The protagonist of "RATATOUILLE" is called Remy, a blue French mouse. He is a natural gourmet, and he is gifted and sensitive to the color and smell of food, and can identify the raw materials of each condiment. Its people are satisfied if they have garbage to eat, but they are never stubborn with food, thinking about ingenious cooking methods all day long. It believes that even if a mushroom is done, it can be otherworldly. It is a pity that his talent was limited to identifying rat poison in food for his tribe, until fate took him from the sewers of Paris to Gusto Restaurant, a five-star French restaurant that was declining. Gusto, the founder of the dead restaurant, was Remy's spiritual idol. He once famously said, "Everyone is a God of Cooking".
Pixar likes to tell stories like this. As young people are lowly and their hearts are higher than the sky, how can they follow their inner passion and creativity without being beaten to death by family expectations, social prejudices and resistance?
"This is a very interesting premise: a mouse wants to be a chef, it has talent, but this will only put it into a completely hostile environment, because it is expressing itself in a way that the world does not want. I I think many people know what it feels like." It’s
not easy for a cartoon to be smart, funny, and beautiful, and both adults and children love to watch it, but director Brad Burt likes to explore serious life in fairy tales. The problem, like his last film "The Incredibles", is also about the sorrow of the extraordinary talent that cannot be accepted in the world. What is rare is that his film does not lose the innocence and mischief of a urchin in attracting the emotion and wisdom of adults. "The New York Times" praised him, saying that he is the Kubrick of the animation industry-he does not impose jokes, does not pretend to be dramatic, not overly pretentious, a simple story, but inadvertently let you Sadness and joy are mixed. John Rast, the spiritual leader of Pixar, commented on "The Rat King's Cuisine", "Its humor, complexity and emotional depth are unprecedented in Pixar."
Unlike the usual sharpness and realism of computer animation, Brad Burt's overall style tends to be soft. He likes round shapes with soft shadows, but he didn't intend to beautify Remy's image too much. Before taking over "Ratuitouille", his colleagues originally planned to aggravate Remy's "humanity" and downplay its "mouse", letting them walk on two legs with a shorter tail, just like wearing red underwear and white. The same as Mickey Mouse predecessors in gloves. But Brad Burt had to go the other way. He lengthened the Remy's tails and let them crawl on all fours. Their fur was dull, and they were only genuine "rats". It’s easy to design a cute fish, but a rat that grows up in a garbage dump is another matter. Therefore, there is a litter of guinea pigs in Pixar's studio. The animator observes how they move, crawl, sniff, stretch, shrink into a ball, twitch their beards, swish their tails...they I found that the body of the mouse is very magical. The skeleton is extremely small and flexible. It can make many extremely flexible movements and pass through holes much smaller than the body. This feature alone has triggered many interesting details in the story, especially in the chase scene. inside.
The first time you see Remy's pink translucent nose, a pair of small hands sticking out of the gray and furry sleeves, rubbing between the food, you may feel sick. But after watching it for a long time, you will find that it is so expressive, with a humble nodding of its head, a French shrug, and an overwhelming passion in its voice. It is a rare, cute and soulful animal. Of course, in order for the soul of this little mouse to be believable, Pixar's animators arranged more than 160 independent control points on its face, and the whole body hair has 30,000 control points that can be adjusted. However, Remy is not a typical Disney cutie, its "human nature" is not born, but learned, just like it secretly learns that humans walk upright on two hind legs. Brad Burt said, "I like the role of Remy because of its restlessness. It is the thinnest of all mice, because it has too many thoughts, and always longs for something more in life."
As far as food-related cartoons are concerned, they do not forget to use food as a funny selling point. For example, "Belleville Trio" constantly makes fun of French frogs and American hamburgers, and the paper-wrapped chickens and chicken-wrapped chickens in "McDull" People are funny and sad, but in "Mouse King's Cuisine", Brad Burt is serious about French cuisine. The pale yellow lemons, the bright green broad beans, and the shining purple light of half an onion all make the bottom of the tongue grow fluid and the index fingers move. However, from a technical point of view, even the stuffing in a small piece of French bread, the steaming of a pot of broth, and the posture of a green onion sliding down the blade, there are a lot of problems to be solved, and it is no better than hairy. Animals are simple. Because the human eye is too familiar with these daily foods, a little bit of ingress and egress will cause visual suspicion and destroy the authenticity of the food. Like bread, it must have a sense of weight. Porous bubbles must be formed when baking bread to look loose and soft. The crust must be thin and crisp. The human eye is very sensitive to green shades, so the transparency of green vegetables is very complicated to adjust. In computer animation, the simulation of liquids has always been a difficult problem. Some thick, slow-moving liquids in the kitchen, such as red wine, broth, and sauces, have a lot of attention to simulation. The broth in the cauldron and the sauce in the spoon require different simulation programs to be moved.
