At this year's Sundance Film Festival, a Japanese film won the Special Creative Award of the World Jury; at the Berlin Film Festival, it won the Special Mention Award for the New Generation Section; and it also received praise for its appearance at the Shanghai Film Festival in June.
This critically acclaimed Japanese film is:
"We Are Little Zombies"
Listening to the name, it is like a horror film about zombies, and then looking at the poster, it reveals a trace of absurdity and eerie atmosphere.
However, the true face of this movie is a special music film.
Why is it special? Because the protagonists of the story are four underage children.
1
The story takes place on a sunny afternoon, but in a place that is not very bright- the funeral home.
The four children, Hikari, Ishii, Takemura, and Yuko, meet here, and coincidentally, they all came to attend their parents' funeral.
While chatting, they also found another thing in common with each other, that is, their parents died, but they didn't want to cry.
The unexpected death of a parent and the fact that the young child did not shed a single tear seemed strange in such a calm reaction. Just like Xiao Guang's relatives looked at the numb him and said: You should be sad, you should cry when you are sad, because you have feelings.
Feelings naturally cry, but the four children in the film have no feelings for their parents.
Xiao Guang didn't touch his mother's cold hand at the funeral home, because there was no warm feeling in his memory.
His father is an advertising producer, his mother is a newspaper reporter, and Xiaoguang's family conditions are quite good, and his parents will buy him whatever he wants.
Material needs are met, but the companionship of parents is not available.
His parents often didn't come home until late at night, leaving him alone at home, not even making him a meal, but preparing countless boxes of frozen pasta for him to heat up. The only thing that accompanied him was the game console and the red goldfish in the fish tank.
Ishii's family conditions are relatively poor, and his parents run a shabby restaurant with almost no customers.
Dad got drunk every day and went crazy in the restaurant, and Mom didn't care, just laughing on the side.
The economic conditions of the Takemura family are even worse, and dad owes a bunch of debts outside and is called every day to collect debts.
Not only that, dad is also a domestic violence man, takemura often comes home to see his mother beaten blue nose and swollen face.
Yuko is a sweet-looking junior high school girl who has no financial problems at home, but her parents have psychological problems.
Her father actually told Ikuko to let her marry him when she grew up, and her mother, jealous of Ikuko's beauty, actually told her that if only she hadn't given birth to her. Such a perverted family, it is strange to have feelings!
Such four children whose fathers do not hurt their mothers and do not love, children whose parents will not cry when they die meet in the funeral parlor, feel that they have no feelings like zombies, in order to find their "heart", the four of them embark on an adventure alone, and form a band, named: Little Zombies.
2
The film is very innovative, it does not use the traditional narrative structure, but instead simulates the fun mode of RPG games, allowing the audience and the characters to fight monsters together.
Obviously, it is such a sad and heavy topic as death, but it adopts a game-like relaxed painting style, coupled with the bloody and cheerful background music, the huge contrast is quite ironic.
The interweaving of reality and illusion is a major feature of the film's narrative. Xiao Guang received a call from his parents in a car accident and rushed to the hospital, and when he was about to uncover the white cloth, the door suddenly opened, and it turned out that this was a trick game.
When the audience thinks that this is really just a whole deception, the camera turns and pulls back to reality, which is just Xiao Guang's imagination.
There are many imaginary clips like this in the film, and whenever the audience mistakenly believes that it is true, it is suddenly pulled back to reality, telling everyone that this is fake.
There are times when imagination is used as reality, and there are times when reality is illusory.
After the death of XiaoGuang's parents, he became the child of a relative, who came to his house and tried to take him away, but could not find him.
At this time, Xiao Guang had to risk returning home to retrieve what he had forgotten. This is what happened in reality, but it is shown through the scene of the game, and Xiao Guang's behavior has become a game breakthrough.
What's even more amazing is that you never know when you're going to suddenly jump out of the narrative of reality.
Three children play at Xiaoguang's house, but behind them swims a huge goldfish. Is it reality or illusion? Perhaps there is another meaning.
Along with such a novel narrative, there are also strange camera angles and bold colors.
From the ubiquitous perspective of God, man is like an ant.
Vr somatosensory shots reinforce the game's sense of absurd nihilism.
The intense colors that are saturated to overflow the screen are in stark contrast to the children's lifeless expressions, which makes people feel sad.
The form is very peculiar, the imagination is rich, but the plot is very simple, even a little boring.
The story of four children running away from home, forming a band, and then disbanding after becoming popular, is not attractive to the audience.
Such a novel form and boring content have also caused controversy, as one netizen said, people who don't like it will think that it is a hollow MV fragment pile, and those who like it will think that it is a spontaneous journey of self-healing.
3
The director of this film, Chang Yun, is not an experienced senior director, and "We Are Little Zombies" is his first feature film.
However, as early as 2017, Chang Yun's short film "Just Like That, We Put the Goldfish in the Pool" won the Jury Prize in that year's short film unit.
Based on true events, the short film tells the story of four teenage girls who put 400 goldfish into a middle school swimming pool. But for this boring story to the extreme, the director is eye-catching.
28 minutes, 9 chapters, the plot is scattered but all have a unified theme, the director starts from four young girls living in Japanese towns, highlighting the thinking of the characters under the boring life.
The film's wonderful and rich audio-visual skills, novel shooting angles, and fast and slow editing rhythm are all the same as "We Are Little Zombies".
The styles of the two films are very close, and the themes expressed are equally heartfelt.
In the short film "Just Like That," we put the goldfish in the pool, four teenage girls trapped in a small town live an extremely boring life.
Although they sang together and walked the railroad tracks together, they still felt empty and lonely, not only these four people, but even the people around them were bored and numb.
In order to get rid of this boring daily life, they even long for accidents such as war and the sudden death of their parents, but nothing happens, and the boredom continues.
In "We Are Little Zombies", this daily boredom is magnified to the extreme. Even when my parents died, my heart didn't fluctuate at all, I just felt bored.
Like the walking dead, without emotion and enthusiasm, they shouted out directly: We are little zombies!
Four children who should be full of young vitality, become numb and bored, thinking that they are little zombies, what is wrong with this?
The child's parents must be blamed, the four families in the film, whether poor or rich, invariably ignore the care for their children, obviously have parents, but they live like orphans.
But don't rush to scold your parents first, because you will find that their parents also live like zombies. Not only them, but every passerby turned into a zombie.
There is an impressive scene in the film, in the crowded subway station, everyone is staring at the mobile phone, walking on the road expressionlessly, like a zombie.
So the boring routine turns everyone into an emotionless zombie, and that's the biggest problem.
However, as shown at the end of the film, life is not over, and we can still find our own direction with hope.