At this year's Cannes Film Festival, the film "Dog Formation" directed by Guan Hu and starring Peng Yuyan and Yu Liya won the Best Film Award in the Un Certain Regard unit. This realistic film is not only the only work to win the award among the six mainland films in the competition, but if you go back to the last time a domestic film made a gain in Cannes, it was "Destined" by Jia Section Chang who won the Best Screenplay Award 11 years ago. Even if the scope is expanded to include Berlin and Venice, the last time a domestic feature film won an honor at the world's most important international "three" film festival was Diao Yinan's "Fireworks in the Day" at the Berlin Film Festival ten years ago.
"Dog Formation" takes a small town in northwest China 16 years ago as the time and space background of the story in the film, and through the life experience of Erlang, a young man who has just been released from prison, in the town, and the symbolic presentation of the herds of stray dogs in the town and the animals in the abandoned zoo, it profoundly depicts the group portraits of those lives that have been abandoned, ignored and trampled by the dominant forces of capital and society under the rapid development of industrialization and drastic social changes, as well as the powerful life energy contained in these life groups.
According to normal logic, such an art film that has won international honors, even if it cannot compete with those commercial films full of main themes and sketches in the box office market, at least in terms of word-of-mouth, it will be praised by the industry and fans. However, the reality is not satisfactory, since the release of "Dog Formation" on June 15, the domestic box office of 30 million yuan has fallen short of the expectations caused by the Cannes-winning film. What's even more embarrassing is that in terms of word-of-mouth, the film has received mixed reviews, and there is even a saying that this film is a simple copy and imitation of Jia Zhangke's film from content to form. Is this really the case?
As far as the author's own perception is concerned, the so-called plagiarism from Jia Zhangke may be more of a personal conjecture of some "section chief" fans. Although this film does have similarities with some of Jia Zhangke's previous works in terms of content and material, they both focus on the marginalized groups of society and those who have been abandoned and ignored by the times. However, both in terms of the form of content and the style of the video, Guan Hu's work is fundamentally different from Jia Zhangke's previous works (such as "Xiao Wu", "Platform" and "The Good Man of the Three Gorges").
When it comes to plagiarism or borrowing, some of the sources of artistic creativity in "Dog Formation", "Xiao Wu" and "Platform" all originated from the Italian neorealist film movement in the fifties of the last century (it is not surprising that for decades, art film creation around the world has inevitably drawn inspiration and nourishment from neorealism and the French New Wave movement). But the work of Chief Jia is clearly closer to that of Germany. Sika and Fellini, "Xiao Wu" pays tribute to "The Bicycle Thief", in which the protagonists steal because of the pressure of life, and they also have to be scrutinized by the public on the streets of the city because of their behavior; "Platform" clearly bears the traces of Fellini's work "The Wanderer", which also tells the ideals of the imprisoned youth in the town and the experience of a young man full of confusion, in which a character returns from the city and carries an electronic device to "show" in front of his friends, which is directly borrowed from "The Wanderer", but in the previous work it is a radio, and in "Platform" it is replaced by a tape recorder.
In terms of video style, Jia Zhangke's early works focused on social documentary in style, and the images in his films rarely pursued visual aesthetic significance in composition, but were filled with an unmodified sense of roughness. Even in Xiao Wu's highly creative mirror scheduling, its main function is to use the reflection of the protagonist in the stinky ditch as a metaphor for his inverted social status. The core theme of Jia Zhangke's film is to focus on the underprivileged characters in society, and to highlight the film's practical significance and social criticism function through the objective and true presentation of their lives and inner mental states, and the object of its criticism points to the dominant forces of society.
It should be emphasized that Jia Zhangke's early film works certainly have extremely important artistic value and practical significance in the mainland, but if we look at the whole world, this kind of film creation concept that focuses on the bottom groups of society and realizes the function of social criticism while presenting their lives and mental states. From Italian neorealism to the New Wave movements in Eastern Europe and Japan, from Pierre Paolo Pasolini to Milos. Foreman to Shohei Imamura and Nagisa Oshima in Japan...... Over the decades, there have been countless classics of its kind, as well as many film masters. This kind of realistic film is rare in the mainland, but it is everywhere in many regions with a freer creative environment in the world. Regardless of the fact that Jia Zhangke's own artistic talent is slightly inferior to those of the masters mentioned above, and that his works have gradually lost their sharpness in recent years, even those of his predecessors at his peak, due to the fact that there are too many classic works of the same kind, it is extremely difficult to win important awards at the "Big Three" international film festivals.
