Read an article about Nabokov and Xu Zhimo. The two do not seem to have intersected in history, except that they both studied at Cambridge. Xu Zhimo went a year late. As a special student at King's College, he was not considered a formally registered Cambridge student. The Soviets overthrew a huge empire, and Nabokov traveled to England, Germany and the United States as an exiled nobleman, when he was a second-year student at Cambridge.
The two of them obviously did not know each other, and the only intersection was that they both studied in Cambridge, or they both left their impressions of Cambridge in the name of literature. For Nabokov, "The cold of winter makes me miserable... In the morning, there is always a thin layer of ice in the jug, and when I tap it lightly with a toothbrush, the thin ice immediately becomes crushed ice, and the water The jar made a clanging sound." Xu Zhimo described a postcard-like Cambridge The oily is swaggering under the water; in the gentle waves of the Kang River, I am willing to be a waterweed."
At that time, Nabokov entered the mainstream circle of Cambridge, and as a descendant of a Russian nobleman, he was engaged in heated arguments with students of the left and the right. For the revolutionary war that was taking place in his homeland, Nabokov was not interested in the world. Always arrogant and impatient, he has few writers in his eye, and he is extremely impatient with the judgment of British students as outsiders to their homeland. At that time, Xu Zhimo was immersed in the April sky in his world. He was just a man with a lot of affection, just like his words.
Some people always talk a lot before they want to say something. If I meet such a person, I will avoid it. Because when you don't understand, after a few hours, you find that the meaning of listening intently is actually only a few minutes, and after getting to know this person, you will be interrupted and sarcastic involuntarily from the very beginning. When it comes to writing articles, I must be a "someone", although I often console myself that the truth in the world is limited, and the number of people who write is like wild grass that cannot be burnt by a wildfire. Syrah, rambling, similes and metaphors, arranging stories, how do you stack up the words that circle the earth N circles? Then I messed around for a long time, what did I want to write? Actually, I want to write a film review about "The Book Thief", but I must state that it makes sense for me to write about Nabokov and Xu Zhimo, because their very different memories of Cambridge remind me of myself After reading "The Book Thief", I need to express my feelings urgently.
The author of The Book Thief, Max Susack, was born in Sydney in 1975 to Austrian and German parents. This book about the life of ordinary people in Germany during World War II, the source of the story is the story of his parents.
After watching this critically acclaimed book turned into a movie, I found myself like a person watching the scenery across from the Great Falls. Torrents, rocks, torrents and the impact of rocks, may be described as beautiful and spectacular, but not breathtaking, knowing that it is on the other side. Even if it seemed to come to me roaring, it had become a rustling sound of water splashing under the clear sky as it approached.
Then, what factors did this movie rely on that blocked my way of empathizing with it. The first is photography, digital photography, which is already ubiquitous, with a high definition that is so high that it makes people feel uncomfortable. For example, in Ang Lee's "Billy Lynn's Midfield Battle" the year before, the Western media generally commented that "it is too vivid and clear, and it feels like a fake. , unlike a movie, lacking a cinematic feel". This reminds me of the film age, the coarse grain and the blurred color transition of the film age, like life, there is an ambiguous sweetness and bitterness. The overly clear images made the World War II background of the story and the sometimes interspersed documentary clips look like two unrelated strangers randomly arranged in the same scene, and the director insisted that they were the same person. Most scenes in the movie are light sources of warm yellow, which is a safe color for filming. Few scenes will turn the colors to a cooler but still brighter. This is a typical American film approach, without the hard, cold, and astringent feel of European films. However, for Germany during the war, the style of American films is obviously not suitable for expressing the abrupt, gloomy and tragic nature of the war. In the documentary clips interspersed in the film, the babble of the "Führer", the short and powerful German and the gentle and sweet American language in the film are even more confusing. This is what happened in a country. Or convince yourself to believe, but that is enough to kill the dream-making sense of the movie. Although the dream is not real, after all, when it is a dream, it has a sense of reality.
For Chinese readers, the title of this film is easily reminiscent of Kong Yiji and Kong Yiji's words in defense of themselves, "Stealing books can't be considered stealing...books stealing!...A scholar's business, can it be considered stealing?" A passage from the Black Teeth Kingdom in "The Mirror of Flowers": "...So here people who steal things are called stealers, those who steal books are called stealers, those who borrow things and don't return them are called Gui'er, and those who borrow books do not return It's called a liar." Ah, the grand and richness of Chinese characters, even the jokes to scholars still have a trace of warmth.
The movie always uses the voice-over of Death as the string line. Unlike the solemn and terrible image we imagined, the tone and language of Death is naughty, just like the warm tone of this movie.
