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The innocent and lovely little girl Phoebe (Elle Fanning) has been eager to star in the upcoming classic play Alice in Wonderland. In the fierce competition of students for a little actor, Phoebe was finally selected by the drama teacher Miss Doggil (Patricia Clarkson) and called into the crew. Next, in addition to the undiminished homework, little Phoebe has to rehearse the drama rigorously. However, this obviously puts a lot of pressure on Phoebe. Even Phoebe pays special attention to her words and deeds, for fear that the teacher will temporarily change her angle because she is not satisfied with her performance. But instead, the more careful Phoebe is, the more mistakes she makes. Under great pressure, Phoebe's performance is getting worse and worse. Her parents were also very anxious about the little girl after learning the situation, trying to help Phoebe out of the predicament. Frustrated, Phoebe gradually began to be autistic, but under pressure, she imagined another strange and wonderful "fairyland" in her mind and gradually could not extricate herself from her fantasy world. ...

The mystery of "growth"

Phoebe in Wonderland first appeared on the big screen in the drama competition unit of Sundance Film Festival in 2008. At the same time, it is also the first novel written and directed by the filmmaker daniel barnz, which concentrates rich research results on the complexity of "growing up". The whole story describes in detail the experience of a little girl named Phoebe. Her mother is too eager to pursue academic success and ignores her responsibilities and obligations as a mother. There is also a drama teacher directing the campus play Alice in Wonderland, and Phoebe is trying her best to win the role from it ... Geoffrey Gilmore, who is in charge of Sundance film editing, spoke highly of this film. He said: "Phoebe in Wonderland is a very sincere and in-depth film, which can be regarded as a thorough test of normal and crazy emotions. It has realistic style and rational storytelling style, and it also exudes extravagant and wasteful fantasies. After combining metaphors and fables, we should study the so-called childhood. We try to know everything about children. Even as parents and teachers, the methods we adopt are sometimes not suitable at all. "

Daniel barnz from Philadelphia majored in English at Yale University. After graduation, he went to the University of Southern California for further study. This time, he chose film as his major and got a master's degree in fine arts. Bartz said, "The most gratifying thing for me is that since I graduated, I have been making money by writing some movies, which is enough to support myself-although it was not long before I took my first creative job.

In fact, daniel barnz's earliest artistic talent was performance, and he even described himself as a genius who would enter the performance state as soon as he stepped onto the stage. Baltz said: "Every summer, I go to those noisy and extremely enjoyable drama summer camps ... until I went to college, I began to seriously think that I might be more interested in the field of directing. Although I majored in English at Yale University, it was a drama. After graduating from college, I moved to L.A. and got a job in the Actors' Guild, a theatrical troupe in Tim Robbins. Then I was admitted to the University of Southern California. Since then, it has been officially included in the film field. "

Although he has an orthodox identity from the University of Southern California, after graduation, daniel barnz clearly realized that few people might venture to hire him as a film director, so he could only explore and look for him bit by bit from the beginning of his creation. Bartz said: "The first script I wrote was Phoebe in Wonderland, and today, 65,438+00 years later, it became my directorial debut ... the role of Phoebe is on me. In the past few years, Ned Zeman and I have written some template stories about movies, many of which are based on his articles published in Vanity Fair magazine. For me, this experience has accumulated a lot of experience and benefited a lot. Together, we created many screenplays tailored for incredible stars such as Jodie Foster, Mel Gibson and Leonardo DiCaprio, but for various reasons, none of them succeeded. However, every creative process is an opportunity to better understand the way of telling stories. I am especially glad that I didn't direct Phoebe in Wonderland as soon as I finished writing it. After so many years, I feel that I have grown into a better storyteller than before. "

"strange children" also have a lot to do.

