Pixar's new animation "Turning Red", also translated as "The Metamorphosis of Youth", only looked at the title, and felt that the former was not the latter.
After watching the film, I feel that the original name is more appropriate and the content of the expression is richer.
The story takes place in Toronto, Canada, which is the most popular city for immigrants in Canada and the city with the largest number of Chinese immigrants.
The protagonist, Meimei, is a 13-year-old well-behaved girl with excellent grades, filial piety to her parents, and can help her mother with housework. Their family has lived in the local Chinatown for generations. As a second or even third generation of immigrants, Meimei's life has been fully integrated into the local society, she has a girlfriend group with different skin colors but the right beat, likes the idol group called "Four City Boys", and also records her little secrets in her diary.
Meimei has a typical Chinese family, the mother is capable and strong, and the father is gentle and makes a good dish.
Director Shi Zhiyu is the first Chinese female director of Pixar, who has directed the famous animated short film "Bao Bao Bao", which shows people a suffocating maternal love with a short animation.
In "Bao Bao", the mother ate the disobedient Bao Bao when she grew up. It once caused great controversy.
In fact, this scene comes from a sentence that director Shi Zhiyu's mother really said: "I really hope to put you back in my stomach, so that I can always know where your people are." ”
Born in Chongqing in 1989, Shi Zhiyu immigrated to Canada with his parents when he was two years old.
So there are many Chinese elements in the film that can evoke childhood memories: electronic pets, star chasing, drawing favorite boys on books, hiding diaries under the bed...
Little children have their resonance when they watch it.
Brother Tiger said to me while watching, you can feel the enthusiasm of the girls in our class chasing stars after this paragraph. And, of course, many of his own shadows.
We looked at the Cantonese dubbed version.
Therefore, it automatically assumed the role of Guangdong immigrants. Mother and daughter both worship the gods of the appearance of the Chaoshan mother and The Chaoshan girl.
The beautiful mother "Ah Ming", who wears a cheongsam and wears pearl necklaces and high heels, is a typical Chinese mother at first glance.
Strict discipline of children, perfect requirements, everything is done in detail, always want to control everything about children.
At the beginning of the film, Meimei said: My family's first rule? Honor your parents.
Filial piety comes first.
What is filial piety? It is to listen to the elders and not to be willful.
The word filial piety has kidnapped many generations of Chinese children in the name of love.
This time, it was the excellent and obedient and obedient girl Meimei who was kidnapped.
And when Ah Ming, the mother who kidnapped Meimei, heard her mother call, the trembling look was terrifying across the screen.
And the father who seems gentle and can cook is also a typical Chinese father, although he has also made an indelible contribution to the family, but when it comes to children, he is often reduced to a decoration.
It is the mother and the child who snuggle up with each other, and it is the mother and the child who quarrel fiercely.
Many children love and kill their mothers and respect their fathers.
The well-behaved woman has always been very well-behaved and listens to her mother in everything. If you suppress yourself for a long time, you will always have problems.
The fuse is to see the idol's concert, and the well-behaved girl Meimei has a big rebellion in adolescence.
Here, the story is magically handled that is easy for children to accept, and when she is angry, she turns into a cute red panda with an oversized body.
Some people think she's scary, some people think she's cute.
At first, she herself felt terrible, but later she found that others liked to turn into a red panda, and she accepted herself.
So on the night of the ceremony of sealing the red panda, she refused to seal the red panda in her body. She wants to grow up with the red panda.
But her mother broke down, and she was furious, breaking the sign that sealed her own red panda and releasing the beast in her heart.
Mom turned into a red panda with beauty many times larger.
Another metaphor is that this gene that turns into a red panda is passed on to women and not to men.
It is true that generations of mothers doted on and controlled their children, and the same is true of daughters who become mothers, but this is not the case when sons become fathers.
The ladies of the family collectively deformed and rescued the angry Ah Ming.
Meimei meets her young mother at the ceremony, and the two girls have the same disease, and they are distressed by their mother's unreserved "love" for themselves.
In the end, Meimei's mother chose to respect Meimei and let her choose herself.
Meimei chose to keep the red panda, and she is confident that she has the ability to control the beast in her heart, release her nature, and bring happiness to others at the same time.
This film is suitable for adults and children to watch together. Children learn to express themselves, and adults learn to control themselves.
Perhaps because it is child-oriented, the plot and lines are relatively simple.
I was a little sleepy halfway through it.
But the core of the film's expression is profound, especially for Chinese parents, and it is worth taking a good look.
Especially our generation of sandwich parents, when they were young, were controlled by their mothers, and their experience of growing up was to try to get rid of the ropes of being kidnapped by family affection, and there were successes and failures.
After we become parents, we either repeat the mistakes of the past or successfully get rid of the curse of the previous generation, but we are also at a loss for how to educate the next generation with equal respect.
The previous generation did not leave us with successful experience to learn from, only the lessons of failure may be avoided.
But how to make our children live in peace with the potential beast in our hearts, we can only feel the stones to cross the river.
I didn't fight with my mom, but I did fight for years.
Both are dissatisfied with each other. My mother felt that I was disobedient and filial. I felt that she was too controlling, too demanding, and she was not satisfied with what I did, and at the same time she did not have the ability to always want to control me. Thanks to her lack of ability, the control is far from keeping up with the desire, which causes me to run away with my whole body.
The profound lesson is that there is no winner in this protracted battle between mother and daughter. For years I was reluctant to go home, and I could no longer be as close to my mom as I was when I was a child. Watching other daughters holding their mother's arms, the mother and daughter go shopping and eating together and joking, I feel sincerely envious.
Now, I just want to try to make myself a mother who can be generous with her children, respect them, understand them, whether they are excellent or mediocre, and can always be close friends with their mothers.