If your 2020 is as bad as mine, and there is really nothing worth summarizing at the end of the year and you can barely hand in a "I'm still alive" answer sheet, then when you finish watching the cartoon of "Spiritual Journey", you may be in High-five with me in a corner of the world-yes, it doesn't matter if nothing is done, at least this story gives us comfort.
Pixar used its 23rd animated feature film to prove that it has gone further and further on the road of innovation. While enjoying the shock of audiovisual, theme and plot, I was also anxious about it. It seems that it does not intend to be a hot IP, or even to target the main audience of cartoons—children, but only to become a small group of adults— come, let's talk about life.
Oh life? What is there to talk about. Especially when adults over the age of 30 walk into the cinema, most people just want to look at the crevices of ordinary life, catch a breath, laugh, and then walk out of the cinema casually and continue to return to reality.
But "Spiritual Journey" is too much. Not only did it fail to pull you out of reality—as a cartoon, it gave up creating a fairy-tale fantasy wonderland—but instead squeezed you back into the familiar world, noisy cities, lively streets, and crowded people. ...You are still listening to the city, being flashed with lights, and feeling your own insignificance in the busy traffic.
Yes, this protagonist is as ordinary as you. Joey, a black music teacher, has the dream of a musician, but is confined to the school’s music classroom as an unimportant job, spending day after day with children who don’t love music at all. Get a gifted "iron rice bowl".
His mother may be the same as your mother. I don't think you have a stable job after you are over 30, and you still have to rely on her half-life to work to get you relatively stable. And after you drifted for so long and finally got a job with social security, what dreams do you have to mention with her? She can only show you all the dedication that she has done in front of you, making you discouraged.
Yes, how familiar. Just like me, or you, our every day. "Spirit of the Mind" gave up creating more beautiful and better fairy tales. There are no adventure kings, exploration captains, and warriors. We see Joey on the screen like Joey sees himself in another world-boring, Boring, there is no tomorrow. If he also had a "monument" of life, that statue would not have become a great man because of the patronage of death. He was still a person sitting in a daze by the washing machine waiting for the clothes to be washed, but he turned into a sculpture without any surprises.
This kind of plain looking back is frightening. It does raise a question that we don't want to face when watching movies for entertainment: Why am I alive?
I even think the creator is cruel. After all, Joey still has an obsession when he lives as an ordinary person. To be a jazz musician, at least shine on the stage of his dreams, even if only for a moment. And most people... we... if we don't even have the minimum dream (or "life goal") like Joey, then what is our mediocre day for?
This question is so cruel that you have to face it, think about it, and consider the urgency of its answer, because life suddenly comes to an end one day, and the biggest accident of life comes. That very familiar question is trembling:
"If you would die now, would you regret it?"
Joey ran back on the avenue leading to "the other side of life". I never expected to see such a horrible scene in Pixar cartoons. It foretells the inevitable death, the limited life, and the common sense that everyone of us knows, but my hair is as horrified as on pins and needles.
I even want to do something urgently, and quickly think about my answer, go back to a certain end where I can trace my life, start again, find the spark of life, and live it again without regret...
At this moment, Pixar gave it a heart-warming side. How frightening is "the other side of life", there is so much hope for "where you are born". Here you are brand new, free, open, full of any kind of possibility. Here you can imagine how to live and start a journey ignorantly and fearlessly.
But don't let your guard down. Thinking about the meaning of life has not become irrelevant because of the warm environment of the "Mind Academy".
Important Person 22 finally appeared. She has been alive for thousands of years, her heart is so old that she "lives" without any hope, and only enjoys such mediocre "living".
This may be the most "evil" character I have ever seen in cartoons. Although she has a soft and cute face, her heart is extremely dark. She is more shocking than any "bad guy" in the duality of good and evil cartoons, because she is not a certain other person, but may be the other side of our heart, another self.
