The Greek film "The House of Canine Tooth" (also known as "The Tooth") describes such a totalitarian family. This is a luxurious villa with a large beautiful garden and a clear swimming pool. There are green grass and flowers everywhere in the villa. However, this villa like a paradise is located off the beaten track, overgrown with weeds, surrounded by high walls. There are a family of five living in the villa, as the parents of the dictator as well as the parents of the dictator (the principal is the father, he runs a company outside, and only he has the right to get out of the villa to the outside world), as well as one child and two daughters, They are just their youth. On the surface, their family lives happily, with everything they need, and enjoys family happiness. The father earns money to make family life worry-free, the mother takes care of the house, and the children happily sway their youth. However, the scenes at the beginning of the film reveal the absurdity of this beautiful utopia: Although the son and sister are adults, they are playing boring games (such as putting their fingers under hot water, to see who can stand the longest time) ; The knowledge they accept is actually the false knowledge carefully constructed by their parents (for example, the mother tells her son that zombies are little yellow flowers on the grass); their freedom is only the freedom within an inch of the fence; their lives are full of A stylized life; they have no communication with the outside world. There is no TV and only family videos for their entertainment. The only phone is locked in a safe for mothers and fathers only; even the son’s sexual needs can only rely on Father regularly brought female employees from the company to solve it.
This seemingly happy and harmonious family is actually undercurrents and conflicts. Parents have absolute authority in the family and use violence against their children at any time. The hearts of the three children are also full of violence and hatred. This repressed violence and hatred is sometimes more dangerous, and the conflict between them is sometimes bloody. Although they face the darkness of the outside world, they are full of fear, but after all, young hearts also have a desire to explore the outside world. They often stand under high walls and sigh at the outside world. At the beginning of the movie, we were just amazed, surprised at this strange family, surprised at the absurdity of this family, and felt ridiculous for their various weird behaviors. But as the lens deepens, the dark side of the family becomes more and more prominent, our sense of fear also emerges spontaneously, and a chill rushes from the bottom of our hearts. This is in line with George Orwell’s "Nineteen Eighty Eight" How similar is described in "Four". The female employees from outside have brought new things to this isolated family and intensified the internal contradictions of this family. The father was afraid of this change, and he decided to terminate the migrant female employee from entering the closed home. In fact, any totalitarian is full of fear for outside information, because foreign things will definitely expose their carefully fabricated lies, and will also undermine their various rules and regulations and threaten their dictatorship. So this family can only step into the darkness and terror, they let the incest between the brother and sister to solve the sexual desire. When things have reached this point, the disintegration of this totalitarian family will not be far away.
Canine tooth as a movie name is also a very important image in the movie. Canine teeth are inherent to animals. Carnivores are especially developed. They are gradually degraded in humans, but as long as they grow, they will not fall off with age. But the father in the movie tells the children that the loss of canine teeth marks a person's maturity. As long as the canine teeth are not lost, it proves that they have not grown up and cannot adapt to the outside world and need his protection. He actually wanted to put the children under his dictatorship for life. At the same time, the canine tooth has another utopian meaning in his mind. Canine tooth is a symbol of human wildness, he tries to tame human wildness, which is natural nature. It is not easy for people to lose their natural nature! He did not do it in the movie. In reality, it is also difficult for a dictator who is much more powerful than him to do it. Only by respecting human nature can we maintain social harmony. This is the abhorrent and inevitable failure of totalitarianism. Unfortunately, all supporters of totalitarianism have not clearly realized this point. In order for his eldest daughter to get out of this cage and cross the high wall, she can only use dumbbells to smash her canine teeth to prove that she has grown up, matured, and can see the outside world.
The dog is also an image in the film. My father always wanted to find a dog to visit the nursing home, and at the same time to prevent the children from escaping, but the dog had to be sent to the dog training center to be tamed, and it had to go through five stages of training. In fact, this is also a metaphor for the difficulty of taming the family's children, that is, their people. When the dog has not been tamed, the man has escaped. It’s just that the way the eldest daughter flees is also deeply affected by the rules and lies of the family. Before she flees, she smashed her canine teeth to prove that she has grown up; she chose to escape by lying in the trunk of her father’s car because Her father told her that her feet should not touch the ground outside. This can't help but worry people. Even if she succeeds in fleeing, can she still adapt to the outside world when she grows up in such a totalitarian family? The three brothers and sisters actually have a brother, although he does not appear in the whole film, but he has important significance. Whether he is alive or dead, we don't know, this family is also secretive about him. Maybe he escaped the family like his sister, after all, the passion of youth and the freedom of human nature can't be stopped.
This film actually explores the basis of the existence of totalitarianism. The existence of totalitarianism can only rely on weaving lies, closing off the outside world, and relying on high-pressure rule. But the lie can only last for a while, and it cannot never be pierced; and in this world of free communication, it is so difficult to block outside information; in the face of the recovery of human nature and the powerful, high-pressure rule of the ruled. In the end, it will be destroyed. No one can stop the yearning for freedom and the desire to communicate with the outside world. "House of Canine Tooth" may seem ridiculous, but the director is using the small to describe the big, and he is talking about the family. In fact, it is a metaphor for the country. The totalitarian state of the country is what people really worry about. In this sense, "The House of Canine Tooth", like "Nineteen Eighty Four", will cause people to think more.
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