Author | One brother
Produced by | One Piece Movie
At the tail end of March, Brother Yi would like to remind everyone that Chinese film fans are about to usher in a grand movie carnival at the end of the month - "Ready Player One"!
For this movie, fans all over the world are looking forward to it.
And almost eighty percent of that expectation came from the most prominent name on the poster— Steven Spielberg.
This year's Director is already 72 years old.
After "World Wars" 12 years ago, he has never touched on science fiction again.
In particular, a series of realistic films with Tom Hanks in recent years (including the Washington Post, which was on fire last year), have made everyone feel as if the old man has become a fantasy.
But after watching "Ready Player One", Brother Yi only wanted to say one thing:
Our dearest Spielberg, his fantasies never stopped.
Spielberg's position in the film world is unshakable:
"He is one of the greatest directors in the world in the 21st century, the label director of Hollywood films, and the most influential figure of his generation" (Life magazine)
"He is also one of the richest filmmakers in the world" (Forbes Magazine).
He's probably the hollywood director Chinese knows best, just think about those names:
Jaws, E. T", "Saving Private Ryan", "Schindler's List", "Raiders of the Lost Ark" series, "Contact of the Third Kind"...
What many people don't know is that his experience itself is more like a Hollywood movie.
Spielberg was born in December 1946 to an American Jewish family in Cincinnati, Ohio. His father was a computer expert and his mother was a musician, and the family environment made Spielberg equally fascinated by technology and art.
But what attracted him more was light and shadow.
Sometimes some traits are innate, and Spielberg's preference for images seems to be a gift from God.
Before he was ten years old— the age when we were still playing with mud — Spielberg began making "movies."
On his 12th birthday, Spielberg got a pocket camera from his father. He used this camera to shoot his first micro-film, The Last Shootout.
At the age of 13, he began making a 40-minute war movie, Nowhere to Live, and won the award again.
At the age of 16, he wrote and directed his first independently produced feature film, the 140-minute sci-fi film Firelight.
The first real film in Si Dao's life was a science fiction film.
Next, he seems to have walked the path that every successful person must follow — dropping out of school. In his sophomore year, he got a contract because of the chance to interview the manager of Universal, so he decided to drop out of school and start a film career.
In 1975, Jaws was born.
Less than a decade into the industry, Spielberg became a famous director in Hollywood.
In the early days of "Four King Kongs", "Jaws" caused a sensation around the world, he pioneered the concept of "summer blockbuster", and was the first director in history to box office more than a billion dollars.
The subsequent "Raiders of the Lost Ark", "ET Aliens" and "Contact of the Third Kind" have all achieved unprecedented commercial success.
But as many people as they like him, as many people hate him.
Fans believe he has brought the film industry closer to a new era. Those who hate him, on the other hand, believe that Spielberg's films re-treat the audience as children, eliminating irony, conscious aesthetics, and critical reflection.
In fact, when commenting on Si Dao, there is a key factor to pay attention to: he is a very personal director himself.
His films more or less bring out his real experiences, whether it is life or emotions. It was these experiences that gave him the heartfelt charm of the films he had originally made.
As he himself said —
My films come from feelings I can't explain. But I wouldn't really analyze them.
Having the whole movie story in your brain is a very lonely thing because no one can help.
In fact, I don't know what it's like to be an adult. ”
As a child, Spielberg was fragile and sensitive. He said that every time he woke up from a dream, the whispers of demons were in his ears.
The dark cinema was once thought to be the only place where he could not feel the horror.
In the beginning of his films, we can easily feel a strange sense of fear.
For example, "Jaws" can be filmed so madly, it comes from his own deep-sea phobia.
Spielberg has an inextricable complex for emotions, for family, and especially for fathers. Fifteen years after his parents divorced, Spielberg barely contacted his father, turning to the film for comfort:
In Raiders of the Lost Ark, Indiana Jones' father is his partner.
