First published on Tencent Entertainment, titled: Venice opening film, I hit X! sci-fi movie? Payne, are you sure you are not teasing me? Abridged
Yinxiang from Venice Rating: X (Journal system, 4 stars out of score)
The day before the opening of the 74th Venice Film Festival, I had nothing to do. I happened to read the question "How far will political correctness eventually develop?" At the time, I just thought it was funny. Gave me a big slap in the face. Yes, this sci-fi film directed by Alexander Payne says nothing but political correctness.
The film has a very interesting setting. Norwegian scientists have discovered cell shrinking technology, which can reduce organisms to one part of the original 2,744. On the one hand, it is "environmentally friendly" and on the other hand, it can greatly reduce living expenses-for example, almost Everyone can live in the dream mansion. A full set of diamond jewelry including bracelets, necklaces and earrings is only more than 80 US dollars. The food expenses of a middle-class home is only this price for a week. As a result, many people rushed to make themselves smaller. The male protagonist Paul played by Matt Damon was troubled by "still living in the house where he was born" and finally decided to shrink with his wife. Who knows that his wife retreats, Paul must face the shrinking life alone.
To be fair, this setting (or plot summary...) is really good, it implies the development direction of various social science fiction. For example, the issues of taxation and citizenship mentioned in the film, including the relationship between Paul and his wife who fled the battle, also have a lot of articles to do. But... after the fairly good first act, the plot direction is simply staggering. If the first act also talks about social issues such as the mid-life crisis and the middle-class dilemma, the "shrinking" is treated as a kind of "immigrant"/development of the new world (there is even a farewell party), the drama The work is quite satisfactory. From the beginning of the second act, the play completely collapsed in the direction of political correctness. I still remember that in the answer to that question, someone mentioned that many viewers in the United States should refuse to watch "Dunkirk" because there are no black actors, so now American film and television must arrange various minority actors, which must be included. There are blacks, black women, MSL, Mexican and Hispanics, Asians, the disabled, and sexual minorities (now called LGBTQIA+, if you don’t understand, go to make up your own lessons...), and they must appear in proportion. Although it is a foil most of the time, it is absolutely necessary. I know that many people in there are shrewd and say that they can make a film with "transsexual black female disabled MSL" as the protagonist and then go to get an Oscar... and "Shrinking" almost did it! Not to mention that its various scenes are almost like side dishes, and the extras of various ethnicities are placed, and at the same time various obese people are also placed (it is said that the latest word can no longer be called overweight, but it is called "horizontal direction." Different"), not beautiful enough (I have been politically incorrect... to be called "different in beauty"), etc. actors, particularly typical physical appearances are politically correct. Then……
In any sense of play, the focus of this film should be the conflict between the "shrinking world" and the original world, the relationship between Paul and his wife, and then the survival or collapse or alienation of the shrinking world as a utopia. How does the shrunken human face the original world and so on . But Payne doesn't care about these things. First, Paul's wife has disappeared since calling Paul at the airport! It was not mentioned at all until the end of the film! ! ! ! Then Paul got divorced, moved out of the mansion and moved into a small apartment, and was unable to pursue his original career as a rehabilitation therapist, so he had to be an operator-although he didn't understand the reason (just mentioned that the outside license expired and couldn't do it...). Then he lived upstairs by a former Yugoslav tyrant who loves partying (played by the famous Christopher Waltz). The house is very large (I don’t know why he and Paul are in the same apartment and the room types are so different). Paul’s The date was disturbed by the body upstairs and ended in embarrassment, so he had to go upstairs to join the body, and then inexplicably knocked on the medicine (probably LSD or something), and somehow woke up the next day and met to clean it. The Vietnamese refugees in the room—yes, I never thought that this is the heroine of the film, a person who is politically correct enough to not be more perfect: women, Asians, disabled people, refugees, and she is because she is protesting against the Vietnamese government. The construction of a dam in her hometown caused the village to be submerged and thrown into jail, and was forcibly retracted by the inhumane Vietnamese government as a punishment. I don’t know how she escaped to the United States (it is said that she came in a TV box-the problem is that the news that reported on this incident was actually discussing whether the shrinking person would become a terrorist, and why she went wrong again. Yes?) Then, with a logic of "I am weak, I am reasonable", she began to order Paul to help her-yes, order, or even force, and then Paul actually... died...
