Horror genius Jordan Peele's new "Us" isn't a good movie. Filled with fable-like causality and fatalism, it inherits the eerie horror of "Get Out", making this film full of devious modern metaphors.
Like "Get Out", this R-rated horror film, the fourth-highest box office in North American history, can be watched by itself, but the bizarre lines and scenes that fill the film will make people unconscious. Fantastic.
When the heroine's "Shadow" says the line "We are Americans", the audience will immediately realize that this is a movie made for American audiences. The highly symbolic setting of "soul ties" satirizes the sharp binary opposition in American society, and the confrontation and metaphors everywhere make American audiences seem to see their kidnapped life and thoughts, and want to die. fell in love with this work.
"We", which received a box office of $175 million in North American theaters, created a sense of horror that only belongs to Americans with a neurotic tone. Jordan Peele, who was born as a comedian, is very good at grasping the essence of things. The inheritance and development of ideology and expression is the foundation for "Us" to create a miracle at the North American box office.
The biggest enemy is not other people, it is the self in the shadow. The epitome of society and the identification of identity are the direct source of the horror of this film. From this perspective, the ambition of "Us" is obviously greater than that of "Escape from the Dead", which expresses racial identity.
Compared with the previous work, the plot of "Us" looks less surprising. After all, an anticlimactic story, a story that is difficult to justify, and strong mapping and metaphors make this work seem to be missing half of it. And the missing half is what American audiences who are full of tacit understanding urgently need to make up for themselves.
In fact, the story of "We" is not complicated.
At the beginning of the film, everything seems normal, even full of Hollywood family movies. Dancer Adelaide and her husband Gade have come to the seaside again with a pair of children. It seems that this happy family of four, like the thousands of middle-class families in American society, has a harmonious husband and wife, well-behaved children, a car, a house, a stable job, and the capital and time to enjoy life as a family.
However, another story line edited in parallel with the family's beach vacation describes Adelaide as a child, who was once lost in a beach casino due to his father's negligence, and was surprised to meet another "self". This nightmare-like experience made her suffer from severe psychological trauma, and she was unable to say a word like a walking dead. It was the patient guidance of her parents and the joy of dancing that allowed her to gradually get rid of the psychological shadow and grow up. for a normal person.
Compared with her cheerful and humorous husband, Adelaide is cautious and preoccupied, and is reluctant to reveal herself easily, especially the childhood experience, which made her full of alertness and anxiety about the safety of her children.
Just on the night when the couple decided to end their vacation, someone exactly like the family of four broke into the house. Thus, a shocking secret was revealed.
It turns out that a mysterious organization in the United States has developed human cloning technology many years ago. However, clones that are almost identical to the original body are walking dead without souls. To this end, scientists have carried out some form of "soul link" between the clone and the original, but found that the clone can only imitate and repeat the movements and expressions of the original just like a marionette, but cannot copy the original. language and thought.
The experiment failed, the mysterious organization quietly evacuated, and the clones were forgotten in the experimental facility under the beach playground.
Adelaide realized that the woman who looked exactly like him was the clone he saw back then. A struggle for survival between the body and the shadow has evolved into a brutal, bloody, unscrupulous cannibalism.
A large number of metaphors and contrasts make this film, which focuses on horror and horror, even more bizarre and elusive, because only by integrating into American society can you deeply appreciate the horror of this series of attacks.
The body of the real world and the shadow in the underground facility constitute a bizarre confrontation. Their bond is a "soul link", and the body enjoys the colorful life, and the joy and anger they show, but the shadow becomes vague and meaningless.
This setting contains two layers of metaphors: the ontology is likened to the wealthy class, and the shadow is more like the poor class. In American society, where classes are increasingly solidified, an invisible and intangible red line has become an insurmountable barrier between classes; A deeper metaphor is that the mysterious organization that makes clones is the ruling class itself. Ordinary Americans who are influenced and manipulated by a series of policies, regulations and ideologies are like clones in the film, carrying out work and life step by step. Submission to the established consciousness of the ruling class.
In the film, the life-and-death struggle between the body and the shadow heralds the sharp confrontation between classes in the divided American society, and the mysterious organization is like an invisible hand, which indirectly promotes the awakening of clones' self-awareness and gives them The chance to "get back the life you deserve".