Code 22, she represents hopelessness, inferiority, isolation, fear, paranoia, hatred, ... any negative emotions have reasons for her, and she does not intend to live. In the "Mind Academy", she has become a stubborn old slippery head. The great souls in the thousands of years of human history can't touch her. She has a dark energy-no hope.
In cartoons, no hope has been said too euphemistically. Without that "pass", there is no spark of life. The concept of life and death is portrayed as a concrete world, without a soul, there is no spark, but there is no flicker on the screen. But in my abstract consciousness, her absence of sparks already represents the boundless darkness.
It is not very creative to create this concrete space between life and death. After all, there was "Dream Travels" before, and Pixar has used excellent technology to show us a magnificent world of darkness. However, in "Spiritual Journey" I got the shock of innovation suddenly, because here, life seems to have a lot more dimensions, in addition to life and death, there is still a certain chaos between life and death, the individual who needs life themselves Go across.
What we can perceive in the movie:
One, the real world that lives in the flesh.
Second, the other side of life, that is, the avenue of queuing to death.
Third, the place of birth, that is, the Academy of Mind, the virtual world that shaped the personality during his lifetime.
Fourth, between life and death, the state of selflessness.
If you just travel back and forth in the dual world of living and dying, I won't say how novel this story is. But when three and four appear and become concrete and plump, it provides us with many mirrors to observe the living person Joey and the unformed soul 22, together with discovering the multi-faceted nature of our lives. So even we ourselves can't help but look at those "black holes" that represent boundaries: What is my face in a world of different dimensions?
A fund manager obsessed with transactions? A crazy street artist? A professor who has contributed his life's knowledge to mankind? Or a so-and-so who is bored to death by eating, drinking, sleeping and sleeping? ...
Because of the observation of distance, the outline of life becomes clear. Joey has changed from a concrete person to an abstract soul, not only seeing the illusion of his life, but even becoming a cat, seeing his own body alive.
Because of the observation of distance, Soul 22 has also gained a new perspective of examining life. Not only can we see how boring and mediocre people alive outside of those great soul teachers (like Joey), but we can also see that they are so ordinary and still obsessed with living. This is indeed an interesting question.
Here comes the question, "Why am I alive?" is not just "I want to live as a musician shine once." This is an ordinary subject that has been told in many stories. Now in "Spiritual Journey", this question has evolved into, "I am destined to not be able to live shiningly, but why am I still alive?"
The process of asking questions is like peeling an onion. When the peeling seems to be almost finished, I already feel the joy of getting the answer. Just like Joey always believes that he can become a musician and can perform ecstatically on his beloved stage one day. So he lives with enthusiasm.
But I never expected that this problem could still be peeled off. There are questions behind the answer.
When Joey walked out the door from his beloved bar as he wished, he once said that "I die without regrets" has been achieved, and he has completed a wonderful performance. But life didn't make life fuller, more meaningful, and more shining because of this. As a female musician said, he wanted to see the fish in the sea, always thinking that what he saw was just water.
But the sea is water. Life is like this.
The answer is so tasteless after the onion is peeled to the end. The shining moment in your life you want, thought to be the goal of your life, is actually just a musician who spends day after day and night after night. And she, who is so shining, is also in this ordinary "water" just like you at this moment.
Joey was destined to be disappointed, and I was also disappointed. When a goal you have longed for half your life is finally achieved, in addition to the pleasure you get at that moment, the rest is destined to be endless loss. Because where will I live in the days to come? Why should I go every day with enthusiasm? I have no idea.
The throwing of this question made me feel a certain kind of strong emptiness. It is so familiar that I began to imagine the face of the story creator, who is also a person over 30 years old like me. One day when he was drawing anime or writing a script, I asked myself, oh I am so good at drawing or writing, I I should have been born to do this, but when I reach middle age, I doubt that for most of my life, do I really want to continue doing it? Who defines that I should always do this and nothing else?