In terms of content and form, "Dog Formation" is closer to Michelangelo. Antonioni. The film's shots are very self-conscious, and the color rendering is also more stylized, and the presentation of the wilderness, small town streets and animal groups in the film is full of a kind of alienated and barren beauty. The empty shots of abandoned coal mines and mine equipment in the film are reminiscent of Angelopouros's "Landscape in the Mist". Under this aesthetic structure, the theme of "Dog Formation" is to present the impact of technological progress and industrialization on the living conditions, behavior patterns, and spiritual world of human beings (including animal society). Since the development of industrialization has been proven to be an irreversible process in the two hundred years since the start of the Industrial Revolution, the ideological core of the film is no longer a critique of the dominant forces of society, but focuses on depicting the loneliness that is difficult to be cured in the hearts of individuals living in the environment where industrial civilization has a serious impact on human beings and the natural world, as well as their life attitudes and struggles to cope with this environment.
Regardless of the level of the director, in terms of the ideological function of the film, "Dog Formation" is more ambiguous and abstract than the former, and it is easier to be favored by the judges at international film festivals. In this film, the director not only tells the daily life of the male protagonist Erlang, who is incompatible with mainstream society and secular values, but also focuses on the large number of stray dogs left on the streets due to population migration in decaying towns, as well as various animals such as tigers and peacocks left in abandoned zoos. The director juxtaposes these three to extend the theme of the film from a single individual at the bottom of society to a group of life under the influence of industrialization and historical process.
In the three ideographic elements of people, dogs, and zoo animals, the life experiences of the male protagonist Erlang represent the realistic theme of the film, focusing on telling the fate of individuals in contemporary cruel and realistic social life, the dilemma and spiritual loneliness and loneliness; The presentation of the stray dog named Fine Black and the dogs on the street uses abstract film language to describe how we should face our social situation when our values and survival concepts do not fit the dominant force of society and become the object of abandonment and oppression, and how to establish the value of our own lives and stimulate our inner vitality. At the end of the film, the presentation of the fauna in the abandoned zoo has a surrealist color. Tigers, peacocks, black bears and other wild animals stroll through the dilapidated streets of towns in the afterglow of the sunset, as if we are in the end of the current civilization, strolling through the ruins of the past civilization to welcome the eternal darkness or new life that is about to fall.
Looking back at the best films in Cannes in recent years, 2023's "Anatomy of the Dead Annex" is a presentation of the uncertainty of contemporary marital relationships; In 2022, "Triangle of Sadness" is a question and subversion of the inherent hierarchy and traditional order of human society; 2021's "Titanium" points to the dual physical and mental effects of contemporary industrialization and mechanical dependence on human beings, as well as the inevitable combination of humans and machines and species mutation in the future. Despite their different subject matter, the core themes of all three films seem to point in one direction – the crisis of contemporary civilization. The creative intention and thematic expression of "Dog Formation" are obviously close to this direction. Frankly speaking, his creative concept is more avant-garde and advanced than the artistic expression of Jia Zhangke's previous works.
Of course, "Dog Formation" does have regrets in terms of overall quality. In terms of character encounters, they are also low-level characters on the fringes of society, compared to the ending of the male protagonist in "Xiao Wu" who constantly loses friendship, love, and finally loses himself, the male protagonist Erlang in the film has the luck of hanging. The lack of foreshadowing is naturally loved by the heroine (perhaps because Peng Yuyan is handsome), and it happened to be at the right time to "ask for someone in Shekou", and achieved a complete victory over the family members of his manslaughter target at the moral level. As a work of realism, these overly functional designs are indeed unconvincing to the audience. Under the creative theme, the content is not solid enough, the character creation is not delicate and in-depth enough, the setting of some plots is too functional, and the use of movie symbols is more confusing, which has become the fly in the ointment of this film.
On the whole, this film can still be called an excellent domestic art film with a novel theme, profound meaning and outstanding image style, and the glory of the work in Cannes is also worthy of applause from film lovers. For moviegoers, whether we are one of the many socially marginalized groups in the 18th-tier towns who are struggling to make a living, or the "996" migrant workers in the big cities who bear the pressure of work every day and dare not have extravagant hopes for marriage and love. Today, when capital and the dominant forces of society have almost monopolized everything, and the class fortress is becoming more and more strong. How to calmly face the incurable loneliness in our hearts, stick to the spiritual "self" in the realistic and cruel real life, and always embrace the courage and passion for life, maybe "Dog Formation" can bring us a hint of inspiration.