After a break in September, Hayao Miyazaki's new film finally officially met with mainland audiences on April 3.
This is the twelfth feature-length animated film directed by Hayao Miyazaki, and it is also the Hayao Miyazaki film that won the Oscar for Best Animated Feature Film again after "Spirited Away".
The new film was released in the mainland for the first time, and Time Jun naturally couldn't wait to find out - "What kind of life do you want to live".
Heron and juvenile
The story of this game still continues the traditional Miyazaki fairy tale style, that is, the adventure of a teenager/girl in a fantasy world.
The mother of the young Mu Majin, Hisako, died in the bombardment of the air raid, and as his father married his aunt Natsuko, the family returned to live in the old house in the countryside of the two sisters in order to escape the war.
However, the father who is already an adult can endure the grief and start a new life, but the real person who lost his mother at a young age cannot.
Every night, he dreams of his mother disappearing in the fire. After entering the new school, his gloomy and withdrawn personality also made him incompatible with his classmates and was bullied.
In order to avoid social interaction, the real person even smashed his head with a stone and kept his door behind closed doors, citing injuries and illnesses.
But life has not been quiet again.
A heron that suddenly appears is always harassing him, saying strange things like "your mother is not dead".
It also lures real people towards an abandoned mysterious tower near the old mansion.
According to the maid's mother-in-law, the prototype of the tower was a meteorite that fell from the sky. After discovering the secret of the meteorite, the real man's uncle built a tower on the periphery, and then disappeared into the tower forever.
The real mother, Hisako, also entered the tower when she was young and disappeared for a year.
What's even more bizarre is that soon, Natsuko, a stepmother who is weak due to pregnancy, also disappears after walking to the tower.
The secrets of old things, the words of the heron, the disappearance of the stepmother...... All of them are pushing real people into the tower to find out.
A new fantasy adventure begins, and the audience follows in the footsteps of real people and once again experiences the magical world filled with Miyazaki's unique imagination.
A "world after death".
Here, there are black undead who wear hats and beg for food, and there are innocent and cute people who may be reincarnated at any time. There are pelicans that feed on wala-wa-la-wa-la, and there are parrots that are aggressive and gluttonous.
Of course, there is also another human girl who is familiar to real people - Fire Beauty.
Homi uses fire magic to save the real person and takes him to Natsuko's delivery room, but both of them are attacked by meteorites and fall unconscious.
When he wakes up again, he finds himself in a higher latitude world, and meets the creator of this world, his great-uncle.
It turned out that the uncle was already old, and he sent the heron to introduce the real person into the tower, just to let the real person inherit his mantle, stay in the other world, and maintain the balance of this place instead of him.
Do you want to return to the cruel real world and continue to be a lonely teenager who finds it difficult to fit in, or do you forget all your worries and become the ruler of this world?
In the old house, the problems in the old books left by the mother are finally in front of the real person again-
What kind of life do you want to live?
Anti-war ideology
(The following contains spoilers, please watch as appropriate)
Born in 1941, Hayao Miyazaki experienced World War II as a child.
The trauma of childhood, which witnessed the brutality of wartime, and the years of continuous social, political and economic turmoil in post-war Japan, made Miyazaki's staunch anti-war ideology deeply rooted in Miyazaki's heart.
This hatred of war, and the humanist reflections that followed, were reflected in his subsequent artistic creations.
Like works such as "Porco Rosso", "The Wind Rises", "Castle in the Sky", and "Howl's Moving Castle", "What Life Do You Want to Live" is also a Miyazaki-style anti-war film full of metaphors.
The story of the new film takes place at the height of World War II, only one step away from Japan's defeat in 1944.
In this war, the young shepherd experienced a drastic change in his life. Not only did he lose his mother, but he also said goodbye to his past stable and happy life.
Watching the animation in combination with the historical background, we will find that all kinds of things in the fantasy world actually echo reality.
In this story, the birth of the other world is closely related to a meteorite that landed here during the Meiji period.
The black boat-shaped stones, as well as the fleet of ships that real people see when they first enter the area, are hard not to be reminded of the "Black Ship Incident" of 1853.
After witnessing the strong ships and guns of Europe and the United States, the emperor who returned to power launched the reform movement, which transformed Japan from a feudal society to a capitalist society in one fell swoop.
Echoing this, it was the real person's uncle who used the power of meteorites to create a new different world during the same period.
However, the rapid development of economic and military power brought about by the Meiji Restoration eventually led Japan to embark on the path of foreign expansion and aggression.
The conflicts between creatures in the other world have gradually begun to break away from the control of the uncle.
This is also reflected in the iron gate that the real person encounters after entering the world in the tower.
The locked door is inscribed with the words "Death to those who learn from me" and behind it is a huge stone tombstone, apparently suggesting that Japan's imitation of Western civilization will eventually lead to its destruction.
留心观察,在真人通过隧道走入塔中时,入口处的石门镌刻着"fecemi la divina podestate"字样,意为"神圣的力量、无以伦比的智慧"。
This sentence comes from the third poem of Dante's "Divine Comedy", "The Gates of Hell", which actually makes it clear to the audience that the so-called other world is the world of the dead.
