After Zeus destroyed the world with a flood, he came to the survivor Deucalion and asked him to express his wishes. Deucalion realized that, while living with others is not an easy thing, living without them is simply impossible, and his wish was - more human beings.
Deucalion made this choice based on the fact that as a person who has been properly evolved, he needs to establish contact with others to exchange resources and gain the sense of security necessary for survival. Although he estimates that there are risks in establishing contact with others, he still Thought it was worth a try. Civilization is actually many such things worth trying out, making choices, bearing the consequences, and thinking about countermeasures.
But humans seem to have so far failed to find a proper way to deal with each other. Many things have been invented, many schemes have been devised, religious, ethical, legal, literary, artistic... Each of them to a certain extent squeezes some people into a community, but at the same time An insurmountable gulf has formed between the communities. On the one hand, it is difficult to establish a stable and firm trust mechanism between individuals and groups, and on the other hand, the prevention mechanism for strangers and unfamiliar groups is growing and mature. Iron gates, iron windows and iron fences not only armed the building, but also armed people's hearts.
Getting a stranger to open the door for you without the slightest bit of defense is no easy task, but Tony Erdman managed to do it with just an ugly set of false teeth.
The maintenance of teeth by Europeans and Americans not only stems from health needs, but also raises it to the height of social needs. They generally believe that a white and neat tooth is a necessary condition for interpersonal communication. It is inappropriate to judge people by their appearance, but a good first impression can effectively reduce the cost of communication. However, Winfield obviously has decent real teeth, but he willfully uses a set of stained and stained buck teeth as his social teeth. With this set of dentures, Winfield becomes Tony Erdman. Dentures are used throughout the film, similar to the clown's red nose, allowing him to move freely between his real identity and his virtual identity. The paradox is that teeth that completely violate social standards have actually become modifiers of social games, with which you can easily modify the natural attribute values of the character and enable the invincible mode.
Compared to those who strictly adhere to social image standards, Tony Erdman is extraordinarily raunchy. He walked among a group of "civilized people" like a monster with poise, and his speech and demeanor were always embarrassing. This embarrassment constitutes a spectacle of roosters standing tall. A person who deliberately pretends to be ugly is extremely dazzling among a group of people who deliberately pretend to be beautiful. He is not only rejected by the aesthetics of civilized people, but also protected by the morals of civilized people.
So Tony Erdman inadvertently found the key to unlocking trust. People who are willing to put down their body and pretend to be ugly will not be alarming. Winfield stubbornly believes that humor enhances personal charm. This is not the case. He does not know that the humorous effect comes from people's tolerance for ugliness. The stricter one's requirements for beauty, the more one expects to be relaxed on an object that defies the rules. Just as in this age of masks full of Duxiang-style smiles, one might reserve more goodwill towards a person who is unsmiling.
Winfield's humor is actually not so humorous, and the "humorous" Winfield is not so easy. Humor is not the theme of his life, but loneliness is the theme of his life. Living alone, his mother died, and the death of his dog made his life even more bleak, and he was powerless to change, at most, put on dentures and become Tony Erdman. His life was like fishing in a bathtub, and he named his bait Humor. Even though he knew he was getting nothing, he persisted and clumsily fished down. This is what makes this character so eye-catching. He obviously has no talent for humor, but he believes in humor with all his heart, creates humor in a serious manner, and tries his best to interpret it.
The most notable feature of this film should be the anti-alienation effect and anti-defamiliarization, so that the audience can integrate into the story and get close to the characters to the greatest extent possible. In particular, the design of dialogue is often rhetorical, which is closer to the language ecology in reality. It is rough but not delicate, and even when the theme is pointed out, it seems blunt and lacking in literary grace. This kind of contradictory behavior not only shows the director's courage, but also makes a powerful mockery of the film that has been abnormal for a long time.
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