ウェス・アンダーソンは私の好きな許計だった.
Wes Anderson was my favorite director.
しかし、『犬ヶ岛』は彼の最悪の作品だ.
However,'Isle of Dogs' is Anderson at his worst.
This is my first feeling after watching "Canis Island". I don’t want to translate here, anyway, "Canis Island" is much more willful than me: the story takes place in modern Japan, and most people speak Japanese naturally; and in order to make it easier for Western audiences to understand, the film will bark all the dogs. It was translated into English and dubbed by many Hollywood big names such as Brian Cranston, Edward Norton, Scarlett Johansson, Tilda Swinton, Bill Murray, etc.
Humans and dogs are distinguished linguistically.
This is nothing. In order to let the audience understand the language barriers more deeply from the dog's point of view, the Japanese in the film is not translated most of the time. There is no subtitle translation in Japanese when it is screened in China.
So after seeing director Wes Anderson’s statement on language issues at the beginning of the film, I quickly believed that this might be an unusually weird and interesting movie-watching experience, and Anderson did not let him in the first half of the film. I am disappointed.
The story of "Island of Dogs" takes place 20 years later in a fictional city in Japan in the near future-Misaki City. Due to the prevalence of canine flu, Mayor Kobayashi of Misaki ordered all the dogs to be exiled to a garbage island far away from the city. But Mayor Kobayashi's adopted son, 12-year-old boy Atari (Atari), in order to find his pet dog, hijacked a plane alone and broke into the island of Inu.
Although time is set in the future, the design of the city in which humans live-Misaki is full of the aesthetics of the Meiji era in Japan, ancient and mysterious. Dogs are isolated in another world. Even if there is rubbish everywhere on their island, they still have a shocking decadence and alternative beauty under Anderson's exquisite art arrangement.
Vision will undoubtedly always be Anderson's most praiseworthy strengths. The overhead close-up of the food waste bag opened in the film, sushi making, kidney replacement surgery, and Rube Goldberg's machine-style garbage crushing factory are all the most visually creative scenes in the history of stop-motion animation.
Of course, Anderson's film is also indispensable to the kind of slyness that makes you silent. I really like the running gag of "You heard that rumor, right?". Every time I appear, I can't help but make people laugh. The prophet dog and her gag of "She sees the future?" and "No. She understands TV." It is hilarious.
"Canis Island" is indeed a very strong Anderson style: axisymmetric composition of a large number of characters facing the camera, a completely horizontal overhead shot from directly above the object, a very quirky sense of humor, rock music during the "British Invasion" period of the 1960s ,Etc., etc. For any Anderson fan, "Canis Island" has almost achieved his style to the extreme, what else can be requested, right?
——Unfortunately, it would be great if I could be satisfied so easily.
From the second half of the film, with the protagonist Chief being tamed, the female exchange student Tracy stepped onto the front desk of the anti-Kobayashi government, and the direction of the story became more and more weird. This weirdness does not come from Anderson's usual freak aesthetic, but the derailment of the narrative and its mismatch with style.
What makes me feel more disturbed is the looming cruelty that comes from the deepest human beings in the film.
Since the premiere of "Canis Island" at the Berlin Film Festival, discussions about whether it is suspected of cultural misappropriation and Orientalism have long been raging in the Western media.
The most obvious point is the film’s use of language, which was discussed by film critics Jen Yamato and Justin Chang of the Los Angeles Times. Jen Yamato, as a Japanese-American, sharply criticized "Island of Dogs" through the use of language barriers, which caused Western audiences to feel alienated from the Japanese in the film . This is actually the Japanese in the film. "Dehumanization, Otherization."
Justin Chang further pointed out that most of the untranslated Japanese lines in the film are very simple, and the audience can judge their meaning through the context and gestures; instead, the white exchange student Tracy's language is very rich. This further marginalizes these exploited and unsuspecting Japanese people, and turns the residents of Miyazaki into outsiders in their own cities.
He questioned: Is the "Canis Island" directed by the white Anderson a sincere tribute to East Asian society, or is it just another failure without cultural sensitivity?
