In recent days, the epidemic in India has erupted at an unimaginable rate, while at the same time, the attitude of their people to the epidemic has become even more incredible, with medical staff throwing bodies into rivers and people drinking Ganges water to fight the new crown. Coupled with some of India's tumultuous operations in the international community some time ago, people can't help but wonder, what kind of country is India?
If we understand India through movies, we will find that they have a very good cultural output, those Bollywood classics often become a phenomenon-level topic in the fan circle, positive and enterprising universal values with cheerful, singing and dancing local temperament, people can't help but wonder, this is the News often in the streets can not find the toilet, "a dream brahma" India?
The Barber of Destiny is a recent Indian comedy about a barber who lives at the bottom of the ladder who accidentally becomes the one who decides where power belongs in an election, and in the process holds the fate of both sides of the election and his own fate changes.
Compared with "Wrestling Daddy" and "Mysterious Superstar", which are permeated with American Hollywood narrative strategies from beginning to end, "Destiny Barber" is a film that starts from the lower environment of India and reflects the real Indian society.
It can be said that Bollywood has a certain illusion like Hollywood, but today's social contradictions in India are by no means a plot that "the bottom people realize their dreams through struggle".
Although the Barber of Destiny depicts suffering, it is also full of comedy, and it can be seen that Indians can use any storyboard to express songs and dances.
The film sets the environment in a rural area of India, and at the beginning throws out a very comedic contradiction - the village has built a toilet for a long time, standing there alone, representing the two groups of "south" and "north" people standing in front of the toilet and fighting about who can use the toilet.
People in the south think that public toilets, as the name suggests, public toilets can be used by everyone, while people in the north think that this toilet is built in the north and what people in the south of you use.
In the end, the old village chief who took pains to build toilets came to the town site - he came to the toilet himself to stabilize everyone, but because he could not find toilet paper, he could not come out, allowing the situation outside to become difficult to clean up.
It can be seen that this contradiction, which is only established in Indian society, is exposed in a way that is close to self-deprecation, and the film frolices this absurd conflict, followed by cheerful Indian music, and ends with a bird's-eye view, a comedy scene that looks so appropriate hides the most deep-rooted social contradictions in India today.
The caste system has existed in India for thousands of years, although the official has abolished it, but the people are still accustomed to the existence of this society, coupled with the export of Western democratic culture, but it makes the group contradictions here more intense - the original hierarchy arranged them clearly according to the superiority and inferiority, and democratic elections allowed the long-suppressed humble psychology of the people at the bottom to be stretched, and the party was different from each other, and the competition for face became an inevitable.
When the world's first film industry countries brought movies such as "Joker" and "The Trial of the Seven Gentlemen of Chicago" to us and told us about the problems facing democracy in first world countries, this film showed more of the real democratic situation in third world countries to everyone - as funny as a family, as sad as a caged beast.
While Europe and the United States are already discussing the technical difficulties of how their social turns will work, more parts of the world are still rolling over on the roads where they are turning. In fact, the face of democracy is not only the verbal battle in the courtroom 60 years ago and the flags on the big lawn that represent ideas, but also the scuffle of a group of people in front of a lonely toilet.
This is the background of the story, so what kind of character is the male protagonist in the film? He has no name, but because of some flaws in his body, he has been given a concise and memorable title, "smile". The barber, who had no place in the village, was pulled in to the role that determined the village chief's ownership because of the tie in the votes on both sides of the election. At this point, his fate has changed dramatically.
Unlike the fate-changing opportunities ushered in by many "Bollywood" movies, the turning point in the man's life is quite ironic. When both sides needed the ballot paper, he was urgently "made" a citizen, given a name, and had a voter's card.
It can be said that his "citizenship" was born for this vote. In this barren land, when the mask of civilization is torn off and only a bare democratic game remains, its essence is revealed - people are equal as votes, and the centripetal force of this society is to turn people into a vote.
"Smile" has a name, Mandela, and just like this name, he suddenly exists in this land like a shrine, and he becomes a temporary god.
In order to compete for his vote, the two sides took turns to show him overtures, and in a few days he became carefree, the whole line was renewed, and he was even regarded as a celebrity, and he became the focus of the whole village.
But at the same time the threat was there, with both sides telling him to cut off his arm if he didn't vote for himself. This put him in a situation where the scenery is unlimited but the situation is difficult.
This is a subtle stroke that pushes the fate of the little man to the extreme absurdity, but at the end it opens a moment of madness - when the candidate who has lost power decides to kill him, everyone finds various reasons to save him, and finally these people come together to complete a reunion redemption.
This in turn is subordinate to a neat Hollywood-style play, and the character does complete the arc he deserves, but is this his closer to the real ending? Maybe he did something good in the process of "becoming a vote", but can the people who are demonized by the gangs and factions throughout the film really stop a disaster for him?
In fact, the setting of this catastrophe also stays at a relatively naïve level, because the life of a grass-dweller who has no use value has even lost the value of killing for the powerful, and his real disaster is still nameless and nameless and has nothing to rely on after falling from the altar.
Of course, this idea of the ending is also based on oneself, because when we exclaim that the Indians have done a comedic way to expose social contradictions, when you look back after watching the film, you find that people expose social contradictions in order to do comedy. When we sweated for what we saw as social taboos, they had already taken away all these sharp practical questions with a string of song and dance music.
I have to say that this film has been very restrained in terms of song and dance, but it is still not difficult to see the optimism of Indians in suffering, and the bridges of fleeing and fighting do not necessarily have the meaning of bitterness and hatred in the use of music, but make people feel that this is part of their lives. Chickens flying dogs jump and fight and kill and then have to get together to live a life, can you say whether this is entry into the world or birth?
If Western movies are still bargaining for the bottom line of democracy, then this movie is to rip their so-called democracy out of the bottoms, maybe it is not with a sense of reflection to pickpocket, but the naïve temperament revealed in this more conventional comedy operation is like the child in "The Emperor's New Clothes", people are not extreme, they will skewer a democratic overturning scene in your own way.
The election manifestos of the two candidates are more money than who pays, pulls villagers back from abroad for a vote and locks them up for a month, and goes to rescue the old lady who can still serve as a vote... It's hard to say if this is really happening in a poor democracy.
And what does it mean when these happenings are all ended in the inertia of Hollywood movies? It means that the world has completed another closed loop.
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