awpawp

I watched the 40min or so then turned myself to fast forward mode. It is true that it is a predictable story. It may guess this is more a cinematographic movie than a director's movie. This story could be shorter. You can tell it is a grow-up type of story, but imagine if this a simple boy and father story, it would have been more touchy. It is new spark to use clockwork robot again after "Number 5", but It loses the human connection with each other. Jeff's character is built and triggered by Finch's dialogues all the time, which made the grow-up not believable. There is truly no really conflicts in this movie. It is so visible that it is almost like Deus ex machina over the whole story. For example, do Finch must see the butterflies before he dies? Or would it be better to have more Finch's monologues at the beginning to show the "travel in the day" " and " people killing each other for food preserved", than getting Finch deliver it by talking to the robot directly for a 5-10min campfire scene. In other words, teach the robot something deeper please. If a robot knows how to joke at birth, don't you think he also knows what is "trust"? Joking is more advanced than defining. My 5 year old son would know trust but he won't understand some adult joke yet. Or you say trust then you say don't trust. That just confuses people. Is trust build on interest? After I wrote this, I changed it from 5 to 4.

Youth is not a good translate of "Fang Hua". In Chinese, Fang sometimes not only means "young", but also means the pleasant scent of new growing lawn and flowers, and it is the first mean of "fang". "Hua" means beautiful and blooming. In fact the character "hua" is interchangeable with the flower in ancient Chinese tradition, but "hua" gives more meaning in describing young ladies.

We see "youth" is certainly not able to cover the full meaning of the movie. The movie is not about war, love or the time of culture revolution and etc. It is about how "young beautiful flowers" grow and what they have become at particular time of China. The protagonists are a group of youth at their age around 15. They are the very pure flowers. The theme is about change of the those "pure flowers" life while the country is facing a huge change. The movie is to recall and cherish.