none of them were nominated for an Oscar. And all of this may have changed this year.
The new film "Finch" launched by Apple TV+ is almost a one-man show of Hanks, in the end of the American road, one person, one dog and one robot, struggling to survive, there is no second human character with a straight face in the whole movie, the whole movie has become the stage for Hanks' drag drama, if this does not allow him to nominate for the Oscar again, then everyone will doubt the vision of the academy.
Finch (2021)
The story of "Finch" is set in a post-apocalyptic America, due to environmental degradation, the destruction of the atmosphere, human beings can not survive direct sunlight, near extinction. Engineer Finch, after the end of the day, has long been dependent on a puppy for a long time, surviving alone. However, due to the deep influence of radiation, Finch knows that he is running out of time, so he creates an intelligent robot Jeff, teaches him how to survive the end of the world, and hopes that he can continue to take care of the helpless puppy after his death...
The "Finch" project, which began in 2017 as early as 2017, was on the Hollywood screenplay "blacklist" at the time, and was considered one of the most promising masterpieces in the next few years, being competed by multiple companies and eventually won by Universal and Spielberg's Amperin Entertainment. The film was originally scheduled to be released at the end of 2020, but due to the impact of the epidemic, it had to be withdrawn until a year later, when it was taken down by the streaming platform Apple TV+ and changed to Internet distribution, while Universal retained the power of film audio-visual products and TV distribution.
Since the launch of streaming media this month, "Finch" has exploded among domestic film fans, and Douban has obtained a high score of 8.4, which is the highest score of Tom Hanks movies in recent years. In foreign countries, the evaluation of this film is basically based on praise, IMDb 7.0 points, Rotten Tomatoes praise rate of 73%, Metascore score of 56 points. While earning tears, many film critics have pointed out its slightly routine and cheesy plot. However, if we carefully read the text of the movie, we will find that the director actually buried a lot of interesting settings and character relationships in the movie.
Before this film, British director Miguel Sapsznick's feature film work, there was only one 2010 "Born Again Man", but this does not mean that Sapsznick is a director rookie, but because he chose to sharpen himself on another track. After his debut, Sapsnik focused more on the drama work, directing classic dramas such as "Dr. House", "True Detective", "Sex Master", "Copy" and so on.
The most dazzling work on his resume is undoubtedly the resident director of "Game of Thrones", in the third episode of the eighth season of "Game of Thrones", "The Long Night", Sapsznick directed alone, very perfectly completed the entire episode of winterfell battle scenes, is the last super war in the entire series, and is also the largest war scene in the entire history of American drama, no less than any contemporary film work. It was also Sapsnik who proved his ability to control Hollywood's big productions.
Game of Thrones (2019)
In this film, Sapsnik reversed the great luxury of "Game of Thrones" and chose an extremely small entry point to show the most real human-machine emotions in the apocalyptic environment. Throughout the opening credits, with no cast list and no title subtitles, the audience follows Finch's entire character into a post-apocalyptic world and quickly experiences the extreme post-apocalyptic situations designed by the director. The worldview setting that human beings cannot see the sun is actually deprived of the social attributes of human beings in the film, and everywhere the camera goes, it is desolate and dangerous, turning the city into a "sea" full of unknowns in "The Old Man and the Sea".
The details of the opening scene allow the audience to quickly enter the established impression of the Hanksian old man character. Finch is definitely not a hero, he is just an ordinary person who still carries a badge to work in the last days, trying to maintain his original life. He set the principle for himself and Jeff to stay away from others, because others mean danger, but at the same time they must not destroy other people's finances. He doesn't believe in strange humans, he doesn't trust teams, only dogs are his only friends, which explains why he recreates a robot so that he can continue to take care of dogs after his own death.
But as the story progresses, the audience gradually discovers that Finch is actually a full-fledged Hemingway-style protagonist, an American tough guy representative who only believes in himself. Many times, Finch is grumpy, paranoid and arrogant, with a cruel humor that constantly mocks Jeff, who can't understand his jokes and metaphors. He was extremely confident, believing himself to be superior, and his way was the only right way to look at robots condescendingly as a Creator. Tom Hanks played finch's weaknesses and did a good job of pinching the scale.
