I think that a movie can be called great, not because of its skills. Skills are the icing on the cake. More importantly, it is the pattern of the movie itself, the content and ideas it wants to convey. This is the same as literature. The writing is clean and does not require any brilliant techniques. If the text is too complicated and dazzling, it will become a bluff, in order to cover up the void of the content. And great literature is based on its ideas, or the author's structure, such as Tolstoy's "War and Peace". The same is true for the movie, "Mr. Verdoux" is like this. While watching, I was impressed by Chaplin's thinking about society and caring for human nature. I couldn't help but sigh that Chaplin is really an amazing filmmaker. I am also deeply ignorant of my previous ignorance, only seeing Chaplin's absurd comedy performance. In this movie, Chaplin showed me the reason why the master is a master with a serious performance.
The background of the film is that during the Great Depression in the United States, Verdue, who had worked in a bank for 30 years, was the first to be fired. He was desperate for society. In order to support his family, he targeted the wealthy widows, pursued them and then Kill them and use the property to support the family and invest. He is like a ruthless hunter, looking for one after another in the ruthless and cold society. But Verdoux is not ruthless, he loves his disabled wife and son. And in his heart he is actually kind, even if he became a cold-blooded killer, but the goodness and true affection in human nature were not completely wiped out. This is reflected in his friendship with that little girl. He sympathized with her and comforted her. It's ironic to give her help and even let the desperate girl rekindle her hope in life, because Verdoux himself is so desperate. It is also because they are a kind of people, their loyalty to love, the pursuit of humanity, being persecuted by reality, all kinds of experiences make them cherish each other, and they understand each other. So in the end, Verdoux was sentenced to death, and the little girl who learned the true identity of Verdoux still felt sad. In that cannibalistic society, this friendship is both sad and hopeful. The little girl has been lucky since she met Verdue. She has not experienced the darkness that Verdue has experienced, and has not waded through hell. She has lived a well-fed life and still upholds her nature. Her ghostwriting is Verdue and the others. Hope.
But Verdoux is unfortunate. It is a tragedy created by that society. There are thousands of such tragedies, and Verdoux is just more extreme. The film shows the society's oppression of the powerless people. Whether it is the national economic crisis or the political turmoil erupted by politicians, the people are like lambs to be slaughtered, letting the cannibalistic society slaughter them at will. As a small clerk, Verdoux began to resist with violence. At the end of the film, Verdoux's words make people reflect. He said that our history is a history of murder, and those wars, conflicts, and murderers are heroes. The more people killed, the less guilty. This remark also appeared in "Crime and Punishment". Whether it is Chaplin or Dostoyevsky, these great people are pursuing love, reflecting on the so-called war and narrow sense. hero. When we break away from the narrow-minded nation and country and think from the height of humanity, we will find that many of the "heroes" we praise have massacred another country and another nation under the banner of patriotism. I once read this passage in an article by the writer Xue Mo:
"No matter what kind of life we should respect, we should all be in awe. No matter what reason you take, when you deprive another person of life, the behavior itself is sin. Because your reason will be based on your religious philosophy. , The philosophy of life, and the country’s education has changed into different tricks, which can create different reasons and excuses for "justice". The Japanese have Japanese reasons and excuses for "justice" to slaughter the Chinese. They can fabricate many lies and make every The Japanese are proud of killing the Chinese in competitions; but the Chinese will also have such reasons and excuses to kill the Japanese; Americans can also change such "just" reasons and excuses to kill the Iraqis."
"Every politician. There are different reasons, and everyone has a different lie. When we people do not have the wisdom to discern such lies, we must have a philosophy and culture: killing is a crime, and humans should not kill. No matter what reason to kill is a crime
Yes ." Some people may also say that if you face a brutal person, don't you just let it go? Xue Mo also replied:
"One year, a tyrant appeared in the west, slaughtered a large number of Buddhists and caused countless crimes. There was a very brave heroic monk who came to this tyrant in disguise and shot an arrow. He died, and then the monk ran away. Of course the monk saved many innocent people, but there is a cultural philosophy in the West: killing is guilty, no matter if you kill a tyrant or whatever, his act of killing itself He was guilty. Later, he was not qualified to give ordination to others. When others asked him to give ordination, he said that he was not qualified to give ordination, because he had already killed people. Therefore, no matter whether it was a tyrant or anything, it didn't matter that he killed people. The behavior itself violates the precepts."
We can have punitive behaviors, but what we praise cannot be a culture of violence, and culture should always be higher than behavior.
In this film, Verdoux used a negative example to tell the world what kind of cold-blooded killer would be born under the culture of Acura violence. The greatness of this film lies in the fact that Chaplin raised the film to the height of mankind, and the content he conveyed is still applicable to today. I think this is what a filmmaker really should do. Let the movie become a force.
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