However, this unusual world told by the witnesses is actually so far away from him. Those moved feelings will eventually calm down with the end of the film; those stories that will be constantly heard from the news are only right and wrong in another world after all.
The faces that appear in front of the camera include criminals, soldiers, refugees, prostitutes, homosexuals, disabled people, children who have suffered from cold and warmth, old people with gray temples, and more ordinary people who cannot be labeled. Struggles are powerfully told in short, calm narratives that go straight to the heart. Occasional silence, tears overflowing from the corners of their eyes when their feelings could not be held on their own, are telling a story that belongs to them. The harm caused by war, poverty, hunger, discrimination, violence, and the unbelievable love, kindness, courage, justice, or just the helpless persistence of survival in these inescapable miseries Moving. Particularly impressive was a soldier on a mission in Palestine who said that when he pulled the trigger on an unarmed little girl, he realized something was lost in his life. Shame, that's how the soldier described himself. Looking at his face that was constantly torn between good and evil, and the desire for redemption in his eyes, I really felt the dignity of human beings.
Of course, this is not just a sad and heavy world, and there is no shortage of happy stories in the film. Satisfaction with life, gratitude for your partner, acceptance of yourself, and understanding of love all make people feel the endless power in life. In particular, seeing hundreds of ordinary people making concerted efforts when building a human tower and the joy of tearing down their shirts after success, makes people even more proud of the human group. It's just that this feeling of being born from the group seems to be rare in today's era of more and more emphasis on individuals and contracts. The crowd in the swimming pool is as crowded as dumplings, which is the normal state of contradiction between individuals and groups in this era.
When the people in the film talked about the misfortunes in their lives and were grateful for the blessings of God for them, they were saddened by their experiences and rejoiced for their courage, but at the same time, they only felt that they were so lucky to have avoided the ruthless war. , escaped the endless hunger, escaped the poverty that devoured everything. So, when I look back at the world around me and recall the fashion news that fills the media, I just feel hypocritical and even boring. People are always busy for wealth that is no longer necessary (of course, this "necessary" will vary according to different abilities and circumstances), to pay for the icing on the cake, to argue for trivial reasons, and for the seemingly non-existent emotional pain. Compared with those who may only be able to say that they are living, isn't this kind of life a waste of life? Compared with those who have regained their confidence in misfortune, isn't this kind of life too muddy; compared to those who use People who love and be happy to understand this world, isn't this kind of life too ruthless. However, not many people seem to care about this. When people are accustomed to equating enjoyment with happiness, life is left with the only mode of consumption, material consumption and emotional consumption.
So, what is the meaning of life? The answers given by the people in the film vary. Love, gratitude, devotion, a heart with kindness, each can be the answer, but not all of them. This seems to be the ultimate question, but sometimes it feels like an irrelevant question. Because people are not born with meaning, where does this meaning come from? I would like to say that making yourself happy is more important than meaning. But when I watched this documentary and realized that there are many people in this world who can't choose their own way of life, I realized that this is just the ignorance of the ignorant. For those who are living in the flames of war, struggling on the line of hunger, and hovering on the brink of death, happiness is already a luxury, and the meaning of life is a concept that is too far away, not something they can expect to think about The problem. There are also people who say that living means meaning, but such people always understand that they are not simply living, so this statement loses its weight. And it doesn't seem fair enough to those who ultimately choose to end their lives prematurely.
Perhaps, only by acknowledging that the world is so unfair can the so-called meaning have some meaning. But this question always haunts people, some people ask, some people cry. But frankly speaking, for most of the people living in a peaceful world, the so-called meaning is nothing but an obscene concept in order to save a life that has already become humble, and they can only whitewash their ubiquity in vain. Depressed. This is more contrived than those who don't want anything.
The film is not just listening. When the camera moves back and forth between the narrator and the vast world, each story is followed by a grand display of the human living environment, from the vast desert to the mysterious rainforest, from the endless wasteland to the vibrant life. The grassland, from the turbulent ocean to the hard-working fields, from the colorful slums to the brightly lit metropolis, the film not only walks into the hearts of human beings through people's stories, but also leads people into the world of their lives through the lens. planet. Listening calmly to people's hearts and observing the world broadly seem to remind people how lonely an individual is in the face of the complex and diverse minds, and how small human beings are in the face of the vastness of nature.
However, after saying goodbye to the mysterious and seductive nature for a while, the film always keeps some distance from the material civilization that symbolizes the progress of human society and the proud accumulation of wealth. The familiar and unfamiliar world under the camera is more the basis of people's survival than the paradise of enjoyment, and there is not a single story about success (naturally, the kind of success referred to by the popular science of success in today's society) among the many stories. . This kind of intentional or unintentional neglect is actually not difficult to understand. People are rushing forward in the surging tide of material civilization created by themselves, but they often ignore the dwarfed spiritual realm. The alienation of commodities to people, the prevalence of consumerism, hedonism, and even anti-intellectualism just make it more and more difficult for people to exist in this world as a pure life and an independent soul. The documentary [Human Planet], which is also about human beings, also pays more attention to those people who rely on their bodies rather than technology to survive. In addition to a compassionate mind, this is probably also because these people are people who communicate directly with this planet, and they have the primitive belief and power of mankind. If you look at the most exciting and emotional videos on YouTube in 2015, none of them are related to showing off your wealth, and you will understand how far the so-called material civilization and wealth accumulation make people away from themselves.
When the pictures in the film jumped from faces to the sky above the city, the continuous zooming in of the camera was like a cold-eyed observation of human society, without criticism or praise. After looking at the brightly lit urban night scene for a long time, there was only a little more fear in the shock. People contribute their own wisdom to light up the lights that symbolize civilization, but watching people live behind those neat and bright windows is like witnessing them living in a huge program and consuming it own life. This is like the "Matrix" in [The Matrix], the difference is that the former is enslaved by humans for themselves, and the latter is enslaved by humans for machines. Of course, this sense of emptiness may just be his own delusion of the city, and it is the incomprehension of a mountain villager in a prosperous city. After all, no matter how scared you are, you will always have one way or another connection with these countless cities; no matter how you run away, you can't deny that you are just one of these "batteries", and that being able to become a "battery" is more important than many People are actually lucky.
However, the pressure of survival is not a very good excuse for consumerism. In the film, an old man who seems to have been a political prisoner said that what people pay for buying goods is not money, but the time they have to spend in their lives to earn this money. The difference is that money can't buy it. life. This kind of frankness makes people sad, but people can only spend their lives in such conscious and unconscious sadness, and continue to seek elusive happiness in the trap of great material abundance. Although the progress of material civilization is undeniable and the improvement of living standards is also inspiring, in this era of consumption first and economy as the key link, moderation seems to have long been synonymous with not knowing enjoyment. It is true that criticism of material things cannot be understood as a yearning for poverty, but when people are busy with things they don't actually need, don't they feel that life is a little hypocritical? Especially seeing some people profligately profligate, while others are looking for items discarded by others for their survival in the piles of garbage dumps, I feel that this material civilization is just a savage lie that numbs its owners. , deceived its bystanders and failed its builders.
At the end of the film, when the picture returns to the vast land again, when the lonely individual of human disappears in the vast nature, the biological term "human" shows its meaning. However, when thousands of years of human history have made people accustomed to being given concepts in various sociological senses, how much respect for life itself can the film's calmness and the message it convey awakens.
View more about Human reviews
