text | Linghu Boguang
Today I will write about Hayao Miyazaki's new film " What kind of life do you want to live ". This movie is really not recommended, especially for ordinary audiences. A good movie should be beautiful , story, music, characters, etc. are looked at comprehensively. The visuals and music of this movie are great, but the story and characters are hard to understand.
The first half of the story is plain and delicate, and it feels like an old man talking about the past. Just when I thought this would be a story about how a child reconciled with his stepmother after losing his mother, the appearance of the heron broke this possibility. The middle part between Zhenzhen and Heron and Game even made me feel that Zhenzhen missed his mother too much and went crazy.
Later, the raging waves unfolded. Zhenzhen came to another world inexplicably, and then came to his uncle almost smoothly, and then refused to rebuild the world. It gave people a sense of separation. Zhenzhen was still a person who disliked the unpalatable food. The kid who mutilated himself suddenly felt as if his personality had been sublimated after walking for a while, and he had a great enlightenment. Then the other world collapsed and they went back.
The actions and stories of the characters may be for so-called metaphors, which sometimes seem a bit far-fetched. Those metaphors are completely inaccessible to people who don’t know much about Japanese history and Hayao Miyazaki’s past works. As for the endless debate on the Internet about anti-war or anti-war defeat, I don’t understand it. I just feel uncomfortable when I watch it.
However, let’s start with the male protagonist of this movie today. I think it’s quite interesting.
Is it anti-war or anti-war defeat? It is not difficult to understand Hayao Miyazaki's new film.
The most obvious point is in the male protagonist, especially the point about "self-mutilation", because the real person in Japan lost his mother during the war. When he had not yet come out of his grief, his father He has found another wife, and his father is a war fortune maker.
But his mother died in the war, and his father used the new car he bought with the money from the war to take him to school, which caused him to be ostracized, so he mutilated himself in order to spread malice to the people around him. The turning point about Zhenren is that after reading the book "What kind of life do you want to live" left by his mother, he woke up and decided to accept the present.
The male protagonist Zhenren is rebellious at his core. When he was ostracized and beaten by a group of people on his first day at school, he did not choose to tell his father directly. He knew that this law would not punish the public and he would only be beaten up, and his father would not be effective. He wanted revenge, so he chose to hit himself hard with a stone.
The result was as he expected. His father was furious and would definitely punish those who beat him severely. He used his father's power reasonably. He was very ruthless at that time. I even felt that he would become a person later in the article. An officer, this reflects his inner nature. Under the calm face of most real people, he is rebellious inside. He hates this world and benefits from this world. The more powerful he fights on the battlefield, the more his father makes, and he He is the user of his father's power.
This is the real reason for his core rebellion. He is contradictory, and the inner conflict brings decisiveness in action. When he feels that something is wrong with the tower, he decisively tries to enter. After being attacked by a heron once, he takes a wooden knife and fights again ( I didn’t understand the part about the broken wooden knife). After discovering that bows and arrows had a miraculous effect on herons, he decided to make bows and arrows and bribed the servants at home with cigarettes.
Natsuko went directly into the forest when he couldn't find it, and entered the tunnel when he saw it. We can see that there was no incident in the story that made him hesitate. He was very decisive in doing things, and he took action immediately when it was effective. This kind of action ability may be It comes from the contradiction in his heart. He has been holding back a kind of energy, hoping that the spring will be slowly accumulated from his heart and quickly released from action.
But such a real person is in pain. He is tortured by this contradiction. He is also tortured by the fatigue of metal that is repeatedly bent like a spring. In that era, he had no choice, especially after his mother died, this kind of torture must be running through him.
After the death of his mother, this kind of torture must run through the male protagonist. He longs for his mother, so that she can loosen his spring and relax his tight life. Natsuko's arrival and getting along with him initially put pressure on his spring. , but maybe it started from the arrow that shot away the heron, or from the fact that Natsuko, who was pregnant, cried and said how could I be worthy of my sister.
Loli mother, aunt becomes mother? Character view of Hayao Miyazaki's new film
As a result, at this time, stepmother Natsuko went to another world inexplicably, so he had to save her. Makoto casts the shadow of his mother on her, and perhaps his statement "The heron said my mother was there" when entering the forest to find Natsuko was just an excuse for those who thought he expected Natsuko to die.
And he has recognized Natsuko in his heart. Natsuko is undoubtedly a good mother, or Natsuko is Hayao Miyazaki's projection of motherhood in this work. Even though she knew she would die in the fire, Zhenren's mother chose to return to her world. She told Zhenren that being able to give birth to Zhenren was her greatest happiness. This was the life chosen by her mother.
My great-uncle told Masato that his world, Japan, was a stupid world of constant cannibalism and strife, but he gave up his uncle's inheritance and stayed to create Gensokyo, and returned to his own reality.
