memory with a story. It seems that summer is always long and endless. The scorching sun flashes among the trees, the streets are sparsely populated, and the sound of cicadas makes people anxious. When we were young, we always had so much energy with nowhere to release, just wandering aimlessly in the city for the whole summer. The arrival and end of summer are always silent, just like our youth, those unbridled and arrogant summers have left us forever, when we realize that we have long forgotten those who were surrounded by sunshine, grass, running water, Video games, cartoons, and popsicles fill the summer when I realize that I am really old. When the once dark and ardent smiling faces became cold and numb, when the partings that happened in those summers became normal and indifferent, we chose work, family, fucking big TV, washing machine, car, Health, low cholesterol, dental insurance, loans, home buying, casual wear, luggage, three-piece suits, DIY, TV shows, junk food, kids, walks in the park, 9-to-5, golf, pensions. . . . . (I'm sorry, but when I got excited, I drooled out the lines of train guessing.)
Back to the topic of movies, about the summer in movies, maybe we will think of those quiet summer sunshine and those calm emotional turmoil in European literary films, or the endless babble of summer in Rohmer movies. Confession, but perhaps we will think of the word youth more. Whether it's Ma Xiaojun's rebellious youth in "Sunny Days", the clean and penetrating youth melody in Iwai Shunji's film, or the confused teenagers' thoughts in Hou Hsiao-hsien's film, they all happen in summer, just like we once had , all those summers of deja vu.
The first time I heard the title of "Summer Wars", I had a preconceived impression of cliché and childishness, and then I glanced at the story. Artificial intelligence invades the network system, manipulates the information of society and even human beings, and endangers the social order and security of the world. Middle school students The protagonist and his companions are not afraid of hardships and dangers, fight against artificial intelligence, and finally defeat the AI and save all mankind. This story outline not only did not dispel the bad impression of "Summer Wars" at the beginning, but also made me dislike this seemingly clichéd platter movie.
But in fact, the film once again proved that the act of "taking a film by its title" is superficial and undesirable. He was once suppressed by Hayao Miyazaki's conservative style in Studio Ghibli, and after suffering for many years, Mamoru Hosoda made a hodgepodge of seemingly unbearable films with delicate and sensitive youthful emotions, a simple and mellow family picture, fun and fresh It has a sense of game, and integrates traditional Japanese family emotions and moral concepts into the whole film, which is fresh, strong and positive.
At the beginning of the film, the hero, a shy and introverted middle school boy, is forced by the school girl heroine to pretend to be her boyfriend and go to the countryside to attend her grandmother's birthday. It is indeed a plot design of vulgarity and soap operas, but it is reasonable to exist. I believe this should have a certain appeal to many male compatriots, especially the majority of otaku groups. And when the male protagonist enters this strange and huge traditional Japanese family, in ORZ, a global network system covering all aspects of social life, a malicious AI invades it, causing social chaos. At the same time, the spiritual pillar of the family, the grandmother as a traditional family and a symbol of virtue, inspired the spiritual power of the family, so the family fought against AI together. And the seemingly cowardly but persistently brave male protagonist exists in the film as the continuation and inheritor of grandma's traditional spirit. The creator of AI is actually the illegitimate son of a long-dead grandfather who fled to the United States after stealing the seller's property many years ago. The U.S. military is set to be the culprit for putting AI on the web. With the unfolding of the story, after the death of grandma, the prodigal son returned to the arms of the family, and was forgiven and accepted by the family, fighting side by side with the family. Maybe it's my over-interpretation, but with such a plot setting, it's hard not to be reminiscent of some political metaphors. According to the prompt of the film, the grandfather, the head of the family in the film, should have been a profligate and debauched person before his death, while the majestic grandmother is a combination of wisdom, generosity, perseverance and other virtues, and holds the right to speak in the family. The absence of patriarchy seems to suggest that Japan is trying to give itself a shot in the arm to escape the shadow of "American Dad" with a modern interpretation of the traditional Bushido spirit. When the grandmother pointed the prodigal son's throat with a samurai sword and shouted angrily to get rid of the family scum, the conflict between the traditional Japanese family-based samurai spirit and the cultural discourse power dominated by the United States today is undoubtedly prominent. And the heroine's fascination with the prodigal son when she was young is somewhat inexplicable with the Electra. It became important in the heroine's heart, replaced the American-style unruly prodigal son, and finally got married. This cannot but be said to be another form of patriarchy, or a return to the traditional Japanese family emotional morality in an alternative attitude.
