#换个角度观影 #
It's hard to imagine Wes Anderson making a film like this, but he did make Isle of Dogs, a film full of the exotic imagination of Westerners who are not friendly to the East. Although American film critic Roger Ebert said: "He is the only American director I can think of whose work reflects the Japanese concept mono no aware, which describes a wistfulness about the transience of things." (He is the only American director I can think of, and his work can unconsciously reflect the concept of Japanese mourning depicting fleeting sadness) But in my opinion, he may be a lover of Japanese culture, but his understanding of Japanese culture is still insufficient, and sometimes even a little Western arrogance.
The child had an expression from beginning to end
The story of Isle of Dogs is actually quite simple. The Kobayashi family in a certain japanese prefecture has always hated dogs and cats. In modern times, the Kobayashi family became the mayor alone, and at the same time the dog plague epidemic in the county was epidemic, so the mayor of Kobayashi issued all the dogs in the county, starting from his family's points, to the garbage island on the sea, and prepared to release mustard gas to poison them to death. After arriving at the garbage island, this group of dogs who had been pampered in the human family began to live a stray dog life with ups and downs, but still missed their former owners. In human society, only the mayor's adopted son, Atari, misses the bodyguard dog that accompanies him, and drives a plane to the island to find a little. But something happened to his plane, and the island's four domestic dogs volunteered to help Atari because of their foolishness to their former owners, while also persuading the island's accustomed free dogs to join their ranks. So a man and five dogs began a journey to find a little bit on the island. Later, they not only found Diandian, but also found that the wild dog was his long-lost brother. A group of dogs returned to the county where there had long been students denouncing Mayor Kobayashi's ban on dogs, and after atari's words, Mayor Kobayashi confessed his many evil deeds in politics and was imprisoned. Wounded Atari inherited his position and lived happily with the dogs.
It is said that this stop-motion animation film that satirizes politics all the time is not a problem, and it also continues the consistent aesthetic style of Anderson's films, such as high color saturation, strict symmetry, exaggerated character behavior, etc., which are his strengths and characteristics, but what is unpleasant about this film is Anderson's portrayal of several Japanese people - he always treats Japanese people as the object of Western scrutiny rather than the characters in the film.
First of all, the "characters" in the movie are obviously divided into two groups, man and dog, and the organizational form of the "characters" of the two groups is different. The man's gang is obviously led by a "tyrant" who is abominable, but in addition to grinning teeth, he is angry and has a very single expression, and the servant of the "tyrant" Mayor Kobayashi is a zombie - similar to the zombie in "Elf Hostel", which is not too similar. The dog's gang of "people" is democratically led, and the two groups of hostile forces first discuss solutions when they encounter problems, and at the same time, in the same group of dogs, if the members disagree, they often adopt democratic voting to solve the problem ("agree to say it"). Although the democracy of dogs is relatively crude and simple, compared with the organizational form of humans, the organizational form of dogs is still democratic. So the "man" group represents the ancient East, and the "dog" group represents the modern West.
Second, most Japanese people's expressions are rigid and dull, and their speech is vague, while the expressions of dogs and American students are vivid and vivid, and their speech is clear and loud. As mentioned above, Mayor Kobayashi has an abominable face, but only a few expressions, and his servant is a zombie with no expression. Even atari, the male number one who has a sense of affection for dogs and can almost be regarded as the male number one of this movie, is a child with no expression and vague speech. From beginning to end, I did not see his sadness and joy, the child just stared at the camera, woodenly at the mercy of the dog, even when he bathed the stray dog, his movements were as rigid as a robot, not like the behavior of an organic organism. Worse still, Attari spoke softly and vaguely, unable to hear what he was saying, as if the sound of the film had weakened as soon as it reached him—the role that was supposed to occupy an important position seemed to be just an insignificant supporting role.
Compared with Attari, the dog expressions of the dogs, who are called kings and dukes and bosses, are vivid, their voices are loud, the lines of dialogue with each other are humorous, and the micro-expressions on a dog's face can actually be seen! This also shows that it is not that Anderson's team is not skilled—otherwise how the expression of the American student is so rich and delicate—but that he does not want to portray the faces of Mayor Kobayashi, the mayor's servant, and atari's Japanese at the time. This actually reflects the Westerners' condescending examination of the Easterners - the Easterners are all blurred in the eyes of the Westerners, and the expression changes are far less vivid than those of the Westerners, although the reality is not the case, but Anderson and the director of "Mulan" see it like this (think of Mulan's big white face in "Mulan", which frightens the living and the living, and flutters five layers of powder!). ）。
Third, the whole film looks at the Orientals from the perspective of Westerners, who are only "things" that are seen rather than living characters, which is reflected in three aspects. First of all, when Mayor Kobayashi spoke, most of the time the camera was not directed at Mayor Kobayashi in the speech, but at the English translator of Mayor Kobayashi, who spoke fluent English - in other words, the micro-expression of this English translator is also very rich, and the speech action is with American humor, even if she looks at her hair and facial features, she should be a Japanese, but in fact, her image is shaped according to the appearance of americans. Mayor Kobayashi is always in the perspective of this translator, and his deeds, words and deeds have been judged by this seemingly insignificant little translator.
Second, Atari is also under the scrutiny of dogs. When Attari first arrived at indignowingu, he tried to communicate with the dogs, and his words were not only light and vague, as if a little timid, but the director also deliberately added a dialogue between the dogs. The dog asked the other dogs, "Can you understand his language?" The other dogs said, "I don't understand." Then it was then suddenly after Atari said two English words such as "sit down" with a thick Japanese accent that the dogs felt they could communicate with him. Here, Atari is not an important character, not even a character is just a prop that is seen by the dogs, its tools and values are similar to the owl that later conveys information to the dogs, and the perspective shown in the film is the perspective of the dog, that is, the American perspective, so the Japanese are basically tool people who cannot be called characters.
Third, of course, it is the American student who is full of a sense of justice and indignant in everything he does to find evidence of Mayor Kobayashi's corruption and bribery. With a big popcorn head on top, she went to school in the weather, went home with a snort, went to the bar to drink chocolate milk, and whistleblowed and exposed the mayor's various evil deeds. If Mayor Kobayashi's speech was scrutinized by a fluent English translation, then Mayor Kobayashi's misdeeds were examined by the angry American students who did not have the independence and centrality of being a human being, who always lived under the gaze of a Western perspective, and from the time he came to power to the time he stepped down, he was just a tool man — even if he finally donated a kidney to his adopted son.
Admittedly, the film is a political satire with a peculiar aesthetic and a clean painting style, although it portrays the ugly faces of politicians, the foolishness of dogs, the accomplices of the media masses, and the irrational state of people's groups, Anderson has never been able to get rid of his white Western stance and bring his own downward-looking examination of Eastern culture into the film, so that japanese people are no longer characters and become props for dogs. I have read several Western-English film reviews, but to my surprise, none of them found the film wrong with the East and the West, and instead praised its clever use of Japanese artistic elements and the level of irony. Hey, such a satirical film, if you look at it from the perspective of racial discrimination, why is it not the director himself? (Agree to say "hey")
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