is so miserable.
is a new film with excellent reputation and very few films scheduled.
has only been released for 3 days, with a 1.5% film schedule and a total box office of 5.75 million. I have not yet done "The Annual Party Can't Stop!" which is currently being screened! 》. However, Douban's score rose from 8.0 to 8.3, ranking first in real-time word-of-mouth.
Luc Besson, one of the most successful masterpieces "The Killer Isn't Too Cold" has never been released in mainland theaters, but it has become fifth on Douban TOP250 with a score of 9.4 by 233,000 people.
This person laments that his movies are 10 times better than those of Marvel. He refuses to go to Hollywood to make movies for money. He never went to school but became a pioneering director of French films. He was attracted by a piece of news.
A child was thrown into a cage by his father for four years. As a father of five children, he couldn't help but imagine what happened to this child when he was 7 or 10 years old. What would happen to the child when he got out of the cage and grew up?
"Will he become a good person or a bad person? What kind of pain will he have? How will he face this pain?"
In order to soothe this pain, he made this movie.
If there are still films scheduled in your city, I suggest you go and take a look.
A child who was torn apart by love was shot to the ground by his father and could no longer walk. In the rest of my life, when I tried to stand up, I always fell down hard. Fall down 3 times and stand up 4 times to become DogMan.
If you have watched the movie, I recommend you keep scrolling down; if you haven’t watched it, I strongly recommend you bookmark it and open it after watching the movie.
Today’s article comes from Uncle Meat’s old friend @Brad Tepi. She was trying to answer a question about the final scene of the movie.
The protagonist Douglas struggles out of the police station, walks along the shadow of the cross on top of the church, and eventually collapses under the cross, like the crucifixion of Jesus.
Shocking, of course, but @BradTepi has a weird feel to it.
What does this scene mean?
She tried to give her answer.
(The full text is 3550 words, it takes 9 minutes to read)
Before talking about the ending of "Dog God", let's talk about two sets of concepts.
The first group is: Humanity vs Animality.
The story originated when director Luc Besson read a report about men putting their children in dog cages. This triggered the director's thinking: What kind of person will the child become when he grows up? How will he deal with the world after suffering a major trauma?
Hence this movie.
The protagonist Douglas was imprisoned in a dog cage by his father since he was a child. A banner with "The name of god" hung on the cage fence. What he saw from the back was "dogman".
The extremely twisted family environment made him grow into an atypical "dog person".
He has a human side. For example, he has a kind nature, hates violence, and can empathize with the weak. He loves literature, has a talent for artistic performance, and has obtained a degree through self-study. He thinks clearly and speaks elegantly.
At the same time, he also has an animal side.
During his childhood when he needed the most care, the only ones who gave him respect and companionship were dogs, not people; during his teenage years when he was awakening to self-awareness, it was the old magazines beside the dog cage that allowed him to understand the world, rather than school textbooks. .
Growing up like this, he has some kind of animal instinct.
Survival of the fittest is a natural law that exists in the animal world. Animals usually respond to foreign enemies by fighting back.
But in the final analysis, he is not a complete animal. He is a two-sided entity standing on the gap between "human and dog". This dual attribute should have made his emotional outlook more multi-layered and chaotic.
However, what we see is that he did not hesitate or struggle when he ordered the killing.
He can definitely fight back in a "one-size-fits-all" manner, but it requires a process of emotional stacking. The lack of this process makes the character's moral boundaries quite vague, and it is difficult for you to see where his moral upper and lower limits are. And for his final "becoming a god", this should have been an indispensable part.
What's worse is that the director used cartoonish methods to deal with Doug's revenge against his brother who was released from prison, and the final scene where he and the dogs "defend the home" to try to eliminate the violence.The effect is similar to that in "Home Alone", where the villain makes a fool of himself after being tripped by a trap, causing the audience to burst into laughter. The audience won't even pay attention to the outcome of the bitten person.
In this movie, the cartoonish treatment will undoubtedly weaken the realistic attributes of the protagonist, making his revenge and counterattack seem like child's play.
Going back to the question at the beginning, the scene of the cross "consecrating the gods" is shocking at first sight, but for me, a lingering confusion is:
What is the protagonist's attitude towards religion?
This is also the second set of concepts I want to talk about: having God vs. not having God.
Douglas was born into a traditional Christian family. His father and brother were both fanatical believers. But what did they do?
The father is a habitual domestic violence offender. When faced with his son's answer that he "prefers dogs to family members," he believed that this was absolutely against the teachings of "loving family." So he regarded his son as a heretic and put him in a dog cage.
The elder brother is a pervert who takes pleasure in torturing people. Before betraying his younger brother, he made a promise to his father, saying "I swear in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit." He used the holy name to report on his family's evil deeds.
As the powerful ones in the family, the two committed violence in the name of God.
Doug said he believed in God, but this experience made it difficult for him to place his hope in religious belief.
But what is interesting is that on the night when the gang boss shot him, at what he thought was the last moment of his life, he subconsciously placed his hope in God. And God was indeed on his side.
To have a god, "having" is a state; to go to a god, "going" is an action.
