How to evaluate the British animated film “London Family”
Mu Xian’s “Once Slow” has such a widely circulated saying:
“The chariots and horses used to be slow.
The letters are far away,
A lifetime is only enough to love one person.”
In my opinion, it’s also a wonderful footnote to the British hand-drawn animated film we’re going to share today
All in London
More than 30,000 people on Doosan have scored 8.8 on the 16-year-old animation
It depicts not just the ups and downs of a family’s fortunes, but also a chronicle of modern Britain and the changing cycle of humanity
Unchanging faith in circumstances
If there’s any animation you have to watch in a lifetime, this One in London should be right up there.
01
A London Family was released in 2016, directed and written by Roger Maywood.
Unlike the usual fictional animation, All Londoners is based on Raymond Briggs’ real-life experience of his parents
Ethel and Ernest
The old writer’s monologue at the beginning and his parents’ photo album at the end all emphasize the “authenticity” of the story to the audience.
At the beginning of the animation, the veteran writer quips to himself:
“Seriously, it’s kind of weird
There’s a book about your parents on the best seller list
In those books about football heroes and cooking
I think they’d be proud of that
But more likely to be embarrassed.”
Dubbed by many as “The British animated version of My Mother and Father,” it begins with the mundane but extraordinary encounter of a mother and father.
As a young man, my father was an energetic milkman who would hop on his bicycle every morning to deliver milk.
Her mother was a maid in an upper-class family who was busy cleaning the house all day.
This morning, my father on the bike greeted my mother, who was shaking dust out of the window with a rag.
Ah Jane fell in love with Ah Qing, as if without warning.
Every morning they passed through the tiny window, using rags and bicycle bells.
Unlike most of today’s dog-blood idol dramas, the father of this animation is not slow in pursuing his mother, and soon takes a
Bring flowers to the house and invite your mother to a movie tonight.
After several times together, the relationship between the two heated up rapidly, from dating to meeting the parents, and then the mother is more serious to the hostess submission
Resignation
She and her father had agreed that they were going to get married.
The noble old lady almost dropped her jaw when she heard this.
In her opinion, her mother made a very unwise decision to quit her job and marry.
After leaving the house, my mother said regretfully to my father, who came to help carry the luggage.
“I don’t want to leave them,
They were so helpless,
They can’t do anything on their own.”
You could say the venom is in full swing.
02
Marx had a classic definition of the nature of man, that —
“The essence of man is not an abstraction inherent in a single individual, but in its actuality is the sum of all social relations.”
The essence of man is the sum of all social relations, and in turn, social changes can be reflected in individuals.
Many good films and TV shows start with the portrayal of small characters, and then reveal the nature of their dependence on the big time.
Such as the American film Forrest Gump, the Chinese film Farewell My Concubine and so on.
This One in London is no different.
It tells the story of a British couple who first fell in love in 1928 and died in 1971, spanning 43 years and experiencing the second world one after another
Major historical events such as the war, post-war reconstruction and national political turmoil
One of the best things about the animation is that, despite the sad moments like the death of a loved one, the overall tone of the animation remains upbeat.
On the eve of the war between England and Germany, the father sang and danced with his son, without any sense of “mountains and rain are coming”.
The bulky gas mask became a toy for his son.
It reminds us of the Italian movie Life is Beautiful, where the hero convinces his son that everything in the concentration camp is just a tour
The plot of the play
When war broke out, it was poignant and funny to see my parents haranguing about politics in a bomb shelter.
My father told my mother that the newspaper had reported that the Soviet Union had invaded Finland.
Combined with the German invasion of Poland, Mother came to the conclusion that neither the Soviet Union nor Germany was a good bird, and hoped that one day Germany would
To invade the Soviet Union
My father waved his hand and said it was impossible because they were in the same league.
He told his mother not to be silly. She didn’t understand politics at all.
However, history proved that mother was a prophet.
In 1941, Germany broke the non-aggression pact and invaded the Soviet Union.
As they talked about it at night in the steel-walled air-raid room of the cage-like house, my mother joked that she wished she had bet him 6p.
When the British government nationalized the coal industry after the Second World War, my Labor-supporting father optimistically believed that soon all coal would be big
Its home
The Conservative mother quipped that even then, ordinary people would still need to give money, except that the profits would go to the bosses
It just goes into the government’s pocket.
It’s the sort of crackling about British politics that is so common in animation that the cheerful father and the sharp-tongued mother bicker over it
With the attitude of “gentlemen in harmony but in difference”
I know who you are, and you know who I am.
I can’t change you, and you can’t change me.
In this case, don’t take the other person’s differences too seriously.
I just got by. I can get away with it.
03
Although the animated series is about an ordinary British family, it has struck a chord with audiences around the world.
Countless people see the shadow of their own family in this family, as if it really is “one world, one pair of parents.”
The parents in the cartoon love their children deeply, but they are more traditional, and want to put their son on the right path.
After learning that his son had left his grammar school on his own to go to an art school, the two went into all-night consultation mode.
My father listed the various crimes of the art student:
“The art people all have long hair, drink, and have fruit girls…”
Mother hastily covered father’s mouth and told him to stop talking.
Parents have watched their sons grow and rebel.
They would often peek through an upstairs window at their son and his new girlfriend as they walked side by side, whispering judgments about the older generation
The look of impropriety — the girl’s black stockings and the son’s long hair.
After learning that her son and daughter-in-law would get married in a registry office, the mother was even more incomprehensible to this new way of marriage.
In her opinion, a church wedding would be much better.
Animation “London Family” is such a piece of work by a piece of trivia strung together, in the ordinary visible really strange.
In the process of watching, we are like watching a family album, and the various things in it always remind us of our own life
Memory
It’s hard to love, but it’s harder to stay together.
I believe a saying about love and marriage, is “there is no eternal passion, but there is a long flow of water”, only mutual tolerance can be right
Fang helped him the rest of the way.
