After watching this movie, thinking of my own eighth grade, I really have a lot of feelings. The troubles Kayla encountered in the eighth grade are the troubles many teenagers have, such as the desire to grow up, the desire to be famous, the desire to be a social queen, and the desire to be popular among students. But most people are a little inferior, not confident, and feel very empty when they grow up. Compared with children in China, children in North America may be more mature and realize sex earlier. This film has some insights into the psychology of the protagonist in the special period of eighth grade, such as trying social, trying conflict, and finally failing, which is very real. But at the same time, this film is inevitably mixed with the imagination of some adults. For example, with regard to the use of mobile phones, personal opinions, although the frequency of teenagers using mobile phones has greatly increased, it has not yet reached the point where the film is exaggerated. For Western children, they actually use mobile phones less frequently. Then the father-daughter relationship is also a very important story line in this film, but I think this line is incomplete. For example, where does the daughter's dissatisfaction and hostility toward the father come from? Whether the father caused the mother to leave, which caused the daughter's rebellious psychology, and the father tried to be patient and compensate the daughter. These are things the director did not tell the audience. The relaxation of the relationship between the father and the daughter in the film is not an incident, but a dialogue. It is like telling her some life philosophy when her daughter is sad, which can really solve the troubles of adolescence. It is too straightforward.
Secondly, there are some problems with the film technique. In one scene, the daughter at the table is staring at the phone. In this scene, the dialogue between the two is relatively boring and prolonged. For comparison, refer to "American Beauty" and "Genetic Doom". The table scene of the show shows that the family relationship is much better. The second is the lens. The lens of the dining table scene should be handheld, and the traces of jitter can be clearly seen, but I don't see the need for the main lens to be handheld. On the contrary, it is cumbersome and makes the screen look messy. If it is to show the volatility of the two people's quarrel, can the lens be diversified? It's not just the change of two camera positions. Speaking of the single shot, there is another scene where Kayla goes to the mall for a series of continuous shots. This should be regarded as a transition, a more important node, and the photographer only uses handheld follow-up to express the characters at a fast pace, which is more boring. A better choice can be to use a rocker arm, refer to the way the characters appear in the "Queen Wearing Prada".
Of course, a very novel aspect of this film is to use my own recorded video to connect each small plot, and at the same time, it can express the inner world of the characters. This is very interesting, because the video on YouTube can also be regarded as a role in the play. In fact, I particularly understand this psychology, that is, teenagers want to be popular, but later I found that this has only become a way of recording their lives. However, this is not undesirable when the director avoids telling the story as a running account. Comparing the whole film, the girl's goal is very general, that is, to become confident. Such a goal is difficult to achieve in concrete terms. Why Lady Bird looks good, because Lady Bird's goal is to leave the village and go to school in New York, under the clear goal of designing the growth of love and friendship. And there is no such specific goal in the eighth grade, so the director's narrative is still very good.
To sum up, I don’t really understand why this film has a high evaluation in North America, and it was even shortlisted for the Gotham Awards. Anyway, it may be because of cultural differences.
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