Text | Flowers without feast
Tom Hanks, who was born in the 50s, is still contributing superb acting skills on the big screen today, and consolidates his position as an "American national treasure actor" with word-of-mouth works.
"Captain Philip", "Bridge of Spies", "Captain Sully", "The Washington Post", all the way to the latest science fiction film "Finch", the last decade alone is enough to make us admire the evergreen.
Especially in "Finch", he single-handedly made the 115-minute story interesting, and made a group of Douban netizens pour out a high score of 8.4. Whether it is in the field of science fiction this year, or in the entire theatrical film, "Finch" is worth our calm and enjoyment.
01
From the background of the story, "Finch" can be said to be a disaster film.
In the near future, due to the large explosion of solar flares, the ozone layer became full of holes, unable to block ultraviolet rays and high temperatures from the sun. As a result, the plants shrank sharply until they disappeared, the land was desertified, and mankind suffered a catastrophe.
Finch, played by Tom Hanks, is a survivor of this apocalyptic situation. Before the disaster, Finch worked at a tech company specializing in robotics. Thanks to scientific common sense and technology, Finch escaped the disaster.
So, relying on heat and ultraviolet equipment, as well as the company's wind power equipment, Finch shuttled through the deserted buildings in the city during the day and lurked in the safe base camp at night, struggling to survive in the end of the world.
All his hopes for life are pinned on a yellow puppy. Because he was seriously ill and about to die, Finch spent all his time outside of his life building a robot, hoping that after his death, the robot could always take care of the puppy and keep it in order.
Finch's concerns are justified. In this apocalyptic age, animals will have to face the threat of other survivors in addition to not being able to move under the sun. In addition, irregular severe sandstorms and tornadoes can easily kill people.
On the night of the successful development of the robot, Finch received a weather forecast for a superstorm, and according to data analysis, once the storm came, even the factory that sheltered Finch for a long time could not resist.
So Finch took his pampered puppy, an intelligent robot, and a carrier robot on the road to San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge.
If your expectations for Finch are Nolan's Interstellar or Mad Max, you're doomed to fail, but if you want to be emotionally healed in a science fiction movie, Finch is the right fit.
To be precise, although Finch is a futuristic film with a science fiction setting, it is more concerned with the loneliness of the individual. In this sense, it's more like Spike Jones's "Her," or Duncan Jones's "The Moon," borrowing the shell of a science fiction movie to tell the story of human psychological changes in extreme environments.
So, you won't find high-energy action scenes in Finch, nor will you see story lines of intense dramatic conflict. It runs counter to conventional sci-fi genre films, and is more like a small science fiction poem full of healing flavors, conveying a sad but not sad mood in the process of soothing chanting.
02
In addition to the label "science fiction movies", I prefer to call it the subtype of "survival movies". Movie fans who often watch Hollywood movies should be familiar with these kinds of movies.
In their main story, there is generally only one protagonist, surviving alone in an extreme environment that has lost the order of modern society. Most of the protagonists rely on means of scavenging, planting and picking to survive, and if they are not careful, they may encounter the threat of death due to a change in a certain factor.
Interestingly, the protagonists of this type of film generally look for a spiritual sustenance, or an animal, or a human projection imagined by means of an object to dispel the feeling of loneliness in the heart.
Will Smith's "I Am Legend", Matt Damon's "The Martian" and "The Rest of a Desert Island", also starring Tom Hanks, can all fall into this category.
However, there is a slight difference between the three, one is to survive with dogs in the zombie-infested post-apocalyptic world; the other is to grow potatoes on Mars for years and wait for rescue; and the other is to grow wildly on an isolated island in the Pacific Ocean and create life.
The same is true of "Finch", although the world in the film is not only the male protagonist Finch, but Finch has infinite fear of the outside world. Therefore, Finch would rather pin the meaning of life on a dog, and exchange the continuation of the dog's life for the peace of the heart.
But compared with the above -mentioned "island survival movies", "Finch" obviously has another "word". The intelligent robot Jeff, the puppy Goodyer and Finch constitute three pairs of "father-son relationship", and the construction of the emotional trestle between them and the meaning generated from it are actually the top priorities of the movie.
Specifically, the "father-son relationship" between Finch and the puppy stems from Finch's extreme loneliness and his inner guilt. The former emotion is actually the same as the feelings of Chuck and Wilson, the "volleyballman", in "The Rest of the Desert Island"; the latter emotion is because Finch died at gunpoint because of cowardice, so he wanted to raise puppies to atone for his sins.
The "father-son relationship" between Finch and Jeff clearly bears traces of human paternity. For example, Finch shows impatience in teaching Jeff how to survive and how to see the world, and the relief he shows when he finally sees Jeff growing rapidly.
As for the "father-son relationship" between Jeff and the puppy, it is a new emotional link. There is neither a relationship of control between the Creator and the Created, nor the wishful thinking of human beings confined to their own negative emotions. But between them, we see the bright and warm side of human nature, which is guarded together because of love and because of trust.
These three do not have any blood, but better than the blood relationship of the "father-son relationship", so that the emotions conveyed by the film step by step, from loneliness and hopelessness, to guardian companionship, and finally to mutual understanding, to complete each other.
It's amazing how the sci-fi setting, humanity, and post-pandemic features of this pre-COVID-19 film are very similar.
When it comes to the "pathologies" of the post-pandemic era, it seems to me that the most obvious point is the loss of the "freedom" part, or the unpredictable "limitation". People no longer have the freedom to go wherever they want, and just as when an outbreak breaks out somewhere, people here have to be restricted from going anywhere else.
In addition, the epidemic that has been shrouded for two years and the epidemic situation that will continue in the future make us in the present always feel a different taste when watching "Finch".
The setting that humans or animals cannot survive in daylight is similar to that of people in outbreak areas; Finch's precautions against external nervousness remind people of some people's fear of covid-19 infections and the public's excessive panic about the outside world.
When a global crisis breaks out, whether it is a virus or other disaster, the first and most susceptible disease is always the human heart.
This became the psychological motivation for the male protagonist to avoid almost madly in "Finch". The section where Jeff's rash move caused Finch to flee in a panic and even crash the solar panels on the RV was thought-provoking. Even though the unknown black sedan was just parked on the bridge, we were as frightened as Finch.
Fortunately, "Finch" does not intend to make the future too dark, and at the end of the film, Jeff takes the puppy to the Golden Gate Bridge that Finch has in mind. One is a robot, the other is a dog, and humans do not seem to be present, but the beautiful disposition created and continued by humans is walking forward in this combination of dogs and machines.
Where is the hope? In fact, they are hope itself.