At the end of the film, after killing her "shadow", the heroine Adelaide finally realizes that she is the "shadow" who once lived in the underground facility. Taking advantage of the opportunity of Adelaide's discovery of the underground entrance, she stunned her, leaving her body in the underground facility to suffer, while herself enjoying life on the ground instead of the body.
This also explains the reason why Adelaide was speechless and stunned when he was a child. For Shadow, language and feelings need to be re-learned and strengthened; this explains why only Adelaide in red stumbles. Speaking English, because the language is gradually degraded because it has been closed underground for a long time, there is still a clear memory.
Back to Adelaide's perspective: she became the shadow of a clone who was thrown into an underground facility. Adelaide grew up under constant meaningless actions and behaviors, but was unable to break the "soul link". ", painfully accepted the male clone Gade, the clone daughter who can only laugh forever, and the clone son who was disfigured by flames.
However, she finally waited for the opportunity of "reckoning". The shadow Adelaide family came to the beach for vacation. The body Adelaide, who was always awake, broke the "soul link" and took advantage of the opportunity of the body to fall asleep at night to lead the clones to expand. bloody revenge.
The film expresses the subtle relationship between the body and the shadow Adelaide through many details.
The shadow that was originally inhuman, has become more and more human through the influence of family and society. Except for social anxiety and strong vigilance, she is almost the same as a normal person, but the savage beast hidden in her body is. never disappeared.
In the film, Adelaide, a slender-looking shadow, swiftly killed several clones, and under the influence of subconsciousness, tried to communicate with the cloned daughter, and shouted "no" to the cloned son who fell into the fire. Until the final fight with the original body, a beast-like roar was issued, and the killing aroused the savage beast nature of the clone Adelaide, and also allowed her to retrieve the sealed memory.
The main body, Adelaide, who was locked underground, chose a red suit and golden scissors, which is actually a metaphor. Red represents savagery and resistance, which is in line with the status of clones being imprisoned and controlled prisoners, implying blood for blood; scissors are the weapons of clones, representing that they cut the "soul link" into two pieces and obtained physical and mental freedom. strong will.
In the dance at the end of the film, two identical people, wearing the same white dance dresses, the Adelaide in the world dances on the wide stage, making difficult aerial movements, while the Adelaide underground is in the narrow The two people who were immersed in joyful dance and painful imitation, gave a sharp and biting image contrast.
The advertisement for the charity event "Hands Across America" that helps the poor at the beginning, as well as the hand-in-hand shape, has become another metaphor for the film. It seems that this is Adelaide, the body Adelaide when she was a child, and an advertisement she saw on TV has become the religious symbol chosen by her awakened for clones. At the end of the film, after the clones killed the body of "Soul Bond", they held hands and formed a line, stretching across the beach and the mountain.
The seemingly loving fundraising itself has a strong class attribute and represents the deep-rooted stereotypes of class, race, and gender in the minds of Americans, and the line of "free" clones hand-in-hand foreshadows this kind of Stereotypes and prejudices are like an invisible thread that constantly divides American society.
Through a large number of metaphors, "Us" has carried out an artistic and acerbic satire on various problems and imaginations of American society. Jordan Peele's strong desire for expression and exquisite lens language make "Us" present a form that is greater than content and intent than expression. wonderful mashup.
Jordan Peele's ambition was to make a "Us" tell two stories. In the film, a large number of details and hints are subtly arranged, and it takes conscious deliberation and association to make the suffocating plot more credible and reasonable, with overtones. This is the blank and thinking that Jordan Peele left to the American audience.
But for the audience who see this film as a pure thriller, the two layers of skins "story" and "story" make this film rushed, crude, neurotic, full of loopholes, and nothing new.
At the end of the film, the heroine Adelaide, who realized her identity as a clone, glanced at her young son meaningfully. She seemed to realize that the original son, who used to use a lighter to do tricks, was actually burnt after being ripped off. The so-called "shadow", now, there are only two people left, she and her younger son, who are unique and complete people in this world who are united in body and mind.
The article was first published on the WeChat public account "Cinema Life". It is recommended for DC, Marvel, sci-fi, fantasy, Europe and the United States, classic movies, and in-depth analysis of popular blockbusters. Just pay attention to "Cinema Life".
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