In the book In Search of George Orwell in Burma, there is a story of a "sacrificial virgin":
In one village, a dragon engulfed it, demanding that the village sacrifice a virgin every year so that he would not destroy the village.
The village also sends a brave teenager to fight the dragon every year, but the teenager never returns.
Until one year the dragon asked the village to sacrifice its virginity, and a teenager set out with a sword. At this time, someone in the village secretly followed him to see what was happening.
The boy comes to the dragon's lair, finds the dragon, and kills it with his sword. After that, the teenager sat on the corpse of the dragon and looked at the gold and silver treasures in the dragon's den, and finally his head grew horns, and wings grew on his back, and the teenager turned into a dragon.
This is also the original version of the story of the popular "dragon slayer boy turned into a dragon" on the Internet.
When Pigo first saw this story, he couldn't help but think—
Is the teenager corrupted by desire and turned into a dragon, or is there a dragon in everyone's heart, but there is a missing opportunity to erupt? And those brave teenagers encountered this opportunity.
It wasn't until I saw the movie that I seemed to figure it out a bit.
Dogtown
Not only is the plot of the film "lengthy", but the set is rudimentary.
Some people even joked that "Dogtown" is not so much a movie as a stage play.
Everything just happens in a lattice shop.
There are no buildings, no ornate sets, just a narration that constantly tells the background.
However, it is such a simple background, a shabby shot, but it has been evaluated by Douban 8.4.
Some say it's a real horror movie.
He doesn't need sound effects to make you shiver, he just needs to peel off a corner of humanity in front of you, and suppress despair will be like a boulder pressing down on your heart.
The exploration of human nature has always been the theme of director Lans Von Trier's films, and this film has reached a refreshing and extreme pleasure in exploring the differences between good and evil in human nature.
Man, is it so ugly?
01, outrageous story
The story takes place in the remote country town of Dogville.
The intrusion of a beautiful maiden shatters the tranquility of the town.
The young girl Grace fled to the town of Dogville to escape the gangsters.
Grace's beauty fascinates the town writer Tom at first sight, and he strongly asks the villagers to protect Grace, but the villagers unanimously oppose it.
They couldn't believe the alien woman, and they didn't even know why this Grace had been hunted down.
Finally, Tom made a suggestion:
Over a two-week period, grace was seen to be worthy of protection, and finally a collective vote at a villagers' meeting was made to decide whether to keep her.
In order to get Grace's approval from the villagers, Tom suggested that she try to help every villager, but the villagers gradually learned to "pity Xiang Xiangyu" and could not bear to let her be too tired.
Two weeks later, the meeting unanimously approved Grace to stay in the village.
Young, beautiful, and kind, Grace thought she had finally come out of the hell she had been and had come to the utopia of her dreams.
Breaking the silence is a wanted list.
When the villagers saw the Grace wanted notice posted on the notice board, they became afraid of Grace, believing that Grace should pay more to keep the risk even.
This time, no one was pretending to be polite anymore.
They threw all the dirty work, the tiring work, to Grace, and they thought it was something That Grace should pay.
Grace compromised, and the kind and innocent Grace did not resist even though she thought that these jobs were unacceptable to her.
In China, there is an idiom called "inching forward".
The greed of human nature will never be satisfied.
Grace's kindness has also become her biggest weakness and the fuse of tragedy.
Sure enough, when the police came to interrogate her again, she was threatened by the villager Chuck to either not make a sound or he did.
Grace was silent, then raped.
The villagers in the backwoods of the poor countryside never come suddenly.
Their words and deeds are testing Grace's bottom line little by little.
First there is the indecency of sneaking legs under the table, and if there is no resistance, then the next is rape.
The prelude to Grace's tragedy also began.
She became a slut who seduced her husband, a bitch that everyone spit on.
She was beaten up by Chuck's wife, smashed the seven beloved ceramic dolls in front of her, and said:
"If you can hold back your tears, I'll leave you with a few."
The moment the porcelain doll shattered, Grace also fell apart for this village and these villagers.
Forced to turn to Tom for help, she prepares to escape From Dogville on a train from her neighbor Ben.
