First published on the public account "Comprehensive Comment"
Public ID: zonghepinglun
Author: Li Chen
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In the context of the new crown epidemic, Netflix’s new film "The Abandoned Land" was released as scheduled on September 16, with wonderful originals, luxurious casts, gothic style, rust belts in the northeastern United States, hopeless small towns, shrouded in ignorance The country, etc., various eye-catching elements and a special narrative structure, making the audience almost suffocated by bloody scenes such as a screwdriver stabbing the neck and a knife and cutting their throats. At the same time, they have to think about a question: Is this still America? Why is the chaos half a century ago so similar to the chaos in the United States today? Now, let's take a look at what kind of land "The Land Abandoned by God" is.
Willard, a war-wounded World War II veteran on his way home, met the waiter Charlotte in a restaurant in Mead Town. The two fell in love at first sight. At the same time, the killer Carl and another waiter, Sandy, were also in love at first sight. After that, the two lovers finally got married. Sandy followed Carl to live in Mead. The couple started prostitution and murder. Willard took Charlotte to rent a house in Nokenstay, not far from Mead. Settle down. The first thing Willard did when he returned home from the military was being dragged by his mother to the church and had a blind date with Helen, but Helen was attracted by the priest Roy’s fairy halo, and soon became the priest’s wife and gave birth to his daughter Renault. La, the family lives in Coal Creek Town.
When Alvin was nine years old, his mother unfortunately suffered from cancer. The doctor was helpless. The painful Willard could only hope in God. In order to show his piety, he would kill Alvin’s dog Jack to sacrifice, but the miracle did not appear after all. Charlotte was still dead, and Alvin couldn’t forgive his father’s dog-killing behavior. Desperate Willard cut open his neck with a folding knife in front of the cross he erected, and used practical actions to transform Alvin into Become an orphan.
Roy wins the hearts of beauties with spider tricks. He has a daughter and gave birth to a daughter. He is a winner in life. As the saying goes, he often plays with spiders, but he won’t be bitten by spiders. Roy was unfortunately recruited during a sermon and his head was swollen. He looked like a pig and failed to become Spider-Man, and the fairy halo disappeared. After retreating, he finally realized that, a screwdriver pierced Helen’s neck, and then began to call souls. Unfortunately, God was stunned by his behavior and did not react. So Helen died completely, and Roy had to bury the Helen grass and leave it to the west. Otto got into Carl's car to go back to Coal Creek to visit his daughter. Carl shot him twice to see God and took many photos as a souvenir. As a result, Renora also became an orphan.
The two orphans meet at Emma's house, and the first part of the movie ends.
The second part begins with a simple birthday party. Alvin is 18 years old and is considered an adult. His step-grandfather Ursk transferred a Ruger pistol given to him by Willard to Alvin. Renora was always bullied by three gangsters at school, and Alvin was beaten to protect his sister. Pastor Sykes took a temporary break because of his old age and sickness, and brought his nephew, Ti Gading, to replace him. This young pastor who drove a luxury car was ruthless and good at deceiving young girls. Soon, Renola fell into a human face. The puzzle cannot be extricated. Alvin finally found a chance to critique the three gangsters, and from then on to win peace for his sister, but Renora accidentally committed suicide due to pregnancy. At first no one in the family knew that Renora was pregnant. After the sheriff told Alvin the truth, Alvin Wen noticed Pastor Tigadin, and through follow-up investigations, he finally found iron evidence that the pastor harmed the girl, so he came to the church and exposed the pastor’s hypocrisy and vicious face through a false confession. God.
After the murder, Alvin chose to go to the place where he lived as a child. He wanted to bury Jack well. So they got into the car of the Carl couple. The couple was addicted to murder and skilled in business, but they were educated by their father to use violence to find the right time to start. Alvin was good at observing and vigilant, when Carl was about to start. Decisively, he killed Carl with two shots and Sandy with one shot. After checking his luggage, Alvin found a photo of the dead body in Carl's wallet and two boxes of film in the car toolbox.
Alvin accidentally learned from the owner of a grocery store near his home that the two he had just killed were the younger sister and brother-in-law of Sergeant Mead Podeck. As soon as Alvin collected Jack’s remains, Sheriff Podeck chased him. Alvin decided that the sheriff would take his life to avenge his sister from the sheriff’s act of shooting without hesitation, so he shot back decisively. The sheriff.
With four lives in his life, Alvin had no choice but to go desperately. He got on a ride to Cincinnati. He was sleepy in the car and vaguely heard President Johnson's voice on the radio-the United States sent troops to Vietnam.
Another great battle is coming, and the cycle of reincarnation begins.
Whether it is the Chinese title of "God Abandoned Place" or the English title of "The Devil All the Time", it can well summarize the connotation of the whole movie: in this story full of evil and killing, the order is already out of balance. Most people are pursuing a kind of power, which can prove that they have received divine help. All their abilities and glory come from the almighty God. For example, in the film, Emma said that before finding the Lord, he even had an egg. He doesn’t know how to fry, it’s the Lord who guided his hands to make delicious meals; Roy said that before he found the Holy Spirit, he could be scared to death when he saw spiders...until the Lord gave him strength, and now the Lord looks after him …Some people describe this bottomless worship of God as fanaticism, thinking that blind faith is ignorance. In fact, this is a false perception caused by not understanding the nature of religion. "The Land Abandoned by God" is not a pure anti-religion. The film, on the contrary, expresses a deep sense of loss of chaos and religious negligence at the bottom.
