This year's Cannes Film Festival is a "big year", with excellent works coming out one after another. "The Thief Family", which won the Palme d'Or, was released in mainland theaters in August, and "Children of Jianghu", which was shortlisted for the Palme d'Or, was also released in September. In addition to these two works, there are also two works that are also highly anticipated by mainland movie fans. One is "Burning" directed by Li Changdong, which achieved the highest score in Cannes magazine history; the other is the same as "Children of Jianghu". , and finally won the Best Screenplay Award for "Happy Lazaro".
Happy Lazzaro is the work of Italian director Aliche Rohrwacher. It's hard to think that the director is a post-80s girl. She only started directing movies in 2011. This is her third work, and her skills are already so skilled. Alice Rohrwacher is undoubtedly a talented director. Her debut film "The Eucharist" was well received at the Cannes Film Festival. In 2014, she won the 67th Cannes Film with her second work "Miracle". Festival Jury Prize. She takes her genius to the next level in "Happy Lazzaro," her best work to date.
Many films set in Italy, the stories take place in small towns, such as "The Beautiful Legend of Sicily", "Life is Beautiful", "Please Call Me by Your Name", and "Happy Lazzaro" as well. This is an isolated village called Inviolata, but there is no simple and warm pastoral scenery here. Dozens of dirty villagers live here. Civilized life in isolation. It's not that the villagers are reluctant to leave, it's that they are being controlled by a countess who is in the tobacco business and has a huge fortune. The Countess made the villagers willing to be slaves through isolation, brainwashing and control.
Lazaro is an ordinary villager, he is pure and kind, hard-working and never complaining. The countess brought her son to the village for vacation. The days in the country were really boring. The count's son regarded Lazaro as a brother. And, in order to escape from life here, he directed and acted in a kidnapping case. The countess had already seen her son's mischief and was unmoved. In desperation, the admirer of the earl's son had to call the police for help. The arrival of the police revealed the secrets of the village to the world. The villagers were able to leave the village, except for Lazaro, who accidentally fell off a cliff while searching for the count's son.
This is the first half of the film, where Alice Rohrwacher draws on the fine tradition of Italian neorealism to present us with a pre-modern picture of exploitation and slavery. But the greatest charm of "Happy Lazzaro" is the combination of realism and mysticism. When the film enters the second half, the atmosphere of magic and mystery begins to rise.
When Lazaro woke up, he was still the same as when he was young, but more than 20 years had passed. Lazaro is still looking for the count's son, his "brother", and comes to the city by accident. He met the villagers in the village, and except for Antony, who befriended him, who regarded him as a miracle, everyone else regarded him as a monster and treated him as before. Lazaro found the earl's son. At this time, he was completely down, but his stubborn and arrogant personality had not changed at all. The count's son's wife told him that they were down because their assets were confiscated by the bank. In order to make the count's son happy, Lazaro went to the bank to "recover" the count's son's assets, but was knocked to the ground by everyone.
From the village to the city of a few decades later, the social background has changed abruptly, and the earl's family has also changed from prosperity to depression; but Lazaro has not changed, the attitude of the villagers towards Lazaro has not changed, and the way of life of the villagers has not changed. Nothing has changed. Lazaro, as always, has a holy face and eyes full of compassion and kindness. He has no desires or desires. He does his best to help everyone, and bears all the injustices of fate. He is a saint-like existence .
But Lazaro's kindness has become stupid in the eyes of the villagers, in exchange for the villagers' oppression and use of him. The count's son once asked the countess, is he not worried that the villagers will find out the truth of being deceived? The Countess said: "I exploit them, and they exploit the weaker, this is a food chain that can never be stopped." The exploitation of Lazaro made them temporarily forget the status quo of their exploitation and the reality change. Even if they were rescued and came to the city, they were just exploited in another way, still struggling at the bottom of the society and making a living by stealing and abducting.
No one who thinks he is smarter than Lazaro is happy. The earl's son was in a downturn and was in a state of despair, but he was still indulging in the dream of a prosperous world. The villagers have not changed their servility, conscience, and cunning. In the new social mechanism, there are still invisible exploiters enslaving them, and they are not happy if they survive.
And Lazaro, is happy. His kindness and innocence make him feel almost no negative emotions. He doesn't care about being left out, being deceived, being laughed at, or the fists of the crowd or sudden death. After being knocked to the ground, he still had a holy face, his eyes full of pity and kindness, and there was no expression of pain or unwillingness.
The image of the wolf appears several times in the film, and is interspersed with an allegory of "the wolf and the saint". The fable says that wolves stole the fowls of human beings, and human beings could not be disturbed and asked the saints to negotiate. The sage traveled all the way, but could not find any trace of the wolf, and collapsed from exhaustion. The wolf finally appeared too. The wolf slowly approached the sage and was about to eat the sage when the wolf suddenly smelled an odor. This smell it had never smelled stopped it, and it sniffed again. What is this smell? - "The smell of a good man".
So the wolf ran away. Even a man-eating wolf can distinguish the smell of "good people", but in human society, good people eventually fall alone in a pool of blood.
Living in a world where saints are dead, I am suddenly very curious about what the "smell of a good man" is. I somehow miss this unfamiliar taste.
——The first surging drama——
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