As the last animated feature film, Hayao Miyazaki put a lifetime of thoughts, fascinations, and feelings into "What kind of life do you want to live", and the audience can see it as Miyazaki's ultimate confession to the world. Born in 1941, Hayao Miyazaki will no longer have the energy to create a feature film in the future, and he bids farewell to his mother and Takahata Xun, who is also a teacher and friend, and looks back on his life with his lifelong partner Toshio Suzuki.
The title of the film comes from the novel of the same name that Miyazaki read when he was a teenager, but the story is original to Miyazaki. This bizarre and somewhat ambiguous film not only achieved an unexpectedly high box office ($173 million worldwide, 500 million yuan in Chinese mainland) with almost zero publicity, but also won several major awards such as the Japan Academy Award, the Golden Globe Award and the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature.
Throughout Miyazaki's films, there are two main themes: environmental protection and anti-war. "What kind of life do you want to live" is no exception, although the representation is still about the growth journey of a teenager, but Miyazaki uses various metaphors to tell the audience that the alien world is essentially the distortion and deformation of this world, and the alienation symbols that need to be guarded against represent Japanese militarism. In addition, the main line of this film could have been clear enough, showing a certain degree of disorder, and it seems that Miyazaki deliberately did not tell the story well, trying to break away from the traditional routine of starting and ending.
The protagonist in the film, the boy, represents Miyazaki himself to a certain extent, and the heron corresponds to his partner Toshio Suzuki. In terms of expression, the film draws on classic works such as "Zhuangsheng Dream Butterfly" in traditional Chinese culture, as well as classic works such as "Alice in Wonderland", "Dream" and Satoshi Kon's series of films - tranquility and indifference are the appearance, but the cruel truth is war, this method of expression, in addition to reflecting Miyazaki's own state of mind, is more an accusation of deception, oppression and harm in this world. The uncle is the representative of the traditional reform forces, the parrot king is a metaphor for the violent, killing and destroying militaristic forces, and the pelican represents the ignorant masses, who are always passively indoctrinated.
The 13 blocks that the boy and the heron must defeat are not difficult to see as a symbol of absolute power and militaristic ideology. What kind of life do you want to live? It depends on your own choices, on how you see the world, on which path you decide to take. The boy is both "me" and Japan, because it is the myriad "me" that makes up Japan. The country has a complicated past, with anti-war factions who embrace peace and, naturally, war fanatics who conjure the soul of militarism. The boy's journey in another world is painful and confused, the beautiful and the ugly are layered, and neither forgetting the past nor remembering everything seems to be correct.
This film is a dream of freedom, a dreamlike open stage, very much "The Wall" and "The Matrix". The interpretation of this film is similar to Jiang Wen's "The Sun Also Rises", and everyone has different words, and everyone has their own gains. The film does not have the end of the third act of the regular work, and even though Miyazaki conveys his anti-war and environmental ideas, he is still hesitant about "will the world be okay?" Of course, Miyazaki still hopes that the current and future teenagers will be able to fly out of their own sky.
Part of the pictures: Douban, the official Weibo of the film
Submissions should be sent to: