Thematic Analysis
Since the film looks at the world from a child's point of view, although there are anxious, tense and disturbing passages in the film, the overall tone is relatively relaxed and lively, and the child's innocence, persistence and cuteness are all very sincere. It is moving, and the audience is mostly moved by this innocence. Although there is no lack of criticism and irony of the adult world in the film, most of them are relatively mild.
This article will analyze the theme in detail from three aspects: the innocence and kindness of children, social traditions and norms, and the plight of vulnerable groups.
1. The innocence of children and the kindness of humanity
This article believes that the innocence and kindness of children is the biggest theme of the whole film. The main storyline of the film is that Amop travels thousands of miles to a completely unfamiliar town to find a friend's home, just to return the wrongly loaded workbook and save his deskmate from punishment. The event itself was born out of a child's unadorned emotions - full of innocent wishes, sincerity and kindness.
Adults expressed incomprehension and impatience at his thoughts. Under Amop's repeated explanations, his mother either ignored his request and repeatedly urged him to do his homework and housework, or he was still not allowed to go, thinking that "it's okay to give it back to him tomorrow". In the eyes of adults, it's just a workbook, "it doesn't matter if you tear one, the teacher won't find out". And this kind of numbness and indifference shows that they have long forgotten their childhood and the simple helpless period they once had; this also further caused estrangement and even contradiction between the two sides.
In this short eighty-odd minutes, there are still some hidden "dark lines", one of which is the brief relationship between Amop and a lonely old master.
During the difficult journey, Amop met a lonely old man who used to make handmade doors and windows. He is the friendliest and warmest stranger to Amope in the whole film, and his help actually didn't help Amope find his friend's home - the old man took him back to another "Lin Ma" who was asking for directions. "s home. This was actually an unintentional disservice to Amope, who was in a hurry.
However, out of good intentions and not wanting to disappoint the old man, he hid the workbook in his clothes, as if he had returned the workbook, as shown in the picture below.
In addition to the story line in the movie script, the innocence of the child is also directly presented in the audio-visual language of the movie.
There are a lot of close-up shots of children's faces, showing their unique pure and clear eyes; children's liveliness and cuteness are presented in many details, such as the noise before class, the pictures on the blackboard, and the last page of the workbook. Graffiti, after school jokes, etc. These innocence are completely different from the indifference, numbness, philistinism and ferocity presented by the adult group portraits in the film.
The picture below shows the scene of the teacher showing the Amop workbook to the students. In order to educate Amop's deskmates not to write their homework in the workbook repeatedly, the teacher explained the meaning of using the workbook to the students, and showed Amoop's workbook. When the teacher turned to the last page, which was painted with children's doodles, the teacher was still saying "this is last month's homework", and the students below were whispering.
This is the content of the foreground and mid-ground. In the background, we can see the chalk graffiti on the blackboard (the blackboard was much cleaner the next day), and we can guess that this is what the children may be doing before the teacher enters the classroom.
The picture below shows the children scrambling to surround an old abandoned car after school, climbing up and down, and adding some sound effects of the car moving with their mouths.
The joy of children is so simple. These shots bring children's fun and imagination to life.
The music of the film also adopts national characteristics and quite lively music, which sounded when Amop ran to Bosti twice and when the little yellow flower suddenly appeared in the workbook at the end, adding to this film with children as the protagonist. A bit lively and fun.
2.2 Social Authority and Norms - Honesty Faces a Dilemma
This society conforms to the rules and places great emphasis on "discipline" and "tradition". We see the adult world appear insensitive and rigid.
In the film, the teacher emphasizes that the children should be "disciplined", and that he can be late for class and occupy the child's seat at will; the mother responds numbly to Amoup's repeated explanations and requests, and finally even uses the father to come Threats; the grandfather even "was educated for complete obedience" and said that in order to educate them, he could "find excuses" to beat the children; although the father did not have a single line, his coercion ran through the whole film, and it was an invisible terror.
The picture below shows Amope's father's image in the film for the first time after he failed to find a friend's house and returned home.
In the face of incomprehension or even punishment, not only do children not get enough help and guidance from adults, but the price of "honesty" also becomes very high.
Amop was quite obedient and disciplined in the first part of the film, but under increasing pressure, he unconsciously lied in the second half.
When I was chasing my friend’s cousin, I saw my grandfather. I pretended not to see it, and then said in my grandfather’s question that I was going to buy bread. I was late for school the next day. The teacher asked him where he lived, probably to avoid Being scolded, the three words "Bosti" blurted out; in the end, Amop did let his classmate avoid punishment, but in the way of "writing assignments", which was actually a kind of deception.
So, in a society where telling adults honestly is often criticized and misunderstood, is lying a better way to achieve your goals?
When Lin Ma explained to the teacher that he had left the workbook at his cousin's house, the teacher said "you are lying"; when Amop said that many of his classmates were from Bosti, his mother said "don't lie to me". This mistrust is manifested in many places.
In general, adults form an authority and require children to abide by norms, which increases children's fear of adults, actually reduces the efficiency of communication, and also creates a vicious circle. The greater the authority of the adult, the less space for the child, the greater the pressure on the normal communication between the two parties, the greater the conflict, and the less trust in each other.
