must understand some of the racial history of the United States in order to truly understand "Once Upon a Time in America". The cross talk master Luo Yonghao once highly recommended the book "A Brief History of American Race". It's a good book. It basically covers the racial history of the United States and the changes of the times. If you read this book and read "Once Upon a Time in America", you will understand the motivations of the characters in the movie.
Several of the protagonists are children of Jewish families and have been poor since childhood, but the shrewd business consciousness unique to the Jews is deeply embedded in the bone marrow of this group, so many details in the film show the commercial sensitivity of the protagonists, and even Max is a representative It is a successful example of the Jewish people in American society, that is, they obtained huge wealth through unscrupulous means in business, and then influenced politics. Of course, it is difficult to determine whether Max died or disappeared secretly in the end. It is an open approach, but Max In the end, the exposure of the scandal and the censorship on the one hand is indeed a manifestation of the unscrupulous behavior of Jews in that era. In fact, there are a lot of speeches, books and articles. For example, we can often see that Jews control the speech of the United States, and many Jews cheer for Obama to take office as president, because Obama has some Jewish blood, in addition to the huge and terrible behind Obama. The idea of Jewish power can often be seen, so there are many mysterious and terrible claims about the Jews in the United States. From the perspective of "Once Upon a Time in America", it does not demonize the Jews, but uses an extremely calm and even humorous method. To express the characteristics of Jewish behavior, do you still remember Noodle and Max who asked for their pocket watches from the police when they were children and made up all kinds of nonsense stories by any means? This is a typical Jewish way of survival.
Therefore, we can find that the name of the movie "Once Upon a Time in America" is actually true. It seems to be about a person or even a small group, but in fact, the director's ambition is very big. The ups and downs of gangsters are used to express the various aspects of the era of great changes. It can be said that the small sees the big. Compared with many seemingly grand works, I don’t know how high it is. Cosmic adventures, but in the end it still feels like a small pattern like common RPGs in Japan. A planet is just a village or a maze. For example, some domestic TV dramas known as grand epics have finally turned into mother-in-law and daughter-in-law dramas or palace fights. Family dramas such as dramas, but "Once Upon a Time in America" does not specifically mention the political events and historical situations of that era, at most it mentions the background of the Prohibition era, but it creates an epic feel.
The director of "Once Upon a Time in America", Sergio Leone, is an Italian and one of my favorite directors. His "Red Dead" and "Once Upon a Time Trilogy" are both masterpieces recorded in film history. Last year I also happened to buy a biography of him. That book mentioned Leone's heroic complex and his love for Greek mythology and Greek classical tragedy, so in his two trilogy, We can often see him giving a huge close-up of the character's face, the character looks like a Greek sculpture, which fully shows Leone's preferences, and the protagonists of these two trilogy experience are those characters in Greek mythology It has a certain mysterious sense of fate and history, just like the symbolic representation of a certain historical grand era, and it has various metaphors.
For example, after the protagonist who represents the revolutionary ideal in "Revolutionary Past" finally dies, the bewildered second protagonist (representing the common people and the proletariat) is infinitely confused about the future, which is actually also an era when the revolutionary ideal is gone. Let’s think about it carefully. The theme of the 20th century is war and revolution. Revolution was such a fashionable thing in the 20th century. Confused and confused as well?
The same is true of noodles. Of course, his confusion is not because the revolutionary ideal is broken, but because the great changes and development of the times have changed everything, making him feel the vicissitudes of life like a dream, and the illusion of the world, he grew up in disorder. , and was happy to enjoy the various benefits that disorder brought, so he murdered and looted everywhere, committing all kinds of evil, but in the end, disorder devoured everything he had.
After disorder, order will eventually be established, and civilization will slowly recover, so after experiencing the era of chaotic underworld rampant, with the development of the times, Noodles returned to their hometown and found that the former disorder and chaotic prosperity had disappeared. Gone will never return, and the new things on the street are unfamiliar to him.
Looking further, the pain of noodles is actually the pain that all Chinese people in our big era are also experiencing. Look at what the noodles saw when they returned to their hometown. The old house was demolished, the former good friend betrayed him, the former favorite The woman also became the lover of others. The prosperity of the past is like a dream, and those seemingly unbreakable things in the past are actually so fragile. The days of fighting and talking about friendship are over. In the new era, interests represent everything.
At present, the pain experienced by Chinese people is more severe than that of noodles. The ponds and bungalows of the past are gone, and there are all kinds of strange buildings and residential areas that look similar. People are more polite and polite. However, what hides in the depths is profound indifference. Anyone who is too sincere to others will fall into the trap of intrigue. When interacting with people, they will always be cautious and test it quietly. What did Max say to the noodles at the end of "Once Upon a Time"? It seems frank, but who knows that there is no conspiracy in Max's words? Isn't this another game set up by Max? So Noodle finally rejected Max's proposal. Didn't he see through Max's mind and become disheartened?
Looking further, aren't the stories in many famous books in ancient China telling similar stories? A typical example is "A Dream of Red Mansions". Isn't it also prosperous and lively in the past, but in the end it was just a dream of Huang Liang? Another example is "Jinghua Spring Dream", isn't it also about the helplessness of individuals under the grand era?
So this is probably the reason why "Once Upon a Time in America" can resonate with more Chinese people. This is also related to the fact that the director is Italian and a rare genius director, so more subtleties that are difficult to detect are discovered, such as the child. The plot of sitting on the stairs and eating cake is another example when the protagonists go to the safe for the first time. For example, although Max and Deborah did not meet in the film, according to the description in the film, it is not difficult for us to imagine To come up with another twisted and bizarre story, this kind of blank method also allows the audience to maintain a great enthusiasm to discuss various details of the film, just like Jin Min's "Weima's House" or "Youth Pi's" Like "Fantasy Drifting", the masters can always stuff you countless things in the time of a movie, and then let you spend a lot of time thinking and interpreting. The content contained in a movie is often more than a tome book. many.
This is also one of the reasons why European films have always been more in-depth than American films. Hollywood films pay attention to spectacle, special effects, and various grand narratives. Lan combined Europe's meticulous literary style to express the depths of the characters' thoughts and Hollywood's grand narrative to create "Batman: The Dark Knight", which stunned Hollywood. As everyone knows, on the other side of the ocean In European countries, those literary writers and directors may secretly mock Nolan's kitsch.
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