Religion is essentially a set of knowledge systems for understanding and interpreting the world. Before the Renaissance, the influence of religion covered all groups from the power class to the civilian class. At that time, whether it was knowledge or social authority, religion was It is a top-level existence, representing God overseeing secular power and guiding all living beings. However, after the Renaissance, people’s understanding of the world has undergone a qualitative and quantitative leap, and the knowledge system of religion has been initiated from various angles such as astronomy, geography, humanities, and art. The challenge eventually led to the religious reform, followed by a vigorous enlightenment movement, and the torrent of knowledge in various fields such as natural sciences, philosophy, ethics, politics, economics, history, literature, education, etc. surged forward, and soon It promoted the first industrial revolution, the second industrial revolution, and the third industrial revolution that continues to this day. Every scientific advancement is a ruthless mockery of the religious knowledge system. It can be said that the more advanced science is, the more advanced the science The method of cognition of the world in name becomes more absurd.
However, highly developed scientific knowledge, culture and art have always been in the hands of the power class and the elite. It is not easy for the vast majority of the common people to enter the palace of popular science. Educational inequality is an objective reality that exists all over the world. In fact, in the case of China, the population with higher education has not exceeded 6.68% so far. The United States is almost double that of China. According to this ratio, there should be more than 50 people in the 400-person town of Nokenstein with higher education. Unfortunately, this is a small town shrouded in voyeurism, affair, incest, and fornication. There may be fewer people with higher education than clergy.
In the eyes of the power class and the elite, religion has become a pure cultural phenomenon, a ritual used to connect common values, and no longer has the function of spreading knowledge. But in the vast countryside, the civilian class does not possess high-level knowledge. Ignorance, ignorance, blind obedience, and violence are still dark means to maintain order and unite the people. This means that the knowledge system represented by religion is still effective.
The Israeli scholar Yuval Harari summed it up in his brief history of mankind as follows: The thinking process of modern science is: 1. Recognize ignorance; 2. Explore new knowledge; 3. Gain strength . His summary tells us that the basic starting point of science is Human beings are ignorant. Only by acknowledging ignorance can science gain a steady stream of momentum for progress.
So what is the thinking process of religion? 1. God is omnipotent; 2. You can get divine assistance if you have cultivation skills; 3. Get order . The basic starting point of religion is that God is omnipotent. Whoever acquires the ability to talk to God can gain the power to create miracles, and thus guide all living beings to live a happy life out of the sea of suffering.
The power class and the elite class hold secular power and knowledge. They are not in a sea of suffering. They know very well that power and knowledge bring them wealth and status, so they do not believe in religion in their bones. But the underlying base is huge and ignorant, just allowing religion to manage and constrain it. After all, the religious knowledge system is still sufficient for the underlying.
Using religion to get through the value system from top to bottom, and to effectively manage the bottom masses, is naturally something that the Western power class loves to see. All fanaticism and ignorance are essentially the inequality between all classes. In order to avoid social change, They cautiously avoided class contradictions, and constantly advocated the sacred power of religious beliefs, and convinced people that ignorance, ignorance, blindness, chaos, and violence were essentially due to insufficient piety, so God did not give strength to it, but abandoned it. This This is the theme of "The Land Abandoned by God", which is a deep evocation for religion in the name of anti-religion and anti-violence.
With this understanding, many problems are actually easy to understand. For example, Renora is always bullied by three gangsters. From an anti-religious perspective, God does not protect Renora, so religion is shit, but from the perspective of God, those three gangsters are people who are abandoned by God. , If they believe in God, how can they oppress others? Then we enlarge the perspective of God, and you will have the illusion that as long as you truly believe in God, all the evil people in the film will not exist, and all evil things will not happen. If they exist and happen, it means that you do not believe in God or are not enough. The consequences of piety.
However, all efforts to save mankind with religion are destined to be in vain. Trying to put religion into everyone’s brains, but unable to put wealth into everyone’s pockets. This is the profound contradiction that the capitalist value system encounters after science has become a powerful productive force . This contradiction even transcends class contradictions, because it It is also branded with culture, and it is not just a matter of values.
Although religion carried out a series of reforms after the Renaissance, considering its own crisis, its knowledge system still lags far behind the cognition of society as a whole. Today, the knowledge system of religion has been completely defeated by science, and continued reforms have been lost. The driving force for peace and renewal has become a pure belief and occupies simple brains. As long as the scientific spirit cannot cover the place, religious belief will prevail, and this place will always be unable to get rid of dead silence and ignorance.
When Roy performs spider magic in the church, we will think of the psychic society in the White House;
When Theodore drank tetramine and anticoagulant to prove miracles and eventually crippled himself, we would think of those Americans who tried to inject disinfectant to eliminate the new crown virus. Their great god president personally appeared on TV. Guided this direction;
When Renola and Alvin discuss faith and violence, we will remember that Americans are still debating whether to wear masks;
...
All these unthinkable things seem to us like a curse. In this magical land of the United States, there is endless reincarnation, no one is spared from the nobles to the people.
Of course, Mr. Comprehensive is not trying to put an iron hat on the director and the original author as religious spiritualism, but he wants to say that the director has pointed out a direction to get rid of this chaos through this film, that is, it is impossible to put the spirit of science under the spirit of science. In the case of sinking to the bottom, a pious belief in God may be the best solution, but unfortunately, when the film was basically finalized, the new crown epidemic broke out in the United States. Facts have proved that the American people with liberal and democratic ideas have a great deal of wealth. Belief is no less than the belief in God. Once there is a problem with their survival, they, like the people in the three small towns 50 years ago, are still betraying God and betraying God, creating miracles, creating miracles, everything is still same as usual.
After experiencing the barrenness of the times, the absurdity of fate, the reincarnation of life, the guilt of violence, and the sense of helplessness in religion, perhaps everyone can appreciate what police officer Podeck said to little Alvin. How piercing:
Some people are born to wait to die!
(over)
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