2.3 The plight of vulnerable groups
The characters representing the disadvantaged groups in the film are mainly children, as well as the elderly represented by the old masters who make handmade doors and windows. They all lack the right to speak, and the most powerful group of adults in the society lacks psychological attention to them and their needs, which leads to more or less difficulties faced by the disadvantaged groups in these societies.
The first picture of the following three pictures is of a child who said he had back pain in class. The third picture shows him doing some heavy work for the family after school and transporting the milk pail that he needed a lot of effort to lift.
There are many similar details. It can be seen from the film that on the one hand, children are at the mercy of adults, helping with household chores, taking care of their younger siblings, and sharing work with their parents. Communication is often in a state of being ignored and misunderstood.
Children will be interrupted constantly, must obey every command that adults say, and sometimes be beaten and scolded needlessly. are indeed disadvantaged groups in society.
There are also some elderly people in the film, who also belong to the disadvantaged groups in society. The most detailed portrayal in the film is an old man who makes handmade doors and windows. He enthusiastically helped Amoup, and asked him to "wash his face" along the way, and cared about his well-being. It can be seen from the old man's own statement and some details that he is a lonely old man with no children to accompany him, and his brothers and nephews have also left him. When people switched to iron doors, his exquisite handmade wooden doors and windows were gradually eliminated.
When Amop reported his surname and where he lived, he recognized it immediately and said that he had also done a door for their house. It is conceivable that he used to be a very famous teacher, and people in this village and even further away looked for him. He had his own "golden age", but after all, the past has passed, and he is slowly getting old and slowly being forgotten by people.
Above is a shot of the old man after returning home. On the wall can be seen a picture of the child, possibly the nephew he mentioned, while he himself is "besieged" in the door frame, coupled with his bloated body from old age, hunched waist Back, showing a sense of powerlessness.
The picture below shows him looking through the window to a street that has long been deserted. He still has a feeling of being besieged by the "frame columns" of doors and windows.
For him, Amoup's help not only made him think of his nephew and relieved his loneliness, but also made him feel his worth again. He was very caring for this strange child who came to ask for help, and said a lot of words from the bottom of his heart. The scene where he picked a flower for Amopu by the spring and put it in his workbook was also very moving.
There are many shots of exquisite handmade wooden doors in the film. These are the evidence of the old man's "golden age". With retro and traditional beauty, they warmly shimmer in the dark, illuminating Amoup's journey. .
The picture below shows the small flower that appeared at the end, which is a rare warm memory of Amop's difficult journey. This is the memory of an old man and a child helping and warming each other. It is like an affirmation of Amope's bravery and kindness, a praise of innocence, and a love of the beauty of life. The successful completion of the homework and the teacher's unintentional praise seemed to be a gift to Amope, which gave him all the comfort he deserved during the journey.
This is of course a consolation, but the problem of the disadvantaged in society has not been solved. The adults who are the "pillars" of society did not provide Amope with necessary help and correct advice, did not understand the child's innocence, and did not relieve the loneliness and helplessness of the elderly.
2. Analysis of film technique
Having completed the discussion of the theme, the following will be an analysis of the cinematic techniques used in the film. This part will mainly include four aspects: lens, angle, scene scheduling and editing.
(1) Lens
As people pointed out in their review of "City Lights", when Chaplin appeared in a larger scene, people would be amused by his antics, and when the scene was smaller, the audience would When his face is seen more clearly, it is easier to develop sympathy, compassion and empathy for the character.
The same goes for "Where Is My Friend's Home". In this film, the scenes of children's reactions are often small, with a large number of close-ups and even close-ups to show their facial expressions, while there are very few close-ups or close-ups of adults, and adults are always shot with larger scenes. This difference in the lens makes it easier for us to understand the emotional changes of children and enter the inner world of children. Here are a few examples from the film.
Example 1
For example, in class, when Lin Ma was severely criticized by the teacher, a lot of footage showed the children's reactions. The close-up and close-up shots clearly reflect Lin Ma's guilty conscience, guilt and unease, and also show Amop's concern and concern for his friends.
And teachers appear in a bigger picture. The pictures below are all in medium and panoramic shots. There is no close-up of the teacher in the film, and it is difficult for the audience to feel the inner world of the teacher and understand the changes in his emotions. Because it is more sympathetic to the child who was reprimanded.
In general, shooting with this technique allows us to feel that the child's emotions are relatively open to us, while the teacher's image is authoritative, and his psychology and emotions are unpredictable.
Example 2
After Amop went to Posty, he was told that Lin Ma's cousin had just set off for Koka, where he was, so Amop set foot on the way home again. However, he was stopped by his grandfather who was sitting at the entrance of the village. In order to educate him, his grandfather asked him to go back to get cigarettes. When he came back, a middle-aged man who was in the decoration business was also at the entrance of the village. With the consent of Amop, he grabbed it and tore off a piece of paper, and casually held the notebook with his fingers between the cigarettes and wrote on it.
