The land is submerged by rising seas, and the world becomes a vast ocean, empty and lonely, with gulls skimming by from time to time. An old man lives in an island-like hut in the middle of the sea, fishing alone, watching TV alone, eating dinner alone, and waking up from the morning alone.
As the sea rises, the old man keeps building on the original house, like building blocks, and the increasing house is like a tower standing in the sea.
The new house was built, when carrying furniture, the old man's pipe accidentally fell into the water, and at the moment when he dived into the water to find the pipe, an iron door was opened, the sealed memories were released, and the memories rolled up like seawater...
This is the basic plot of "Memory Building Blocks Cabin", which won the 81st Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film and a Douban score of 9.3 points. The film is only 12 minutes, but with its profound connotation and exquisite picture language, it grabs the audience's heart: sincerity and warmth.
As the title suggests, the core of the work is memory.
Psychologist Freud revealed in detail in his "Iceberg Theory" that people's consciousness and subconscious mind. He believes that the composition of human consciousness is like an iceberg floating on the water, the tip of the iceberg that emerges from the surface represents self-consciousness, and the broader part under the hidden water represents the forgotten life experience and various desires in the depths of the heart, which do not really disappear, but are sealed in a most imperceptible corner, and once triggered, they will re-emerge.
In the film, the old man sinks deeper and deeper into the cold seabed in order to find the pipe, and what greets him is more and more real warm memories, which make him want to stop.
Through the floodgates of memory, the old man saw his wife pick up a pipe and hand it to himself; a narrow bed on which the wife lay and the old man fed his wife medicine by the bed; then a family portrait; the camera shifted, and the daughter brought a strange man home, who later became his son-in-law; the daughter traveled far away to study; the daughter was toddler, sitting on the ground playing with blocks. As the memories grew farther and farther away, he saw himself and his wife when there was no sea around, there was a vast field and trees, and he and his wife met and fell in love, and together they built their first wooden house.
Memories are a precious asset in life's journey. Compared with words and words, animation conveys emotions in the form of images, interpreting the understanding of the abstraction of the world into figurative art, which is the difficulty of animation creation, and it is also its charm.
With its profound meaning and exquisite artistic expression, "Memories Of Building Blocks Cottage" highlights the strong vitality of animation art.
In the film, "family affection and memory" is the main theme, but at the same time it also implies another theme: the relationship between man and nature. In "Memory Building Blocks Cabin", the strong contrast between rising sea level and sinking memory is the film's wake-up call to the destruction of the natural environment by humans, resulting in sea level rise and human homes being broken.
The real sea and the isolated island-like hut are the external world in which the old man lives, and what the film really pokes at the audience's tears is the old man and the spiritual world belonging to the old man himself.
The old man in the film is bloated, his back is strongly ricketed, red and green pants, and his seemingly unsuitable dress has become a bright color in the monotonous and dull life day after day, conveying the personality characteristics of the protagonist who is still firm and optimistic after the vicissitudes of life; the sea is rising, the old man is holding a pipe and unhurriedly building bricks, carefully picking up, steadily building solid, not seeing fatigue and slackness; the pipe fell into the water, originally wanted to find another replacement, but, thinking about it, can't give up the pipe that has accompanied him for many years, So he decisively put on his wetsuit and went into the water to look for it; when he went to the depths of his memory, the audience wondered if he would indulge in it next. The answer is: "No". The old man finally crossed the ocean of memories and returned to the real cottage, still alone, still the wall full of pictures of the whole family, or the table, a plate of small fish on the table, the difference is that this time the old man placed two exquisite wine glasses on the table, one for himself, one for his deceased wife. In the 12 minutes of the film, the image of a firm and optimistic old man is presented in a three-dimensional way.
The unique use of picture color, the organic integration of background music and plot development all add points to the charm of this work.
The color of the film's picture basically adopts three shades of yellow, blue and green, in terms of visual effects, yellow appears warm, blue is cold, and green is closely related to youth and exuberant vitality. The old man dived into the seabed, the picture entered a cool tone, and when the memory struck, the picture turned yellowish, blurry and sad, giving people a feeling of opening the old newspaper, which fit perfectly with the theme of memory.
The 12-minute film does not have any dialogue, and the sound of the film is mainly external environmental sounds and background music. At the beginning of the film, the old man wakes up in the morning and gets out of bed to put on his shoes, when the sound of the water shows that the sea has flooded into the house, showing that his cabin is about to be submerged; the sound of seagulls, the sound of ships, the sound of TV programs, and the sound of red wine into the glass highlight the old man's loneliness. Background music is a highlight of the film, from beginning to end, dominated by piano playing and cello, with different picture shots, or soothing and relaxed, or romantic sadness. Music and pictures complement each other and become an important component of the film's artistic expression, so as to achieve the effect of silence over sound.
The strong artistic tension enriches and enhances the connotation of the work, giving the abstract topic of memory a vivid and perceptible figurative shell. The building block hut becomes the perfect carrier of memory.
The great writer of the 20th century, Proust, in his masterpiece "Remembrance of the Lost Water", said: "When a person cannot have it, the only thing he can do is not to forget." The old man in the film is happy because he has this huge spiritual treasure of memories. Time can wash away everything, including himself, like the sea, only the memories engraved with love will always accompany and never give up.