In recent years, movies in Southeast Asia have begun to gain popularity. In the past, there was only one Muay Thai boxing champion in Thailand who made kung fu movies. Now, the same-sex ambiguous and fresh style is adopted. There are always one or two movies that make people feel good.
India too. In the past few days, I have watched several films along the way, among which "Request" can be regarded as the highest comprehensive level. How high is it? So high that it doesn't look like a Bollywood movie.
First of all, although there are songs and dances in this film, there is no group dance at all, at most it is a duet. Then the singing part is very restrained, almost all solo. Bollywood's most important song-and-dance features are greatly diminished.
It does not suddenly sing and provoked like ordinary Bollywood films, and the singing and dancing parts are almost all given to dreams and memories. In the memory, the protagonist, as a great magician, used dance language to express the dream and magic of magic, which is the perfect match. And the appearance is extremely gorgeous and capable, and it is almost all kinds of plug-ins, and it is justified.
The realistic part of the song and dance has a very practical entry point. The most beautiful dance is the part where the heroine dances with the female singer in the karaoke room to comfort the hero. It is lively, rich, bright and moving. And the most touching, of course, is the song of mother and son set to express the love of mother and son. This setting makes the realistic more realistic, and the fictional is more fictional. This setting itself is very much higher than "Bollywood".
Secondly, in terms of actor selection, the two protagonists are definitely of the typical highest caste race, and they can hardly see the appearance characteristics of Indians in our general understanding. Tall nose, deep eyes, tan hair, very pale eyes, and fair skin. Typical Caucasian appearance.
At the beginning of the film, the male protagonist wakes up in the morning light, and the female protagonist cleans up the house and changes clothes for him. The sun lit up the room, fell on the hero's face like a Greek statue, and the heroine's long dress and long tan hair, and I really thought I was watching an Italian movie. I didn't realize that I was watching an Indian film until the terrible mixed English and Indian Hindi came out.
This made me spit out after the hero's mother came out: You look so Indian, and your son looks like this, it's really abnormal.
Again, in terms of film technique and performance, it is very, very Hollywood. Whether it is the lens language, scene switching or narrative method, including the advancement of the story, it is very Western-style. Has a slow, long and emotional charm.
The story progresses very slowly, there are a lot of branches and emotional foreshadowing, and it is very generous when it comes to conflict, and the rhythm is very fast. I like the part of the story where the hero and heroine go to court together and sit in the car. The subjective shots, objective shots and the instructions behind the shots are all very clear, but hidden in a very slow mood and rhythm .
And last but not least, its core is completely westernized.
This is something that has been criticized by many. This story deals with an almost complete separation from the modern Indian state. A fully paralyzed patient, or a wealthy, persevering, handsome and beautiful (put aside the protagonist's halo of being so handsome and beautiful after being paralyzed for 14 years) patient... How many such patients can be found in India?
Leaving this setting aside, we can speak of the freedom of life and death, the paradox of religion and law. According to the few materials I have read, although India has indeed made rapid economic progress and people's lives have greatly improved, the illiteracy rate, literacy rate, and even the most sinful caste system have not been abolished.
In fact, the appearance of the male and female protagonists in the film implies that they are people of the highest caste, and this kind of person is the top of the pyramid, and has nothing to do with the people under the Indian pyramid. So the core of the film is entirely Western, not Indian as implied in "Indian films".
To put it mildly, this film is not even better than the "Slumdog Millionaire" filmed from a Western perspective, which is suspected of "hunting for strangeness".
But considering that the industry itself is unlikely to be done by people of low caste, what kind of social class determines what kind of social attribute, the attribute of this film is probably the attribute of "high Indian".
Originally, I wanted to use a stalk that people told me "beauty is beautiful, no soul" to make the final comment. But if you think about it, this movie is not entirely soulless. Blaming the director for not caring enough about the people of India is obviously not acceptable for forcing others to be the Holy Father who illuminates the society. Even Gandhi can't reach that level of thought, let alone a director of a commercial film.
But to foreign audiences, such as me, they will feel that such a director is not sincere enough, not worried enough about the country and the people, not sharp enough and wise enough to reflect the truth of society. At least it makes me think its melancholy is too limited, too narrow, too Hollywood. The peculiarities of this part of the country are displayed very little apart from the conflict of religion and law. In other words, the conflict between religion and law is not unique to India. This is also a topic that has long been written rotten and overwritten in the West.
This film is more than two hours long, and it is one of the few films that I can watch without fast-forwarding or reluctantly. It is indeed a very beautiful film, artistically, ideologically and technically, it tries its best to be perfect within its pattern, and even some parts are perfect. But the regret after reading it is that such a beautiful beauty has not grown a heart that suits my appetite.
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