The first and second pictures below are close-up shots of Amoup, the focus is on Amoup's look, and the grandfather behind is blurred. Amop protested and rejected this behavior of the middle-aged man, but his voice became smaller and smaller. In addition, his grandfather said, "Give it to him." Taking it away, he could only choose to silently endure the fear and guilt towards his friends.
In the third picture, when the middle-aged man comforted him hypocritically and was about to tear up his homework, Amop cast a look of help at his grandfather. Grandpa was the closest adult he was present, but he had just agreed to the disrespectful behavior of others towards his grandson, and he was in a state of acquiescence at this moment.
In the fourth picture, Amop has given up his resistance. The fifth picture is that the middle-aged man has tore up the child's workbook without any explanation, and without the help of any adults present, he can only watch all this happen.
These shots show the changes in his expression in nuanced detail, and the audience also brings in their own emotions, feeling the helplessness, unease, tension and resistance of the characters.
(2) Angle
Many of the children's lenses use a horizontal angle of view and an elevation angle, and the camera position is mostly placed in a position where the child's horizontal line is flush. This is to bring the audience into their perspective as much as possible, to see this from the child's point of view. This has resulted in a major feature of the film - the height of the child is difficult for tall adults to fully fit in the painting, and often half a body or an arm, leg, etc. are still in the picture, and the face that plays a role in communication is often in the picture. Outside the painting, the audience cannot see it.
This approach allows us to look closer to the adult world from the perspective of children. They are afraid of the authority of adults, and they cannot understand their thoughts, just as we can't always see the expressions of adults in the film, or even see them fully. There is too much fog in the adult world. The adult world they see is like the picture frame we see selected and cut, a world that confuses them, confuses them, and doesn't know what to do.
The following is an analysis of some of the shots in the film from this aspect.
Immediately after the aforementioned, it is still a scene at the entrance of the village. At this time, Amop unexpectedly heard the man mention the word "Lin Ma", and rekindled hope in his heart, thinking that this might be the father of his friend Lin Ma. So he ran to the two adults who were talking and asked in a low voice and repeatedly.
The picture below is a shot of Amopp stepping forward to ask. It can be seen that he looks so small and powerless among the two adults, and his voice is extraordinarily low in the conversation between the two adults, which is directly ignored by the two adults. At this point the camera is on Amopp's horizon, and we don't know anything about the expressions of the two adults.
In the following shots, it appears that Amop is looking up at the middle-aged man, and the camera also chose to shoot at an elevation. But we can see that the middle-aged man didn't respond at all to Amope's voice.
Amoup watched the man turn around to leave, but was not reconciled, so he chased after him. The tall body of the man in the frame has already been drawn, and only the little Amope is left, who is still persistently questioning.
(3) Scene dispatch
Mizmo is "a flow of visual elements that can symbolize the drama or complexity of an idea" and is a complex noun that actually includes four different formal elements, namely, the arrangement of actions, the sets and props, the way of composition, And the way things are photographed in the frame.
Composition and design are biased towards two-dimensional scene scheduling, that is, in film shooting, directors and painters will take into account some painting-like elements, such as shapes, colors, lines, etc. However, film directors often enrich their images in order to avoid affecting the plane, so the composition needs to take into account at least the three levels of the middle ground, the foreground and the background. This involves territorial space.
This paper finds that the film "Where is My Friend's Home" uses two techniques in the scene scheduling: one is that the composition of the protagonist in the environment can always express a dilemma and suppressing effect; the other is that "authority figures" always occupy the center position to increase its importance.
Example 1
This is the scene of Amop in the hallway at home. The camera in this mirror is intentionally placed outside the hallway, so that the heavy railings seem to surround him. The whole picture seems to have fixed him in a cage, with a certain sense of oppression.
Example 2: The teacher always occupies the center of gravity
In the second part of the theme analysis, this article mentioned that this social adult represents a certain "authority", and the teacher is a very important part of the "authority figure" in the whole film, which also has sufficient scene scheduling. reflect.
The following two panoramic shots, from the perspective of composition, the picture can be divided into upper and lower parts, the children occupy the lower part of the frame, and the teacher occupies the upper and lower parts at the same time, in the picture "standing upright", clean and white Shirts stand out against the worn chalkboard and walls, grabbing the viewer's main attention.
And the following panorama lenses with slightly smaller views are no exception. The role of the teacher still occupies the upper and lower parts, and because of the larger size, the children are even smaller.
In the medium shot below, the pressure of the teacher is also very obvious. He is located in the center of the picture, occupying the upper and lower frame, while the children, Linma and Amop have only a small head in the frame, and in the lower half, belong to the oppressed objects.
(4) Clip
There is a characteristic that can present a process. Originally, it could compress time and space, but retain a large section of the process, using one sequence after another, trying to present a complete and detailed process. For example, a series of continuous shots are used to describe Amope being summoned by his mother to run back and forth at home, from Boss to Koka (where Amope's house is located).
The journey to find Lin Ma is very long, but it is repeated three times, and the process of the protagonist's running is basically presented. This method shows the difficulties and hardships of Amop's journey very well, thus highlighting the children's innocence, persistence and bravery.
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