-Two versions of "Manchurian Candidate" and "Destiny Planning Bureau" review
Zhu Ye
's "The Manchurian Candidate" filmed in 1962, The Manchurian Candidate (1962) is a good movie, this one The film interestingly combines personal fate into the background of the Cold War at that time. The battle hero Raymond Shaw, who was deeply physiologically hypnotized, is controlled by the Eastern camp. At the same time, his mother is also a member of this camp, and his right-wing senator's stepfather is acting as the mother's puppet. What's more interesting is that the awakening and direct commands to Raymond are issued through a specific playing card "square Q". Because of repeated dreams constantly appearing, Raymond's comrades in arms and his boss, Captain Mark, found that things were getting worse and worse. With his efforts, Raymond awakened. He shot and killed his mother and stepfather, not the presidential candidate, at the scene of a campaign speech, and then committed suicide.
The interesting part of this movie lies in the control of people: the basic control is issued in the way of "deep hypnotism-square film Q-accepting instructions", while ideologically it is the hostility between the East and the West, in terms of blood relationship. It is the mother's control of the son's maternal power. Thus, hypnotic instructions, ideology, and maternal authority constitute a complete set of control techniques for the body. When Raymond's beloved girl appeared at the masquerade party in the costume of "square Q", the first two controls were disbanded, and they married happily. As if Raymond was about to be free, Mark was also about to show off against him, but the narrative suddenly shifted to his mother. Mother Raymond actually wanted to use ideological conflicts for her own benefit. Then motherhood and hypnotic instructions appeared together. Raymond became a tool of political terror. He accepted his mother's instructions to kill his wife and left-in-law. From this moment on, the violation of his own wishes reached the extreme, and Raymond was completely able to get rid of the control of various hypnotisms.
In such a system of control and anti-control, individuals eventually get rid of the demands of greater power with free will, but the price is death. It is the protagonist's active death that makes this film full of tragedy beyond the absurdity. And this is the true portrayal of the destiny of the individual in an involuntary society. However, in the Cold War era, it was involuntary wars between ideologies, while in the consumer era, it was boundless information and consumption.
In 2004, after the second Gulf War, Paramount remade "Manchurian Candidates" against the background of the first Gulf War in 1991. The ideological conflict was secretly replaced by the consortium’s control of American politics, the hypnotic control became the implantation of high-tech trackers, the agency that found out the truth became the FBI, and the death of the protagonist and his mother was ultimately determined by Mark The captain comes to execute. This is far worse than the film 42 years ago. In addition to weakening the conflict and no sense of absurdity, the most important thing is that Raymond chose another method of death: being killed. In other words, when he finally got rid of control, he was still passive. This was undoubtedly a silly idea that didn't fully comprehend the compromise of the original script.
Of course, the sillier film is to come. The Adjustment Bureau
(2011), starring Mark Dimon , is even more nonsense. The movie looked pretty good at the beginning, but then it fell into the vague little sentiment of angels and responsibility, love and freedom, and it became rubbish.
So I think of reading novels before, saying that there are all kinds of realism, you can take these three films: the modest is critical realism, like the 2004 remake of "Manchurian Candidate"; the smart is magic realism , That is, the one in 1962; and "Destiny Planning Bureau" belongs to nonsense realism.
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