One breath away from perfection

Fay 2022-04-23 07:04:23

After breakfast, I went to the cinema to watch the legendary "Big Fish and Begonia" as if in class. The overall look and feel is good, the picture and music are natural, 3D is used appropriately, and some scenes are indeed better with 3D (I don't feel that ordinary 3D is much more expensive than 2D in Shanghai, but if both 3D and 2D are provided for the audience to follow. In terms of storytelling, the plot framework (world view setting) and lines are flawed, and several are slightly embarrassing or lead to slight laughter in the audience, but there are still moving places in the details; some The plot is a bit rushed, the spread is not enough, and the overall rhythm is still smooth and compact.

The main line of the plot is that the girl Chun from a parallel world accidentally killed the human boy Kun. In order to redeem his mistake, he would rather sacrifice half of his life in exchange for Kun's soul, and violated the rules of the clan to keep Kun by his side, and then send him back to the world after he was raised. ; Teenage Chun's childhood sweetheart, young Qiu, witnessed the conflicts and pain she faced in the process, and she only wanted to help her, but it brought more disasters, and even returned half of the girl Chun's life with his own life. At the end of the film, the film borrows (of course a misinterpretation) the words of "Zhuangzi": "In ancient times there was a great chun, with eight thousand years as spring and eight thousand years as autumn." Half of the story is called "Qiu".

The whole story is like a screenwriter's dream, and it generally makes sense. With the excellent pictures and music, it is also beautiful. However, because of the lack of foreshadowing of the protagonists' feelings, the psychological motivation of the characters' decision making is difficult for the audience to empathize, so the young girl Chun and Juvenile Qiu are more like two reckless and self-willed middle school teens; the protagonists because of these audiences The unacceptable love between men and women has brought disaster to the family, but still has no remorse (although the girl Chun actually made the decision to sacrifice herself to relieve the disaster, but the emotional portrayal is not enough, and secondly, the teenager Qiu finally took care of her for her made greater sacrifices), which makes the three views of the film even more incorrect; the narration and dialogue are the bigger slot, especially in the second half, a lot of chicken soup-style lines and childish dialogue lead to full of laughter .

You Neighbor's criticism is simple and direct: the screenwriter has never been in a relationship.

Some small details in the plot are a little touching: in order to recover a mistake, you may pay more than you expected and can bear in the process; when you want to do something that is opposed by your parents and people around you, often your grandparents may Continue to give you the almost doting tolerance and support; the girl Chun's costumes and dances are also very well designed (often forgetting that the Hakka are also Han).


Many people know that there are very rich creative materials in traditional Chinese myths and folk stories, but these materials are long and loose, and it is difficult to adapt them. Except for "Journey to the West", Chinese mythology lacks a relatively complete and well-known worldview framework (a modern buzzword is IP), and it is too difficult to construct a framework with only one movie. The setting of "Big Fish and Begonia" is too grand and blunt, and it is difficult for the audience to have a preset for the living conditions of the protagonist and their ethnic group, and it is difficult to understand and substitute the behavior of the protagonist; and there is still a "narrative not enough, The ills of narration, such as "governing the laws of the world and the soul of mankind" are both awkward and unnecessary.

If you compare it with some excellent fantasy animations, you will find that they do not try to build a grand world view framework independently: "Spirited Away" and "My Neighbor Totoro" are about a fantasy encounter in the life of the human protagonist; "Spirited Away" and "My Neighbor Totoro" "Frozen", "The Witch's Delivery Service" and "McDull 2 ​​The Prince of Pineapple Oil" only add some slight fantasy colors to the protagonist, and they are still facing the familiar problems in real life; although the mountain world of "Princess Mononoke" is strange, its setting The setting and the meaning are familiar to the audience; "Ponyo on the Cliff" is similar to this film, and it is also the setting of the love of a mermaid, but the main line of the story is much simpler and lighter.