When it comes to Japanese films depicting traditional families, there are many excellent works in recent years, such as "The Undertaker" and "Walking Nonstop", all of which focus on a family, condensing a long time and sigh into a few days at the moment Inside, sad and meaningful, but positive, the desire to show the beauty and hope of the family remains an emotional thread that runs through the film throughout. This also continues the slow and quiet, de-dramatic nature of early Japanese family films represented by the master of family film Yasujiro Ozu, interpreting rich emotions with details of life, and taking family members' emotional journey from estrangement or misunderstanding to mutual relief as clues specialty. "Summer Wars" has completely abandoned the literary and artistic temperament of the traditional family movies before, and perfectly integrates the futuristic cyber warfare and video games with a traditional Japanese family located in the countryside. Tradition and modernity, this timeless binary opposition has become invisible in this cyber crisis. The solution of this cyber crisis is in the form of video games, and video games have also been integrated into Bushido's spirit of seeing death as home, and the traditional moral values of family unity. The strongest fighter on the Internet is also a teenager learning Shaolin boxing in real life, and the tactics used by operating a large computer to fight against AI come from famous battles in the family history, and even the ancient Japanese card art flower ceremony is used as a virtual world. The way the AI in the showdown. I really have to admire the unrestrained creativity and meticulous thinking of the film's main creators. In this way, the traditional family emotional network and social relationship can be seamlessly connected with the post-modern virtual network constructed by digital technology. The virtual network world and the Japanese countryside full of summer style, the dazzling variety of electronic equipment and the simple furnishings in the quiet ancient houses, the modern social relations and lifestyles of the network and the simple emotions and lifestyles of the traditional family, these Elements that should be in conflict with each other are naturally integrated into the film's audiovisual space through vivid and authentic characters and a smooth narrative that is not sloppy.
Speaking of the audio-visual language of this film, I believe that if you have seen Hosoda Mamoru's upper work "The Girl Who Traveled Through Time and Space", you will definitely be infected by its fresh and bright summer tones and soft style of painting, and by the simple and bright blood in the film. Impressed by youth. The narrative of this film is more lively and compact while inheriting the control of details in the previous plot. Because the story is more social and commercial, and caters to mainstream values, this film hardly puts too much attention on aesthetics. On the picture and lens of the film, the mirror and the light are flat, considering the market positioning of the film, this is undoubtedly a very smart approach. Compared with the previous youth sketch, "Summer Wars" is undoubtedly a successful commercial work. Sociality, traditional family morality and mainstream values have been dissolved in the pleasure of the game without any preaching. This is undoubtedly the old and young. A family-friendly animated movie. To a certain extent, this film is somewhat similar to "Cape No. 7", which set off a movie-watching boom in Taiwan. It subtly integrates nostalgic emotions and traditional morals into contemporary life, and pursues the national climax with a sensational approach.
The film uses a fresh and childlike style of painting to visualize the cyber war whose origin only exists in binary, and uses simple and bright lines to outline a gorgeous picture, creating a blood-warming visual impact. The wonderful fights built by simple color blocks and lines, the Japanese castles in the virtual world, and the beautiful online casinos are all amazing, which undoubtedly gave many Chinese animation practitioners who are immersed in the technology. In my impression, the music of Japanese animation has almost never given critical critics the opportunity to criticize, which is undoubtedly related to the vigorous creativity of Japanese contemporary music. Whether it is the futuristic rhythm in the virtual world, the chirping of insects in the real space, the collision of wind and utensils, and of course those small and fresh Japanese music, whether it is electronics, atmosphere, or piano, they all seem to complement each other so well. , Always stir up the audience's emotions in a timely manner, so that you know that the director will be sensational next, but you will still be involuntarily moved by those cliché plots. Whether it is the eloquent passage of grandma's suicide note, or the utopian bridge of the world's people's dedication account, which is almost obscenity, people are moved without the ability to fight back.
Maybe we have always lived the old self in our hearts, maybe we have all dreamed of a love that we never expected, experienced an incredible fantasy journey, and become a hero to save the world alone. But in fact, we just had unrequited youthful unrequited love, wandering on the same street corner on countless hot and difficult summer days, being scolded by parents all day long because of poor grades, and weeping secretly because of being bullied by senior children . All we have ever had is the calm, or even boring and depressing summers, waiting for it to come and urging it to leave, and when it leaves, it will become inexplicably melancholy.
In "Summer Wars", on the afternoon when my grandmother died, people in the long shot that moved slowly were as still as sculptures, and the air seemed to freeze because of the scorching heat. The hero and heroine clasped their fingers together, watching the girl cry loudly , There is more maturity in the boy's eyes, and more determination. Growth, perhaps in that moment. And when the prodigal son, who has been away from home for many years, learned about his grandmother's death on the street, on the side of the sun-drenched street, there was a picture of his grandmother holding his young self many years ago. Perhaps we have also been lost on a sunny summer street, suddenly woken up by a certain passing time, or saw a person looming across the light and shadow-dappled street in a trance. If we will be moved by "Summer Wars", then we must have had such subtle memories, perhaps the dust of reality buried those summers in memory, making us temporarily forget the broken times of those summers , the intertwined eyes in the summer, the emotion experienced in the summer, the growing pains experienced in the summer, but we still have "Summer Wars" to remind us, don't forget those seemingly calm but turbulent summer days in boyhood, don't forget Those simple and warm youth. Every summer has a story.
Pig Three
2010 6 18
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