Introduction: "Flying is the eternal dream of mankind." ”
A successful film character is embodied in the narrative, often inseparable from an effective character growth. This growth is a clear distinction between the beginning and the end of the narrative, the protagonist either undergoes a moral transformation or establishes the integrity of personality through some kind of life experience, almost all stories are written about the same kind of "heroic growth", and in Joseph Campbell's "Hero with a Thousand Faces", the author compares it to "a hero with a thousand faces is actually a thousand faces".
Children's growth films are more directly written as the theme of the film, although the growth model is very similar, but the social problems and ideologies reflected in children's growth films in different countries are unique, such as Iran's "Little Shoes", Japan's "Spirited Away", China's "Home in a Place with Lush Water and Grass" and the United States' "Southern Beast", etc. The narrative of these films usually takes a "child's adventure" as the starting point. In the text, social issues are integrated with the national spirit, and the film records the growth of children while triggering certain social thinking.
The movie "Flying With You" is also a warm creation under this classic paradigm, the film tells the story of a little girl who has lost her mother and is taken back to the farm by her father, and the kind she finds a nest of wild goose eggs in an accident and then raises her. Seeing that the season of the geese moving south, the little girl and her family boldly decided to use the plane to lead the wild geese to carry out an "artificial migration", and this heroic personal behavior finally aroused a huge social concern. The film shows the audience two kinds of growth and companionship - that is, the companionship of father and daughter and the growth of daughter and wild geese, these two threads complement each other and contrast with each other, on the basis of this narrative, the film also reflects the social problems of the destruction of the ecological environment in the process of human industrialization, and the narrative expression of these two aspects The film has also become a clear embodiment of American ideology.
First, the love of man and man, the love of man and nature
The most intuitive feeling given to the audience by the movie "Flying High with You" is that the two emotional experiences are extremely warm and generous, and this style is presented through the writing method of filmification and simplicity. Unlike most of hollywood's dazzling films in the 90s, "FlyIng With You" abandons complex narrative techniques and falls generously in the choice of scenes, and "the sky", "wilderness" and "warehouse" become important landscapes for this film to set off the narrative and create a fairytale-like warm feeling.
In terms of narrative, the film is divided into two threads, and these two threads have the same expression in essence. The little girl Amy lost her mother in a car accident, and the bereavement became an inseparable shadow in Amy's heart. When she comes to live on the farm with her father, the new environment poses a new challenge to Amy, and it is also a challenge for Amy's father. Amy was used to traveling with her mother, and when she came to the farm, returning to her original house brought her a habitual shock. When she first walked into her father's cabin, she was amazed by the strange props and crafts in the room, which also reflected the strangeness between her and her father.
Accustomed to living with her mother, when she returns here, she has lost her memories of the past, and now she has to re-accept the family ties that were severed by her parents' divorce. Living with her mother made her accustomed to the grasp of "safety", and when she saw her father gliding in the sky and finally planting on the ground, it was clear that this "adventure" was a challenge to her past experience. After officially returning to her father's life, Amy will deal with new relationships, including other opposite-sex elders, Susan of the "stepmother" role, and her father himself. The expansion and elimination of this estrangement leads to the second thread of the film, that is, Amy's experience of becoming a "mother goose".
The growth and migration of wild geese become a stark counterpart to Amy's ability to eliminate interpersonal barriers and mature in the film. When Amy feels unable to fit into the environment, the discovery of wild goose eggs provides Amy with an opportunity to think differently. Amy sees the shadow of her own loneliness after losing her mother in the goose egg, and recalls her father's explanation of refusing to let the workers develop the forest, and Amy also begins to understand her father's intention to give herself a life to rely on. When Amy decides to raise wild geese, her identity becomes a dual juxtaposition of children and parents, and this juxtaposition of roles provides impetus for her growth. In the upbringing of wild geese, new relationships also gradually change from cold to warm through this opportunity, and the company of the elders for Amy is just like Amy's obedience to the little wild goose, when Amy moves from this strange relationship to empathy, the "little wild goose" in the film also becomes a big goose waiting to fly.
The decision to help the wild geese migrate symbolizes that Amy will fly with the flock of geese who have never left the ground, a romantic, humane and heroic rite of passage. Amy and her father in the forest to find the wild goose lost because of the injury metaphorically filled the father-daughter love slowly filled amy's wounded inner side, when the light of the flashlight shone on the wild goose, just like Amy was also illuminated by this care, so she had the courage to continue to complete this flight. When her father accidentally fell to the ground, Amy led the flock of geese back to the south with her father's encouragement. This is a girl's solo adventure, it represents the hero's journey before dawn, when she and the geese return safely, the arc of the character is established, and the coming-of-age ceremony ends.
The two clues of the film are like Cannon's song that accompanies each other until the end of the film, in this companionship and growth we see that man's love for nature is like human affection, and the film also takes this to take a humanitarian view of ecological problems and criticize the overexploitation of industrial civilization.
Ii. Ideological brushstrokes
The influence of different ideologies on children's development in film narratives with different national backgrounds can be seen in different children's development films. The "adventure" in the film seems to be a difficult to achieve in the real context, with a certain fairy tale color. The entire "flight" program was not approved by the government, and the plan was to build technical credentials in the father's status as an "inventor", and then carry out this long flight from south to north with the assistance of relatives and friends and out of a humanitarian spirit.
Part of the film's prose-style perception comes from the director's weakening of the drama of the plot, the film actually does not give the protagonist more natural adventures and does not show more trials in training, Amy mastered the flying skills in a "genius" way, and the obstacles to the plan often come from human characters such as "policeman", "hunter", "developer", etc., but in the end Amy and others still complete their dreams through hard work through great "adventurous spirit". And assisting the media seems to have had a certain positive impact on society.
The interesting point of the film is that the country where the father currently lives is Canada, and the two are equivalent to completing a conquest in Canada through the great "American spirit". In Abulsce's view, ideology is everywhere, encompassing all representations of reality and all social conventions. The film embodies the potential cultural hegemony of the American spirit through the narrative depiction of children's growth, and this so-called "growth adventure" is inevitably with a certain color difference in the author's view from an ideological perspective.
epilogue:
The movie "Flying With You" tells people a simple but emotionally strong story. It is more like a dish of stir-fry, without too much narrative technique, and the concentrated characters and vast visual landscapes establish a soft and clean emotional experience for people. Watching this film, it is easy to think of the adventures in fairy tales, after all, each of us has a dream of flying in our hearts.