——on the road
I personally have a certain preference for road films. Someone will produce this film in 69 Regarded as the road bible and the originator of road movies, then this movie is a monument that I absolutely can't go around on my way to watch movies. It used less than US$400,000 to obtain a box office of US$25 million and received 7 Oscar nominations (of course, its own value is much higher than this title and award). It is it that makes highway movies exist as a type of movie.
It’s not the first and second time to watch this film. This film also has a special meaning to me, mainly because I talked about this film when I interviewed the film agency of our school, and the decision to enter the film agency gave me a chance. Very big impact. Based on this alone, it occupies the first place on my personal top ten list. In addition, after watching this film two years ago, I also embarked on a trip to Qinghai Lake and a part-time job-exchange trip to a youth hostel on Gulangyu Island. (Although it cannot be said to be driven by the influence of this film)
The United States in the 1960s was very turbulent. Martin Luther King’s "I have a dream" speech, President Kennedy was assassinated, the Vietnam War, and mankind landed on the moon, Khrushchev threatened to eliminate the United States... Political turmoil is bound to bring about tremendous changes in the field of ideology and culture. After the First World War The "lost generation", the "beat generation" after World War II, the interweaving of happiness and pain, the conflict between ideals and reality, the dislocation of abilities and goals, the contradiction between their own pursuits and social requirements, caused the American youth at that time to produce When faith collapsed, hippies emerged from the "Beat Generation". .
Easy Knight is a film depicting such a group of people in such a context.
1. The actor
first needs to introduce the three leading actors, not for anything else, just because they were once a part of this group of people.
Peter Fonda, the son of Henry Fonda, whose father has portrayed countless images of American heroes on screen, is known as the silent hero of Hollywood. He is a very "red" and very positive character, but his son is As a hippie, he created such a great film.
Dennis Hopper played a role in James Dean's "Revolt without a Cause" in the 1950s (it may be said that this film has the same core as this film), thus starting his film career. Although "Easy Rider" brought him great success in 1969, it was not until 10 years later that he regained attention for his role in "Apocalypse Now". He is known for his talents, but at the same time he deserves negative reviews for drug and alcohol abuse.
There is more to say about Nicholson. He is an actor I am relatively familiar with, and he has created countless classic screen roles. He is the most individual actor in the American film scene. The roles he plays are always so tired, evil, rebellious, and so dignified, plump and intriguing. He has been nominated for 12 Oscars (7 times for actor, 4 times for supporting actor), and three times for the Academy Award (two Oscars for Best Actor in 1976 and 1998, and Oscar for Best Supporting Actor in 1984) , Is the most nominated actor in the history of the Oscars, and can be called the "king of the Oscars."
He, De Niro, Pacino, and Hoffman are also known as the four kings of Hollywood, and his personal style should be regarded as the most distinctive of these four. As just said, his role gives people a feeling. It's always very different, in my opinion it's always a little crazy, I won't be surprised that he does anything in the film.
His roles include McMurphy in Leaping the Cuckoo's Asylum. About this movie, it will be mentioned later that he has a very close relationship with hippies. More famously, the writer in "The Shining", I think this role is comparable to Hopkins' Hannibal. There is also the Joker in the old version of Batman, an obsessive-compulsive patient in "The Perfection". He is always handy for this kind of role, and there is no trace of deliberate axe at all. In the bucket list, he played a relatively normal person, but he also did a lot of crazy things.
2. The soundtrack
talked about the actors, and talked about the soundtrack. In many road films, the soundtrack is a particularly important part, which is reflected in this film vividly. I believe that anyone who has watched this film will never forget that wanna be a bird. Wanna be a bird, isn’t this our vision of on the road? Of course it’s not just a soundtrack, it sings the voice of young people throughout the age. What’s interesting is that when watching this film for the second time, I noticed that at the beginning of the film, I gave a shot of a plane taking off, and at the same time I gave Peter Fonda a close-up...
So this kind of movie really needs to be watched repeatedly. I mean not referring to a movie that is technically. A major breakthrough, or a film of considerable historical significance in the context of the time, is a universal film that can resonate in any era and trigger a critical examination of the Three Views. Take Citizen Kane, it has always been listed as the greatest movie No. 1. Indeed, if you want to learn film, the film school can spend a semester to talk about this great citizen, because this film has both mirrors and performance. Textbook meaning. However, does the audience like textbooks? Nietzsche said that all writing that does not inspire action is meaningless. The writing here is of course a broad writing. I think that only the things that make the heart ripple are the most valuable.
And there is another reason why I wrote the soundtrack separately. Not only for this movie, but for the hippies themselves, music is also an indispensable part. Rock and jazz of that era were the carriers of the rebellious spirit of young people. Wim Wenders made "Texas Paris", an equally important road film. In his book "Emotion Pictures: Reflection on Cinema", he introduced "Easy Rider". He mentioned that the original movie wanted to use bob dylan. It's alright ma i'm only bleeding as the ending song, but Bob refused. He said to the director, "You have to change the ending of the movie. It's too pessimistic. You have to show hope to others." So why be Bao Bao When Bodylon changed his music style, the crowd would regard it as a betrayal, so angry, because for them, music is not just music, it matters.
