When I saw "Tokyo Sonata" for the first time, I felt that everything in the film could bring the film into our lives, but I always felt that there was a layer of separation. If you think about it, it should be cultural differences. The film maps to social issues, and every item is a complete picture. The world's problems, but each item has a strong Japanese flavor.
We have all heard of the current situation of Japanese society to some extent, specifically, the concepts of "low society" and "low desire society" proposed by two Japanese social observers and scholars, Nozomi Miura and Kenichi Ohmae.
"Low-class society" refers to a relatively obvious social trend or social phenomenon in Japanese society at that time: more and more young people are slowly sliding down from the original "middle class" to "low-class society", whether it is his life Status, spending power, enthusiasm for life, etc., are all in a process of sliding down.
The reason for the emergence of a "degraded society" is that after the 1990s, the Japanese economy went into decline. Japan has traditionally been a non-class society, with no obvious class. In the 1950s, there were two well-known nationwide surveys. One was the "Survey on Japanese National Life" called by the Cabinet Office of Japan. The result was that 90% of the people thought I was "middle-class". In the early 1980s and 1990s, the bursting of the bubble economy brought a great contrast. After decades of development, the dividends obtained during rapid development became less and less, and the sense of satisfaction became lower and lower. At this time, there was a very Great sense of loss, and began to slide into "dirty." Because of the previous "middle-class society", everyone is full of passion, and falling into such a "low-class" society, the feeling of loss is very strong. This is the background of the protagonist's unemployment in the film. That is what the eldest son said to his father, "What kind of work is there to do in Japan?" The consequence of the collapse of the economic bubble is that the cake that everyone had enough to eat is now not enough.
If there is not enough cake to eat, then we can only eat less, and what follows is a "low desire society".
The phenomenon of "human alienation" is inevitable in a highly developed capitalist society. Human alienation refers to the changes and distortions of nature, society and the relationship between human beings. It is a social phenomenon in which people's material production and spiritual production and their products become alien forces and in turn rule people. And this alienation phenomenon, in Japanese society, combined with Japanese culture, has produced many interesting results.
The image of a father can be summed up as "suffering face to face", which is a typical Japanese man's character, who attaches great importance to self-esteem and maintains "decent". In traditional Japanese society, the father's status is extremely high, which is determined by the father's responsibility for the family. Yes, when the social situation is down, the father loses the logical support of authority, and can only rely on violence and lies to maintain his "self-respect", so "even if it is reluctant, the child must accept my values." At this time, Dad presented the image of a "paper tiger". In fact, everyone in the family clearly saw the "emperor's new clothes", but he refused to say it out of the will to maintain the current situation, even if his wife said "that Dignity, if you don't have it, it will be gone." This is the "inner demon", in front of the closest people, people often care about the most.
If the family situation presented in the film is similar all over the world, but in different degrees, the specific situation shown at work has a distinct Japanese style. Japan is a country that attaches great importance to "etiquette". The teacher in the film teaches etiquette classes. At the same time, Japan is also a country that attaches great importance to "professional ethics". There is an interesting dialogue in the film:
"This is for plastic, this is for wood, this is for plywood, but if you have paint, use this, and then this is all-purpose, suitable for everything."
"Can I use the omnipotent one for all of them?"
"Can't"
"Is there a reason?"
"This is so unprofessional"
"okay"
"Then why bring it?"
"in case the emergency"
In an extremely materially developed society like Japan, everyone is like a pre-programmed machine. Science fiction is always imagining the "cyborgization" of people in the future world, that is, machines replace human organs, but before the body is turned into a machine, our behavior has been "cyborgized". Science fiction optimistically imagines a bright future where the human body applies machines, but reality has turned people into machines that serve machines.
This film gives people a sense of airtight suffocation. Kiyoshi Kurosawa deserves to be started by making horror films. He brings the excellent skills of creating the atmosphere of horror films into this film, which makes the current Japanese society repressed and indifferent. The breath is brought into every corner of the film. Another characteristic of Japanese society is the "low temperature society". The reporter Kameyama Sanae put forward the concept of "low temperature relationship" after a lot of observation and investigation: the relationship between people has become more and more weak. Relatively indifferent, lack of concern for each other, are self-centered. She felt that if the whole society was like this, it would be a "low temperature society". A prominent feature of a developed society is that "efficiency is everything". In a high-speed social machine, all substances have their place, but only people lose their place. Therefore, people can only reduce themselves to the lowest level of humanity, and people also become "low temperature animals", and even become cold puppets. In such a situation, everyone loses the courage to resist, maintains the status quo, is content with the status quo, and is unable to return to the sky if there is suffering. "We are like being trapped in a sinking ship. The lifeboats have all gone away, and the water has already submerged our necks." When everything is carried out in the logic of "harmony" and "maintenance of stability", or if it falls to the bottom of the valley, there will be no redemption. , or break the status quo and face the reality, "the beauty under the ice is the real beauty", just as existentialism said, recognizing the extreme extreme of cruelty will not lead to nothingness, but more positive and courageous to face it, Life will bloom the most splendid "flower of evil".
The existence of a family does not depend on social "conventions, role assignments" or unchangeable blood relations, but on "love", "trust", "support" and "care" between people. In the family, people are most likely to try violent words and deeds in the name of "love". All the righteousness is just a layer of "window paper" in the heart. Respect is not brought by identity, but is born from the heart. Identity cannot determine others. What you think about you, what you do, is what makes you who you are.
The so-called "hope" means "there is a chance to start over." The so-called despair means finding that there is no way out and cannot start over. At the end of the film, the couple shouted "start all over again" when they were desperate: "If everything so far was a dream, when you wake up, you are a completely different self, it would be great."
In fact, we can all be completely different ourselves, and this is the hope that Kurosawa Kiyoshi left us. The mother in the film said to the thief when he had nowhere to go, "there is only one self in this world", but in fact, it can be changed to "there is still one self in this world", as long as you take off the mask and stop trying to maintain the shaky state, in fact The dignity of "nothing is gone", as long as we recognize that people are not defined by work and identity, we can still start over.
mi���IV
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