The image of Jim Jamush, known as the "Master of American Independent Films", in the world film scene is quite similar to the characters in his film works. He is a person who is incompatible with his surroundings, and his behavior is strange but also. Not without cuteness.
The number of Jiamuxu's works is not too large, but each one can be called a masterpiece. As an "author" film director , his films always reflect a strong personal style. Jamush's films focus on expressing the alienation and loneliness between people . The film creates unconventional characters and breaks the conventional narrative strategy with a platter-like trivial plot structure, which gives his film a strong postmodern taste, and its minimalist style attracts attention.
He is highly praised by a large number of literary youths for his setting of marginal characters, high-grade soundtrack and setting, poetic content and artistic conception of lines. To some extent, the three words "Jamuxu" represent the absolute benchmark for marginalized independent films in the United States.
In recent years, Jia Muxu has taken the initiative to "embrace" mainstream culture, appearing in front of the public in a way of self-deconstruction and playful humor. For example, in the 2013 film "Only Love Eternal Life" , he put vampire genre elements into the literary film, and portrayed vampires into literary and artistic masters who have been alone for thousands of years. The whole film is also very much like a young literary and artistic youth dropping a book bag. But at the same time, Jia Muxu's unique cold humor makes the story more like the literary version of "That Man Comes From Earth". In the film, Jia Muxu made a lot of deconstruction and distorted criticism of Western civilization through the use of the role, and conveyed a strong personal point of view.
After filming "Patterson", where mythology and poetry coexist, Jamush returned to the "mainstream", and this time he came up with the idea of a zombie film. "The Dead Don't Die" (The Dead Don't Die), as Jamusch's new film in the main competition unit of the Palme d'Or, once again demonstrated his innovation and breakthrough in film style.
You have never seen such a zombie film , and you have never seen such a humorous ridicule of Jiamu Xu. As a black comedy with zombies as the theme, Jia Muxu still incorporates an extremely strong personal style in the film. Scattered slow tempo, repeated cold humor , always slow and low plot structure, even with comic-style naughty special effects.
"Zombies Are Not Dead" is like a one-time prank completed by Jia Muxu with the words of the movie. If you judge according to the style and type of Jiamuxu's previous films, it is easy to imagine "Zombies Is Not Dead" as a graft of literary and zombie films, but such a simple and crude classification obviously underestimates Jiamuxu's aesthetic preferences and ambitions. .
From the perspective of the story, the film tells about the phenomenon of "shifting" the earth due to environmental pollution. Various peculiar natural phenomena herald the undercurrent of the crisis, animals go mad, plants grow in disorder, and corpses buried in graves are scraped. Come out, return to the world, and bring disaster to the world. The whole town suddenly became a paradise for zombies to "violently".
In the film, Jamusch takes the anti-type to the extreme . There is no main story linked end to end. Instead, many characters are stuffed into the story one by one. Except for a few policemen in the small town, most of the characters that have appeared have completed their functional roles in the second act of the film. "Bento". Unlike previous zombie films that focus on drama and excitement, "Zombies Are Not Dead" is obviously too slow in rhythm and storytelling, and it may even cause discomfort for many mainstream audiences . But the cunning Jia Muxu added a lot of restricted bloody shots to the film. There is a scene of the "corpse" that appears three times repeatedly, showing his style of handling the film.
Zombies attacked humans for the first time, and the restaurant salesmen who appeared in the first act suffered unexpected events. Their bodies were lying on the ground feebly and twisted, and three small town police officers entered the restaurant to find out. In this scene, there are repetitions of lines, repetitions of shots, and repetitions of character behaviors. These deliberate repetitions are the best embodiment of the characteristics of the film's genre. The iconic style created by Jamusch has a self-reflection aesthetic of alienation hidden in it.
Through this scene, we can tear the outer shell of the zombie film and explore the theme core hidden in it. Obviously, just like Jiamuxu's "Only Love Eternal Life", it embracing pop culture elements on the surface, but in its core it is still a deconstruction and questioning of mainstream culture, even a mockery. At the beginning of the film, this American town was depicted as eerie and terrifying. When the police patrolled the streets, the streets were empty and unseen. When the zombies crawled out of the grave and harassed the citizens, the town swallowed by the zombies became lively. .
