Wilderness film criticism (human wandering and civilization reflection in the vast wilderness)

Revenant tells such a story against the background of the desolate and vast deserts and forests in the Midwest of the United States at the beginning of19th century:

Hugh Glass, a fur hunter, was badly bitten by a bear and then abandoned in the wilderness by his teammates, who left him to take care of him, but only wanted to get paid. He struggled to survive in the wilderness, miraculously survived with strong willpower, and finally returned to the base and succeeded in revenge.

In fact, the protagonist in the story has a real historical prototype, but in order to make the story more dramatic, the novel is based on this real struggle between human individuals and nature, interspersed with more "human" factors, and expresses the complexity of the internal relationship between individuals or collectives.

In particular, this complexity, on the surface, only increases the drama of the story, but it corresponds to the overall face of history when the story takes place.

The story centers on Grass, tells his miserable experience in the wasteland, and discusses the themes of good and evil of human nature, spiritual dwelling of individual life, opposition and integration between man and nature, and the relationship between civilization and barbarism.

Historical observation of most events in history often has two parallel main lines. One is the bright line: emperors and celebrities shine brilliantly under the pen and ink of historians, and you can sing and I will appear; The other is the hidden line: in the shadow of history, peddlers and pawns, and the people are submerged in the torrent of history.

However, these so-called little people are not well known to the world. At first glance, the energy they bring to history is like a butterfly flapping its wings, but in the end, it can produce a butterfly effect, gather into a gust of wind, roll up the wild sand on the earth, and affect the real direction of historical rings.

For most Americans, the story of glass in fistful of dollars is no stranger, because in American history, glass does exist. He was born in Pennsylvania, USA, and later went to the border areas in the midwest of the United States. Like many of his companions, he hunted for a living.

Then at 1823, one of his adventures made Glass a legend.

The adventure described in fistful of dollars is basically consistent with the facts, but it adds some dramatic effects: after being attacked by a bear, Glass was abandoned by his teammates, tortured in the wilderness, and finally escaped.

However, unlike in the movie, Grass chose to forgive and abandon his teammates in reality, and there was no story of revenge.

/kloc-the midwest of the United States in the 0 th and 9 th centuries was a vast and sparsely populated wilderness with extremely harsh environment.

At that time, people in other American States were full of fear of the vast wilderness in the Midwest. Most people dare not immigrate to the western region easily. Only fur hunters like Glass are white people who really make a living in the west.

By chance, Glass became a hero who could fight against the wilderness, which virtually eased people's subconscious fear of the West.

The star effect brought by grass has led a large number of pioneers to step into the western wilderness, so the "Westward Movement" of the United States in history has stepped onto the historical stage with great vigour.

In this movement, in order to compete for resources, the whites who came to power later launched a fierce struggle with the aborigines. After many battles in wyndell dichinson, the Indians finally chose to compromise and were forced to sign a reservation agreement.

Since then, the vast hinterland of North America, which spans tens of thousands of kilometers, has become the venue for cowboys to release their horses in the western United States. It is a well-known historical bright line that the advanced transforms the backward and civilization conquers the savage.

Revenant takes the bright historical line of "Westward Movement" as the main line, focusing on the dark historical line-a story of a white man's survival and revenge under the rain of Indian arrows.

In the story, Grasse, a white man, married a beautiful Boni girl and had a son, who gradually integrated into the life of Indian tribes.

But one day, his white compatriots suddenly invaded his home, burned it and took the life of his beautiful and kind lover.

The white lieutenant also pointed his gun at Glass's son, and the angry Glass chose to kill the lieutenant, which was the first time that he violated the gentle and peaceful lifestyle he had always insisted on and adhered to.

In the following days, he still chose to stick to his duties, live alone with his only relative, and mingle with the team of white hunters.

However, fate left him seriously injured and abandoned in the wilderness, leaving him to watch his children being killed. Since then, the grass has deeply planted the seeds of hatred in his heart.

Glass repeatedly carved "Fitzgerald %20killed%20my%20boy" (Fitzgerald killed my son) on the stone wall with stone mill herbs and bear's paw, and every word contained blood.

In the days of surviving in the wilderness, he ate river fish and beef liver raw, slept alone in the snow, swam across glaciers and stayed naked in the horse's belly. Although he had a narrow escape, he still supported himself with tenacious will after inhuman hardships.

The idea of hatred and revenge for his son became the spiritual pillar of Glass, who stood firm despite repeated hardships in the wilderness glacier.

In the end, Glass survived with his strong willpower, returned to the base, caught Fitzgerald and launched a cruel duel with him.

Interpretation of Human Nature The complex description of human nature in fistful of dollars is incisive. When the characters in the story are in a dilemma, they all have to face the difficult choice of survival or death, persistence or being sentenced, forgiveness or revenge. The beauty or ugliness of human nature is completely exposed at this moment.

Only in do or die will human beings send out their will to survive beyond instinct, and complex and true human nature will be revealed.

(1) Survival is the first rule.

Human beings are always fragile in the face of nature, and survival is the first law that should be followed among various laws of nature.