As the mother of the German Communist Party, she ran for her life and gave her a pair of children to others for adoption. In the long snow, when her son died, her sister Liesel (the heroine) quietly left a copy of "Gravedigger's Handbook".
There are many films about World War II, but this one is from the perspective of ordinary Germans. It can be seen that in that era, if you did not join the Nazi party, the life of ordinary people was completely destroyed. The adoptive father is a person who is warm and hates war, and has been rescued by the Jews. He tried to be a non-participant in the war. He has almost no job opportunities and relies on his wife to wash clothes for others. In the end, it was because of the tailor on the street that the strict inspection found that the spelling of the name had two n scrambles (this is the characteristic of Jewish names). When the police dragged the poor tailor into the police car, the adoptive father stepped forward to stop him and said a few words. In a word of defense, he was forced to join the army. Fortunately, his car overturned on the way to the front line. His stepfather was lame and was able to return to his hometown.
The adoptive mother was a very interesting woman, a bit vicious, mean, complaining, nagging. In reality, she is a warm and insecure woman who loves her husband as well as her adopted daughter Liesel. Although, this love requires people to slowly understand. For the sake of the family, she was careful, washing clothes everywhere, in order to prevent her husband from participating in the war. She seems vulgar, but she also listens to her husband's accordion playing, despite her adopted daughter's love for reading and writing, and even risking her life to take in Max, the Jewish son Max, who helped her husband before the war. Just like her adoptive father told Liesel to take care of her mother before joining the army, she is not as strong as she seems.
The main line of the movie is Liesel's two friendships, one is Rudy, a childhood sweetheart, and Rudy, who has golden hair and snow-white skin, looks like a delicate enamel doll, but is actually an athlete who likes long-distance running. He likes Liesel. This is a juvenile love, but there is no sadness, purity and brightness of the young Werther. He asked Liesel to go to and from school together every day, and two people raced on the street. He accompanies Liesel to steal books from the mayor's wife, and they run to the deserted creek and yell at the valley - I hate Hitler. He jumped into the glacier and fished out the notebook that Max left to Liesel. He always asked Liesel to kiss him and didn't get it. In the end, in the bombardment of the Soviets, one of the streets they lived in was bombed, and the adoptive parents and Rudy died. Liesel kissed Rudy desperately, wearing pajamas, with dirty marks on her face, as if she was sleeping peacefully. Rudy.
Max is a Jew, a literary youth with long hair and beard. Escaped with a copy of Hitler's Mein Kampf and hid in Liesel's basement. Teach Liesel to read, paste Hitler's books into notebooks, and encourage Liesel to start writing. His friendship with Liesel is heartbreaking. Humans were supposed to love each other and grow harmoniously, but the greed and possessiveness of human nature make it hard to keep the lonely planet where human beings live from being ravaged by war. In one shot, in the dark night, bombs roared, and people ran to the air-raid shelter. Max could finally come out of the basement safely, open his arms, and embrace this empty world.
Finally, we must mention Liesel, the protagonist, who is a very ingratiating character, but the performance of this little actor is rather rigid, the expression of joy and sadness hardly changes, like a little girl trying her best to complete her homework. It often feels like she's a voice-over presence, especially when so many other characters are doing pretty well. The incident with the book thief was that she delivered clean clothes to the mayor's house. The mayor's wife saw that she liked to read books, so she quietly left her there to read books. At that time, it was when the Nazi government was burning books. There are also many books in Chinese history. This is a process of trying to obliterate history and intend to reshuffle the cards. These books by the mayor's wife are obviously against the rules. Later discovered by the mayor, Liesel secretly stole the book and went back to read it, and then changed it back. I believe that the mayor's wife must have known and silently supported it. The mayor's wife has to mention that she looks like Ingrid Bergman, dignified and elegant, gentle and compassionate, with gray braids, and her magnificent beauty The library complements each other. The study room is classically decorated with peacock blue and gold, and the gilt hardcover book, everything is beautiful, like a paradise in the war.
There are many scenes corresponding to the book. The warmest one is when people hid in the bomb shelter, Liesel recites the stories in the book for everyone. People gradually changed from anxiety to serenity, immersed in the story. From ancient times to the present, books have always been a medicine to comfort people's souls.
Read books, give up war and hatred, and let human beings coexist with warmth. The utopian dream sounds ridiculous, but it is like the sound of reading in a bomb shelter, and this consolation reaches people's hearts.
There are regrets in the film, but on average it is still a movie worth watching, not to mention which art in this world has no regrets about that incident?
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