Movies with animals as the protagonists are very difficult to make. There are few attempts in this area in China. Apart from the fact that animal actors are more difficult to control, how to see the truth in the subtleties is also a test of skill. It's easy to be sensational, but it's hard to be clever.
This is a touching story, and all the viewers who saw it were moved, including me.
The film is based on real events that happened in Japan. To this day, there is still a bronze statue of the dog Hachiko at Shibuya Station in Tokyo, and its remains are also preserved by the National Ueno Science Museum. In the 1990s, Japan once put this theme on the screen, and then the Americans remade the play, and the place of the story was changed to the United States accordingly.
However, I'm more interested in the narrative style of the film, because it's easy to be emotional, but it's hard to be clever. Don't you see that many domestic film and television dramas are desperately trying to impress the audience, and the actors are also doing their best to perform, sometimes shouting piercingly, sometimes crying like a stream of tears, but except for a few emotionally vulnerable aunts and aunts who wipe a few tears, Most people are still indifferent, even when the actors are crying on the screen, the audience in the theater is laughing. Touching people's hearts, sometimes "moisturizing things in silence" is more effective, especially for such a warm subject.
The one-and-a-half-hour video is divided into three paragraphs:
The first part is that the professor picked the dog, the wife strongly opposed the adoption, but in the end his love for the dog moved her;
The second part is that Xiao Ba grew up and developed the habit of going to the station to pick up the professor to and from get off work every day. One day, he suddenly learned the ball picking game that he had always refused, but after that day, the professor never came back;
The third part is that after the professor's death, Xiao Ba is reluctant to live with the professor's daughter.
Except for some dramatic conflicts in the first part, the other two parts are relatively bland. If it is an ordinary elementary school student writing an essay, it is estimated that one or two hundred words will be finished, but now it has been turned into a movie of more than an hour, which makes people have to I admire the Japanese screenwriter's ability to express ordinary life (the American version still uses the Japanese version of the script 22 years ago).
Of course, the American localization of the script is also quite successful. For example, in the Japanese version, there is a scene where Xiaoba wailed at the portrait of the professor and ran with the professor's coffin, which was quite impactful, but these were not in line with the national conditions of the United States, so the American version designed the plot of picking the ball: Xiaobagang When he arrived at the professor's house, he taught it to pick the ball, even crawling on the ground with the ball in his mouth (it was this scene that moved the professor's wife) to demonstrate to it, but who knows that this American-style life is not Japanese. The dog's nature, Xiao Ba has always been unable to learn; later, the professor's hairy-footed son-in-law came to the door, and in order to get close to the prospective father-in-law's pet, he played the game of picking the ball again, but the dog was still indifferent, and the embarrassed young man had to do it himself. He went to pick up the ball, and he tripped and fell in the panic, making a fool of himself; on the morning of the professor's death, Hachi seemed to have a premonition and chased to the station with the ball in his mouth. The skill of picking the ball made the professor very happy. In this way, through the core prop of "ball", the three parts are effectively penetrated. The part of Xiao Ba's death was well preserved by the American version: in the blizzard, Xiao Ba, who was dying, saw the door of the station open in a trance, and the professor called his name with a smile on his face. It was as if he had returned to the past, and rushed towards the professor's arms quickly, but in reality, the old little eight was lying on the ground in the snow and slowly closed his eyes...
Movies with animals as the protagonists are very difficult to make. There are few attempts in this area in China. Apart from the fact that animal actors are more difficult to control, how to see the truth in the subtleties is also a test of skill. Taking this story as an example, it is impossible to have any ups and downs in daily dog raising. Most of them are trivial things. It is already difficult for the audience to watch it interestingly and not get bored. This point of dog interaction is also lost. It is easier said than done to show a dog's waiting day after day, but also to move people! The efforts of American and Japanese filmmakers in this regard are quite meaningful.
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