In Jamux’s eyes, the small town is undoubtedly a metaphor for American society, and the people living in it are not indistinguishable from the zombies. The seemingly scattered metaphors in the film are actually supported by a unified concept: when the local prison is full, the dead will run to the ground; and when the ground is in a mess, the living people also look like walking dead.
In the film, the zombies crawled back to the world from the ground. Although they have the horror of cannibalism, they still shouted social accounts, WIFI, and coffee. Zombies still succumb to popular culture, consumerism, and networked narcissism. Fans who are familiar with the genre of zombies must know that zombies, as a popular element of the movie, gradually established their status after Romero’s classic zombie film "Night of the Living Dead" .
Through "Night of the Living Dead", "Dawn of the Living Dead", and "Zombie Out of the Cage", Romero led the first wave of zombie movies, zombies, zombies, cannibals, and in many ways replaced classic monster types and Science fiction creatures penetrate into the practice of movies through various sub-genres, and also penetrate into the popular context of various eras. For example, from the "nuclear crisis" to the "fear of infectious diseases", to today's insinuations about the Internet society and consumerism.
The core themes of zombie films are often related to death and the demise of consciousness . Romero has completely constructed the transformation of zombies and the methodology of zombies elimination through his works, as well as a series of moral issues arising from this. In "Zombies Are Not Dead", Jia Muxu once again expressed his attitude towards part of popular culture through character design, paying tribute to Romero's status as the originator of zombie movies, and also borrowed the rules of the zombie genre he established.
For example, after being bitten by a zombie, they will be assimilated; for example, the nature of carnivorous and bloodthirsty; and zombies will still return to places they are familiar with and find people they know in the past.
The attachment to the past life, as well as the hatred and qualities that were cherished before the zombieization, will not change because it becomes a slow-moving, seemingly low-intelligence zombie. Therefore, in the film, Jia Muxu directly satirizes the public after being brainwashed by various doctrines with this type of paradigm, becoming dull and stupid. For example, they ridiculed social phenomena such as environmental issues, Trumpism, political correctness, Metoo, network society, consumerism, and racism.
For example, the racist played by Steve Buscemi in the film always wears a hat of "making America white again", but in the face of public opinion pressure, he still duplicity says he is not racist However, he was the first to be attacked by black zombies, and finally killed by a group of zombies that symbolized public opinion.
In addition, the hippie girl played by Selena Gomez is a symbol of outsiders, but she suffered a zombie slaughter just after entering a small American town.
The character design in the film obviously carries definite functional references, from age to gender, from skin color to ideology.
The ending of the film also expresses Jamux’s views on the current society, that the masses torn apart by various doctrines are experiencing the demise of self-awareness . People who have lost the ability to think independently are actually long before the demise of their bodies. , The soul is gone, there is no difference from the zombie. There seem to be two completely detached people in the film, one is a scavenger who leaves society and enters the jungle, and the other is a morgue caretaker who is regarded as a weird person by the residents of the town.
One of them deals with nature, the other simply associates with the dead, and the identity is not earthly. From this point of view, Jiamuxu has completely lost faith in the real world, hiding behind the camera "laughing but not talking", laughing and cursing as much as he wants.
Finally, it’s worth mentioning that Jia Muxu, who likes to drop book bags, not only quotes classics and inter-texts various popular cultures in the film, but also quotes a lot of his previous works, copying "Earth Night", "Mysterious Train", and "Leaving Souls". The shots, camera positions, and bridges in "Guest" are deconstructed by self-deprecating .
For example, let the character directly break the fourth wall, talk about the script and the movie in the film, and even directly question why Jia Muxu only gave the complete script to a certain character, and the character directly threw the film's theme song CD out of the car window. , Because a theme song was repeatedly played and mentioned in the story, which bored both the audience and the characters.
Therefore, "Zombies Are Not Dead" uses an anti-typological approach, borrowing the shell of zombie films, and satirizes popular culture and the society of blind obedience. All the "discomfort" and "contrast" in the film are magnified in deliberate slowing down and repetition. Jia Muxu gave the "magnifying glass" to the public, hoping that the audience could see the self in the mirror in the film. Probably, only Jia Muxu dared to be so proud and so cruel at the same time. From this point of view, "Zombies Are Not Dead", which has a sense of comedy, is actually still a total horror film, which makes people feel desperate and helpless.
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