An epic movie always chooses the audience, not the other way around.
How lucky I am, I was picked by it last night, without warning, and watched the remaining five and a half hours. The first few times before, it didn't last for half an hour. Read it before dawn. Read it in the coldest, darkest, quietest hours of winter nights. I cried many times in Xia Que and laughed many times after reading it.
It seems that at some point in the third hour of the film, it is certain that I will write what I am writing. Instead of writing book and film reviews like in the past, I will spend a few days after the end, thinking silently, calming my emotions, weaving words, and gradually flowing out. It also seems that while making a decision, the above title appeared. These are the sentences that crossed my mind again and again as time passed and the plot progressed for five hours. Watching the 40-year life history of a family and the main characters, the movie has exhausted the stitches, folds, changes, and vicissitudes of time. Every time I am moved by the people in the story, I meditate to myself and to them: We don't know anything about destiny.
What is destiny?
Everything revolves around the brothers who mirror each other - the story of Nicolas and Matteo.
Brother Nikolai is gentle and flexible, delicate and sunny. The younger brother Matteo is sharp and pure, handsome and impulsive. At the beginning of the story, Mateo, who is well-educated in literature and loves poetry very much, failed in the exam because he insisted that the evaluation of artistic achievements should be considered separately from the artist's own morality, and disagreed with the professor. The gentle Nikolai did what he liked, won the praise of the medical professor, and successfully got a high score.
The brothers and two other friends had agreed to go on a graduation trip together. But Mateo accidentally meets Georgina, a girl trapped in a mental hospital, and he is touched by her fragility, amazing beauty, fierce resistance to the outside world and unease. Unable to bear the hospital's repeated electric shock treatment, she secretly escaped with her, hoping to send her home. He came with her as he joined the other three. The two friends were amazed, but Nikolai decided to "rescue" the girl with his brother.
During the trip, both brothers fell in love with Georgina. In the middle of the way, Georgina and Mateo had a violent quarrel because of privately looking at her manuscript, while Nikolai calmed Georgina, who was on the verge of illness, with his usual gentleness and patience. They found the girl's father, but were turned away. The three who continued to move forward were a little dazed, not knowing where to go. At the train station, Nikolai asked Georgina to buy ice cream alone out of good intentions, but she was taken away by two police officers who happened to meet at the counter because of her unusual behavior. As she passed the two brothers, Georgina motioned for them to keep quiet. The two really didn't move, and they said goodbye at a glance.
The twists and turns of fate always show up at the most inadvertent moment. This sudden farewell was the first decisive moment of fate.
It was night, and the two brothers were relatively silent because of self-blame and guilt. After realizing there was nothing they could do, they chose to avoid Georgina. Nicola finally proposed to go directly to meet the other two friends and continue the journey, and Mateo agreed. He hadn't slept all night, his face seemed expressionless, but there was disappointment in his eyes. At dawn, leaving his sleeping brother behind, he boarded the train back to Rome alone. Nikolai, who woke up in time, was angry and shocked, and begged him not to be impatient, but he understood that nothing would help. His younger brother is so angular, stubborn and firm, a personality that no one can persuade when he makes a decision. The two are separated. Each embarked on a hastily chosen destiny trajectory in the chaos.
After that, Mateo's fortunes took a turn for the worse. Nikolai, on the other hand, tends to balance after ups and downs. Mateo went his own way, gave up his university studies, chose to join the army, and disregarded his brother's opposition and advice to become an inconspicuous policeman. Nikolai did not find two friends. After wandering around in several Nordic countries, he was logging in Norway. Because of the floods in Florence, he was recruited to return to his country to participate in disaster relief.
In Florence, Nicholas excitedly reunites with Matteo, who is already a soldier. He was still in a mess, and was deeply moved by the beautiful piano music that suddenly sounded, and he met Julia, the performer and the love of his life. This is the second decisive moment of fate.
While rescuing the precious books in the Florence library together, the brothers read the pages of ancient Latin books floating on the sewage with the dim light of flashlights, and discussed their future options. Nikolai said he wanted to study neuroscience, and hoped to find Georgina in the future to help more patients like her from being tortured by electric shocks. Matteo said he wanted to become a police officer, but he did not explain why, nor did he respond to his brother's advice and accusations that he wasted his talent. For choices, they all did what they wanted.
After that, radical left-wing activities were in full swing among European youth. Julia responded fiercely and participated enthusiastically, letting Nicola know she was pregnant during a chase from riot police. At the same time, Mateo broke out into conflict with the students, his colleague and friend was paralyzed, and he was transferred for violently beating the client. He goes to see Nicola, and Julia gets up and slams the next door, slamming the piano in anger. Nicola patiently mediates, saying she is "always the right type" like her brother.
With a child, Julia stopped playing, became trapped in her motherhood, questioned herself, became angry, and eventually sold the piano. Nikolay's digging into psychiatric research, bit by bit, changed the dark side of the industry, sending abusive doctors to court. During an operation, he accidentally rescued a group of mental patients who were tortured in the basement in a mental hospital. As if destined, Georgina was among them.
Mateo met Melalie, who loved photography, in Sicily. She is warm, he is alienated. He half-seriously told her how to search for mystery, to read into people's hearts. He casually said, if he went to work in a library, which was the best library in Rome. Before leaving, she asked his name. He hesitated a little and said, My name is Nikolai. Leaving without looking back.
