Interpretation of Assour and Asmar's Films

A kind of poetry

The story tells that in medieval Europe, a young knight azur went to the Islamic world in the Middle East to find his long-lost wet nurse. There, he encountered many setbacks and deception, but he was finally reunited with his wet nurse, and his wet nurse's son Asmar, who had been brothers since childhood. Assour and Asmar decided to set out together to find the fairy in the fairy tale.

This is a fairy tale, with typical roles necessary for fairy tales: fairy, magic, beast, prince and princess. Director Othello grew up in Africa. As a descendant of white colonists who grew up in such a magical land, he was influenced by various myths, legends and fairy tales. The complex system of European, Asian and African legends grows in Othello's young mind like a tropical plant, which directly leads to the hopeless romantic tendency in his character, and he is obsessed with the fairy tales of princes and princesses all his life. The most obvious example is 200 1 year, and one of his animated works is called Prince and Princess.

Othello was preceded by two successful works, Tut-tut and the Wizard and Tut-tut and the Beast. Othello brought the magnificent African fairy tale to the big screen for the first time with an animated feature film. Like Azur and Asmar, Giligu is a magical experience. The simple story, gorgeous and bright colors, interesting costumes and the background full of African national characteristics make this work full of freshness, which is different from Disney animation and French animation full of repression and humanistic reflection.

Gee Gee's success has provided Othello, who has always been used to poverty, with a relatively rich material foundation, so that he can rent an apartment in Paris and work with his eight-member team to create the next animation in six years. This time, he decided to pick up the fairy tales of princes and princesses again, that is, Assour and Asma.

Assour and Asmar.

Azur and Asmar have inherited the style of Geely in many aspects, with the same gorgeous colors, the same clean and bright pictures and the same simple and meaningful stories. The most attractive thing about Othello is the unique sense of form in fairy tales. It repeats similar paragraphs and deepens the theme in each repetition, which is both easy to understand and full of formal beauty.

In the last paragraph of Azur and Asmar, the fairy princess finally decided to marry the suitor, but she was embarrassed to find that they were two brothers and gave in to each other. In order to solve this problem, they sent Phoenix to ask for reinforcements again and again. First, the mother of two brothers, she couldn't solve it, and then their friend, a tramp, Kabu, didn't have any good ideas. The third invited the little princess in the palace, and her opinion was "marry both", which was obviously impossible. The fourth invited the wise man in the city, but the wise man was at a loss. Finally, the cousin of the fairy princess was invited, and the problem was solved, because she took a fancy to Asmar at first sight.

Such a solution is typical of children, but the focus is not on the plot, but on the aesthetic feeling in form. In the literary classics about imitation, auerbach listed great works in European history, from the Bible to Zola's novels. He described 1 1 century French knight literature classic "Song of Roland" as follows: "The lines of the poem are rigorous and neat, marching slowly like a knight's phalanx", and the words with a sense of form faintly exude the dignified and generous style of feudal times. It is this unsophisticated elegance that is the essence of Othello's animation. The romantic director studied animation in San Francisco for a year when he was young. As a result, he couldn't stand Disney, which he thought was vulgar and noisy. That's not what he wants to pursue at all. It is not until he is fully capable of controlling his own works that we can see his creative ideas that run counter to Disney's, which is the fundamental difference between European and American cultures. The former is elegant and calm, while the latter is bold and radical, and of course full of vitality.

Assour and Asmar.

A dream

Othello wanted to express a moral theme through Azul and Asmar, and that was tolerance. As a descendant of a colonist who grew up in Africa, Othello returned to Lyon with his parents at the age of 12. Different from the previous generation, he has no affection for his "motherland", and even less for this hot city. He said that Kabu, the tramp in the film, was a portrayal of himself 15 years old. He feels that everything in the local area is not as good as his "hometown" Africa. Of course, Kabu's hometown is Europe.

Derrida, a French thinker, had a similar experience, and Bourdieu once lived in Africa. The multicultural life background can give people more strength and resources to examine their own culture, which is an important reason for their strong criticism, and Othello is obviously the same. Othello's "tolerance" in the film is obviously aimed at this problem.

Just as Mexicans flood into the United States and Sichuanese flood into Beijing, the number of Muslim immigrants in Europe is also increasing. According to scholars' research, these immigrants, whether illegal or legal, have actually become an indispensable part of the economy of the immigrant countries and made great contributions to the economy of the immigrant countries. Unfortunately, however, European countries are not ready to accept them culturally. The neo-Nazi forces in Germany and the conservative forces in Spain launched various violent incidents against immigrants. On the one hand, these incidents are due to the pressure of employment competition, on the other hand, they are also due to the negative cultural image for many years. After all, the Christian world and the Muslim world have been fighting for thousands of years. Under this historical background, Muslim beliefs and customs are easily criticized in Europe. The resulting contradiction has become an important issue in European society.

In this sense, Azur and Asma are not just a fairy tale, but a dream, a dream of advocating racial reconciliation and cultural tolerance. Othello admitted that the story of the knight looking for his mother was based on truth. This is the news he heard on the BBC, the story of an Englishman reunited with his wet nurse in Beirut. After so many years, their language is not fluent, and their appearance has changed a lot, but the nurse still treats him like her own son. This story brought Othello to tears. Although cultures are different, human nature is the same. In the film, azur's father cruelly drives the Asmar family out of the house. However, when azur found the nanny's hometown, she took him in without hesitation, regardless of what panic his blue eyes might cause in the local area. And his brother Asmar, although he has always been worried about his childhood experience, refused to admit him, and even refused to speak French with him, but finally chose to live and die with him in the long journey.

In order to express the theme of cultural exchange, Othello even boldly chose nearly one third of the Arabic dialogue without French subtitles, in order to "let the French audience taste the taste of being an immigrant in the cinema", knowing that there are many things happening around him, which are related to him, but he just doesn't understand, so his heart is full of anxiety. Azur chose to close his eyes after encountering this anxiety. Ironically, the scenery he encountered became more and more beautiful, and he could only listen to the description of Kabu, a biased tramp, and became a blind man with beauty but no vision. This clearly and powerfully expresses the phenomenon of "cultural misunderstanding".

Undeniably, this film is excellent in conception, the only drawback is that it is too simple, but it has been done too well for an animated film mainly aimed at children. Once the seeds of cultural tolerance can penetrate into children's hearts, they will naturally play the role of spring breeze and rain. At least, when they face the foreign students in the school again, they will restrain their surprised eyes and be more kind and considerate.

Azur means blue in Arabic and Asmar means brown in Arabic. I hope azur with blue eyes and Asma with brown skin can become brothers, and I hope people all over the world can become brothers and sisters. This is the poetic blue and Asma's dream for us.