—From the movie "Cherish Life"
When watching this movie, the splendid scenes in "The Life of the Disgusted Matsuko" flashed in my mind. The more oppressed I am, the more I want to be better. Whenever the protagonist is abused by her mother, she feels desperate in life and always imagines that she is standing on a dazzling stage and performing charismatically, with screaming fans and a passionate white boyfriend. Gorgeous dreams highlight the gloom of reality, and the messy, miserable, and difficult life always makes people have nowhere to escape. This film confronts the bottom of the black society in the United States. The content involves domestic sexual assault. It reproduces the awakening process of a black girl named "Cherish" from being insulted and rejected to regaining hope in life. Her fate is more twisted and heart-wrenching than Matsuko.
In the late 1980s, in Harlem, America, where black people gathered, a 16-year-old girl named Clarice Jones lived a bleak life with no future in sight. Her overly bloated body and unflattering face were always mocked by children in the neighborhood. Always sit in the last row in class, low self-esteem and cowardly. What is even more aphasia is her private life. She was raped twice by her father. She has given birth to a mentally retarded daughter and is pregnant again. Mother Mary spends all day lying on the sofa like a whale watching TV, living on the welfare of her daughter and disabled granddaughter, doing nothing all day long. She beat and scolded Clarice at every turn. While appeasing her husband's crimes, she vented all her anger and resentment on her daughter, who was also the victim. The viciousness of her words was outrageous.
Clarice has always been resigned to this. When she is pushed to the garbage heap by a bad child, or she is attacked after being abused by her mother at will (the mother who has been scolded will never forget to throw dishes and other objects at her daughter), the only one. The only way to escape is poor fantasy. Dreaming of being slender, with long hair, and a radiant face, standing on the stage to receive all the attention, or dreaming of a handsome young math teacher becoming a boyfriend, and a mother returning to the loving image of her childhood. Clarice, who looks indifferent and doesn't care about anything, just doesn't know how to express herself and how to get out of her nightmarish life. Her mother regarded her as an enemy. Once the family's secrets were revealed, they would be despised by others. She gave herself another name: Precious, to express her desire to be respected and loved, and her desire to live a normal life.
The director presents the shocking inside story of a family to the audience with extremely simple lens language. The extreme description of the dark side of human nature does not exaggerate or deliberately avoid it. All the true colors are silently conveyed from the character's demeanor and words. The ugliness that is hard to look at may be the other side of life? Without any protection and attention, Clarice will have to face the bigger difficulties that follow.
Clarice was ordered to drop out of school because she was two months pregnant. At the same time, due to the recommendation of the math teacher, she has the opportunity to enter the one-to-one elective school for further study. The mother obstructed this in every possible way. She instilled in her daughter various fallacies that "going to school is useless, you will only be ridiculed for your appearance, just stay at home and get relief money", in order to mentally imprison her daughter to make her Isolated. Clarice, eager to change the status quo, endured unbridled scolding while insisting on going to school. At school, she got along with a class of fellow troubled girls day and night, gradually got rid of her inferiority complex, dared to speak out in class, and met the most important person in her life, Mr. Ryan.
Ryan's kind listening and continuous encouragement made Clarice feel respected and cared for the first time, and her closed heart was opened little by little. I will break free from my mother's abuse and start to think independently and plan my future. "I feel that I exist here," she said sincerely, and her soul has also ushered in real growth.
And life is not kind. After giving birth to her second child, she has to juggle her studies and livelihood. Her mother kicked her out of the house after another hysteria. Teacher Ryan arranged for her and the child to stay temporarily at a friend's house. In a stranger's home, she was not regarded as an alien, no one cast a contemptuous look at her or attacked her personally, and everyone talked friendly about their own preferences in life. Clarice thought: I don't know what they're talking about, but they're so classy, I've never lived in such a classy environment. I love these and I think my kids will too. The birth of a child made her feel her responsibility and sparked love and hope for life. As long as she doesn't give up, she can insist on finishing high school and university and create a different life. This scene looks very warm, and the cold heart can be melted with a little love, but it is a pity that the people who hurt her the most are close relatives.
If the film ends here, it can be regarded as inspirational, but there is a more painful blow. With her father dead and confirmed to have AIDS, Clarice falls into despair. Her test report came back positive, but luckily the child was not infected. The grim truth lay in front of her eyes, and her life may be numbered. In the face of her mother crying and regretting the past and wishing to reunite with her daughter, Clarice was moved but not "appreciative" (Is this as the saying goes: some serious crimes may be alleviated by self-redemption, But it is difficult to be forgiven), she left the social work office with her nine-month-old son in one hand and her mentally handicapped daughter in the other, and stepped into the crowd. No matter how rough the future is, she intends to face it alone. The past experience is like a nightmare, but there is still a glimmer of light in the life that is struggling. The red ribbon on the gray street lamp once appeared in her dream, and the life that has gone through adversity has a powerful strength.
I really like the song and dance performances that appear in the film at the right time. They are warm and cheerful, without any worries. They entrust the protagonist's dream of finding life dignity and love, like a polished match to keep warm. The queen of the song, Mariah Carey, showed herself in plain face, and played a middle-aged social worker who sympathized with Clarice in the film.
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