Yes, I understand part of Paul’s logic. He is well educated, helpful, and his life is very unsatisfactory. He lacks women. He lives very boring, even because this Vietnamese disabled female refugee is a famous news figure. Excited)... But this can't be the reason for his Stockholm-yes later Paul not only slept with her, but fell in love with her...
A female refugee from Vietnam asked Paul, what kind of Fxxk did you give me (according to her, there are 8 kinds of hahaha). It is very simple to answer as I said. It is WTF.
In the third act of the film, Paul followed the politically correct heroine through the entire "leisure land", and through the wall, he came to the world outside the wall (yes, this is obviously the wall that Trump built on the US-Mexico border. ), a place that is basically Mexico, where there are countless (illegal?) immigrants and poor people, Spanish is the prevailing language, and female refugees with disabilities in Vietnam are simply helpful little angels in this “community”. Then Paul broke the prosthesis of a disabled Vietnamese female refugee (of course I can’t remember her name, I just want to emphasize the symbol because she is a symbol), causing him to be further called by her-and then Stockholm.
The plot of the fourth act is even more exciting. In order to help Paul get rid of her weak and reasonable master, Duchamp, the former southern local tyrant, proposed to take him to Norway. Who knew that the disabled female refugees in Vietnam had to go with him because they invented the technique of shrinking. The Norwegian scientist feels guilty about her experience (see the typical logic of the White Zuo Virgin...) so she is asked to go to Norway at any time. Then...Due to the environmental crisis, the first community to shrink down decided to collectively move underground. Paul was tempted again and followed the team to the underground, but because of love at the last minute, he gave up following the prophet and returned to his lover (again WTF’s last-minute rescue), they flew back to the United States. Then, the film... is over!
This film is simply a collection of political correctness, from the Nordic and environmentalism at the beginning, to all the casting and rhetoric, to refugees and (illegal) immigrants, it can be called a model drama. Of course, it is not useless. At least it has a good setting. It has an observation of the political economy of American social structure, and has a very creative way of writing on the topic of immigration (the director himself is the second generation of immigrants), and it is extremely politically correct. The heroine's lines (Vietnamese accent and grammatically messy English) are really superbly written, many short paragraphs are really good, and the live effect is also very good. However, between the four acts of this film...It really doesn't matter, I just remembered that one episode is one episode. By the way, I haven't broken the setting yet, this movie is not even porridge science fiction, at most it is soy milk science fiction. How to maintain the ecosystem? What to do if it rains (it rained in the film but didn't take it seriously!)? How to prevent biological invasion? What about bacteria? What about the virus? How to prevent Hate Crime in the original world? This has not yet discussed political, economic, legal and social issues...
It is rumored that Hong Chau, a Vietnamese actor who plays the politically correct role of a disabled female refugee in Vietnam, has already begun to air the Oscar nominations in the media. Let’s look at how to play in the future. (Of course it’s not that Zhou Hong’s performance was not good enough. Last year, after the Oscar was criticized as "too white", the host Chris Rock said at the opening ceremony of the awards ceremony, "But we can never set up a black award ( category) right?” (Of course not to criticize him for discriminating against Chinese Americans on the court). Who would have thought that for more than a year, yesterday, the toilet bill and BLM, today pushed the statue, it is said that now even the applause and mathematics are politically incorrect. To put it harshly, Payne thinks that he has done nothing wrong with political correctness. If he wants to go online, it is hard to say whether he can pass the Beckdel test of the feminists (I don’t think it can), let’s see. You won’t be scolded for straight men’s cancer; then pick the black standards, LGBTQIA+ standards, and so on. I guess there won’t be much left to watch in this film. Seriously, don’t catch hot spots, just talk about it. Is the story really that difficult for a two-time Oscar winner for best screenwriter? Or is it that American society has become so incomprehensible?
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