But the car was halfway down the road, and Ben stood in front of her, either giving money or paying for the body.
She had no choice.
The dirty flesh was no longer hidden, and Grace had a wooden face, no sorrow or joy.
The first time she was threatened with rape, she was there to stay in Dougville.
The second time he was threatened and raped, it was to leave Dougville.
Despair, swinging away like ripples.
When the maiden finally thought she had escaped from hell, the curtain lifted.
She was still in Dougville, and it turned out that everything she had escaped had long been known to the villagers, and Ben had deceived her.
To prevent Grace from escaping, the villagers built a heavy cast iron wheel that, like a dog chain, was tied around her neck.
At that moment, in the eyes of the villagers, perhaps Grace was no longer a human, but a dog at the mercy of others and would not resist.
At night, Grace's bed became a must for every man.
They vent their bestiality and carry their trousers away.
In their eyes, Grace was just a tool, a beautiful outlet.
Writer Tom is the only man in the village who has not had a relationship with Grace.
Is it his moral code that stops Tom?
Apparently not.
It was a persona in Grace's eyes.
Everyone in the village did not understand or even look down on Tom, only Grace regarded Tom as a good person, a hero, and only Grace would rely on him, which satisfied Tom's vanity and sense of accomplishment.
However, Tom finally couldn't help it.
He came to Grace's bed, and Grace refused him.
The girl punctured the writer's mask -
You could have threatened me and forced me to have sex with me just like everyone else, but you didn't.
Is it your humanitarian spirit that is stopping you?
No, you just want to be different from everyone else.
Tom reported Grace.
His sense of accomplishment and vanity was torn apart by Grace, and he had no place to look at himself.
To the surprise of all the villagers, the legendary whistle of the black car is the sound of the destruction of the village.
It turns out that the person who hunted down Grace was her father, a mafia boss.
Grace can't stand the cruelty and evil of the gang and runs away from home.
The father and daughter were reunited after a long absence, and this time Grace finally understood a truth:
The people of this village don't seem to be much different from the gangsters.
Gunfire rang out, fireworks soared into the sky, and there was no More Dogville in this world.
02, who is the real arrogant person?
The three-hour narrative, in my opinion, is for the last ten minutes of father-daughter dialogue.
At that moment, I knew what the director was trying to say.
Grace finally ordered her men to kill everyone in the village, is she still the kind girl she once was?
Pigo believes that she has not changed.
Grace, who had once despised her father, thought the gang boss was an arrogant person.
Because He can decide the life and death of others, this is a power that God can exercise.
But the old father said:
"You're the one who's really arrogant."
Grace was sexually assaulted, insulted, betrayed, but still defended the villagers, believing that they had unspeakable grievances.
She believes that forgiveness of other people's sins is true goodness.
The old father said:
You even think that rapists and murderers will also be victims.
That's what God should do, and you're the one who's really arrogant.
Grace's moral judgment of herself is close to that of a saint, and there is almost no bottom line to the moral standards of others.
Because in her heart she arrogantly thinks that she is different from others.
This is the real arrogance.
Sinners who have made a mistake deserve to be punished, not forgiven and forgiven.
In the end, Grace made a change —
She asked her men to kill the woman's child first and let the woman watch.
If the woman could hold back her tears, stop.
"This is what I owe her."
At this moment, Grace truly changed from a saint to a person.
No one can excuse others, just as no one can bear the consequences of sin for others.
At the beginning, Pigo once told the story of the dragon slayer boy who turned into a dragon.
Now, maybe everyone will have a different understanding.
Like the small town of Dogville, without Grace's intrusion, perhaps, no one would have become a sinner.
But Grace's bottomless tolerance, compromise, forged everything.
The girl is pitiful, but she does not deserve sympathy.
What the director wants to express, in addition to telling the sinister nature of human nature through Grace's sad experience, but also telling people: if you make a mistake, you must bear the result.
Villagers who do the wrong thing will bear the consequences.
Grace slaughtered the villagers, not for revenge, but for the sake of reform.
After watching the movie, we can't help but ask if there is a good person in "Dogtown"? I guess the answer is pessimistic...
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