The power of questioning is not necessary in cartoons, it will always aim at a specific enemy rather than itself. But in "Spiritual Journey", I clearly see that the enemy is the other side of our hearts. On the other side, it is full of doubts, anxiety, anxiety, and denial. Like Soul No. 22, it easily overthrows something that you think is great or meaningful. And you have worked so hard for it so much that you can no longer face the past and can only comfort yourself. Yes, only this goal is the meaning of my life. I can only and must go on like this.
I say that this is a small group of people's night talks, because the issue of this question has a threshold. Its premise is that I have struggled and tasted what I have gained. For example, when I dream of a happy marriage and starting a family with someone I love, I find that life is so boring; for example, when I work day and night and finally get a promotion and raise my salary, I still do repetitive tasks and wait for the monthly payday; for example, what I long for Once I became famous, and once I got windfall fortune, after all of them were obtained through my hard work and luck, I found that it was nothing more than that...
Next, the question is next, what should I live for? Are they still my real goal in life? The answer has been overturned. I overthrew myself.
This feeling of emptiness is what Joey felt when he walked out the door of the bar—and I felt it. I have never thought of a cartoon that strips abstract things like meaning, goals, obsessions, and motivations of life to the end, leaving only the air of embarrassment.
Life is meaningless at this moment. It became a turn of others, and I caught "empty".
Because of this emptiness, I resonated with "Spiritual Journey". It is not sorrowful tears, it is not the joy of happiness, it is not a laugh for humor, all emotions have been surpassed. I actually felt the emptiness in reality in a cartoon, and even forced myself to ask myself again, why is this happening?
However, no one can give us the answer. Joey's idol won't give him the answer, and he needs to pursue it himself. On the contrary, after the character who was once obsessed with emptiness 22 stepped into reality, any small detail has meaning-what irony!
Live without holding on to the destination, but get the meaning of living. So what is the meaning of being alive? A fallen leaf? One run? A lollipop? Or is it lying on the ground looking up at the sky once? ... It seems that they are both, it seems that they are neither.
When Joey played the flowing notes, I didn't get the exact answer. I could only feel a certain emptiness in my emotions returning to fullness. Understanding the subtle difference is like he is really talking with music-music, in the final analysis, is a way of expressing himself, and our protagonist is not fighting for this way of expression. What he wants to express freely is the details of his moving life and the tentacles of memory, which makes him feel the smallness and greatness of life, which will eventually be integrated into music and become part of the "spark".
Therefore, music itself is not a goal to be achieved. But through music, Joey can realize the freedom of expression and the release of his soul. He can not only live in the world, but also transcend the world. He perceives the abundance of life through music, and touches the meaning of life in a way that belongs to him alone...
Well, at this point, everything that seems chaotic to me seems to have a clear point. "Spiritual Journey" is not a typical story in which the protagonist pursues his dream. This story has different standards in different dimensions of life and death. If we can still find a rope leading to "the other side of life" in "Dream Quest", the loneliness we feel can only be in the fourth dimension. A barren pursuit, an individual's own pursuit, without companions.
Movies are the art of heartbreak. When the soul desert in the fourth dimension appeared, I was moved more, more complicated, and more unspeakable than the flowing notes played by Joey on the shining stage. It turns out that there are so many people in the world who are obsessed with this desert like me, but we can't extend a helping hand to anyone, we can only rely on ourselves to explore hard. Suppose there is no sailing ship, no falling leaves, and no soul helmsman to resolve your sorrow. When wandering between life and death and selflessness, after all, only oneself can distinguish which part is attachment and which part is paranoia. . No. 22 soul exists in the heart of each of us, she is a living nether.
This obscure dialogue will eventually end. From life to death, from death to life, if you take another finite journey to your limited life, it may not have real meaning. The next life will be chaos.
But I think not all stories have to tell you, what is the meaning, what is the goal, and what is the success or failure. In this conversation, it is comforting that losers are not shameful, and everyone who is small and lonely is not shameful, and has a reason for existence. As its name suggests, "Spiritual Journey" just takes our hearts through, seeing the desert and seeing the glimmer.
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