3. Analysis
Why go on the road? Because you want to escape, because you want to find. What to avoid, what to look for? Escape the numb life, escape the reality that seems to be free but obstructed everywhere, escape the hostile glances of hypocritical "guardians", find the true meaning of life, find the freedom of dreams, and find an equal and friendly utopia. Is this unique to hippies? Obviously not. Even now, every young man has a dream of going on the road in his heart. Sometimes he always feels the unresolved sense of loneliness. In the age of hippies, many people choose drugs and sex to fill this gap. After returning to reality But there is only a deeper emptiness. It is time to talk about "Flying Over the Cuckoo's Asylum" mentioned earlier. In the late 1950s, the CIA had funded research on hallucinogens at Stanford University. A young man named Ken Casey ran to apply for volunteers, and it turned out to be a test product for the CIA. However, the hallucinogens let him get the hang of it, and after returning home, he wrote a best-selling book called "Flying Over the Cuckoo's Nest". The film of the same name adapted from this book won 5 Oscars in one fell swoop. This film also caused a lot of The social influence puts the mental patient's situation into the public eye. Casey bought a farm near San Francisco with the contribution fees and held LSD parties all day long. Later, he wanted to make all American people psychedelic, so he and a group of friends drove a colorful school bus around the United States. Soon, the media invented a new term to describe these lunatics: Hippies. Later, someone said that hippies = college students born during the baby boom + LSD. Although this evaluation is too simple, it is quite accurate.
So, what is the carrier of these emotions that have nowhere to vent in our hearts today? Some people choose to travel, some people choose to read books, and some people choose music. Of course, we fanciers choose movies. What's interesting is that people who do these things often don't just do one thing. Xiaopeng, who has been backpacking for ten years, always carries a Guevara biography with him, and the first record company to which the band signed is called Howl. There is a classic long poem in the hippie movement, which is Ginsburg’s Howl. Of course I am not sure if there is a relationship between the two.
I talked about this movie when I tried the movie club two years ago. At that time, I was talking about freedom. But now I want to look at it from another angle. It can be said that it has changed me in less than two years. It can also be said that it has changed my perspective.
I think for the creators, what they want to express is already very clear, as Peter Fonda said in an interview with Rolling Stone: "The word easy rider is specifically used to refer to those in the South of the United States. Men who live on their wives as chickens, no, not pimps, but those who live with prostitutes because they ride on other people and live their lives freely. Well, old man, this is what happened in the United States Things. Freedom has become a bitch, and we ride on her for a long time." What they want to complain is that freedom was trampled in the United States, as Nicholson said in the film before the bonfire.
However, while understanding their intentions, we must not forget their identities. They did not create this work in the 1980s, not a remembrance of that era, but the people who lived in that era. They are actually also One of the hippies, the scene of taking drugs by the campfire is really taking drugs. Dennis Hopper was often drunk when they were filming. Their ideas are those of hippies, so in their view, the United States is naturally such a desperate look.
However, looking at it from the perspective of a bystander, what can we see? In my opinion, it is the confusion and emptiness of young people who are involved in all of this. Young people cannot find their position in society, cannot see how the future is, and are full of confusion about the meaning of life. A series of social turmoil in that period deepened the confusion, so I said that it was an era when the confusion of young people reached the culmination. What can they do? Drugs, sex, and short-lived Nirvana, they try to escape the inescapable sense of loneliness through these, but these are temporary. They can only obtain instant relief, but they cannot finally find the meaning of life. This is why Fonda The truth of everything is revealed at the end of the film: "we blew it".
What do they call freedom? It's the short-lived pleasure of being detached from reality, and it's leaving the troubles behind. What do they need urgently? It is one's own position in society. This is what all young people have to experience. It is what I and the classmates around me are experiencing. As opposed to the mainstream culture, the hippie movement provided them with such an opportunity. The demonstrations they participated in allowed them to tell themselves that they had no emptiness and that they had a place in this society, and people were most afraid of it. It's just that there is no place in the world. What I fear most is that I have walked this way in the world without leaving a trace. Such a panic set them on the road, and set them on the road in the name of freedom.
So I think in fact, whether it's Easy Riders, taxi drivers, or ALFY, the format of these movies may be different, but they have the same essence, the confusion of young people. The times will indeed have an impact on this, and at the same time it transcends the times, allowing these films to span decades of time to once again impact us today.
Why do I say that? In fact, I can simply analyze how the hippies back then went through their lives? Some died for various reasons. These are not what I want to talk about. What I want to discuss is those who are alive, those who are still in this world, what kind of attitude do they live in this world What about?
Jack Kerouac, when he was young and ignorant, he didn't know the purpose and end of the rebellion. Because blind madness did not provide Kerouac with the answer, it made him fall into a vicious circle of crazier and more confused, so he Turning to seek help from religion, his understanding of Zen Buddhism on Solitude Peak made him realize that after all, his care for the meaning of life still has to be put into life. After returning to the world, Kerouac had an in-depth experience and ultimate thinking about life. Kerouac became more and more aware that life is life. It does not have the supreme meaning because of someone's hard pursuit. On the contrary, the more peaceful life is, the more it can show the meaning of life.
Yes, easy rider, some people die on the road like the end of the film, and most people will go home someday. Their lives burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles, whether it was extinguished at the most dazzling apex or ended at the final burnout, they all left an extremely splendid brilliance.
Related recommendation: "Motor Diary", the story of Che Guevara's journey across South America on a motorcycle when he was young. This trip was also a crucial experience for the formation of Che Guevara's later political opinions. And Che Guevara is the banner of the hippie movement, why? One is because of his rebellious spirit, and the other is that many hippies are actually a little leftist. They yearn for the Garden of Eden, so the communist society is undoubtedly a huge attraction for them. In this case, of course we have to understand the charm of Che Guevara.
"On the Road", one of the most important works of the Beat generation, I think it is also the most famous. Garnett Hedland as Dean, the performance is remarkable.
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