an "old" film. It tells the story of the British building of railways during the African colonial rule, but in this prairie there are a pair of demons-lions, engineers and hunters hand in hand to kill them story.
Judging from the perspective of that era, the film’s shooting techniques are quite good, the overall atmosphere is very classic, and the lens is very unique in its use, such as when a lion hunts people from the bottom up. The angle of view, the following movement. But in comparison, I prefer to talk about some of my feelings while watching.
Here I want to state first, I don’t know whether the metaphor I feel is deliberately set by the director, I can only say that at least I tasted a similar taste in the film. The biggest attraction of this film is the cannibal lions. The locals call them devils and ghosts. They are very appropriate to me, because they dare to attack humans in broad daylight; they can recognize traps and avoid those that target humans. Weaknesses to start; what’s even more bizarre is that they should be able to shoot them several times, but it’s not because they hit the iron railing or because the gun is faulty. They seem to have something in their bodies. Unknown mysterious power shelters them. When the hunters and engineers found their caves, they were even more horrified to find that hundreds of bones were piled up inside. The hunters unconsciously said in terror: "There is no lion like them. They kill people just for pleasure!"
From the above description, I unexpectedly thought of the Bible's parable of Satan. The Bible says that Satan is like a roaring lion, marching around looking for someone to devour. The lion in the film shows itself vividly in this aspect. Every time it appears or even does not appear at the end, its roar reverberates in the grassland, especially when trapped in a trap, facing several muskets. People, it roared through the iron railing, causing one of them to throw away the musket in his hand and hold his head and shout, because he couldn't bear the earth-shaking sound. Looking at those scenes again, in the vast grassland, it sneaks around like a ghost, looking for edible humans, and the biblical metaphor of Satan. What’s even more ironic in the film is that the man who came to the continent of Africa with the faith of God and tried to promote Christ died very early under the claws of a lion. This really makes me feel very interesting, because whether it is Christianity or Catholicism. Or Protestantism, according to the ten commandments, has a warning not to believe in other gods. As a result, a believer who insisted on his duty to promote Christ died at the hands of "Satan". What does this show? And those Africans who believe in other sects are also being massacred, eventually killing the lions, but it is the white people who have brought hope to the locals again, hehe, very interesting.
In addition, for the male protagonist, the engineer has been repeatedly saying, "I came here to build a bridge, and my biggest dream is to connect the world together." I feel that there is also a strong sense of self-defense. The barbaric immigration of Western developed countries to Africa at the time, I believe that any Western student who has studied modern history cannot avoid the fact that they have indeed built a large number of railways in Africa, but they are by no means as beautiful as the engineers said. Of course, I believe that there may be a very small number of high-level intellectuals who devote themselves to infrastructure construction on the African continent with such a concept at that time, but most of the purpose is actually very simple, that is, colonial rule and the construction of railways. It is nothing more than to make transportation faster and more convenient. Conducive to the transportation of local raw materials by themselves, just as the Japanese built a large number of railways in the Northeast. At the beginning of 49, the most developed transportation area in the country was the Northeast. The Japanese did not come to China to help with infrastructure construction. The ultimate goal was Looting, domination, so the so-called "connecting the world" and so on that have been repeatedly emphasized in the movie, according to me, has a strong self-bleaching element. Of course, I also believe this sentence, because the whole world is connected. It is more convenient for them to carry out colonial rule.
Finally, I want to talk about Africa in the movie. In the Africa of that era, it seems that the nightmare of Africans is the lion through the description of the movie. Those who are howling to die are covered in blood. In fact, it’s not just that era. At this time, on the continent thousands of miles away, I don’t know how many people died in the same way. It’s just that it’s no longer the lion who killed them, but people of the same kind. The same kind of people with guns. After the end of the Cold War, the Western countries represented by the United States failed to promote democracy in Africa. They went to the Middle East to conduct another experiment and watched them fall behind one by one under the banner of democracy and freedom. The country has left pieces of endgame, and it feels like deja vu. . . "Satan is doing one thing-marching everywhere, he is looking for someone to devour."
Text / 25/02/2008 8:47:30 pm
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