The cute and simple Wa La Wow can be seen as civilians who have died in war around the world.
And the pelicans that feed on wah-wah are those Japanese who have been seduced or coerced by militaristic ideas. Their lives today are built on the marrow of the colonial people.
But in the film, it is also said through the mouth of the pelican that they are forced to be swept into here, and they want to escape but can't escape, so they can only eat wah-wah wow-la for a living.
Although they appear as greedy, on another level, they are also victims of war, hateful and pathetic.
As for those parrots that come in flocks and are well trained, they are naturally referred to by the army.
The sign they hold in the film is printed with the word "Duch", which is derived from the English Dutch.
The etymology of Dutch comes from the German Deutsch, which is the German name for their own nation. During World War II, Nazi Germany, led by Hitler, was the most powerful and brutal fascist state.
At this point, the cannibalistic nature of parrots and the reason for the fanatical worship of the parrot king are self-evident.
After entering the higher-dimensional world, the real person found that Uncle Tai was fiddling with 13 building blocks made of stones. He questioned the other party why it was stone and not wood.
Because 13 is an inauspicious number in Western legends, stone is a building material from the West. In old Japan, stones were only used to make tombstones.
It was the introduction of Western ideas that eventually led the Japanese ruling class to inflate its ambitions and wage war against foreign countries. If the world of these polluted stones continues to be maintained, then nothing will change.
And after the real person rejected the uncle, the world in the tower did collapse because of the parrot king's radicalism.
A year later, in 1945, Japan surrendered, and World War II finally ended.
A real person who returns to the real world, experiences adventures in another world, grows and gains the courage to face a new life. The answer to the question of "what kind of life do you want to live" is clear.
The post-war Japanese were also faced with this kind of thinking.
There are a lot of blank spaces in the film, and I believe everyone will have their own interpretation after watching it in person.
A farewell piece
After the filming began, Miyazaki, who is nearly 80 years old, became more and more in poor health, and even said at one point that he was "ready to die in the middle of making this animated film".
Therefore, although the "farewell work" has become a joke among fans, everyone actually knows in their hearts that the farewell said this time is most likely true.
Jean Hisaishi served as the composer, Yonezu Genshi customized the theme song, and popular Japanese actors such as Sugata Masaki and Kimura Takuya dubbed...... The star-studded lineup also shows how much the studio attaches importance to this work.
However, after the film was actually released, it was dubbed "Miyazaki's most obscure, most difficult to understand, and most stream-of-consciousness work".
Many people say that they can't understand it, and misinterpret Miyazaki's own words, "There are some things I don't fully understand," to mean that the creator himself doesn't know what he's drawing.
Post-screening ratings are polarized
There will be such a result, in fact, it is closely related to the promotional strategy of the film.
The title of the film is "What kind of life do you want to live", which is taken from the novel of the same name published by Japanese writer Genzaburo Yoshino in 1937.
Six years ago, two months before the film's title was announced, the manga adaptation of the novel was released in Japan for the first time.
At the time, most fans speculated that the content of the film should be related to the original story. However, due to Studio Ghibli's resolute "zero publicity" strategy, even industry insiders know nothing about the plot synopsis of the film.
As a result, many viewers who have read the original work only find out after entering the cinema that the animation is only on the spiritual level, echoing the criticism of militarism in the novel, and its essence is still Miyazaki's original story.
The original that appears in the anime
As a result, when those high-speed changing scenes and metaphorical settings flood onto the screen, the audience, who has no time to think about it, will naturally have a feeling of "not understanding".
In fact, if this movie is really regarded as a review, tribute and summary of Miyazaki's own life, then many plots are not difficult to understand.
In the process of watching the movie, you can also find a lot of easter eggs from past works-
For example, the maid mother-in-law in the old house is similar to the mother-in-law in "Howl's Moving Castle" and "Spirited Away".
The cute Wow Wow Wow is similar to the Wood Elves from Princess Mononoke.
The doors in the tower that lead to different worlds are also featured in Howl's Moving Castle.
The note attacking the real person in Natsuko's delivery room is exactly the same as the paper man attacking the white dragon in "Spirited Away".
Even in the design of the film's protagonist, Hayao Miyazaki also refers to his own life experience.
Masato's father, like Miyazaki's father, ran a fighter jet factory during the war. Affected by the war, it was not only the real people who moved from the city to the countryside with their families, but also the young Hayao Miyazaki himself.
Due to the death of his mother when he was a child, Miyazaki has always wanted to embrace his young and healthy mother again. This wish was fulfilled by a real person on his behalf in the movie.
As for the metaphors and symbols that can be seen everywhere, they are the full embodiment of the consistent anti-war ideas in his works, which are worth revisiting and pondering.
This is Hayao Miyazaki's "film of life", and how can he "not fully understand".
The expression during the roadshow obviously refers to the fact that even at the age of 83, he is still exploring the question raised by the title, that is, "what kind of life do you want to live".
This is also the ultimate problem that everyone has to face in their life.
This holiday season, walk into the cinema together, say goodbye to Miyazaki, and find your own answers.
Author: Gummy Bears