Eight years ago, "The Return of the Great Sage" directed by Tian Xiaopeng can be described as creating a new situation in the creation of national comics and has become a phenomenal epoch-making work.
As director Tian Xiaopeng polished "Deep Sea" for seven years, the trailer in the Easter egg of "Jiang Ziya" three years ago has whetted the audience's appetite, which can be said to be the attention of everyone.
Now "Deep Sea" has joined the "fight" of the Spring Festival file, unfortunately, as the only two animated films in the Spring Festival file, "Deep Sea" is not outstanding at the box office now.
But as far as "Deep Sea" itself is concerned, it has opened up the boundaries of Chinese animation film creation at this stage, adding a unique bright color to this year's Spring Festival file.
If "The Return of the Great Sage" affected the IP operation of subsequent Chinese myths and legends, then "Deep Sea" pulls its gaze back to the present, using animated fantasy romance to observe and soothe the current real life.
The comments on "Deep Sea" also show a somewhat polarized state, which is also relatively rare in national comic movies, compared to previous national comic movies, "Deep Sea" largely abandons the neat narrative and shows more of a state.
This state is more accurately conscious of consciousness, and Deep Sea is a fantasy adventure and a reflection of reality pain, and the combination of the two, this presentation of character consciousness largely deconstructs the narrative, and instead shifts the focus to the picture and the seemingly crazy character behavior.
"Deep Sea" seems to be the core of maternal love, but it is actually a reflection on the meaning of individual existence, and maternal love is more of a role in supporting survival and another symbol of meaning, so in the end, the redemption of life and death still falls on Betelgeuse himself.
In the film, Betelgeuse's search for maternal love begins with a lack of family love and depression, and then uses the sea voyage as a guide, using the fairy tales told by her mother as a child and the storybooks on the ship to construct the fantasy of a girl who has lost hope in the world before she dies.
So before the first half of the mystery is revealed, Betelgeuse's strange experience of encountering sea elves or entering the Deep Sea Hotel is full of absurd and strange feelings, which at the same time contrasts strongly with the beautiful picture, forming a sense of discomfort to some extent.
This discomfort can be said to be a kind of emotional foreshadowing, and "Deep Sea" tries to complete the emotional externalization of Betelgeuse with such a contrast, allowing the audience to substitute into it, and finally trying to present the maximum emotional rendering at the climax of the plot reversal.
It is a little regrettable that because the externalization of Betelgeuse's consciousness is too focused, too many characters' behavioral motivations and the overall introduction of the worldview are likely to make it difficult for some audiences to substitute, which is the main reason for the polarization of "Deep Sea" reviews.
If the dazzling picture of "Deep Sea" is Betelgeuse's vision of beauty, then the seemingly ugly things such as sea elves and frustrated ghosts are actually projections of the misfortunes that Betelgeuse has experienced.
The sea elf is the only strong connection between the main motivation of "finding mother" in the film, and this setting actually has a very sad undertone.
It is clear from the subsequent pimple soup made with sea elves as the main ingredient that sea elves are simply hallucinogens, which make everyone intoxicated, Betelgeuse uses sea elves to find their mother's behavior, rather than with sea elves, she can indulge in the hope of finding her mother.
The sea elf was taken away by Nanhe, which actually deprived Betelgeuse of his only hope, and at the same time was disliked by the customers of the Deep Sea Hotel, causing Betelgeuse to be in a bad mood, attracting the appearance of frustrated ghosts, and causing the entire Deep Sea Hotel to fall into crisis.
In this series of events, the customers of the Deep Sea Hotel are obviously Betelgeuse's people who look at them coldly in real life, and the appearance of the dejected ghost is a projection of Betelgeuse's self-isolation.
When Betelgeuse mastered the fate of a boatman in disguise, he gradually became accepted from the original "obscurity", and finally broke through the light in the eyes of the deep sea and moved towards a new life.
In addition to Betelgeuse's projection of self-consciousness, this shift in counterpoint relationship also carries with it this irony of warmth and coldness, maintaining one's status and circle with a superstitious culture, thereby achieving denigration of others, of which Betelgeuse is a victim.
In addition, "Deep Sea" seems to have similarities with "Spirited Away", but the adventure background of "Spirited Away" is still childlike and beautiful, and its healing is based on goodness, and it still has a warm background.
But from the very beginning, "Deep Sea" chose to face the unbearable situation in life, and finally completed the growth of the girl Betelgeuse with a life and death farewell, so that fairy tales and reality are blended, and the diversity of emotions is sharp.
When the film finally returns to reality from fantasy, Betelgeuse's deep-sea fantasy journey is completely connected to the real world, and this time the protagonist's growth is no longer so earth-shattering, singing and crying, but contains plain sorrow.
This kind of sorrow is sublimated by Nanhe, which combines children's fantasies with adults' wanderings, and the bitterness and bitterness in it are self-evident, all of which are descriptions of the tenacious survival of small and pathetic little people, and it is the "life" of Nanhe that changes Betelgeuse's "death".
Therefore, at the end of the film, it is not too important whether the mother can appear or not, real life has not improved much for Betelgeuse, but the growth of the inner individual has been completed, turning the external hope of finding the mother into the salvation of the self.
Not to mention how many innovative highlights "Deep Sea" has on the screen, the choice of theme alone is also unique in the wave of national comics, if the previous works are more mythological IP to find the balance between adults and children, telling a story of bloody adventure.
Then "The Deep" turns more inward, based on emotions, connecting the perceptions of adults and children, it does not have much plot about blood, but it also has an inner sincere heart.
In contrast, "Deep Sea" is not a Spring Festival family movie, it tells the bitterness of reality in a romantic form from a child's perspective, and its redemption process also has a little dark element.
But I have to say that it is a work of heart, still contains beautiful blessings, the so-called frustration and obscurity, but the prejudice and discrimination of others, and even in the unfathomable bottom of the sea, there is still a beautiful warmth, holding up people full of unbearable people to the light.
This seems to have nothing to do with the Spring Festival, but if you think about it, it is also a unique blessing, after all, a festival cannot make people forget the pain of the past, but it contains the hope of continuing to live, and this coincides with "Deep Sea".