Question: Who kills more people, sharks and coconuts?
Answer: coconut.
This is a question in "I Am Black".
There is an equally interesting question on Zhihu: Are there poor people in Beijing? If so, why didn't I see it.
I believe it is not that he did not see the poor, but that the poor he saw were not the poor he thought. The poor in his eyes may be the stereotype of inadequate food and clothing, and ragged clothes in the movie. Poverty is often linked to the past, because what we see on the screen is always bright and beautiful. And when a movie really presents the "invisible bottom layer" without prejudice, we are rejecting such sincerity. This is what happened to the film "I Am Blake" in Cannes.
I sincerely pay tribute to the judges of the Cannes Film Festival, and of course, my deeper tribute to director Ken Roach.
When we are discussing Cannes, what are we discussing? The answer is simple, of course it is movies. If you care about red carpet gossip, I don't mind. So when we are talking about movies, what are we talking about. Is the movie really "wood without roots, water without roots"? Of course not. Unlike other art forms, movies are collective creations. Commercial movies are indeed the most intuitive and direct connection with the current social mental state and living conditions. But we are always ignoring these. When we maintain the "artistic status of film" with a noble attitude, we selectively ignore his social demands. When we were grateful that the movie touched the deepest corners of our hearts, we attributed this to the director's "artistic genius", and did not pursue where such talents came from. This is what happened to "I Am Blake" in Cannes.
The topic of the film is about the "invisible bottom", and these "countless" and "good taste" film critics face "I Am Black", just like the Zhihu questioner mentioned at the beginning of the article. There was once a fable called "Why not eat minced meat"? I think they are asking: Why don’t you give awards to our favorite movies? Like "Tony Erdman"? (Disclaimer: I like this movie very much)
Cannes has never shy away from politics, and even faces politics directly. I still remember that in May 1968, when the "May Storm" broke out in France, during the film festival, radical French New Wave directors Godard and Truffaut directly robbed the stage. He shouted through the microphone, "There is a revolution outside, are you still presenting awards here?" Then everyone took to the streets to "participate in the revolution." But nowadays, when Ken Roach is practicing the "revolution" that has been going on since the "May Storm" in the film, the critics are bluntly speaking outdated? We have been emphasizing experimentation and innovation, but we always say that the film is dead, "this wave of directors can't do", the previous film art is a great art. When we shed tears for the past value orientation, but ignore the previous values appearing in modern society? This is a paradoxical fact.
"We have lost how we evaluate the culture and art of our era and the thinking of the masters of our era today." (Dai Jinhua)
After experiencing a series of ideological storms such as modernism, postmodernism, and deconstruction, it seems that "every solid things have disappeared" for the once solid value evaluation standards of literature and art. It seems that only visual spectacles and heroic narratives are left in our movies, or a little more, we have given up the blood that dripped directly, we have given up solid beliefs, we are fortunate and content with petty bourgeoisie, literary atmosphere, Buddhist narrative? This has almost become a social symptom, and we all have this disease.
Ken Roche is not, this old man is more sensitive than you and me, and more determined to face what is happening and what is about to happen. He was a warrior who fought social injustice uncompromisingly throughout his life. His fighting ability was so strong that he could not get a cent to make movies during Thatcher's two terms in power. And the "neoliberalism" of Thatcher's period used government austerity policies and privatization to erode the meager victories of the working class, ostensibly reducing the size of the government to reduce its intervention in "individual freedom". When the global financial crisis comes, the government allocates funds to rescue bankers and big capitalists, and at the same time exacerbates the unique symptoms of capitalist society such as unemployment and unstable jobs, and public opinion unrealistically vilifies those who receive relief. The result is that the power of the working class is weakened, workers bite the bullet and accept lower wages, longer working hours and higher prices, and wealth is more concentrated in the superstructure. This is the British society that Black faces.
Ken Roach has never been a "nationalist" but a "cosmopolitan", because his films are never limited to telling about the British, but instead focus on the bottom and the weak of the world. The slogan of Occupy Wall Street is "We are 99%." In fact, the most terrifying thing is not that one percent of people do not look at us, but that we are still looking at one percent of our lives.
And with the polarization between the rich and the poor is the problem of information barriers and the elimination of skills. We are in an era of unprecedented technological change. The outstanding characteristics of this era are "new" and "fast." , And young people are" in the age, when we are used to computer operations, we have forgotten that the popularity of computers is still a matter of scratch in our lives. We are too accustomed to forgetting and adapting, so that we forget and obscure The reality that we do not want to see and cannot see. That is when we are struggling to catch up with the world, there are still a large number of people, which is what we often call "the old, the weak, the sick and the disabled", who have no ability to catch up at all, and even no one gives him a chance to catch up. From this I thought of a point. There are 17 million blind people in China, and there are blind roads in almost all city streets. How many blind people can we see in real life? We are so accustomed to the world we see and want to see, that we ignore the hidden existence.
After the end of the Cold War, modern society quickly regressed to the world at the end of the 19th century, back to monopoly capitalism and the polarization of the world. This is an era in which "everything that he owns is doubled. Whatever is not, even what he has will be taken away." This is an era in which unequal distribution is the basic social structure and social reality.
"I am not a customer, not a customer, nor a service user. I am not a lazy person or a beggar. I am not a thief. I am not a string of social security numbers. I am not a piece of data on the screen. The powerful bow down to treat their neighbors as hard as possible. I don’t accept or ask for alms. My name is Daniel Black. I’m an upright person, not a dog begging on the street. I’m here to ask for it. It’s my right and asks you to treat me and me with respect, Daniel Black, a citizen who has no extravagance and no compromise."
This is Blake's declaration, and it is also Ken Roach's declaration.
The film’s Hong Kong title is "I, Don’t Bow Your Head". When Blake applied again and again, but was rejected again and again, he still emphasized that “losing your self-esteem is equal to losing everything”. Without bowing your head, the so-called self-esteem, I think, is “ When we don't have the ability to say no, we still have the power to say no."
What is called "hope" is actually "having a chance to do it again". When Blake restarted again and again, reality and time did not give him a chance. Humans do not have the ability to resist time, movies can. Human beings have the ability to resist reality, but we often give up the opportunity to resist and hide in the dream of movies instead.
"For Ken Lodge's films, what is important is not only the reproduction of the suffering in society, but also forcing us to face up to the suffering in society, the people in suffering, and to face up to the colorful big screens in society. The important thing for the people who are gradually invisible, disappearing, and completely concealed from above is that he always shows a kind of courage to face the suffering and the courage and strength to reproduce the people in the suffering.” (Dai Jinhua)
The little girl in the film said that her brother, "Others never listen to him, why should he listen to others?" Do we also want to listen to Ken Roach.
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