Brad Burt said that he is a typical American. Even if the salad before and after the meal is full, he has no passion for food. It is unreasonable for the French to waste their lives on eating and drinking like this. But he is a perfectionist, and he doesn't understand what he doesn't understand. "Ratuitouille" is faithful to the French food culture. Even the wine serving procedure is completely in accordance with French rules. He flew to Paris with a team of animators to eat in a good restaurant, and enjoy the cooking process of food in the most creative kitchens in the world, including Guy Savoy, Le Train Bleu, Taillevent, La Tour d'Argent, They are all century-old restaurants in France. In addition, not far from the California headquarters of Pixar, there is French Laundry, which is known as the best French restaurant in the United States. The chef is Thomas Keller, a legend in the food industry. He personally served as a consultant for "Mouse King Cuisine" and accepted a producer as an apprentice to teach him how a good cook should cut onions with the accuracy of a surgeon. , Stirring the soup with the sweet energy of the lover, holding the frying pan with the pride of the artist, as if holding a palette of violin instead of egg and cheese in his hand. Thomas Keller believes that the feeling and atmosphere of a great kitchen are very important. When chefs are busy in the kitchen, the highest level should be like dancing, beautiful and cheerful. So we saw Gusto’s kitchen for the first time in the film. Although the chefs were so busy, there was a waltz in their footsteps. Later, Remy hid in the chef hat of the restaurant worker Lin Guini. When the conductor cooks, his expression and posture are not like a chef, but like a band conductor. "In a restaurant like French Laundry, there are many unimaginable details and secrets, but the most important thing is the chef's feelings for food. This is the same as the feelings of PIXAR animators for animation."
Except for the kitchen scene. There are also several very funny chases and fights in "Ratuitouille". The thrilling street chase between the badass chef and Remy is almost like "Die Hard". The lights follow its feet, and the space is continuously divided. With the brisk violin music, new worlds open one by one and quickly pass by. We follow it to the ground, hide under the table, cross the seam, and follow the sewer. The water pipes climb all the way up... This is probably the first time we see Paris from the perspective of a mouse.
Some commentators said that the night view of Paris in "Mouse King Cooking" is the most complex and gorgeous visual scene ever created by CGI technology: foggy Paris streets, broken stars in the city lights, bright yellow Eiffel Tower, and the color of the sky. Unpredictable, the light in Gusteau’s kitchen is warm... The first night Remy spent in Lin Guini’s small apartment was lying in an oven cotton glove on the window sill, facing Facing the Eiffel Tower and the lights of Paris, he fell asleep with a sigh. Where else is better for dreaming than Paris?
However, the things made by computers are often too clean and perfect, lacking a sense of history, and the charm of Paris lies in its hidden dirt. Every inch of the ground under your feet is a superposition of history, a small crack in a corner or a hidden corner. Every corner can call you back in time. Therefore, when animators recreated Paris on a computer, they did not faithfully copy a digital version of Paris, but spent more time capturing the real atmosphere of Paris and the feeling of living in that city. Brad Burt admires cartoonist Al Hirschfeld very much. Although his celebrities have undergone exaggerated transformations, their faces are often more alike than the deity, and Pixar's goals have always been the same.
In addition, it is worth mentioning that the sinister food critic Ego is really the most exciting supporting role in the film, a bit like the zombie in the Tim Burton puppet show. His empty and gloomy study room is in the shape of a huge coffin, indicating that he is isolated from the world, which is very similar to Dickens' novels. His harsh comments angered Gusto, but he was finally overwhelmed by Remy's RATATOUILL (a French rustic stew made with cheap goods such as eggplant, tomatoes, green peppers, and pumpkin).
A film critic of "Slate" said that watching "Mouse King's Cuisine" saw choking, not because of the emotion of the drama, but because he saw the passion of the creators in every detail of the film, freshly cut the water drops on the vegetables and French copper. The scratches on the pot, the smokiness in the kitchen, to the old syrup on the chef’s apron, and some lovely details, like Remy’s eating grapes, not just stuffing them into his mouth and chewing. Leaning on a comfortable sofa and squeezing a grape into the shape of a tall wine glass, the intoxicated look shows that he really loves food. In such a world, you would be happy to believe that a cute little mouse can wash your hands and make soup.
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