Slowly, the audience also discovers Finch's boyish side, and the formation of his reclusive personality is obviously deeply related to his father's absence. When he was about to greet his own death, he put on the high-end suit he wanted to wear for his father, lamenting that he did not have time to travel the world like his father. At this moment, we also finally understand that Finch is giving the strict fatherly love that he has never received to Jeff the robot who has only been in the world for a few days. At this time, the audience will not hate Finch because of his shortcomings, but more of an understanding and sympathy for this role.
Although the story of this film is very similar to Hanks's other masterpiece "The Rest of the Desert Island", Hanks's performance can be said to be diametrically opposed, after all, when your opponent is with a volleyball, all your dialogue is actually monologue, and when you face a robot you create, you have the dual identity of father and creator.
In fact, we also see a shift in Hanks's acting style over the years from this role. In previous years, Hanks might have been more inclined to play the role of an innocent, innocent and kind ordinary person like Jeff, because this robot that does not understand human affairs is obviously a sci-fi version of "Forrest Gump". Finch's strong patriarchal role is a new challenge for the always gentle Hanks.
Usually, the role of Cruel Mentor is given to Denzel Washington (Training Day) or JK Simmons (Burst Drummer), and in Forrest Gump corresponds to Lieutenant Dan played by Gary Sinis. But Hanks's interpretation is completely different from the above actors, because the gentle side of the personality makes Hanks's role even if it is severe, but still with deep love and melancholy, he knows that his time is short, and the audience will also understand his seedlings.
At present, as a possible Oscar "small year" this year, Hanks's breakthrough performance still has certain advantages over most awards season works, and it should be no difficult to get nominated.
On the other side, Jeff the robot, voiced by Carrebo Landry Jones, clearly has a deeper intention as a director. In Finch's original value system, he once borrowed the three laws of robots of Asimov who joined the puppy, and formulated a strict hierarchy for the team, that is, humans are higher than dogs than robots, which is a very obvious class metaphor.
But as the story progresses, the audience discovers that robots are the most intelligent and emotional characters in the film. Jeff has different qualities of innocence, kindness, and confusion, and is infinitely powerful and pure like a child, and even his intelligence and learning ability are significantly higher than those of humans. In getting along, we can also feel that Finch's discrimination against Jeff has slowly recognized, and jeff has changed from a "slave" walking a dog to the only close friend around him.
Putting aside the cloak of science fiction and applying the context of reality, if the robot is regarded as a minority, then the narrative of this film is a typical equal rights film logic, a white mentor, with a "black" apprentice, influencing each other, changing prejudices, and finally completing the role transformation, that is, an enlightened "slave owner" to save the "slave" story. The same design has been used in many popular movies, such as "Green Book", "Untouchable" and "Quidditch". In science fiction movies, the director tries to explore the deeper robot ethics in the current science fiction creation with the idea of equal rights in reality.
Jeff exists for the puppy, but everyone realizes that puppies only live because of habits, and robots are the next owner with higher intelligence, so Finch tells Jeff before he dies that he is looking forward to him five years later. Humans set a mission for robots, but when robots keep learning, can they have higher pursuits and abandon their established missions? Is the value of robots determined by their creators, or can they also have free will to determine their own destiny? When Jeff looks in the mirror, he already knows something about himself, he gives himself a name, so should he also live his own life?
Such Kubrick-style torture, placed in such a warm film, although out of place, is undoubtedly worth pondering. This is also why the director left an open-ended ending and deleted the original ending in the script where Jeff meets other humans again. Finch dies near the end of the film, leaving a confused Jeff on a long journey with his puppy.
If there is a sequel to the movie, it will no longer be titled "Finch", but will tell the story of "Jeff". Because the audience knows that in such a world, puppies cannot really survive, but robots are immortal, they are more suitable to live on this planet than humans, and they are the next stage of evolution.