Daniel barnz's idea of writing Phoebe in Wonderland also stems from his real childhood experience. Baltz said, "When I was growing up, I was called a' strange child' more than once ... If you had a similar pain in your childhood, it would definitely affect your life and personality to some extent, but in my opinion, I am actually grateful for this experience. When I was a child, I was particularly imaginative and addicted to it. Although there are all kinds of struggles and setbacks in the middle, after I crossed a certain obstacle, my creative talent was even more stimulated. It is for this reason that I decided to write a movie script based on this, which is about such a different little girl. She will grow from her own differences and finally get the energy to continue. Later, I also had my own children, and my mentality changed fundamentally. The direction of the script also changed, and I began to move closer to the perspective of a parent with an unusual child. Every parent wants his child to be special or not so mediocre, but if your child really becomes what you expect, you will feel sorry for the discomfort caused by the special child-if you have never had a child, it is impossible to have such a profound understanding of it. Since I fell in love with drama and decided to make my own film, I made up my mind to convey all these feelings and cognition to those who used to be as' weird' as me. "

In the process of filming Phoebe in Wonderland, daniel barnz also got great inspiration from many children's films. He said, "For example, Peter Jackson's Creatures in Paradise, in my opinion, is the greatest film ever focused on girls, which not only perfectly captures the unique innocence and rashness of that infectious child. Besides, I really appreciate the sincere performance of Looking for bobby fischer, which allows the audience to enter a child's mind and find a visual style. This is a bold attempt by Steven Zaillian, the screenwriter and director of the film, who adopted a very rare form of long-distance shooting. Of course, Fanny och Alexander is also a movie that has to be mentioned here. It was so beautiful and heartbreaking that I didn't mention it first because I didn't want to sound too arrogant. Finally, I want to mention David La Chabbert, a world-famous eccentric fashion photographer. His use and thinking of color also inspired me a lot. You can definitely find similar shadows in some series of pictures of Phoebe in Wonderland. In the process of creating visual style for this film, I would like to thank several people in particular, including photographer Bobby Bukowski, artistic director Thérèse DePrez and producer Lynette Howell. Without them, it is impossible to produce such an unexpected work. Basically, we just came to an apartment in new york, where we discussed the theme of the film, then studied hundreds of photos and pictures and watched clips of different film works-it took us almost a weekend to completely decide the shooting work and schedule. "

Several filmmakers first reached a * * * understanding of the concept of the film, so that all parts of the film can maintain the same style. Daniel barnz said: "We try our best to deal with all the visual imaginations that come from the theme of the story. For example, in school, we use illustrations as lines, hoping that everyone can better understand the perspective of the story ... Then we need to support a more free environment, because we are constantly encouraged to break some conventions. When shooting, we leave as much space as possible for the operation of the camera, and the color of the picture should be more and more exciting and inflammatory. Of course, there have been many arguments between us, but it has also broadened our horizons and improved everything. From the beginning, we realized that the key point here is to connect reality with Phoebe's imaginary world. We want the characters in Alice in Wonderland to walk around Phoebe one by one, and then become more fantastic, because the last thing we want to do is to be disturbed by CGI that confuses reality and illusion. When I was a child, I always used my imagination according to my surroundings-so we wanted to keep the real part of it and then transfer everything to Phoebe's mind. "

Daniel barnz also admitted that he never dreamed that the first film could assemble such an excellent cast. Baltz said, "Even in my wildest daydreams, nothing like this has happened ... felicity huffman and Patricia Clarkson are my first choices. They decided to sign the film long ago, and their names undoubtedly played a role in our preparation of shooting funds. Followed by bill pullman and campbell scott. Finally, I met my sister Elle Fanning, who is four years younger than Dakota Fanning. As soon as I saw her, I realized that standing in front of me was a brave and clever little girl Phoebe who represented the central content of the film. "

Behind the movie: obsessive-compulsive disorder and schizophrenia

Actually, Phoebe is a very typical obsessive-compulsive disorder patient. In order to play the leading role, she kept repeating meaningless ritual actions, such as turning around on the grass and jumping up and down on the stairs ... She also wanted to jump down from a height, but she actually knew the harm of doing so in her heart, which was a manifestation of being forced to think. Phoebe kept saying "wake up" while watching ballet, and said "mouse" when she saw a fat woman on Halloween, all of which reflected the uncontrollable symptoms caused by obsessive-compulsive disorder. Obsessive-compulsive disorder also gave Phoebe the illusion of schizophrenia. She thought fairyland was actually an illusion of her schizophrenia, but at the end of the film, she still didn't get rid of schizophrenia-she saw her drama teacher run away with Alice and disappear at the end of the corridor. ...