Last Saturday, in my leisurely time doing nothing after writing a game review, I expertly clicked on Twitter, ready to look for random writing material for the next week and admire the professional photography of a few female bodhisattvas I followed, when an unexpected entry on Twitter caught my attention#BoycottLSC
#BoycottLSC的意思是抵制 "The True Story of Assin".
When you mention the name "Asin True Story", does it suddenly remind you of something? That's right, it's "Forrest Gump". In fact, this "Asin True Story" is an authorized remake of the classic movie Forrest Gump, but it is Indian.
I think everyone has a fixed impression of Indian movies: the protagonist always ignores the rules of physics and overturns all the god drama plots under the gods, no matter what the scene, a large group of people can suddenly run to sing and dance, and Indian English full of curry... I have to say that most Indian movies taste like this.
(For everyone's sake, I won't put the GIF)
But there is an Indian actor whose movies are not quite the same, and readers who are familiar with India will probably know who they are talking about - Aamir Khan. His early movie "Three Silly Bollywood" is indeed one of the best films in India, when I looked at the score of 9.2 on Douban and ran to see this movie, which really refreshed my inherent impression that India has no good goods.
Take the most complained about song and dance link, Aamir Khan's film is never forced into a bunch of Indian big men dancing like ordinary Indian movies, but purposefully let the song and dance carry some plot inheritance, or fill the gap in the plot.
For example, at the beginning of "Three Silly Bollywood", there is a plot where the protagonist has just entered the university and is oppressed by the seniors, but Aamir Khan presents this plot all in a song and dance, which not only quickly advances the plot, but also makes the plot of the expression of "oppression" easy and funny, so that the song and dance link is not so full of violation.
Such advanced filmmaking skills obviously left his Indian colleagues a lot, and it is only natural that several films he has shot have been highly acclaimed in the world, and even the leaders of the mainland's State Administration of Radio, Film and Television have used Aamir Khan's film "Wrestle! Dad" to "knock" the domestic artists.
It is said that such Aamir Khan spent 10 years preparing to get the copyright and polish the script, with the male and female starring of "Three Fools", the remake of "Forrest Gump", should be a very anticipated intersection, but after the movie was released, the reputation was mixed. The IMDB rating is 5.2, but the freshness on Rotten Tomatoes (media rating) is 64%, and the popcorn index (audience rating) is 91%, which means that critics have sung that audiences are satisfied.
More seriously, the film has received a wave of bad reviews in India, and the boycott is getting bigger and bigger, and even the spearhead of the boycott is pointed at the Aamir Khan actors themselves, why is this?
It all has to be answered in the movie.
As a feather slowly falls, the film kicks off in a familiar way. Until the feather lands at Racine (Aamir Khan) feet, he takes out a box of fried crispy balls, a common snack in India, squeezes the juice, and puts it in his mouth. Then said the classic line remastered:
"Mom said that life is like a fried ball, even if the stomach is full, the heart longs for more."
After eating, he enthusiastically told his story to the passengers around him. Racine's character design is exactly like Forrest Gump, he comes from a single-parent family, raised by his mother since childhood, his legs are immobile, his reactions are also slow, and he has to rely on orthotic braces to walk normally.
The special physical condition makes Ashin always bullied at school, and only the neighbor's little girl Lupa cares about him and is willing to play with him. Once Racine was chased by a classmate, and Ruppa asked him to run, so a miracle happened, Racine ran and ran straight out of the orthotic brace.
Like the plot development of "Forrest Gump", since the unexpected opening of the door to running, Racine's life seems to have opened. He entered the university as a special student and graduated successfully, and then went to join the army, retiring in several major wars and making many combat achievements.
And in the army, he met his good brother Bala Raju. (The corresponding should be Baba Blu of the original work)
This man is very strange, unlike the men in the army who are full of wars, he likes to talk about underwear the most. In fact, Bala's family has been making underwear for generations, and Bala is very knowledgeable, and also cooperated with Asin to start a underwear business in the army, and by the way, Racine also learned to make underwear. But the happy times were always short-lived, and in a difficult battle, Bala unfortunately died. And Racine, who survived, kept his promise to Bala, left the army, opened an underwear factory, and named it after the goddess "Rupa".
