Mamoru Hosoda's "Happy Life Report" themed film "Future of the Future" (2018) two years ago finally made it to the big screen in China. From the newlyweds' romantic desire to raise the next generation in "Rain and Snow" (2012), to the overwhelmed and selfless devotion of a first-time father in "Monster's Son" (2015), and now, the story has finally come to an end "Second child" topic.
The story itself is not complicated. The four-year-old boy Xiao Xun's family suddenly ushered in a little life that was his own younger sister, the future. In the process of "competing for favor" with their sister, the new generation of the two families constantly traveled back to the past through the magical family tree, and gradually learned more about the family's past, and finally the relationship between family members became closer.
It can be said that this is the most intuitive reflection of the current situation of Japanese society's demographic structure, but such a heavy social theme seems too young under the shell of animation.
Children's stories
The childish plot lacks logical connections
The film naturally divides the whole story into five parts by setting the boy's four "travels", but between each part the audience feels the most intuitive fracture that lacks the overall connection.
After the first crossing, the audience saw the change in the attitude of the little boy Xiaoxun towards his pet dog, and this change was based on the fact that Xiaoxun once became a dog, and experienced a dog who lost his family because of the birth of a baby The overwhelming feeling of pampering.
This kind of superficial forced empathy and lack of any close connection with the subsequent plot triggered by the fairy tale-like plot is more like explaining the background setting of the entire story, without obvious logical clues . At this point, the entire film has passed 1/5.
In the following few crossings, although the film did not continue to make Xiao Xun become a mother when he was young or a sister when he grew up, it still continued to use low-level and gamified processing to force Xiao Xun to be with his family. The other members of the group draw closer.
Whether it's putting away the Dolls for Dolls in time with the future sister, or messing up the grandmother's house with the mother in the past, these childish plots have absolutely no deeper human connotations under the surface of the story .
The repeated use of the same "traveling" technique is more like arranging the film into four sections side by side - "Me and My Sister", "Me and Mom", "Me and Dad", "Me and Dog" .
In these four sections, the audience can't see the narrative logic hidden in them at all. If these parts are shuffled and rearranged, the overall logic of the film is the same. Just relying on a line from my sister during the last time crossing: "This tree is the historical index of our family" to make a forced deduction, but it has become a footnote-style supplementary explanation.
paper man
Characters that do not grow are slightly flatter
Under the two flaws of the logic of the story and the immaturity of the plot, the inevitable result is that all the characters in the film lack the necessary growth and development.
In addition to the above mentioned that the protagonist of the film, Xiao Xun, did not reflect the internal transformation of the characters in the process of family backtracking many times, there is also a lack of the shaping of the two roles of parents. In this process, they have gained common ground Necessary for growth .
In fact, although the proportion of the two roles of parents in the film is not high, they should play a complementary role in growing up with Xiao Xun to a certain extent. For the parents, having a second child at home was also a whole new experience.
The film is based on how the family can better adapt to the new life by retrospecting the family history when there are major changes in the family structure.
But in the whole film, the mother's role is missing nearly 1/5, and the father's role only plays a role in adjusting and funny.
It's just that at the end of the story, with the help of a brief conversation between the two parents, I understatement that I have grown a lot over the years. It is difficult to convince the audience that such a character change based on lines is hard to convince.
Similar to the use of lines to force a flat character to add a sense of heaviness, it appears repeatedly in the film. It is precisely because of this treatment that we see the absoluteness of black and white in the treatment of many character relationships in the film.
Xiao Xun and his younger sister are not in absolute opposition, or at the end of the film, there is a slight sudden absolute reconciliation; Xiao Xun and his parents are either in an absolute confrontational relationship, or in an absolute submissive relationship at the end of the film.
Such a wide-ranging treatment is more like a depiction of the self-rescue of the eldest son in a two-child family and the "fantasy" efforts to maintain the family in the absence of parents.
In a comprehensive situation where these aspects are missing, it is not difficult to understand why the final presentation of the film is fragmented.
beautiful
Restore the real screen design as much as possible
Of course, apart from the slight deficiencies in the design of the plot and characters, this film still has many remarkable points. Especially the screen design of the whole film.
Different from the general animation film, where the art and props department is responsible for the construction of the scene and the design of the objects, in order to make the final presentation of the film more realistic, the design of all elements in the film except for the characters is made by various lines. Experts from all walks of life have done it themselves .
For example, the "home" of the four-story structure in the film, which was complained by grandma as "you can't live in a normal house if you marry an architect" was designed by the crew and SUPPOSE DESIGN OFFICE construction company.
In addition, some other details in the film are the result of following the real design of life as much as possible. For example, Xiao Xun's story picture book is a children's picture book from Tupera Tupera; Xiao Xun's favorite train model is drawn in cooperation with the Shinkansen and finally presented in a real way. As Hosoda Mori said in the interview:
"We recruited real experts from various industries in Japan to create everything in the animation. Although this is an animation, we still hope that it can reflect the reality. Even the Shinkansen train that almost took Xiaoxun away in the film is made of The designer of the Shinkansen designed a fake Shinkansen model. I want to create the tonality of the real world in the animation, and I don't want "Future of the Future" to be a work in the two-dimensional, pure animation world. "
In addition to the painstaking design of scenes and elements, the audience can also clearly feel the ingenious echo in the combination of scene design and story.
Most of the story of the whole film takes place in one fragmented interior space, which is connected by a huge central courtyard and a huge oak tree.
This also vaguely echoes the family's maintenance through the "family history" represented by this oak tree in the story. The design of the family tree with a rather miniature carving style also gives a more substantive expression to the concept of "family" in the film.
There are many comments joking that this is another "dog food" work after Mamoru Hosoda's marriage. But it is undeniable that the issue of the second child and the traditional East Asian family concept mentioned in the film has gradually become an important social issue, both for Hosoda Mori's small family, and for the entire Japanese and even East Asian society.
And this kind of expression of socialization issues that pours a lot of personal emotions into it may better show how an individual in the current society faces specific issues in the context of the times.
From this perspective, it might be more fun to see how a "perfect family" in an animation world handles these issues with an education mindset.
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