"If a song isn't trendy but it's not outdated, it's a ballad." I wrote my first review after seeing what I consider my favorite film for the third time. . The first time I watched "Drunken Country Ballads" was in the Spring Festival of 2015. At that time, I had just come into contact with European and American music, and I still knew very little about folk music. For such a film with the same beginning and ending scenes, I don't have much feeling. Just because I thought the soundtrack of the movie was too good, I left this 1.5G mkv in the mobile hard drive instead of dragging it into the trash. The second time I watched "Drunken Country Ballads" was in November 2016. At that time, I encountered a lot of fetters and setbacks on the way to school, and I began to slowly pay attention to every line, every expression, and every action of the characters. At that time, I just learned to smoke, and the more I watched this sad film, the more depressed I became. I smoked half a pack overnight. The third time I watched "The Ballad of Drunken Township" was tonight, November 6, 2017. After a year in a foreign country thousands of miles away from home, I clicked on this movie again, and I could understand more. Rune is a down-and-out folk singer. He has a certain talent, a certain talent. He had a good career with his deceased partner. But his partner died and he had to start a less successful solo act. Luen is arrogant in his heart. He verbally disdains those who regard music as a business; he says that he disdains to bow down for five buckets of rice. But his arrogance also made his heart overly sensitive. In front of the few friends who really cared about him, Luen was furious and said his true thoughts: I am just a singer, I need life, I am not a clown.
Likewise, in order to live, he chose a journey that made him ridiculed and came to Chicago. Meeting the famous producer, Rune played "the Death of Queen Jane" with complicated fingerings in front of him. I think Luen chose this song for other reasons besides showing off his skills. Rune must have thought the ballad, about Queen Jane's death in childbirth, was a reflection of her own musical career in some way. He wants producers to hear it. But the producer's sentence "I can't see the commercial value of this song" made Luen hit a wall again.
Rune is also a scumbag who screwed everything up. He had slept with enough girls, but he could hardly form a stable relationship. The last girl gave birth to a child with Rune on her back, and brought it back to her hometown to raise it by herself. Rune may be sincere to Gene, but Gene is also married, her husband is Rune's good brother, but Rune still makes Gene's belly bigger.
"Everything you touched turns into shit". In the second half of the film, Rune finally gave in to Gene's words. He said he didn't want to do it. He wants his son to inherit his father's business and return to the sailor line, just to survive. Just to exist.
This is a very sad story, warned you. But life is another big joke. Without the qualifications of a sailor, Rune was forced to return to the bar as a folk singer. Continue to live an ordinary life. Like the cat that ran away and came home alone at the end. Feeling sorry for Rune? Looking at ordinary but unwilling to be ordinary, looking at him who wants to struggle and struggles, but his life is always unsatisfactory, do you think of someone you know? or yourself? There's always a rune in everyone's life, and there's that cat that comes home by instinct. That person, that cat, it's you, it's me. The Coen brothers joked that "all successful people are filmed by Hollywood", and made another story with the theme of "LOSER" and the ordinary life of "little people". But isn't that also the story for most of us? After all, not all football players are Messi or Cristiano Ronaldo. After all, not all actors are Marlon Brando. After all, not all folk singers are Bob Dylan. And all we can do is go on instinct, even though life may bring us back to where we started. Writing this, I am inexplicably reminded of the ending paragraph of the novel "The Great Gatsby": We strive forward, sailing against the current, until we return to the beautiful and innocent old days. Gatsby worked hard to give everything, he wanted to go against the river of time, go back to the past, and find that beautiful and pure love. He said that he believes that through his own efforts, he can go back to the past and regain that beautiful relationship. Our hard work and unremitting efforts now are all to find back the fleeting good things we had in the past, such as family, love, and friendship. We hope that through our own efforts, we can have this wonderful thing for a long time. However, when we continue to achieve material wealth through hard work, we gradually become selfish and indifferent, gradually forget the beautiful things we wanted to pursue in the first place, and get lost in luxury and desire. Few people are like Gatsby, who are always obsessed with the pursuit of beauty and innocence, and the green light in their hearts is always on. That's what makes Gatsby great.
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