If the child born from the union of black and white has become a mixed race that is neither black nor white, then the film born from the graft of Hollywood and Australia is a nondescript epic. An epic film needs a root, as well as folk customs, historical care, and humanistic thinking. It must be deeply rooted in the land on which it depends to tell a truth that is integrated with itself, in order to be most deeply rooted in the hearts of the people. performance, otherwise it will be superficial. Australia is a country riding on the back of a sheep. The majority of immigrants make it lose the possibility of planting roots. In other words, their history is floating, empty and scattered, so when Baz Luhrmann When the film came out, we found it to be as vast as the land of Australia, but just as empty.
We don't need to compare the movies far away. The Taiwanese characteristics expressed by the Taiwanese movie "Cape No. 7" last year are very moving. From the film's popularity among the audiences on the island, it can be seen that it is similar to the current Taiwan The degree of co-production; and how much local light does this "Australia's Troubled Times" have? Is it cattle and sheep, loess, cowboys, or manor? These scenes are common all over the world, such as "Ambition", "Out of Africa", and "Dancing With Wolves". Can you still use these original scenes as your Australian label?
There was no heartfelt excitement when I wanted to come to Nicole Kidman when she set foot on the Australian mainland. In 1992, when she was not Tom's wife, she had a difficult journey across the sea and land, which was full of ups and downs, displacement and emotion. Entangled encounters can soothe people's hearts, but it's unremarkable to repeat it 17 years later. Perhaps it was the change of mood that created her numbness, and the thinness of the script also contributed to her superficiality. If a clichéd story like "Moulin Rouge" can still create a beautiful and peerless sad woman, then "Australia" shows the All we have is a vase that draws attention to its beauty. It is accompanied by Hugh Jackman, who is also an ornamental animal. The series of model films such as "X-Men" have made him successful, but they have also hurt him, just like making an actor who can have a soul degenerate into a tough guy on the screen .
"Australia's Troubled World" cannot face its own history, so instead of love, it is said that love is the most cliché, and it is still the most important and core element in epic films. War and turmoil are always pushed over as the background of love, allowing characters to show their distress, hope, frailty and strength in the swaying wind. In these epic films, the fire of war can burn out. Everything, the only thing that can't be burned is love. "Australia's Troubled Times" has a splendid resentful woman and a free and uninhibited cowherd, but it does not give a twists and turns of emotional development. The love between Sarah and the cowherd is more like a "captive" behavior. The dislocation of the relationship is in this In the chaotic and chaotic era, there is a funny texture. The Cowherd in the film does not have the courage of a little guy like Tom in "Ambition" to fight for a big cause, but is only satisfied with a place to rest and a woman's arms, eager to It's just a good horse with a violent character; it's Sarah who has ambitions. She longs for land, cattle, and men. The bones are not cold yet." This woman couldn't help but let herself go.
So when the director took a heavy rain from the sky to open the door to their emotions, the unbridled kiss at the entrance of the theater seemed so fake to us. After stroking Cowherd's sexy and thick chest hair, we discovered that this was originally a passive and tired love. The mixed-race child Nara became a shield for the absurd relationship between the two, and the concept of "doing bad things" was used as a fig leaf to be pulled between the two, and finally to the child. Speaking of which, the director tried to use children to balance this kind of character relationship, because the relationship between men and women has a very unreliable side. The status and identities of the hostess and the male cowherd are very different, and their love and hate may only be unified to the poor On the child of the child, he did not hesitate to brutally kill the child's mother and fire the father, and achieved such a strange "joint family". Of course, the emotional conflict between the two should also be based on the child. How the child will go, like a father or a mother, has become an excuse for making the two separate, which is too weak.
If the relationship between two people is the main line of this epic, then the thinking about race is the sub-line of the film. Buzz Luhrmann tries to capture the "Stolen Generation" and makes a big fuss without thinking about them (including the Nicole Kidman, Hugh Jackman) is a generation stolen by Hollywood, years of opportunities in the studio have made their thinking more American, so that they have long since deviated from the thinking mode of being an Australian. So Baz Luhrmann's filming of "Australia's Troubled Times" seems to be a process of recolonization. He made the half-race Nara refuse the education of the authorities, but let him be worshipped and nurtured in the song "Flying Over the Rainbow". The phenomenon of gentle slavery. It has been said in the textbook of Marxist philosophy: culture has a class nature, so our films cannot be classified, and you can't use "music without borders" as an example.
Nara's father is white and his mother is black, so he calls himself half and half. This feature did not give him a pass in the two circles, but instead allowed him to seek development in the cracks. As for him getting close to the hostess of the manor, learning capitalist music, and voluntarily smearing a black face to watch "The Wizard of Oz", it is itself a process of pursuing self-slavery. The director didn't have too much pen and ink to write about Nara's pursuit of his own words, music, beliefs, and living habits, but just replaced it with a scribbled concept of magic, which obviously lacked a kind of research and verification of the indigenous culture, and the focus was still on In depicting a kind of "fascination" of children to white culture, those who chanted "Cape No. 7" all day long, listen carefully, if you want to sing praises to this movie, you should drag it out and behead it first.
In order to hide this kind of coquettishness, the director took a lot of effort to make the film into a fairy tale. Nara has the same tragic family, extraordinary fortune and let him out of danger. The magic of the realm, the process of pursuing slavery was covered up with "dream" and "fairy tale", so he did not hesitate to bring out "The Wizard of Oz" and Xiulan Temple, and the camera panned from behind the screen and aimed at the man on the crossbar. Little black face, and then cut to the romantic scene at the dance on the other side, the contrast makes this pure and dreamy world belonging to children the best baffle.
We can say that director Buzz Luhrmann did not have Australia in his heart. He grabbed love in one hand and a fairy tale in the other and made a dream of his own in this beautiful location. He put the gorgeous temperament of the epic above this illusory dream, and used the smoke of a knife and fire to test this unbreakable proposition for a hundred years. , its splendor, its printing, its unevenness is more than my eyes can handle.
What else can we see besides the two propositions of the epic package? The story of "Ambition in the Land", the mood of "Out of Africa", the proposition of "Dances with Wolves", the momentum of "Gone with the Wind", or do you want to get a little bit of it all? I think this is the drawback of the film, too much pursuit of the appearance of grace and luxury and ignoring the original most precious sincere heart. Text/Grey Wolf
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