In the sequel that followed, Spielberg deliberately added such a dialogue -
Son: Do you remember the last time we drank? I drank a milkshake.
Father: Really? What did we talk about?
Son: We didn't talk, we never talked.
Isn't this Spielberg's own white depiction of himself!
Similarly, in "Contact of the Third Kind", Spielberg recreates the divorce of a family almost completely.
He's not so much a personal director as he is somehow a relative of his films.
Movies have become the only way for him to pour out his emotions and release pressure.
This is his creative habit, and the reason why many people criticize Spielberg's films, and in his speech at Harvard University, Spielberg himself admitted this -
But I was immersed in the "movie bubble."
Because I dropped out of school, my worldview was limited to my imagination
and not the real world."
Si Dao is such a person, he has infused too many emotions into the film, and his films have never been made for the sake of showmanship.
Schindler's List (1993) was, in Spielberg's own words, the most emotionally difficult film he ever made.
Making such a film requires unprecedented courage for Spielberg, a Jew, and the greatness of Schindler's List is not how cruel it is, but precisely how warm it is.
The little girl in red in the black-and-white crowd, and Schindler finally shouted to the Jews at the train station: "This watch of mine can save a man!" I can save a person with this dress! My car can save 10 people, I did too little! ”
To this day, Spielberg has never stopped gathering evidence of tragic events in human history, including the Rwandan Massacre, the Indonesian Massacre, and the Nanjing Massacre.
After the release of "Saving Private Ryan", it caused great repercussions, and the picture of World War II has never been so clearly displayed in front of the world.
At the same time, the discussion of sacrificing a squad to save a person has not stopped so far.
When Captain Miller took a pistol and fired one shot at the tank.
Or when the squad finds Ryan, but Ryan refuses to go to the rear.
The enormous emotional impact of these moments allows the war movie to move away from the panorama of General Patton and to one person after another— something much more important than the Normandy scene.
Spielberg's greatest contribution is not to make the film sell better, but to make the film more humane and warmer. And this is what a child can do - because only a child can believe that the world will always be beautiful.
The loneliness and fear he suffered as a child are all healed in the dream of the movie.
Today, the 72-year-old Spielberg has gradually gone in the opposite direction of criticism of him: just when many people criticize him for treating the audience as children, he has become a child himself.
Many people remember the movie "E.T: Aliens" The protagonist rides a bicycle with aliens and flies past the moon, with a kind of fantastical childlike beauty.
And then there's the relationship between little Elliott and the alien, the classic farewell when the alien leaves.
Since "ET Alien", alien movies have appeared a touch of human warmth, and Spielberg's childlike heart has continued to this day.
The new film "Dream Giant" of the previous year, Spielberg admitted frankly, the child is the first, the movie is the second.
His new film "Dream Giant" is made for children and adults with childlike hearts.
He once said of the child's heart:
In your heart, there must be a "childish" side. I think that's critical, because when you're a child, you see the world ahead of you — your life is still ahead of you and not behind you — so it's only natural that even in the subject of tragedy and life's tribulations, I want to take that side of my childhood to the front and put it in the center. ”
The process of choosing the protagonist of "Dream Giant" turned out to be when filming "Bridge of Spies" and saw Mark Reirance kind and lovely.
In Spielberg's words, he smiled and we all laughed, so we immediately decided that he would play the Dream Giant.
A film full of innocence, the real situation is so innocent, after experiencing a lot of serious and complex themes, Spielberg can be said to return to his original intention in another way.
Childishness, opposition to utilitarianism, the search for the heart, especially in later years, looks more like Spielberg's characteristic fearless romance.
And "Ready Player One" seems to amplify this romance and then enlarge it.
From the trailer that has been exposed, Brother Yi sees a variety of childhood elements. At yesterday's early screening, all the audience cheered like children — everyone just liked to be a child in a dream that Spielberg had made.
After all, the first post-90s generations were said to be old.
And the real old man Spielberg is still the greatest child in the world, his childhood is not over, his dreams have not yet woken up.