Maybe it's the fool who has the fool's luck, Rupa's underwear is sold all over the country, making Racine a big entrepreneur, but he donates most of the money. After his mother died, he resigned from the company and returned to his hometown to farm. After an unexpected reunion with his childhood sweetheart and separation again, he chose to run. Running from day to night, the pace did not stop, and as a result, it caused a national sensation and became a celebrity.
In this process, Racine inevitably intersected with major events in India's modern history. In the movie "Forrest Gump", Forrest Gump personally experienced the Kennedy assassination, Watergate and the Vietnam War, and in "Asin True Story", it became the assassination of Gandhi, Operation Blue Star and the Cargill War.
The passengers on the train did not expect that this stupid boy in plain clothes in front of him was such a legendary figure. When the train arrived, Racine also got off. Waiting for him there was Rupa, who had returned again. The two returned hand in hand as they did as teenagers, and after a sweet time, Ruppa died of illness.
It is not difficult to see that "Asin True Story" is a typical remake blockbuster that follows the original work step by step. It stands to reason that there is a high-quality original plot foundation, coupled with the consistent advantages of Aamir Khan's movies, full of content, steady rhythm, and acting skills in place, so why is it so serious to hit the street?
On the one hand, it is for religious reasons, and the criticism of religious extremism in India in the film has aroused the dissatisfaction of many Hindus.
And this is not the first time Aamir Khan has encountered such a situation. In 2014, he starred in the movie "I Drop God" because it exposed religious contradictions in India, and it was boycotted by Hindus before it was released.
This film presents more fully the long-standing conflict between India's pluralistic religions: the anti-Sikh massacre in 1984; In 1992, Hindu extremist groups forcibly demolished the Babri Mosque; In 2008, the terrorist attack in Mumbai, which was later made into the movie "Mumbai Hotel"; In 2011, Mumbai was bombed in a series of 7.13 incidents. These events were caused by religious contradictions, resulting in the death of many innocent people.
Hotel Mumbai
In addition to mentioning these real historical events, Aamir Khan also puts his thoughts on religion in many details of the film. For example, in college, whenever there was a religious conflict, his mother would call him to warn him not to go out:
"Because there's malaria outside."
Later, when his companion Muhammad asked him, "Why do you never pray?" Racine replied, "My mother said that religion is the main cause of malaria and that God lives in the depths of everyone's heart." ”
Aamir Khan uses the protagonist Racine to see religious contradictions in India as a source of virus and chaos, which is obviously a bold but dangerous statement for a country with many believers and fanatic faith.
Click on the Twitter entry, and we will find that many of the religious believers wearing the Indian flag are expressing boycotts.
However, if the bad reviews caused by religious reasons are only malicious attacks by certain groups. Then another bad review suffered by the movie is the unavoidable problem of plagiarism.
The film "copyes" the original work from the setting of the characters, the composition of the picture, and the editing points. For example, the most typical shot of the original work is the male protagonist running, and the feather that symbolizes the rise and fall of life floating in the air, even Aamir Khan himself imitated Tom Hanks' performance in "Forrest Gump" almost the whole time:
But no matter how wonderful the original copy is, it will inevitably make people suffer from aesthetic fatigue. It's no wonder that netizens don't have a high evaluation of the film.
Of course, this "Assin True Story" is not as useless as Indian netizens evaluate.
With Racine's tireless running in India, he took the audience to get to know the Indian mountains and rivers again, the customs and people; And a number of famous actors also contributed quite wonderful performances throughout the process. Although Aamir Khan's performance has no breakthrough, the overall character shaping is very fulfilling, this role is still a small person that Aamir Khan has always created, and is often just a bystander in historical events, similar to but different from Forrest Gump in the United States.
The film is filled with a lot of presentations, reflections on the current situation in India, and also makes the film fundamentally different from the "American Dream" of "Forrest Gump", and in some ways, it can be called a qualified adaptation.
Adapting global film history classics has never been easy, and Aamir Khan wanted to do it and made efforts to do it, which is indeed commendable; However, his fist and fist intentions were not fully felt by the Indian people, and they rose up to resist, which is really emotional. From a personal point of view, I do hope that Aamir Khan can make films that inspire the Indian people, but with my knowledge of the third brother, it is really difficult and difficult. (laughs)