Just looking at the script, I am willing to give five stars, but the scene scheduling is relatively monotonous and the camera movement is a bit deliberate, so I deducted one star.
The Chinese translation of the title is too deceptive, this is not a story about love at all, but a story about growing up (the English name should also be given a bad review, Liberal Arts is too casual). A 35-year-old literary man (Jesse) who is eager to go back to school, and a 19-year-old college girl (Zibby) who is eager to grow up quickly. At the beginning of the story, they meet. Like all love scenes, Zibby is matured by Jesse. And humorous, Jesse was drawn to Zibby's energy and precociousness, and they started chatting about their favorite music (classical and opera), finding that their tastes were so similar, they were both somewhat old-fashioned people. Zibby complained to Jesse that boys of the same age in college were too casual about their relationships, and Jesse laughed that he was like that when he was young, and apologized to Zibby on behalf of all boys aged 18-22. If the plot continues to develop like this until the male and female protagonists successfully overcome the barriers of age and come together, then it will be a romantic light comedy with interesting lines.
However, the direction of the plot was completely unexpected to me.
At the beginning, there are a few supporting characters that are important at first glance, and a supporting role that seems to be less important at the end but is very important (spoilers will start below).
The first is Peter, Jesse's second-favorite professor from his college days, who invited Jesse, who had been out of school for many years, to return to campus for his retirement farewell party. Peter is a very interesting old man. He sorted out a bunch of shirts that he no longer had the opportunity to wear because of retirement. He wanted to give them to Jesse. After being politely rejected by Jesse, he said unwillingly, "You don't want such a beautiful shirt, you must I'll regret it!" Just as he said, Peter is an old child who doesn't want to grow up. He has taught at the university for 37 years and has lived on campus all his life with 19-year-old young people. He said that in In his heart he always thought he was 19 until he looked in the mirror and found that he could no longer lie to himself, that he could not be 19 forever. He offered to retire, and in the face of the academy's retention, he still insisted on his decision. But at the retirement farewell party, he was very lost, and his farewell speech made everyone embarrassed and didn't know how to respond. Then he regretted it, and he approached the head of the department, hoping to return to teaching at the school, only to be told that his position had been given to a young and promising scholar. Peter begged, begged, cried and begged, and finally spoke badly (like a child) to the young department chair he had hired back then, but he couldn't get it back - just like our youth, gone forever.
Youth and old age are like a pair of enemies that cannot coexist peacefully with each other. Old people are always prone to prejudice against young people, but often forget that they were once young, and they are so irritable just because they are no longer young. On the contrary, it is young people's desire for maturity. They always hope that time will go faster, so that they can meet the future self as soon as possible and save the not-so-perfect "Lengtouqing".
Next is Dean, whom Jesse stumbles into at the coffee shop. Dean deliberately satirized Jesse because Jesse and he liked the same writer, and Dean later apologized to Jesse, saying he didn't know why he did it. In this respect, Dean and I are very much like me, craving the approval of others on the one hand, and terribly rejecting those who are like me on the other. When I was younger, I don't know why, but then I thought maybe it was the fear of someone claiming to be "like" and breaking into my life, we lived in isolation and read tomes (especially those tones). The Dark Book), enjoying solitude while criticizing it, all just to make yourself less happy, as if "happiness" was an addictive drug to stay away from. It's no accident that Jesse and Dean approached each other because they were so similar. When they were young, they read too many books and didn't have a common topic with their peers. They chose books as company because they were afraid of disappointing others. It was an escape . Dean seems to be luckier than Jesse because he met Jesse when he was 19 and encouraged him to do things that would make him happy, while Jesse only met a romantic literature professor, making him a more sentimental people.
Next, let's talk about this romantic literature professor (her name is too long, I really can't remember), in short, she is a female professor with a cold charm. Jesse, who returned to school, saw the female professor from a distance, and told Peter next to him that she was his favorite teacher in college. The second time, Jesse ran into a female professor in the bookstore and took the initiative to greet her and introduce herself, but the female professor ignored him. The third time, when Jesse was reading "Twilight" in order to convince Zibby that she shouldn't read "Twilight" and other garbage books, she happened to be caught by a female professor, and the female professor's eyes were saying: " How dare you say that you like my class after reading such a poor book?" The last time, after Jesse rejected Zibby's first night, she was alone in a bar, and she met a female professor again. At this time, the female professor seemed to be Just like a different person, she even took the initiative to invite Jesse to go home with her. After a lot of rain, the female professor who turned her face faster than her book immediately slammed Jesse away. Jesse was disillusioned at that moment with all the good fantasies of the female professor. He said, "I just had the least romantic night of my life with a Romantics Professor."
Life is often full of irony. Jesse began to think about what his literary obsession had brought him over the years.
In fact, everything we experience begins a section of our future life.
Back in New York, Jesse came to the bookstore he frequented with confusion, and he was always used to reading the last three pages of the same book. This time, Ana, the clerk of the bookstore, took the book from the shelf for him. It turned out that every understatement of Ana before was a foreshadowing. She observed Jesse's every move. She praised Jesse's new shirt for being beautiful. She was the one destined to be in Jesse's soul. No matter how many times Jesse ignored her before that, he would see the amazing beauty in her one day. This is also a miracle.
Many times this kind of "cause and effect" in life seems illogical, just like the weird Nat who always wears a red hat, appears by the big tree on campus, and calls Jesse Ethan for himself. Where did he come from, I don't know why he always appeared in that place in the middle of the night, I don't know who the friend he was going to visit was, but the unknown words he said to Jesse just contributed to Jesse's inner growth.
In this film, I saw a lot of shadows of my own life. I thought of myself when Jesse and Ana were sitting on the floor of the bookstore and when Ana said she was trying to read less because reading takes up so much of her life that she doesn't have time to experience life itself , especially for myself living in Hong Kong, in addition to taking classes in school, I watch movies in the cinema, and the content of class in school is also studying movies, not hypocritical, movies are the way I breathe. In Hong Kong, my favorite cinema is Yau Ma Tei Film Centre. Apart from the fact that it puts on a lot of literary and artistic films that other cinemas won't show, it is located in Yau Ma Tei, the most marketable place in Hong Kong. Temple Street is just a few steps away, and then go a little further. It is the place where fruits are wholesaled. Hong Kong people call it "fruit barn". The workers will start working when the sun is still up. I often watch movies and see midnight or even early morning, from the world in the movie to the most living world. , this feeling is too wonderful to describe in words, as if I am not a person who belongs here, and I am happy to be an "outsider", not an "outsider" in Hong Kong, but an "outsider" in life.
It was loneliness, the kind of loneliness Dean was talking about.
I'm grateful for the loneliness that made me who I am now. I love who I am now, and I still want to be better in the future. However, I don't mind if I walk a little slower at the moment, and a little slower, enough for me to appreciate the scenery along the way.
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