There is no doubt that "Canis Island" is indeed Anderson's tribute to Japanese culture. From the beginning of the film, Ukiyo-e of the Utagawa school was used to introduce the history of human-dog wars and the background of the canine flu outbreak, not to mention the ubiquitous Japanese cultural symbols such as taiko, sushi, kabuki, sumo and so on throughout the film. NS.
Whether it is using the music from Akira Kurosawa's "Seven Samurai" and "Enchanted Angels" , or using the "ホクサイビール" that appears several times in the film to play Katsushika Hokusai's "Kanagawa Surfing" joke, it seems to be able to tell Anderson's "love" for Japanese culture. However, if you "love" foreign cultures and justify with tribute, can you really sit back and relax?
Do not. If there is no basic cultural sensitivity when playing cultural tribute, it is still cultural misappropriation, but the author's unconscious cultural misappropriation.
Most people do not realize that it is not worthy of praise to piling up cultural elements of other countries into an aesthetic feast, because in many cases, these elements are merely visual symbols that have been stripped of their cultural context and are filled in the picture. .
I can cite a lot of places in "Island of Dogs" where the treatment of Japanese culture is actually quite casual. The most typical example is the name of the city itself, "メガ崎". This is an extremely weird name (Mega = huge), as a city name itself is unimaginable. What’s more weird is that, regardless of market signs or government documents, the "メガ" in the city name is always written on top of each other, as if forming a Chinese character (similar to the feeling of "ram"), and the city name can be guessed. The writing method itself is prepared for visual curiosity.
And anyone who is familiar with Japanese can easily see that the pronunciation of "メガ崎" is a parody of "Nagasaki." Yes, it is the Nagasaki that was bombed by the atomic bomb. Moreover, a mushroom cloud really appeared in the film, but it was completely stripped of its original cruel context for comedy purposes. The original bomb reappeared in Nagasaki in a playful way. This is still a film that is going to be released in Japan under the flag of tribute to Japanese culture -forgive me, I really have never seen a movie like this.
Jokes about names abound. The Japanese boy’s name Atari (Atari) is often associated with the video game company Atari in the United States; the mayor whose full name has not been seen in the audience is called "Mayor Kobayashi" ", and Atari was finally named "Mayor of Atari"; when Spots rescued Atari, he once called Atari Master Atari-san, but he mistakenly pronounced "さん" as "son". As for Professor Watanabe Min and Assistant Yoko Ono...I don't want to talk about these two names anymore.
You can certainly argue that this is also Anderson's weird humor, and I can even imagine the way Anderson snickered when he said these names. But I'm sorry, it's really not a clever joke.
"Island of Dogs" represents the West’s overwhelming view of the “Oriental” art over the centuries. It does not care about the real situation of Japan, but emphasizes its mysterious and fascinating exoticism to satisfy the Western audience’s curiosity about Japan. Heart. What Anderson actually loves is not Japanese culture, but the imagination created by Western society as the subject of Japanese culture as the other.
At the same time, the people who really created and lived in Japanese culture were ignored and hardly understood by the audience . They perfectly embodies the Western stereotypes of the Japanese, and they have been portrayed as a gloomy, cowardly, ignorant, rigid, and lacking democratic background to bring out the superiority of Westerners.
The opposite of the Japanese is Tracy, the white female exchange student who is most likely to identify with the audience. This is a very typical Hollywood "white savior" character: a white hero saves his nationals on the territory of another country to arouse the emotional resonance of the audience, while the real nationals of the country become the other.
As for the Japanese boy Kobayashi Atari, who should have become a real hero, but was actually marginalized under Anderson's strategy. In the two separated worlds of the film, the events on the island of garbage are mainly guided by the perspective of the stray dog Chief. We empathize with the dog. For the dog, Atari is the other with language barriers; and in the story After the student movement in Misaki City, we began to turn to Tracy's perspective. She automatically turned into a role that was recognized by the audience and aroused empathy, and Atari was still the other.