The tower in the film was built during the Meiji Restoration period. The tower represents new things in the West, and the Japanese people who dare not approach it represent the conservatives. My great-uncle saw the splendor of the tower and represents the reformers. But everything has two sides. He entered the tower and built a new world, but he brought evil with him. The parrot represents fascist militarism
. I think in addition to anti-war, this movie is also portraying people and society. A real person is kind. No matter it is a bad person who has hurt others or a person who wants to abandon him or harm him, he will not treat others in the same way. At first, it was to find her mother, but after realizing that her mother was Huomei, she still aimed to be "the person dad likes".
When the real person found Natsuko in the delivery room, for some reason he was suddenly willing to call him mother. Many people did not understand this change. I think when Masato finished reading the book his mother left for him, he had actually let go of the past, otherwise he wouldn't have tried his best to save Natsuko.
At that time, he had already planned to let Natsuko become his mother. Zhenzhen knew that there was evil in his heart, so he deceived her. Natsuko chose to leave the real world directly in order to protect his heir from being polluted by the real environment. Wuzi and Huomei knew what would happen next but still went. Lao turned off the lights and dumped the trouble on Huomei at first, but later went to save Zhenren when something really happened.
Although I didn’t understand the middle part when I first watched it, when the blocks collapsed and the world was destroyed, especially when the male protagonist’s mother pushed open the door to her world, everything connected together. That wonderful world was built by the male protagonist's uncle through his wisdom and knowledge through constant reading. It is another world used to escape the reality of constant disputes and wars.
In the end, the world was destroyed by the empire he created; the male protagonist did not want to escape reality like his uncle, accepted the death of his mother, and chose to give up the world and return to reality; the mother in her teenage years also returned to her own world, even though she would not be able to escape from reality in the future. She is about to face death and wants to welcome the birth of the male protagonist as a mother.
When I watched it, I didn’t think deeply about it at first. Only at the end did I realize that this magical world in fantasy actually reflected the cruel reality, the life-and-death robbery, the arrogance and imperialism of imperialism. Ambition, the warmth and coldness of human relationships, and the cruelty of war. When I first saw the name of this movie.
I thought this drama was about the protagonist’s choices in life. Unlike the anti-war themes of Mr. Gong’s previous films, this film skipped over the cruel description of war. What he wanted to express more was that even in reality It is cruel and cannot be changed. We must face history and face reality bravely.
It doesn’t matter if there are many metaphors, but it doesn’t matter if you don’t understand them? Japanese animation in the Hayao Miyazaki era has come to an end
In fact, I feel that this film is not a movie that can be fully interpreted.Because in addition to having a certain understanding of the modern history of East Asia, it also needs to be interpreted in conjunction with Hayao Miyazaki's own life experience. In addition to the anti-war theme, the film also tells about worries about the inheritance of the comic industry, and even some personal settings cannot be fully understood.
For example, I think the most obvious one is the servant mother-in-law. There are many such images of elders in Hayao Miyazaki's past works: Granny Qian in "Spirited Away" , and the pirate mother-in-law in "Castle in the Sky " , the neighbor's mother-in-law in " My Neighbor Totoro "...and every main character in the film has a prototype in reality.
According to the description of the relevant documentary: Huomi is her mother Miko Miyazaki, Kiriko is Ghibli’s color designer Michio Yasuda, and her uncle is Gao Yanxun, who guided Miyazaki on his career path, and Heron Man It is his "lost friend in life" Suzuki Toshio.
What role did the maid's mother-in-law play in Hayao Miyazaki's life? Why did Kiriko say that the maid's mother-in-law had been protecting the real person? Where did such emotional lines come from? Unless Hayao Miyazaki himself comes out to explain these settings, it will be difficult for us to find the real answer. We can only understand it with openness.
So many levels create obstacles to understanding the video. Not only is no passerby willing to learn so much about a cartoon, but even many people who are fans like me cannot fully understand it. On July 14, 2023, the film was suddenly released in Japan with zero publicity. In the promotional video recorded for China, Toshio Suzuki said: "Profit, no matter the profit."
Such a willful and wanton ending was originally the work of the palace. This is a work that Hayao Saki dedicated to himself, his colleagues along the way, and his fans for many years. Domestic publicity did not make this point clear, which led to many passers-by going to the theater to watch the movie because of Hayao Miyazaki's golden sign. So I can understand those who criticize it as a bad movie and don’t understand what they mean.
No matter what, just think of it as the Japanese version of "Let the Bullets Fly". The scene in the end where the world's tallest tower collapses is very similar to the scene in Let the Bullets Fly, but the person in the tower is not Huang Shiro, but the native Japanese culture. idealist in the environment. The brainwashed people escaped, the national bourgeoisie escaped.
The Parrot King, the representative of militarism, even escaped trial and managed to survive. Those who died were just idealists, but the real people who survived took a building block from the hands of the idealists. It seemed meaningless. A farce that Heron said "everyone will forget."
Movies are just entertainment and cannot guide real life.