Doug's attitude towards "God" is very complicated, and the movie also captures the flow and variability of his attitude.
But strangely, in the last scene, he was "crucified" through a picture full of religious metaphors.
In a religious context, even a wicked person can be forgiven if he is aware of his sin.
Doug has always been skeptical of the so-called fair rule of law. He has his own value system:
Stealing jewelry is "wealth redistribution"; letting dogs kill people is "dog eat dog".
That’s not to say that you can’t film criminal protagonists, but the problem is that the underlying motivation for martyrdom is self-punishment, or a sense of guilt.
How could Doug become a martyr if he had no sense of guilt?
This makes the final scene of the movie, although full of impact, just an empty shell of ritual. Because he was not martyred for Christianity, but for something else.
Next, I will write my own understanding.
During this mainland road show, director Luc Besson said, "Whether it is China or France, anywhere in the world, everyone has one thing in common, pain."
Movies cannot change this status quo.
But as a creator, the director's initiative lies in casting a ray of compassionate sunshine to individuals who can't find an exit in difficult times.
The best thing about this movie is that it was shot in an ideal state.
In the first half of Douglas's life, he was a weak man who was oppressed by power. When he was a child, his father and brother abused him, and he was imprisoned and he was unable to resist; when he was a young man, society rejected him, he could not find a job, the pet shelter was closed, and he had to move out overnight.
The experience of this character is indeed similar to Joaquin's version of "Joker". But the biggest difference is that the strings of reason in the clown's mind were gradually broken during the process of socialization, while Doug's strings of reason were almost never reconnected due to the extreme experiences he experienced since childhood.
"Dog God" tells the story of a low-level person who has been oppressed for a long time and bursts out with a powerful recoil. Its intensity is not directed at the outside world, engulfing the surroundings with the flames of hatred like a clown, but at the inner world to establish its own set of laws.
British philosopher Schiller believes that human beings must go through three stages before they can liberate themselves.
The first stage is what he calls the barbaric stage, in which people are driven by physiological impulses and only collide with each other.
The second stage is the rational stage. People at this stage bid farewell to ignorance and regard popular precepts as guidelines, but often ignore that rules are also a kind of instruction, which serve unquestionable authority.
After going through the first two stages, people inevitably develop desires, the crowd becomes differentiated, and people begin to fight, cheat, and become alienated. How to return to your true state without falling into childishness and innocence?
Schiller provided an optimal solution, which is to enter the third stage, the game stage. What does that mean? He explained that with a game player's mentality, we create our own rules and our own characters, so as to achieve an ideal life state in a comfortable way.
This third stage is undoubtedly a kind of utopia, too organic and too idealistic. But its greatest value is that it provides a solution.
In the protagonist Douglas, there are three stages of self-liberation, especially the game stage.
In the first half of his life, Dawn Russ was a person with "no choice". He could not choose his origin, family, or gender. To make matters worse, a bullet took away his ability to walk.
Later, the companionship of the dog, the artistic energy of the drama teacher in the welfare home, and the recognition of him by the "sisters" in the club gave him a new life experience. However, the film's glimpse of the above groups seems to say that the key to Doug's self-repair does not lie in them, but in his free will.
He no longer believes in people, nor does he believe in universal rules and commandments. The outlet he found was to create his own set of rules. Since you created it yourself, abiding by this set of rules means defending your position of freedom and defending your own choices.
He punishes villains for no profit, just to repay the kindness of the laundry lady; he steals jewelry not for money, but only for decoration of his stage performance; his role as a drag queen has nothing to do with his sexual orientation, but He hopes that through disguise, he can briefly experience a different life; he kills people not entirely out of self-defense (the concept of self-defense is stipulated by law), but because he wants to be the arbiter under his own set of rules.
He lives his life as a "choiceful" person.
Based on this, his final decision was self-consistent.
When he was growing up, order never protected him, so he refused to be judged by order.
is not subject to social rules or religious precepts. Turn yourself into your own creation and freely decide your own life and death. From this point of view, he is already his own "god".
He questioned the God in front of him like a rebel, which was definitely not a state of conversion.
He does not accept divine punishment, but accepts self-judgment.
"I'm here for you, I stand for you."
used the last part of walking upright to put an end to his life with his own hands, and also completely completed a counterattack against the God of Destiny.
At the end of the video, when Doug walks out of the police station, the music of Piaf's "Non, Je ne regrette rien" plays. It is more appropriate to place it here:
No, I don't regret it at all
I have paid the price, swept away And empty, forgotten
I don't care about its passing
No, I don't regret it at all
Because my life, my happiness
From today on, I want to start over with you
This is a movie about choice .
Life is a choice, not a responsibility.
Ideals are not discovered, they are invented.
From the moment he was thrown into the dog cage, Doug became a spiritual exile and could no longer find anyone to convert to.
How to redeem a mind that has been tortured to the point of barbarism by the family, and a brain that has been squeezed to the point of madness by society?
"Dog God" is saying that the real answer is never a dog.
Instead, you.
The choice is yours, and there is a glimmer of hope.
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