"Who are you? Who slips into my robot body and whispers to my ghost?"
"Who are you? Who slipped into my mechanical body and whispered to my soul?"
printed with this sentence The words on the movie poster could not be more appropriate to introduce this movie. This animated film is almost as famous as , "2001: A Space Odyssey", and , "Blade Runner" and . It is regarded as a bible by science fiction fans. It can be called a great work in science fiction movies, animated movies and even the entire film industry. .
Its gorgeous and complex cyberpunk style with strong oriental colors, obscure and esoteric lines, philosophical depth and breadth of thought themes, and advanced science fiction settings have made this 1995 movie released in the past two decades. It has been talked about by movie fans all the time, and was even adapted into a live-action movie by Hollywood in 2017.
This movie is of course the 1995 animated film "Ghost in the Shell" directed by Mamoru Oshii.
In the beginning of this movie (especially when the plot was not read for the first time), what impressed the audience is probably the numerous empty shots depicting the city in the movie, combined with the cyberspace presented by the creepy music. Punk style.
This is partly due to our Hong Kong, China, because the story’s place-Shinhama City, Japan, is a future Japanese city fictionalized by the director, and its specific city features are actually based on Hong Kong, China. A large number of red, green and green neon tube advertising signs, towering buildings crowded to obscure the sky, posters and small advertisements repeatedly covered on the walls, trams, etc. appeared in the movie. These elements from Hong Kong are like "Silver Wing". The rainy and rainy weather like "Killer" has created a crowded, chaotic, and dirty city appearance that does not conform to the future high-tech settings.
, together with the soundtrack created by Mori Oshii, the treacherous "Puppet Ballad" created by Kenji Kawai, the whole movie presents a highly developed technology but a huge gap between the rich and the poor. This is shaky. The sense of apocalypse has achieved the unique cyberpunk style of "Ghost in the Shell" , and also brought a different audio-visual experience to the audience.
However, after enjoying this gorgeous audiovisual experience, many viewers gave up the idea of further exploring the inner thoughts of the film. In the final analysis, it is because the theme is grand and profound, but the expression is obscure and difficult to understand, causing the audience to lose interest or have enough time and energy. It is obscure and difficult to understand. We can see one or two from the movie lines:
"You and I are like looking through a mirror, and what you see is nothing but illusion."-Schopenhauer
"Things that already exist are both illusory and reality. "
" When a child was a child, what he said was a child, what he felt was a child, and what he thought was a child. Only when he became an adult, he abandoned the childlike innocence."
Just seeing these esoteric lines, the audience began to cloud. Inside, even yawning again and again. But movies that make people think are good movies, right?
The theme of "Ghost in the Shell" is magnificent and profound. We can at least take a look at one or two from the following aspects:
1. Who is "I"? In the movie
, there is a clean car driver who is controlled by a false memory by the black hand behind the scenes. When a false memory that does not belong to him is implanted in his mind, he has not noticed it at all. If he had not been caught by Kusanagi Motoko and told Conspiracy, this bachelor who has lived in a bachelor apartment for twenty years may always think that he has a lovely daughter and a dog, and a happy family and a happy marriage.
Our consciousness depends on our memory, and memory shapes consciousness. But if memory can be faked, can consciousness be produced out of thin air from completely false memories? This is also the problem that Motoko Kusanagi is entangled with. If all my memories are false memories made up by other people, would it not be Motoko Kusanagi but someone else? Or maybe, I am not human at all...Director Oshii Mamoru put forward such a statement that memory shapes consciousness, but left the problems caused by this statement to the audience to think about. Are "me" and "we" real?
2. What is a "person"?
Since mankind has ruled the earth for so many centuries, we have become accustomed to "anthropocentrism", and we don't even want to admit that mankind is just a kind of animal, but a higher animal. So now the machines created by humans, when they have the same or even more perfect appearance as humans, have the same or even deeper thoughts as humans, and have the same or even clearer self-awareness as humans, these machines can Is it called a creature? Even, can they be called "humans"? The representative of this type of machine is the "puppet master" in the movie. He wandered around the network, developed self-awareness, and got into a humanoid machine to obtain a body, hoping to be recognized by humans.
What about human beings, when we are replaced by metal mechanical bodies up and down, inside and out, are we still "human beings"? This is the situation of the protagonist Motoko Kusanagi. She began to wonder if she was a machine:
"Probably all the biochemical humans with the whole body will be confused like this. Maybe she died a long time ago, but now I am just The virtual personality composed of the prosthetic body and the electronic brain, maybe the real me has never existed...After all, my existence is only judged by the surrounding conditions." So what is a "human being" What is the difference between "and "mechanical"?
3. The final fate of humans and machines
As mentioned in the previous point, a machine with self-awareness-a puppet master, and a human being who has become a whole body and began to doubt itself-Kusanagi Motoko, they both seem to be Represents the development trend and direction of mankind and machinery. They are so similar,
"I see myself in you, as if I would see myself in a mirror."
So, the two merged, which seems to herald the fate of human beings and the machine will eventually be integrated, in the movie The end of the evolutionary tree is translated as "human". Will there be a new species of species after human? So is mankind perished? Is the machine dead?
"Human beings themselves are in constant change, and the desire to maintain self has been limiting you. I am connected to a huge network, and I am only a small part of it. For you who have not yet come into contact with the experience , Maybe it can only be perceived as a ray of light. We were all tied together in a corner, so we need to be next to each other. Although all our aggregates depend on only a small function, it is time to break through the barriers that bind us. It has risen to a higher level of structure." This passage from the puppet master's words clearly illustrates the problem. The fusion of humans and machines has both been sublimated and sublimated into higher-level creatures. We humans have gained strength, longevity, convenience, and speed from machines, and machines have gained self-awareness and freedom from us.
Compared with the brainless confrontation and hacking between humans and machines, whether such predictions are more scientific, we don’t care about him. After all, the meaning of science fiction films has never been to predict the future, but does such a movie bring us Come for deeper thinking? The slightly boring plot and obscure lines certainly prevent us from understanding his pace, but such a rich thought feast is also a delicious taste that only humans can enjoy for the time being.
"The internet is infinitely broad, where shall we go next?"
text/xiao eight
When you pursue freedom, you have already lost it.
-"Ghost in the Shell"