We are not discussing who is the more responsible for the final victory (atari and the hacker kid are of course the credit), but the narrative strategy is determined. Tracy is the "white savior" recognized by the audience in this story.
To make matters worse, Tracy never said a word to Atari. What she fell in love with was the fearless samurai spirit shown by the little boy. What she fell in love with was only the imagination. In fact, it also symbolized Anderson and our audience’s cultural appreciation. Curious passion.
In the case of direct cultural appropriation that completely ignores its cultural context, the most embarrassing thing is undoubtedly the scene between Tracy and his assistant scientist girlfriend in an izakaya. Tracy excitedly scolded the assistant named Yoko Ono in the film, thinking that she was not refreshed enough after the death of her boyfriend Professor Watanabe-for anyone familiar with the Beatles, this is obviously an intertextuality with the death of John Lennon in reality. Because John Lennon's wife is Yoko Ono.
Although Yoko Ono herself showed that she didn't care much about this matter, the scene was a bit too much like a joke, which caused some troubles to some American audiences. Fortunately, the American film critics didn’t know that the song in the izakaya was even worse in this scene, otherwise the reaction would be more intense-the song is called "Tokyo シューシャインボーイ", this is a song about the defeat of Japan by the American GHQ After the takeover, Japanese orphans made a living by wiping boots for American soldiers!
Symbol of the white savior, Tracy scolds Yoko Ono, whose boyfriend is dead in and out of the scene, not enough to cheer up. The background is actually the music of American soldiers occupying Japan. To say that this is a metaphor, it doesn't seem to make sense logically. Who are the American soldiers and who are the Japanese orphans? I prefer to believe that Anderson just made a big platter with Japanese cultural symbols, and did not intend to straighten them out at all.
When I saw this scene in the movie theater, I really didn’t know what expression to face—Am I supposed to laugh or something?
This is the most obvious orientalist work I have seen so far this year. I don’t blame Anderson for his unconscious Orientalism complex. He is more like an older child showing his once collected toys to others, without realizing that a large number of his complex for Japan and the East originated from the West. The society has been occupying the right to speak for centuries, even less aware of the original context of those collections.
Of course, any author has the right to express his love for foreign cultures, but they must break away from the perspective of curiosity, carefully consider whether they truly understand its original meaning and context, and carefully examine their past cognition. Wes Anderson has done a terrible job in this area, and to make matters worse, most of us can turn a blind eye to it.
In fact, in everyone’s nature, they will be more or less confused by the beauty of a foreign country because of their sense of distance. However, the real danger is that if they are guided by this mentality, they will fall into opposition and turn the culture of another country into reality. The creators and users of the movie are marginalized, dehumanized, and other, unscrupulously using stereotypes to produce comedic effects. This is actually a more concealed cruelty.
"Canis Island" exposes how cruel we humans can be: we can easily not regard them as living beings on the earth, and watch them with curious eyes. As long as it is not us who is offended, we don't mind.
However, they are also us.
If we put aside cultural topics, would "Canis Island" be a good film?
I don't think it is because the relationship between man and dog in the film is too ironic, and this irony is separated from Anderson's usual system, which seems very fragmented.
At the beginning of the film, the film tells the legend of humans and dogs through the mouth of the sage dog Jupiter: more than a thousand years ago, dogs were able to live freely on the mainland, and the human side of the Kobayashi Dynasty opposed dogs. Class suddenly launched an attack. In this war between man and dog, dogs became prisoners. Just as the dogs were facing life and death, a young samurai betrayed the human side he was in, cut off the head of the ruler of the Kobayashi Dynasty, and allowed the dogs to exist as pets.
If the legend is just a legend, then it doesn't matter. But as time progresses, the film reminds us that this is indeed the history that actually happened in the film: the story told by the sage dog Jupiter is not fictional, but comes from the records of the murals on the shipwreck, the story on the shipwreck Another mural also reveals the dog experiment of the Kobayashi family 20 years ago. We learned that Mayor Kobayashi inherited the love of cats and hatred of dogs from the ancestors of the Kobayashi dynasty, and it became his motivation to promote the extermination of dogs.