When Ang Lee talked about "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" in his autobiography (martial arts can also be regarded as a kind of fantasy), he talked about the difficulty of polishing the script and lines. Telling an unfamiliar world to the audience needs to rely on "logic, rationality, and a frame of reference formed by what the audience knows and hears"; he is very modest about the language problem, saying "either because I lack learning, or China's dramatic language is not enough now." Novels and dramas in modern Chinese have not developed for a long time, and have experienced twists and turns in the middle. Among them, there are even fewer outstanding fantasy works and works that describe the relationship between young characters (not limited to love). For a setting like "Big Fish and Begonia", there are few things that can be borrowed, and there is a lack of coherent story traditions, and it is necessary to polish the script carefully; I don't know how much time and manpower the filmmakers have invested in the script, so let's look at the final answer sheet. , The film has a big gap with the audience's expectations in terms of plot and lines.

However, there are not many fantasy stories that have been successfully adapted with the help of ancient mythological materials in ancient books such as "The Classic of Mountains and Seas" and "Zhuangzi". "Xianjian" and "Ancient Sword" are relatively successful examples, and the parts used in them are inevitably unreasonable, and after all, they are RPG games rather than animated movies. In terms of the difficulty of the topic selection and the effect of the final film of "Big Fish and Begonia", at least one can still get a good one.


There is a copy of "Big Fish and Begonia" that is "a 12-year appointment", which is calculated from the screenwriter having this idea and releasing the earliest version of the Flash animation short film, and from the official timeline, except for finding investment and projects The pause time, the actual production time of the final film is not much longer than the usual five or six years of production time for animated films. However, with the story set in the making for so long, and the pre-production samples winning several awards, it is almost impossible to make major adjustments to the script midway through the project. It seems to understand the pressure faced by the main creative team. I even suspect that the paranoia of the protagonists Tsubaki and Shonen, who are willing to sacrifice a lot for a goal, pinned the psychology of the main creative team. (For example, the big fish in the play is understood as this film. The lyrics in the impression song "Big Fish" "I'm afraid that you will fly away, I'm afraid that you will leave me, and I'm more afraid that you will stay here forever" is like The main creators faced the aspirations of this script during the vast preparation period.) If

you do things too hard, the effect will be detrimental.

From "Big Fish and Begonia", we can already see the potential of the Biantian team to integrate various animation film resources (including creativity, materials, animation, music, dubbing, etc.) Due to the uncanny valley effect of robots, in the final stage of near perfection, a little bit of unnaturalness and embarrassment will be magnified. I hope that the other side of the sky team can recover the investment, accumulate experience, and then make a few animations that explore folk customs and ancient myth materials, and have a more life-like atmosphere. The ambition should not be so big, and the frame of the world view does not need to be so high. From more familiar materials Storytelling is better. After all, the spiritual core of the movie still depends on its own plot narrative, not from ancient books.

View more about Big Fish & Begonia reviews

Extended Reading

Big Fish & Begonia quotes

  • Lingpo: What brings you to the Island of Souls?

    Chun: There's a soul I'm looking for: the soul of a human boy

    Lingpo: What time was it he died?

    Chun: It was two days before the wheat harvest.

    Lingpo: You need to be sure of the date. Otherwise you're searching for a needle in a haystack. So many die every day.

    Chun: I'm sure. It was my birthday.

    Lingpo: I know what you're trying to do, girl, and it goes against the laws of nature!

    Chun: I don't care. I've got to save him!

    Lingpo: The punishment is harsh for those who defy nature, no matter who you are, so you *should* care.

    Chun: But I owe him, for saving my life.

    Lingpo: How very touching. I've been stuck here for 800 years, and I'm still not done paying penance for my sin!

    Chun: But you didn't...!

    Lingpo: Don't interrupt! Let me tell you what real tragedy is. Meeting someone you care about so much you forget yourself and make a mistake. So then you go back and try to fix it and make things right again, and then you learn that fixing it's impossible.

    [chuckles]

    Lingpo: We can never undo the wrongs we've done. This I know.

    Chun: You're saying you won't help me?

    Lingpo: I'm saying I pity you. Besides, resurrecting someone from the dead doesn't come cheap.

    Chun: What would it cost?

    Lingpo: No less than a lovely girl's loveliest features: your eyes.

    Chun: [winces]

    Lingpo: [laughing] Now she's scared.

    [chuckles]

    Lingpo: Don't want to give up your pretty eyes, eh? All right, I'll take half your life instead.

    Chun: If that'll save him, take it.