The film "IO: Last on Earth" uses rich and profound literary rhetoric to allegorize a sci-fi movie, simple dialogue, and gentle plot to further reflect its positioning as a niche online movie. But throwing aside the colorful pictures of commercialization, it still uses its own way to give its own answers about how to save itself in the apocalypse of mankind. A careful analysis of the content of the story will reveal that the answer to the movie is not at all perfunctory, but seriously inspires us, who are now fully exploring the unknown universe, to carry out a self-thinking about survival.
As long as human beings live on the earth for one day, then the topic of the doomsday catastrophe may never be out of date. After all, this answer is still remote and unknown to us at present, and it can still be regarded as our pastime after dinner ( Scientists should be more anxious, but it shouldn't affect their appetite for three meals a day), this topic has become a constant source of material for film and television works. Similarly, every film related to this often conveys a kind of revelation, or thinking, or hope. The movie "IO: Last on Earth" (Chinese name "Girl Earth Guardian/Girl Save the Earth") is no exception, and its answer is that it does not explore a new world, but still stands on the earth itself. Thinking about choosing the path of rebirth: Faced with the nearly declining home of the earth, whether we choose to leave or stay, whether to abandon our home or re-incubate.
As an American movie with a science fiction label, "IO: Last on Earth" seems a bit out of the mainstream. There are hardly any colorful hardcore science fiction shots throughout the story, and the plot's deduction has been deliberately suppressed to be very smooth and uneven. shock. The production team poured more pen and ink into the portrayal of the withered doomsday earth and the lonely thinking about human survival. There are too many allegories in the story, such as retro tapes, melodious piano music, "Exodus" by the hero, and human sculptures and paintings full of Renaissance colors in the art museum. Among them, the most important is the "LEDA AND THE SWAN" ("Leda and the Swan"), which is accompanied by the poem of the same name by the Irish poet William Butler Yeats, which also gives The deep connotation of this story. To a certain extent, if you want to really understand the content of this movie, you have to understand the inner meaning of this work.
"Leda and the Swan" originated from Greek mythology. According to legend, Leda was a princess of the Kingdom of Crete, married to King Yendarius of Sparta who was expelled and exiled here. After marriage, her husband returned to Sparta and became king again, and she could only live alone on an uninhabited island. The main god Zeus transformed into a swan and combined with Lida, the wife of Spartan King Tindarius. Lida lays eggs and gave birth to the peerless beauty Helen and another daughter, Clytenistra.
From this, we can easily think that the heroine Sam Walden in the movie should be the Lida, the male actor Micah who came from afar in the hot air balloon refers to the swan, and the uninhabited experiment The base is the uninhabited island. In fact, the director also deliberately gave Sam a few close-up shots in the screen, showing her tender skin, ruddy face, and beautiful body, just like a youthful and energetic young life. And Micah who descended from the sky was the incarnation of the god who brought the seed of life.
When Sam took a bath, Micah, who was reading "Exodus," moved "Mother Heart", obviously attracted by the heroine's jade body, but worried about him. I think that if the audience does not understand the background of "Lida and the Swan", they may feel confused and abrupt about the sudden ambiguity between the hero and the heroine and the subsequent combination.
In fact, from ancient times to the present, "Lida and the Swan" has been a particularly passionate subject of creation by Western artists, from Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, and Michelangelo in the Renaissance to Cezanne and the master of surrealism in the Impressionists. Salvador Dali, even his later photographic art, has dabbled in this subject. As for why, I think that in addition to the mystery that is derived from mythology, the ambiguous love is also an inescapable factor, allowing artists to play and wander between elegance and popularity.
The works of the impressionist painter Cézanne are selected in the film. Compared with earlier works, Cezanne seems to have deliberately concealed the mystery of the myth itself through his iconic form of "color block accumulation". The painter used the technique of still life painting to depict Lida with a thicker body and fuller body, highlighting the painter's pursuit of object volume, in order to infuse this traditional mythological subject with a more secular and modern meaning. The reason why the director made this choice must be to convey to the audience that "Leda and the Swan" in the context of the story is no longer a romantic mythical story, but a realistic problem that humans must face, whether Leda is beautiful or not. It is no longer important, what is important is that our dying lives need to be continued, and our dilapidated earth needs to be saved.
The poem of the same name by Yeats further illustrates this point of view.
A sudden blow: the great wings beating still
Above the staggering girl, her thighs caressed
By the dark webs, her nape caught in his bill,
He holds her helpless breast upon his breast.
How can those terrified vague fingers push
The feathered glory from her loosening thighs?
And how can body, laid in that white rush,
But feel the strange heart beating where it lies?
A shudder in the loins engenders there
The broken wall, the burning roof and tower
And Agamemnon dead.
Being so caught up,
So mastered by the brute blood of the air
Did she put on his knowledge with his power
Before the indifferent beak could let her drop?
The late writer Yu Guangzhong from Taiwan, China translated it into Chinese:
Suddenly snapped: Juyi still takes a selfie,
Fanning the falling girl, he uses black webs
Rubbing her double strands, holding the back of her neck in her beak,
And hold her covered breast on his chest.
How can a horrified and vague finger reject it,
Her loose crotch, that feathered favor?
Under the white-hot sprint, the fallen mortal body
How can you not feel the beating miraculous heart?
There was a tremor around the waist, and it was planted since then
The walls were ruined, the roofs and towers burned down,
And Agamemnon died. Was caught just like that,
Overridden by violence from the sky,
Did she draw upon the wisdom of God for his power,
Take the beak of indifference and haven't put her down yet?
