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From "Voice of the Stars" to "Five Centimeters Per Second" to "Your Name." ’, Makoto Shinkai is actually telling the same story over and over again. This story is very similar to Haruki Murakami's "Meet the 100% Girl".
Murakami wrote in this short story that there is such a pair of boys and girls in this world, who are 100% in need of each other, and 100% in need of each other, and their encounter is destined to be a miracle. Isn't that the case with Makoto Shinkai's youthful love narrative? It is full of a small and fresh sense of lightness. It can even be said that he never touches the true appearance of love, but always describes a beautiful imagination of love.
This is with him in 'your name. ' Iwai Shunji, who paid tribute at the end of the film, is different. Although Iwai also exudes a kind of soft light and freshness, but at the same time he has the courage to face the cruelty and shadow of life. For example, "Love Letter" is actually a work full of death. Behind the ultimate crush story, Iwai's real theme is life and death.
But for a long time, Xin Haicheng was still immersed in a kind of high-sweet love fantasy like a middle school student. The real emotional challenge in the story is either time (like "your name.") or space (like "five centimeters per second"), not the human heart. Therefore, Makoto Shinkai's story has been stuck in the first half of "Meeting a 100% Girl".
At the end of the novel, Murakami turned abruptly, and 100% boy and 100% girl finally passed by. Makoto Shinkai refuses such a sentimental and even gloomy ending, constantly creating a sense of vacuum far from reality.
But this time, Weathering With You seems to be a little different.
Makoto Shinkai repeatedly aimed the camera at the wet Tokyo, the tiny corner of this super city. Kabukicho is full of crime, a girl who runs for a living, a strong hunger, and an insolent yakuza. In the story of Makoto Shinkai, he was suddenly saturated with a sense of life full of reality.
Describing the experience of the city is a very difficult challenge, and in "Weathering With You", perhaps most people are willing to believe that this love story with a surreal setting really takes place in a real Tokyo. inside.
This may be a sign that Makoto Shinkai is slowly starting to turn. Of course, from "your name. ', a story apparently in response to the 3.11 earthquake in Japan. Why is the strengthening of Xin Haicheng's social faction attributes so worthy of attention?
Because Makoto Shinkai has always been considered a representative of the "world system". In this type of work, the social environment is almost evacuated. In other words, it is difficult for you to see how the author responds to the times and society through his works.
This is also an important reason why the works of Makoto Shinkai have never been compared with Hayao Miyazaki. That is a great author, always in close contact with the times and the hearts of the times. Miyazaki's work constantly responds to postwar trauma, how a contemporary Japan is shaped by the trauma of war. But Xin Haicheng is not, what he cares about is always a kind of juvenile mood.
The capture of this kind of mood is a weapon for Makoto Shinkai to capture the audience, but it also makes Makoto Shinkai's works always look narrow.
Of course, the core of "Weathering With You" is still the pure love story that Makoto Shinkai likes. A boy who leaves home meets a girl with superpowers, and a destined love is born. What is really worth taking seriously about the description of this love is that Makoto Shinkai has incorporated some social elements to constitute resistance to this love.
The important decision in the whole story is whether to save the world or save the lover. But when such a choice is placed in the context of pure love, where can it constitute a real dilemma? Therefore, to criticize the protagonist for exchanging the life of his lover with the devastating tragedy submerged in Tokyo is to talk about the problem beyond the context of the story. It's like in the story of Bai Niangzi, how many readers have the time to accuse Bai Niangzi of flooding the mountains, and most people care about whether Bai Niangzi rescued Xu Xian, and whether the two will be married in the end.
Therefore, what we should pay attention to most is what is constantly preventing the lovers in "Weathering With You" from coming together. What we saw were some adults, a widowed uncle who ran a hunting magazine, and some violent police officers. Obviously, Makoto Shinkai is talking about a legend of pure love on the surface, but what really constitutes a conflict is the struggle between teenagers and adults. This is a setting full of social expressions, and these adults all represent a negative image of mainstream values.
In "Weathering With You", the growth of teenagers is constantly subject to the discipline of socialization and the punishment of violent machines. None of this is something a standard pure love story would want to care about. Looking at this line of thinking, the ending of Tokyo's submersion is almost the biggest challenge to norms and systems-although this ending is set, it is also a logical ending in the pure love story system.
Not like "your name. ” The more standard and smoother typed narrative, “Weathering Child” is more like a bumpy collision of Makoto Shinkai. in "Your name. Under the huge halo of ', Makoto Shinkai's subsequent creations naturally entered a kind of "post-'your name.' era", and he inevitably had to live in a kind of 'your name'. ' under the shadow.
The most obvious evidence is that Weathering With You is full of "your name" in the elemental settings. 』Shadow: surreal setting, ancient legend, catastrophe, RADWIMPS band. In addition, the two are also keen to use MV-style paragraphs to express their feelings directly and forcefully. Moreover, Makoto Shinkai now has Genki Kawamura, a producer who has repeatedly planned hits, standing behind him.
Kawamura is recognized as "your name. 』One of the important contributors to the great success, he must have a sharper sense of market smell than Makoto Shinkai. Under his drive, Xin Haicheng must continue to move towards new box office peaks. But unexpectedly, Xin Haicheng made "Weathering Child" far more than "your name." 'Dark, he has a desire to go deep into life, and even infiltrate a kind of cruelty.
So, in a way, "Weathering With You" is like "your name." ' companion, but at the same time, Weathering With You may also mean a new set sail. At the age of 46 this year, Makoto Shinkai, who is about to enter the year of his life, may plan to use his future works to complete the second half of the story of "Meeting a 100% Girl" that he has always abandoned by himself.
Originally published in "Beijing Youth Daily"
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