01
The role of form
At the beginning of the movie, you wonder how it is a simple, symbolic scene like a drama stage, where every household in the village just draws a white line on the ground to indicate that it is their home, and there is not even a door, and you will wonder if this is the setting of the play within a play. Is the plot in the movie filming a play?
Continue to look at it will find that it is not, the director chose such a form to make a movie, after watching the movie and thinking back, such a form may be to create a distancing effect, let the audience understand that this is the drama, let the audience have a perspective of scrutiny, not just follow the simple emotions of the plot, but have a deeper rational thinking. This is the director's ambition, because he is not just telling you a story, but even as I wrote, he is going to show you a social experiment on human nature.
02
The story begins
The story also unfolds in several acts like a drama, and at the beginning of the plot, what is shown to us is a daily dog town, where people, like people in other villages, look simple and ordinary, have a little bit of their own glitches, and everyone lives a peaceful life together day after day, and even very democratic, and everything is decided together by voting.
Tom, a member of Dogtown, is known as a writer, but wanders around the village all day, saying that he is observing, and thinks that he knows everything, wants to educate everyone, and often organizes villagers to hold moral reorganization meetings.
03
The arrival of the "interloper"
Grace, a beautiful and mysterious young woman, the "intruder" of Dogtown, appears after Tom hears the gunshots, the story tells us that she is hiding from the pursuit, Grace loves Dogtown*, and her first impression of Dogtown is: I saw a beautiful village in the mountains, everyone faces a harsh environment, there are still dreams and hopes.
Tom suggested that Grace stay in dog town to avoid the difficulties, but the stranger in the small dog town was too conspicuous to hide, she had to get all the villagers to agree to stay, Tom told Grace that if she helped each family for an hour a day, everyone should like her and agree to her staying, Grace did it, and after two weeks she successfully passed the vote.
This is also Grace's last happy time in Dog town, getting along with everyone very happily, feeling that she has made friends, before voting, someone is afraid that she will leave, secretly stuffing her luggage with gifts within her ability, bread, change and her beloved things, she feels everyone's kindness, and finally the vote is also unanimously passed, she does not have to go, these make her very moved.
04
The arrival of time and again
Slowly things changed, the police came to the village to post a notice of wanted Grace, the villagers felt that they were helping Grace, so grace was right to help them, and the villagers' attitude changed, from the original gratitude to the arrogance.
Soon the police changed the wanted order with a high reward, the villagers were even more shaken, someone wanted to hand over Grace, Tom suggested that Grace use double the labor to please the villagers, let them keep her, Grace did it again, and she worked day and night until she was exhausted.
But the situation escalated again, and once during a police search, Chuck raped her, and everyone could treat her as they pleased and not treat her as a person.
She couldn't bear it, and she tried to escape at Tom's suggestion, only to give money to a villager who was transporting the goods, hoping to hide in a truck and escape, and eventually was not only raped by the man, but also taken back to Dogtown.
Grace hiding in an apple truck
The villagers were afraid that she would escape again, so they tied bells and chains around her neck, and there was a huge iron block under the chain, and now she had to drag the iron block first and then move it slowly with each step.
At this time, the villagers did not treat her as a person, randomly scolding and raping, she endured silently, even Tom, fully exposed his hypocrisy, cowardice, selfishness, and mouthed to help Grace, and as a result, he had to step on her at a critical moment.
These changes are happening slowly and little by little, it seems to change in an imperceptible place, from the perspective of the audience, in addition to easy criticism, you can also think about if you are those villagers, whether you will treat Grace the same as them because you are afraid of being different from others, don't rush to deny, you can think slowly. Is the subtle influence of the environment on people real and imperceptible?
After watching the movie, my first thought was the Stanford prison experiment, putting mentally normal college students in the real prison environment, placed in the position of the jailer, and soon it will become extremely brutal, which is a real experiment conducted by Professor Zimbardo of Stanford University, but this test is out of control, the prisoner who plays the jailer becomes extremely cruel and bloodthirsty, and the prisoner even has a mental breakdown, and finally the original two-week trial was forced to terminate on the sixth day.
05
The reversal of the story
Back to the story, the above is not the end of the story, the reversal came, in fact, Grace is the daughter of the gang boss, her father finally found her, can deduce that she should be because she is not used to what her father does and left, she and her father's last conversation about arrogance, very wonderful, pushing the story to another height.
Grace felt that her father's actions to deprive others of their rights were arrogant, but her father retorted that Grace was the most arrogant person he had ever met, because she felt that she had a high moral standard, that she was superior, that she should understand and sympathize with these inferior people, that it was the poor, difficult circumstances that made them like this, that they were also victims, and that this idea was that they were not regarded as human beings, that they were inferior beings who could not be taught, unchangeable, and obedient, and that they could not be blamed for anything they did. Grace felt that this was his own kindness. Her father said that she was not evaluating people by the same standards, and that if she felt that she had made a mistake, she would be punished, and that others should be punished for making mistakes, so that they would be equal, and that it would be extreme arrogance if they did not give others the opportunity to take responsibility for their actions. Is this true?
Her father told her that the right wasn't that bad, that she could find her own way to exploit it, and she was persuaded, so Grace agreed that her father would slaughter the entire village and burn the village, and Grace herself gave Tom a shot in the head, and she became the same person as her father.
06
？？？
What good and evil seems to be in the face of rights does not seem to matter, everything that was insisted on before can be abandoned, and the way the people of Dog Town finally treatEd Grace is also because the villagers at that time had such rights, but Grace now has more rights, big enough to slaughter the village.
In a sense, are human beings all the same, and once they have rights, will some things deteriorate? I can't come to that conclusion and can only end with a question mark.
That's probably what this movie is all about, it doesn't provide entertainment, it offers reflection and warning.