At the beginning of the story, the picture of the Glass family living happily together was presented to the audience, and a woman's narration came from her ear: "Please try to live anyway."

This narration runs through the whole movie. Whenever Glass suffers all kinds of hardships and is close to death, this narration will ring in his ear and call him softly: Please try to live!

At the moment Fitzgerald abandoned him in the wilderness, and his repressed soul and scarred body were about to separate, his beloved wife appeared in front of him again in plain clothes, reminding Glass, who was seriously injured, to live, and his hope would last forever as long as he had a breath.

In order to stick to the throat scratched by the mother bear and unable to drink water, he sprinkled gunpowder on the wound and lit it; In order to fill his hungry stomach, he chewed live fish and swallowed the liver of animals raw; In order not to be caught by Li Ren, he ventured into the rapids to survive. In order to survive, he hollowed out the dead horse that fell off the cliff and hid it naked in the belly of the horse for a long night.

He came so close to death several times that he survived and finally got revenge.

In front of nature, people seem particularly small. Expressing the hero's strong willpower is the eternal theme of literary works.

In fistful of dollars, Glass is in danger and struggles to survive alone. People can't help but imagine how strong his willpower is, and he can beat a brown bear much older than himself and survive with hunger and pain in the snowstorm!

As long as there is breath, there is hope of living. Glass is undoubtedly powerful.

The most terrible thing in life is not the difficulties and obstacles, but the loss of morale. In a sense, "please try to live anyway", this sentence of Glass's wife can also be said to the Sioux, even to everyone.

The kind Sioux who saved Glass's life, in order to survive, he had to go further south to find his people.

In its short history, the Sioux people survived the experience of constantly migrating for survival and always fighting to the death with the enemy. In the story, everyone tries to survive.

Although we ordinary people don't have the experience of the characters in the story, this story also inspires us:

When difficulties and setbacks come, we need to overcome them with strong willpower; Hope is a metaphysical thing. Although invisible and intangible, it is a belief and persistence that always exists in the human soul.

Just like the epidemic in China before and the epidemic spreading all over the world now, as long as we have courage, as long as we are optimistic and strong, as long as we believe in the beauty of tomorrow, human beings will have hope of survival.

(B) the evil and good of human nature

Human nature has never been described in general terms. The main idea of this story is to reveal the good and evil of human nature in extreme environment.

According to the development of the story, there must be a bad guy in every team. This bad guy must be selfish and an important second person to spur and sharpen the protagonist.

Fitzgerald in revenant is such a treacherous and cynical racist image. He was portrayed as "the most evil man", and his faith and humanity were completely destroyed. He brought the tyranny and cruelty in human nature to the extreme.

He pursues the values of "money first":

In order to get the reward, he chose to stay and take care of glass; He gradually lost himself under the temptation of money, trying to kill glass and finish the task as soon as possible; He gave his soul to the devil, brutally killed Glass's son, ignored Glass's life and death, left him in the wilderness to die, and lost the most basic conscience of being a man.

The role of Fitzgerald vividly shows the evil of human nature and the essence of evil of human nature.

In addition, Glass suffered a tragic experience of abandonment and death, and his heart was full of hatred for Fitzgerald who abandoned him and killed his son, and the evil of human nature was completely aroused.

When hatred overflows a person's chest, then his reason will disappear with it.

However, after hundreds of miles of trekking, when he died, he still believed that he only came for revenge, and Glass finally chose to forgive. He could have killed Fitzgerald himself to avenge his son, but he chose to let God decide and leave the life of the enemy to the God who holds the sword of life.

Glass is a kind man after all. He lived for revenge and finally woke up in the abyss of human nature. He realized that fighting violence with violence was not the final solution to the problem after all, and chose to forgive at the last minute.

At the same time, he also put his life under the arrows of the Li people, but in the end he was saved from death because Grass had saved the daughter of the Li leader before.

Therefore, the goodness of human nature is the sword of fate. Although the sword of fate is in the hands of God, it is also in the hands of human beings.

(c) Personal spiritual home

what is love ? It is difficult for people to give a specific definition.

Love seems to be a kind of energy that can be stored and transformed, and it is an indispensable factor for human beings to obtain spiritual shelter.

Glass never spoke out loud about his love for his wife and children and his nostalgia for his dead wife, even when his beloved son was called an illegitimate child.

Glass's heart seems to be transformed into two types, one is to always play the role of a fur hunter who accepts reality, and the other is to always cherish the warm memories of his hometown. This love is so deep that he thinks that love does not need outsiders to know and understand, but only needs his careful care.

However, it is this love that runs through the whole story, like an inexhaustible source of energy, supporting the grass to constantly challenge the limits of human survival.

"I am here, and I will always be here." This sentence became a belief and commitment that Glass believed in.

This sentence shows the emotional connection between father and son, whether it is the son's cheek with a badly injured glass in the film or the father's climbing to the chest of his son who is no longer breathing.

