Editor's Note: If you "don't want to sleep" or "can't sleep," read on.
There may be a literary film here, and there may be a horror film here. I don't know if you'll fall asleep or if you'll be scared even more out of bed.
Tonight, tell the story of a shrinking man.
Alienation is a recurring theme in literature since the 20th century, with Kafka telling the story of a man turning into an insect in Metamorphosis and Eugene O'Neill's play "Hairy Ape" about psychological mutations.
There is no shortage of such works on the screen, and "Incredible Shrinker" is one of them. The film is based on Richard Maiserson's novel Shrink man and is directed by Jack Arnold.
Poster of Incredible Shrinkers
The protagonist of the film, Scott, suffered from some kind of radiation pollution, and his body began to shrink slowly, thus losing the ability to work and live independently.
Looking at works on these themes, we can see that they have a common pattern: they begin with a mutation in body or mind, and then show the process of the protagonist's disconnection from society.
It reflects a kind of survival anxiety, fear of social abandonment.
Director and male lead
In the case of Metamorphosis, Gregor has been working diligently for the happiness of his family, but when he became an insect, he lost the ability to work, was fired from the company, spurned by his family, and eventually died tragically.
Kafka used this novel to expose the nature of social indifference, a person can only be accepted by society if he continues to produce for society and for others, and if he loses this ability, he will be ruthlessly eliminated by society.
At the beginning of the film "Incredible Shrinking Man", Scott and his wife are on vacation at sea, the wife enters the cabin, and Scott stays alone on the deck, when a ominous cloud approaches it, and Scott looks isolated with his back to the camera, which indicates Scott's situation throughout the next film.
Scott stood at the bow of the ship facing a drifting cloud of radiation and looked helpless.
In order to avoid being excluded, Scott can only flatter the world, and he writes his tragic experience into a book to satisfy the curiosity of the public.
The film features a character, Doris, who is a dwarf who performs in a circus.
Her performance and Scott's performance are homogeneous, both taking out their misfortunes for people to appreciate and consume, a kind of self-harming dedication, but it is the last way for people on the margins of society to maintain contact with this society.
At this point, the film enters a stage of relaxation, the shrinkage stops, and Scott finds a reliance on Doris. This détente is intended to recharge the escalation of the drama conflict that follows.
Soon after we see the shrinkage begin again, and a desperate Scott leaves Doris behind and runs across the grass alone. Using Doris as a reference, Scott's distant back quickly shrinks in the frame. This shot reflects Jack Arnold's superb ability to express himself in the lens, and he completes a rapid reduction through the principle of visual perspective.
As soon as the camera turned, Scott had become extremely small, less than 10 centimeters tall, just in line with the previous shot.
The director used the principle of visual perspective to complete a quick retraction
The film then goes into a fantasy adventure entirely.
For the tiny Scott, the whole world becomes dangerous, and even the family cat has become a terrifying beast.
Due to the cat's attack, Scott fell into the basement. Basements are often used to store things that are temporarily unusable in daily life, and sometimes these things are completely forgotten after a long time, so it can be said that the basement represents a space that is not far away from daily life.
Scott is attacked by a cat
Especially in this film, common living objects such as mousetraps, matchboxes, needles and threads, etc., are magnified to show surreal colors. Scott falls into the basement, symbolizing that his spirit has completely detached itself from human society and retreated into the subconscious world.
The magnified mousetrap is a bit surreal
Props in the film
The plot that takes place in the basement occupies nearly half of the film's content, and the theme of the adventures of the fairy tale villain is brought to the big screen.
Scott covered himself with only a rag and used a pin as a weapon, like the one-inch mage in Japanese legend or the thumb in Grimm's Fairy Tales. However, the little people in the fairy tale have great power in them and can defeat monsters that are larger than themselves.
Using a pin as a weapon is like a thumb in Grimm's Fairy Tales
The climax of the film is Scott vs. Spider in the basement. Spiders are a human nightmare, ugly in appearance and venom. Many fantasy adventure films like to amplify this nightmare, such as giant spiders in Tarantula, Return of the Lord of the Rings, Game of the Brave, and Harry Potter.
The scene where Scott and Spider fight is also set up to be full of fantasy, making the big battle look as if it took place on some distant alien planet.
Great War Spider
Many works with alienating themes will end in tragedy to express the cruelty of society, but such an ending still contains affirmation of society.
It criticizes the social rejection of the human character that has lost its use value, in other words, as long as the society does not expel people, the society is still a good society. It also believes that once a person is expelled from society, there is nowhere to go.
Take the protagonist Yang Ke in "Hairy Ape", in the end, he still thinks about counter-attacking and reckoning with human society, which shows that he has always been full of yearning for human society, but he only resents this society to exclude him.
Movie scenes
And "Incredible Shrinking Man" has a new breakthrough in values. After Scott killed the spider, he climbed up the mound and walked toward the grid web of the basement window.
This grid represents the last barrier of Scott's spirit, and when he first came here, Scott's body was still too large to pass through. It shows that his spirit is still imprisoned by the human world.
By the time the second came, he had shrunk small enough to make a smooth crossing of the grid. This shows that Scott has completely transcended the limitations of human consciousness, and the reduction disease has finally dissolved his attachment to form, and his mentality has changed from fear to relief.
Scott stood in front of the fence net
The film ends with an aerial shot lifting upwards, Scott's figure shrinks to a minimum, and then the vast cosmic picture fades in, suggesting that this is the ultimate return of life.
The narrator makes it clear what the film is trying to convey: "Even a small existence is meaningful, and for God, there is no non-existent existence." ”
Stills from Incredible Shrinker
As Schopenhauer said:
"When we indulge in observing the infinite expanse of the world in space and time, when we contemplate the past and the future for thousands of years,—— or when the night sky truly unfolds before our eyes and thus imprints the boundlessness of the universe into our consciousness,—— then we feel that we have shrunk to nothingness, that we as individuals, as living human beings, as impermanent will phenomena, as if they were a drop in the ocean, disappearing, disappearing into nothingness. But at the same time there is a direct consciousness that arises against the ghostly idea of our own smallness, against this false possibility, which makes us conscious that all these worlds exist only in our appearances, exist only as forms prescribed by the eternal subjects of pure knowledge; and if we forget our individuality, we will find that we are the eternal subjects of pure knowledge, that is, the shoulders of all worlds and all ages, as prerequisites. The vastness of the world that had disturbed us before was now settled in our hearts, and our dependence on it was offset by its dependence on us. (Quoted from The World as Will and Appearance)