#换个角度观影 #
Wes Anderson's "Crossing Darjeeling" and "The Genius Family" are awkwardly good. The reason for the awkwardness is not only because the behavior of the people in the film is nervous, but also because our genius director Wes Anderson always forcibly and reasonably unifies the opposing elements, which has caused this twisted but fascinating film.
The Geniuses and Darjeeling tell similar stories, except that one takes place in New York (a city similar to New York) and the other takes place on a train in India. No matter what kind of movie, there is a strange family of people, including an unreliable father or unreliable mother, several bear children who have grown up crooked because of their unreliable father or mother, and one or several Indians. In the movie, in order to reconcile with their parents, or in order to reconcile with themselves, the bear children have to do a series of strange things that seem incompatible with their adult identities, and these things seem illogical on the surface and do not help the bear children and their parents to reconcile with themselves, in fact, in the end, the bear children have also achieved their own goals through this method, not only reconciling with themselves, but also having a new understanding of life, which is both surprising and touching.
In both films, and The first unity of opposition set by Anderson is the unity of the opposition between the characters and the space in which the characters appear. In "The Genius", the film begins with a glimpse of a luxurious mansion that Mr. Trenbaum bought on Sagittarius Street to make the family comfortable. On the face of it, the family should be housed in a luxurious mansion for a family, but just ten years after the Trenbaum family had lived in it, the head of the family, Mr. Trenbaum, was expelled from the mansion by his wife for no reason and lived outside for more than twenty years without divorce; and the wife and three children who lived in the mansion also had their own thoughts—each of them lived like an island. The eldest son does not talk to the family when he is sad, and relies on the loneliness and sorrow by taking the two young sons through safety exercises; the adopted daughter has been smoking since the age of 12, but no one in the family knows it; the younger son's deep admiration for the adopted daughter is not realized until he grows up; and neither the mother who lives with the children nor the father who is kicked out by the mother knows nothing about it. They live together and they are isolated from each other.
In "Crossing Darjeeling", the opposition between this space and the relationship between the characters is more obvious. In this film, Anderson directly arranges the three brothers into a small and compact train car. It can be said that their physical distance is too close to each other, however, even if the three brothers are so close to each other, there are still various barriers between each other. What Peter told Jack was not told to Francis, what Francis told Peter was not told to Jack; Francis did not tell the two brothers about the fatal car accident, nor did he tell him why the three brothers were on this inexplicable journey through Darjeeling; and every time Jack slipped off the train to make a call, Francis and Peter had to hold the window of the train and ask each other, "Who is Jack calling?" The distance of the physical space does not bring the characters closer, and what makes them closer is their inexplicable experiences.
And in these inexplicable experiences there is also a second unity of opposites—that is, the unity of opposites of nature and form. In the two films, the appearance of this is different, but it is essentially the same. In the genius family, I don't know if you have ever thought about this question, but I have thought about it anyway - what does the talent of children have to do with their healing of spiritual wounds? It's not that gifted children grow up in such a family and meet such an unreliable father and indifferent mother will have psychological problems, but why does Anderson have to set these children up as genius children? One of the rational explanations for this problem is probably this unity of opposites. In the film, the three children of the Trenbaum family plus the blonde cowboy of the neighbor's house are still successful in their careers, which is largely related to their extraordinary talent, but their way of solving problems is childish and nervous. This is the opposition between the form of genius and the childish content—yet this opposition is unified in the body of each character. The adult Trenbaums and the blonde cowboys on the other side of the door seem desperate to keep the children in their bodies, as if this is the only way they can feel safe and survive in a world that is out of place with them. So, if you want these children to grow up, then their fathers must die, and only when the father dies can the children become fathers.
In "Crossing Darjeeling", this antithetical unity of nature and form is more obvious. Regarding the location of the film, Anderson chose India depended largely on the mysterious imagination of Westerners about the East. Therefore, in the movie, Francis arranged this spiritual journey for himself and his brothers to find his mother. Since it is a spiritual journey, it should include some things that can only be understood and unspeakable, such as accidental inspiration, such as trance-inducing feelings, etc., but Francis's behavior in the film clearly shifts the American way of doing things to the spiritual journey - he hired a balding assistant to arrange when he and his brothers meditate every day, when to make a wish, and when to visit which temple to visit. Even if you make a wish with peacock feathers, you first write a manual for your brothers — how similar it is to americans in real life learning to burn paper with their ancestors in Chinese!
In this way, a spiritual journey that should have gone with the flow and could not be forced was turned into a family training camp by Francis, in which his brothers, even if they were full of complaints, could not resist the so-called authority of the big brother—they probably could not resist their promises to the big brother. But in any case, Anderson forced the Western program into an Eastern-style freehand activity, so that the contradictions were perfectly and humorously integrated into the journey of the three brothers.
Of course, this unreliable three brothers are also similar to the four children in "Genius Family", they seem to be unwilling to grow up, and they also want to keep the child in the body, even if Peter is going to be a father, he still feels that he is a baby. When Francis was in a car accident, he said that his only thought was to be with his brothers, and that the end of their journey was to find his mother. And their unreliable mother, after settling them down, left them and drifted away, no one knows where she went, the audience only knows that they were abandoned by their mothers after the death of their father. Although this may be a tragic experience in real life, in the movie, the three brothers quickly grow up after being abandoned by their mother. Francis removes the gauze that he has wrapped around his head and is used to sell misery, Peter accepts the reality that his wife is about to give birth and he is about to become a father, Jack no longer rejects the fact that his novel is not completely fictional, and all three of them begin to face the world in real terms—and the sign is that they have finally thrown away all their useless luggage.
And the wonder of the unity of opposites in the second point is that the opposing aspects are of no help to the characters in solving the problem, and I don't believe that the three brothers would get anything out of such a clear spiritual journey that was arranged, nor do I believe that the children of the Trenbaum family in "The Genius Family" can solve their spiritual problems by living together. But the result is that their problems are inexplicably solved, and this solution is related to the unity of the third opposite.
The third unity of opposites is the unity of the opposites of fairy tales and life. Anderson's films are bright and dreamy, like scenes in fairy tales, and sometimes he is afraid that fairy tale scenes are not enough to express the meaning of "fairy tales", and he also forcibly arranges for fairy tale books in the movie that are very simple in English to tell the audience - look, I am telling a fairy tale. So he allows his characters to have different personality characteristics from ordinary people, or out of tune, or unreliable, or serious nonsense, or nervous to do the right thing, anyway, none of the behavior is on the point. However, all these absurdities actually happen in real life, and people have to have emotions with the characters in the movie who are not you, me, and him. We understand the absurdity of the characters in the film, and we understand how they reconcile with themselves—in "Genius", the old Trenbaum finally agrees to divorce his wife and thus restore the whole family's twisted relationship, while in "Crossing Darjeeling", the mother's final departure makes the three brothers understand that they must grow up and take on their duties and tasks in the world. Sometimes the epiphany is also a momentary accident, although all roads lead to Rome, but life is never a straight road to "live thoroughly".
You have to go around some curves and experience some inexplicable ups and downs.
Therefore, these opposing unity, these mischievous characters, these awkward plots are smooth from this point of view, after all, there are very few smooth lifes, and most of us have to be awkward with ourselves, the awkwardness of others, the awkwardness of the environment, so in order to show the awkwardness of these countless moments, Anderson has made so many awkward movies. Well, it's still pretty good.
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