After Kobayashi's death was reported by the media, he performed a kabuki of "Young Samurai and Headless Patriarch" at his funeral. This reminds us once again of this period of history, and also hints to us that the confrontation between Atari Kobayashi and Mayor Kobayashi is the historical reproduction of the young samurai and the headless patriarch.
This raises a question: The dogs in "Canis Island" are not dogs that we have domesticated by humans in reality, but are independent species that once had self-will. This makes the warmth of man and dog in "Canis Island" seem very hypocritical.
From the beginning of the film, we were put under the dog's perspective. However, when almost all humans have betrayed their partners and supported the exiled dogs, all the dogs are still eager to return to their owners. The only exceptions are Chief and Nutmeg.
When Chief emphasized "I bite" several times and was proud of his identity as a stray dog, and denounced those dogs who longed to return home to lick their wounds, we established the Chief's dominant position in the story. When Nutmeg met Chief, he even refused to recognize the identity of the performing dog-``I don't consider that my identity.''
This is a typical Andersonian role that we can usually establish emotional connections: They have questions about their social identity, refuse to be given an identity by others, and embrace a different lifestyle with sincerity like a child.
However, this is the only dog with a self-will, but ultimately surrendered to humans. The subject that can most empathize with the audience surrenders to the object that the audience cannot empathize, which forms an upside-down dislocation.
The most unbearable part of the film is the way the boy Atari tamed the dog. On the first night, with wind playing on the radio, Atari arrogantly ordered the dog to sit down. It is not only difficult for the audience to understand Atari's language, but more importantly, his strong body language, cold expression, and highly stylized Kabuki-style performance make the audience separate him from him.
The Chief refused. This is as it should be. Since we are substituting the dog's perspective, how can we accept the leadership of the "human" in the film? However, when Chief and Atari were alone together, Atari again tried to forcefully order Chief to pick up the stick that ran out, but he obeyed.
From this moment, the film began to fall apart. Anderson played a little trick here. He tried to break the cold impression created by the boy Atari's insistence on sliding the slide. This childish detail made him a little warm. However, the trick is the reason why the trick, because as Anderson just make the audience sympathize with (rather than empathy) for Atari impression, and the story of Chief opportunity to generate sympathy for the Atari is not present. This makes Chief ef's behavior lose its logical self-consistent-unless it was all arrogant before.
And even if the audience can sympathize with Atari to a certain extent, our empathy is still from the perspective of a dog, which makes the audience almost unavoidable to have a feeling of being dominated by others (of course, unless you did not substitute for the dog in the first half of the film) Perspective), rather than the warming effect that Anderson expected.
Do you know what is worse? If you watch the Mandarin field, then you will have a deeper experience of this fear of being dominated by others: when a dog speaks Chinese, a person speaks Japanese, and even the last dog with self-will succumbs to the dominance of people. You can hardly avoid having a strong dislike for the film.
In this land once occupied by Japan, it is really hard for the audience in the Mandarin field not to think of the humiliation of the past. Therefore, Maoyan and Taoping tickets have a large number of 1-point scores from the Mandarin field. I don't think their reaction is too radical. If I look at the Mandarin field, I will probably be equally angry.
When Atari ordered Chief to pick up the thrown stick, behind him was a Japanese ghost (おに) with a big mouth open, which made this scene of people tame dogs even more frightening.
The relationship between man and dog in "Canis Island" once again reflects the most profound cruelty of our humans. No matter how many times the film emphasizes "Dogs are man's best friends" or "Because he's a 12-yo boy. Dog loves those", it is actually reflected in the behavior, but there is no friendship at all, only cold dominance and obedience.
All of these still reflect the absolute domination of animals by anthropocentrism in the real society . No matter what mistakes humans have done, animals must forgive and obey unconditionally, and we can still use the name of "love". What a cruel and arrogant human being!