The brothers then lost their father. Julia leaves home to devote herself to a left-wing assassination group. Mateo was transferred to Rome, avoided seeing his family, and reunited with Melari at work in the library he once recommended. They had an intimate relationship, but he deceived her again and again about his own affairs, hot and cold. At work, he was still furious when interrogating suspects, punching and kicking. After seeing the profile of Julia, one of the arrestees, he was already deeply tired of and self-abandoned by himself, the system, and the rules.
The day before New Year's Eve, Melalie couldn't stand being left out, she found the police station where he worked, broke his lies about his name and occupation, spy on him, and demanded a result. He shut down his emotions furiously, scolded her, rejected her, and let her go. On New Year's Eve, Mateo arrived late at home to reunite with his family. Couldn't fit into the warm atmosphere. Unable to open up to family. He couldn't face his mother's ardent love, just as he couldn't face the all-A transcript in high school hanging by his mother's bed. Unable to say goodbye seriously to the beloved brother Nikolai he wanted to be. Falsely claiming to have a work call, Mateo returns to his small apartment where he lives alone. After wandering around for a while, he slowly unlaces his shoes on the balcony, takes off his boots, and jumps downstairs, as inadvertently as all fateful moments in the movie.
The splendid fireworks of the New Year bloom silently in the open sky in front of the balcony, one after another. As for the fate of Mateo, here is the end. The fate of the entire family also turned here.
From this beginning, my movie viewing entered into a seemingly lag, but extremely turbulent emotional ups and downs. Even if the director's shooting technique is consistent, smooth, slow, and gentle like water, even if the pictures and scenes are bright and beautiful, even if it is just a common sentence. I cried and cried and laughed and laughed until it was over. Tears like a landslide are the following four:
1. After Mateo committed suicide, the mother sat in his apartment, looked around blankly without tears, and finally asked Nicola and the younger daughter to help her take all Mateo's books. After carrying some books as far as they could, the children supported their mother and slowly went downstairs to the car. The three witnessed the cleaning workers use decontamination paint to remove Mateo's blood, a habitual method, a mechanical action without emotion. The moment she turned her back and walked forward, her mother suddenly collapsed and threw out the book in her arms. The two brothers and sisters couldn't control it any longer, and cried while hugging their mother.
2. Julia, who was in prison, received a package from Nikolai. The message was "I send something that only you can read". It was a stack of sheet music. She opened one of the Bach books, and the high-pitched music sounded in time, as bright as a hymn. She had been so alive, so sure, so beautiful.
3. Nikolai was invited to conduct a psychiatric examination of a defendant, presumably by proving that he was a mentally ill person to be released from prison. When the two met face to face, the other finally said in a calm tone, "I'm just a victim of political upheaval, and you think you're changing everything that's corrupt, but you're just an accomplice to the system. A grayed-out middle-aged Nicola walks out of prison, only to bump into a photo exhibition poster featuring Matteo's portrait. Those penetrating eyes, those penetrating faces. Only the dead remain forever young, pure, passionate, idealistic.
4. Nicola took his mother to Naples to visit Mateo's child, the last bond he left to his family and the world. Under the face and eyes of joy and expectation that his grandmother could not hide, the little boy Andrew turned his head and smiled brightly, like an angel descending.
Fate manifests in character. Did Mateo, who called himself Nicola to Melalie, want to be gentler and kinder, to always bond with all his family members with actions, to love those he loves, to take responsibility, and to do what he wants to do? And Mateo, who is sharp, sensitive, penetrating, clear love and hate, fragile and tough, rough and tender, impulsive and firm, conceited and self-confident, Mateo who attracts the love and attention of all family and friends, is it not Nico Is it the person you want to be in the same way that Ra spreads tender love to the world? They all received their own destiny through their own character, and received the love and understanding they expected. It is only for Matteo, who is more sensitive, more sober, more introverted, and more idealistic, and is therefore troubled at home and abroad, and has closed his expression. Because of his strong personality, life is extraordinarily cruel and painful.
Destiny lurks in politics. Intense like Julia and Mateo, but after devoting themselves to the order and rules they believe in, they are disheartened to see the truth. They may all suffer from lack of patience. Mateo says goodbye to self-destruction. Julia renounces music and returns to the Florence library after the flood, which is also the place of atonement for her fate.
Destiny is also contained in the family deeper than the sea, the family that will always anchor the wandering ronin, the friendship that crosses classes and never leaves, and the parenting of children mixed with sweetness, sadness, rebuke, but full of love. There is forgiveness, there is return, and there is atonement.
And at the end of fate, politics, character, family, friendship, forgiveness...the end of all of this, is love. only love.
I think the reason why the movie is so beautiful and moving is that in addition to the grandeur and shock of fate, it is the kindness and love that float on all of them.
Love bridges every family squabble, whether it's Mom and Dad at the beginning of the film, or Mateo and Julia, or Nicola and Julia. Love gives Julia redemption, and she finally gets her forgiveness by playing for her pregnant daughter. Love leaves the only clue left to the world after Matteo's fall. Love makes Georgina walk out of the mental hospital to find Matteo's love and trace the traces he left in the world. After Ai let her daughter get married, Nicola and Melalie, who were alone again, broke through the shackles and finally kissed each other with the blessing and forgiveness of Mateo. Love continues to migrate to the next generation, making Andrew say to Nicola from the air: "(During the journey) I think of Dad, Mom, and you. You always say that things are always good, and I think you are right. , everything is really beautiful."
Yes, everything is truly beautiful.
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