It not only connects father and son, but also connects past and present. The images of the wife and mother, which are deeply hidden in the memory of the father and son, always miraculously appear at the critical moment of life and death, making the father and son feel the joy of family reunion, making them feel extremely warm and have infinite power.

In the desperate situation, how much power can human beings break out to overcome fear, nature and themselves?

In fact, as long as human beings have the belief of winning, they can have new hopes when they are desperate. They believe that love and faith are enough for people to survive spiritually in the wilderness.

In the finale of the film, Glass sees his beloved wife again, and her blue eyes are shining with love.

The reflection on civilization is in the wilderness, the forbidden area of human civilization, and survival is everything; Everyone is a hunter and a prey at the same time.

Wild animals kill people, not because they are cruel by nature, but because their territory has been violated by human beings.

They don't care why you came, whether you are strong or weak, they just want to tear up the invaders. If it can't protect its territory, it will die. This is the survival law of the savage world.

The most vital part of the whole movie fistful of dollars is primitive, fierce, tyrannical, savage and primitive.

There is a cloud in the Book of Rites: "Love knows its evil, but hate its good." We should face up to the wildness of human beings without escaping or conniving; We must understand that wildness is the internal force that supports human reproduction and survival; We should believe that wildness is the eternal cornerstone of living things.

On the road of building civilization, human beings need to stop from time to time and re-examine themselves.

The "westward movement" in the United States is an eternal pain in the development of American civilization. The white pioneers in the west destroyed the native Indian homes with advanced weapons and almost destroyed the Indian civilization on the North American continent.

Primitive aborigines have been clinging to their land and homes for generations, making a living by hunting and gathering, and maintaining a wild lifestyle. It was not until Europeans discovered this continent that they began to plunder and slaughter Indian natives with their enthusiasm for money and so-called new capitalist ideas.

They regard the aborigines as barbaric human beings and shoot them with gunpowder guns representing advanced technology. They plundered indigenous women, wealth, resources and food.

In the movie, the French hanged the Li nationality from a tree and hung the sign "I am a barbarian" on him. Does this represent real civilization?

Civilization entered the so-called barbarian land with a strong posture, and there was only the eloquence of the winner between killing and being killed.

When civilization takes up arms and kills barbarism, it is called conquest; A savage attack on civilization is aggression.

When a civilization invades an alien civilization, it will inevitably encounter struggling resistance. Facing the end of individual life, the boundary between civilization and barbarism is actually very vague.

Homer's epic thinks that the strong can naturally plunder in different gangs because they are powerful heroes, but Socrates denies the values of the strong, calls for justice and speaks for the weak.

Nietzsche, a modern philosopher, thinks that God and civilization have brought a disaster to mankind. Instead of making the human species more progressive, it has shrunk. Therefore, in order to restore human strength and regain human dignity, we must once again affirm those heroes who are in a barbaric state.

However, in Survival in the Wilderness, the ultimate choice is Socratic divine power, not Nietzsche's barbarism.

However, Nietzsche is not without reason. The essential relationship between civilization and barbarism is a pair of contradictions. The extreme of civilization will make the personality of the whole society go to luxury, languish in some so-called elegant state, and its strength is no longer strong. The extremes of barbarism are extremely inflated desires and endless wars and killings.

Looking back at the history of China and the West, we can see that no dynasty was established by strength, and in the end, its life strength deteriorated and it went to national subjugation.

On the surface, the film fistful of dollars presents naked barbarism to the audience, but in essence it has planted the seeds of civilization.

The biggest difference between barbaric society and civilized society lies in:

Barbarian society advocates violence and rules others, while civilized society must convince others by virtue and standardize and convince others through legal documents.

Savage society is ruled and dominated by the strong. Whoever has powerful power and weapons can override the weak and plunder their property and even their lives. Any faint cry can only be swallowed up by the vast wilderness, and we must rely on ourselves to get revenge.

In a civilized society, if you are hacked, you can't just take revenge with a knife, but you must resort to the law to get justice for yourself.

This is the case with the glass in fistful of dollars. He comes from a civilized place. In the whole suffering, all the motivation at first came from the idea of revenge for my son. He endured the harshest and worst torture in the primitive world and finally survived. He denied this barbaric logic and remained firm in the logic of civilization. He left the opportunity for revenge to God instead of killing his enemies himself.

It can be seen that although God has been suppressing human nature, in a sense, it is precisely because of the existence of this invisible God, which is ubiquitous in human hearts, that the barbaric nature of human beings has been washed away and it has gradually become civilized.

When Americans are fighting against the European classical tradition, the trump card of their patriotism is the wilderness spirit, and Americans deeply show their desire and love for the wilderness.

If Forrest Gump, once a smash hit, represents the resurgence of American neo-conservatism, fistful of dollars represents the beautiful vision that Americans hope to rebuild the spirit of the west.

In the process of challenging and conquering the wilderness, Americans have established order and civilization, gained their own identity and inspired national pride.

When we no longer pretend to be highly civilized, we no longer blindly demand from nature, when we no longer despise indigenous people and people of color, and we no longer seize land by killing, to some extent, we have improved our collective quality and realized human civilization.