Reading the poems carefully, the audience should be able to feel the important role of "Lida and the Swan" in this movie. After reading this poem, Sam decided to stay on the earth to be the creator of the new era of mankind, and this is also the salvation attitude that the story hopes to convey: mankind must continue, the path chosen is no longer in the IO colony and unknown galaxy, and Still on the earth.
In this regard, the second clue of the story is stated in the form of interstellar mail in the film. Sam’s friend Elon reports to her from time to time the life and exploration of human beings in the galaxy from the IO colony. They have escaped from the earth. Fortunately, I am anxious for Sam and his father's stay on the earth, and I am delighted to be able to explore a new earth in outer space. This is exactly the rebirth path that Sam and his father chose to stick to the earth: escape and abandon the earth. As the text on the billboard stated: "Exodus-The future is in the stars."
However, the movie did not tell whether the humans in the galaxy really explored the new earth, because in the eyes of the creators of the story, this road from scratch is extremely long. Maybe it does exist, but it is far away. As far as the short life of human beings is concerned, the path of exploration in light years appears fragile. In contrast, Sam and his father’s obsession with life research is based on the results of many years of biological experiments-the continuation of life may not require oxygen, and biological signs will slowly "evolve" as the natural environment changes. , In the end, no longer dependent on oxygen, can survive on the earth, and this is also in line with our objective understanding of nature and the continuous evolution of life on earth.
After watching the movie, I feel that the creators seem to have been questioning the human beings who want to escape: when the earth is destroyed by us and lingers, why we choose to abandon it so easily, abandon this we were born here and multiply Here, the home that has been replaced by generations? Why can't we have more confidence in the nature of the earth, and thus give up the life sciences and natural laws that we have accumulated, recognized and applied to this hot land for a long time? The movie finally gave its own answer, and this answer is more like a wake-up call: for a long time, human beings thought they were dominating the earth, but they forgot that they were just one element in the creation of nature, and it was initially based on the weakness of bacteria. The body multiplied from the sea to the land, no matter how many so-called immortal civilizations we created afterwards, in the life of the earth, we are still so small and short-lived. The so-called extinction in our eyes is nothing more than a rebirth of human beings and a cycle of life. Choosing to flee hastily can only show human beings in a hurry and innocent.
When Yeats wrote this poem, he aimed to express the development of history as a cyclical advancement of "rotary body". The combination of swan and Lida symbolizes the beginning of human history. This is the combination of Sam and Micah in the movie. In this regard, the film also quoted the British poet Thomas Stearns Eliot (Thomas Stearns Eliot) quotations to emphasize:
We shall not cease from exploration
We should not stop exploring
And the end of all our exploring
All our exploration
Will be to arrive where we started
Will eventually return to our starting point
And know the place for the first time
And got to know it for the first time
Sam followed the message sent by Micah to the IO colony to further express this attitude: "We know how to fear our planet and fly to the interstellar to find new planets. But the fascination with other worlds cannot make me ignore our homeland. Beautiful." The footage of the film immediately shifted to the coast-as a metaphor for the new beginning of mankind. "The waves are hitting the coast, and the wind blows the tip of my hair. Tell them that it feels good. Tell them that the clouds have cleared and the mist has enveloped the ocean. . Tell them that a whole new world is waiting for us. Tell them that we are waiting for you and waiting for you to come back.” At this time, a child ran on the face in the fog of the coast, and he/she and Sam became the new "us". . The movie ends here.
It can be seen that the symbolic meaning of "Lida and the Swan" played a key role in the whole film. It not only served as a footnote to Sam's decision to stay on the earth, but also showed hope for the future rebirth of mankind. And after reading it back for a moment, I feel that this is still laying the groundwork for the generational cycle of mankind. Sam repeated Yeats's verse in the art museum, "There was a tremor around his waist, and since then, ruins have been planted, and the roofs and towers burned down." In Greek mythology, Helen and Clytenistra, the peerless beauties born by Lida and Zeus, brought disasters to the world: in order to fight for Helen, the Trojans and the Greeks broke out in a ten-year Trojan war. . On the other hand, Clytenestra killed his husband, Agamemnon, the commander of the Greek coalition army, for committing adultery.
Perhaps, although the new era that Sam brings is yearning and full of hope, it is just a momentary moment of human beings in the near-eternal nature. The love, hatred, emotions, emotions and desires between humans have long determined that we can never escape from birth to The destiny of extinction, in the great natural soil, it is difficult to grow life that will never decay after all.
All in all, the rich and profound materials have given this film a unique artistic style and connotation. But at the same time, this has also led to a certain degree of obscurity. In addition, the storyline and images are not as eye-catching as traditional commercial science fiction films, which will inevitably make it difficult for some audiences to digest and interpret easily. I think, if we want to talk about the failure of this film, it is the contradiction and embarrassment between nicheization and commercialization of the film. This was originally a niche movie that was launched on Netflix in January 2019, but whether it is a trailer editing or a science fiction film starring the male lead "Falcon" from the Marvel Avengers, they are incompatible with the film's self-positioning. The most "humorous" fear is that the Chinese translation of the film title-"Girl Earth Guardian/Girl Saves the Earth"-seems to want to take a look at the current IP hot spots of heroines, through "girls" and "guard". Words such as "rescue" make people want to choose to watch this film for "Wonder Woman" and "Captain Marvel", and then try their best to seek the click-through rate that is related to revenue. In fact, this is understandable.
I think that niche movies belong to the niche after all, and those who love them will still love them. Those who don’t "catch a cold" don't need to force it. It has nothing to do with good or bad. The so-called pleasing to the eye, different audiences have their own standards, human beings have their own path to rebirth, let alone a movie.
Recommended evaluation: three stars★★★
Recommended viewing environment: a quiet bedroom or study room, a computer, around 9 o'clock in the evening, it is conducive to calm thinking and careful experience.
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