I also thought about whether Anderson wanted to express the cruelty of human beings deliberately ironically, and further extend it to people who were brainwashed and enslaved under power politics—just like in the end of the film, Atari Kobayashi ironically inherited power through hereditary, and the new establishment The Atari cabinet is even more silly than Mayor Kobayashi, everything seems to be the replacement of the feudal dynasty, and there is no change at all.
When I wrote this film review, I also saw many people start to praise the political metaphor of "Canis Island". However, even if we interpret this story from the perspective of a "dark fairy tale", "Canis Island" still lacks overall self-consistent.
Film scholar James MacDowell describes Anderson's quirky temperament as a balance between "ironic detachment" and "sincere engagement" , and believes that Anderson is walking on trial and empathy, irony and sincerity, detachment and devotion Above the blade. Attempting to regain the childlike naivety that is contrary to the adult cynical reality is Anderson's greatest weapon.
So, Anderson is considered in cultural studies is a "meta-modernism" an important part (metamodernism) in the film industry. Andersons grew up in an era when postmodernism ridicule and irony were most prevalent. When they wanted to rediscover sincerity, hope, romance and emotion, they had to resort to the tools of postmodernism.
The result, as described by cultural scholars Timotheus Vermeulen and Robin van den Akker, is that their work "oscillates between the enthusiasm of modernism and the irony of postmodernism, and the oscillation between hope and depression, naivety and sophistication, sympathy and Between indifference, identity and diversity, wholeness and fragmentation, purity and ambiguity."
This is always the most interesting part of Anderson's work: he can be sincere and ironic at the same time . What we need to emphasize is that sincerity and irony always happen at the same time in the best works of Anderson , resulting in his very unique and subtle quirky temperament.
Whether it’s "The Trenbaums" or "The Grand Budapest Hotel", those Anderson's iconic screen-oriented shots, extreme emphasis on symmetrical composition, or extremely eccentric but extremely childlike characters that make the audience feel embarrassed about the characters. The sections of the sneer and laughter all have a subtle and ironic sense of alienation, but they still have the truth of their inner emotions, and neither the sincerity nor the irony is false.
However, "Canis Island" only achieved this on a visual level. At the story level, whether you understand it as a sincere "warm fairy tale" or an ironic "dark fairy tale", this breaks Anderson's consistent principle and is separated from his audiovisual style——
If "Canis Island" is a "warm fairy tale", then it will be a utopia . But as we mentioned earlier, it is impossible to explain the cruelty behind its human-dog relationship, Orientalism, power politics, etc.
If "Canis Island" is a "dark fairy tale", then all the warmth in the film will appear hypocritical and become an antitopia . But if all the sincerity in the story is disguise and false, and its inner roots are actually irony in the end, then Anderson has lost his greatest weapon, and the visual style he has always pursued has become a pretending prop.
In my opinion, Anderson wanted to create an atopia, an atopia. However, because irony and sincerity, transcendence and devotion are separated in the film, they only repeatedly turn between the two extremes of sincerity and irony, but they are not coexisting and wrestling at the same time. This has led to "Canis Island" in the eyes of the audience either becoming a utopia or sliding towards an antitopia.
The story of "Canis Island" is cruel. And this cruelty itself seems to be produced without Anderson consciously, let alone by the majority of the audience, which is even more cruel.
After Atari tamed Chief, a child's graffiti was written on the wall they passed by, and there was also a portrait of Mayor Kobayashi on the wall. This sentence appears in a seemingly warm picture with a dog supporting a person, which is a bit creepy. Undoubtedly, it uses children's innocent handwriting to show the future encounters these dogs will face in the future. The human butcher knife has been put on the neck, but it is still naively asking questions.
For me, it can also be the ignorance of the Chief after being tamed by Atari, or it can be applied to the relationship between dog and human, obedience and domination, and even, it can be that every one is ruled by power politics. The "we" we wrote are also all "we" who have been kidnapped by consumerism and cultural curiosity mentality without knowing it:
どうやって僕らを杀すつもり?
How are you going to kill us?
We thought that the butcher knife would fall soon, but the real answer was: being enslaved to death in ignorance.
This article was first published on the public account "Mr. Ani Ma", welcome to follow me.
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