The protagonist JD, I always call him "Jingdong" for convenience. At the beginning of 2017, I watched the novel "The Elegy of the Country Folks". In April, I first chatted with others about this story. She was a blind date introduced to me by a friend, and she graduated from Sichuan Normal University. Because we love literature, we always have a variety of books, movies, etc. in our chat. Her English is not good, and I was reading the original English, so for the convenience of chatting with her, I told her that the protagonist of the story is called "Jingdong".
I am very happy to be able to make a movie and can't wait to see a movie. However, after watching it, I realized that the theme conveyed by this movie was different from what I saw in the book. Three years have passed and I can't remember many of the plots, but I still want to talk about the difference between movies and books, and the "country folks" I can observe from movies.
The main location of the story is in Cincinnati, Ohio, and JD’s mother is an addict. There is a background. I hope everyone can understand that Cincinnati is the top ten drug-infested cities in the United States. There are also many drug addicts and corresponding rehabilitation centers. Jingdong’s mother "N enters N exits" rehab also has a reason. Think about how you can escape the temptation of drugs in such an atmosphere? It's like sitting in an apple orchard, always telling yourself that I don't want to eat an apple today, but when you are hungry and thirsty, you will inevitably reach out and pick one to quickly solve your physical and psychological needs. However, you must also know that in the city of Cincinnati, there are famous Fortune 500 companies General Electric, Procter & Gamble P-&G, and many financial companies. Despite being in a rusty zone, the city is prosperous because of these international companies. The influx of people and ethnic integration must be considered well. The affluent middle class earns $15K a month, not to mention company executives, but there is still a huge gap between the rich and the poor. A friend told me that a black lady could not afford a second-hand car, so she could only take the bus to the company before dawn. As the company's temporary front desk, she received a salary of more than $1K a month. I used to live in Cincinnati for a year. American colleagues said that the area we live in is better in the local area, both in terms of public security and physical facilities. This is not the case in middle town. An American colleague who is about to retire told me that he lives in middle town, but he always took his gun when he went to collect the rent, for fear that the tenants would fall back on the bill or the drug addicts would not restrain themselves. Live by yourself.
There are many scenes of family lawns in the play. If you look closely, you will find that many lawns are not trimmed. Americans, especially the middle class, value lawn mowing very much, because that is the face of others. This is like the large yard of the Northeast. If the yard in summer is not clean and unruly, and the snow in the yard is not cleared in winter, neighbors will gossip about it. Laziness and burying are all used to knock down people. My American colleague once said to me: "We Americans are too boring. In spring, we buy grass seeds, plant them, fertilize them, and sprinkle water, and then cut the grass every three and a half." It sounds a bit similar to hair. If you mess up your hairstyle, you lose face. For the JD family, if you even have a problem with eating, mowing doesn't seem like a big deal. There are several places in the play that directly mention money, such as JD’s tuition fees, and JD.com helps mothers to pay for the asylum by swiping their cards. There is one more detail. Jingdong gave several credit cards, and then used different amounts. Because JD is a student, applying for a credit card in this capacity is actually very difficult to get a large amount of credit, so that in daily life, it is necessary to use multiple credit cards to deal with large amounts of payment. So is $1,000 considered a large amount? Calculated. For example, a discover credit card is usually $1,000 for a student's initial application. There are also several places where money is not directly mentioned. For example, my grandmother paid for the calculator so that there was no money to pay for the pills and food. Drugs are very expensive in the United States. Without medical insurance, a bottle of daily medication can cost thousands of dollars. Food gives us the most obvious feeling. First, this feeling is the most direct, and second, it can deeply reflect the embarrassment of grandma. Food in the United States is extremely cheap. Fast food restaurants such as McDonald’s often provide a set menu of 2 hamburgers for $1; the unit price of food in large supermarket chains is also surprisingly cheap; if you can find any part-time job with an hourly salary on this day, Then there is no problem for you to feed yourself. Although the situation of Jingdong and Grandma is a bit exaggerated, it is not unreasonable: both young and old are incapable of working.
There are a lot of swear words in movies and books. This can be regarded as the consistency between literature and movies, but it also conforms to the background of JD.com. For those who grew up in this environment, it is very easy for children to learn swear words. Parents with very low levels of education do not think that they have an impact on their children, let alone their children's learning. Besides, in this family, there seems to be no civilized person (except sister) in three generations. Grandma's abuse of her mother, her mother's scolding of Jingdong, and Jingdong's rebellion against her grandma and mother, foul language came out directly from the mouth along with the feelings at the time. Everyone who joins this family is full of quarrels and foul language. Grandma, mother, JD.com, her mother has several boyfriends, and JD’s partners. Faced with the role of mother, shop assistants, nurses, etc., have to "swear back" to resist this role. When communicating with my American colleagues, both native Americans and immigrant Chinese have many restrictions on the words of their children. When I was chatting with mentor's son, and when he was so excited he used adverbial swear words, both mentor and his wife told him to pay attention to language. Although I didn't think it offensive, because at the time I just translated "TMD" in my mind to express my strong feelings and express the poor English words. Think about our surroundings, isn't it also such an environment? If parents are busy with their livelihoods, there is a high probability that they will not care about the growth of their children.
There are three unforgettable places in my memory.
The first is that the mother wants to drive and die with her son. If it weren't for a deep hatred, he wouldn't kill his son. In fact, this movie does not fully show the madness and depravity of his mother. I remember that the book mentions his mother's cursing, resentment towards people around him, dependence on drugs, and false promises to his family. What makes people feel more pitiful and want to give up at the same time is that she keeps changing her boyfriends. She seems to be looking for love or getting care, but when she meets a scumbag, she will directly suffer pain, because all the scumbag can give is harm; even if she meets someone who is willing to live together, she will get along because of drugs and get along with violence. , And ultimately was cruelly abandoned. She will never get what she wants, so she will say that these results are blamed on her two children, and Jingdong will inevitably be blamed.
The second part is not shown in the movie. What I can recall is that my grandma pointed a gun at her mother and told her that she should never step into her house. Imagine if a family has come to such a stage, how divided the family is, what kind of hatred did some of them do? The film constantly inserts scenes from the life of young Jingdong and his family, and it also slightly introduces how grandma treated her mother when she was young. This is like a vicious circle. Grandma walked into the marriage ignorantly and violently. As a daughter, she also unconsciously followed the same route as a mother, even more tragic. And Jingdong’s sister does not seem to escape such a life trajectory, fortunately, the family formed is still peaceful. The male family role is missing in this movie. Grandpa didn’t have a few lines, so he got the box lunch early; the mother’s boyfriend changed and changed, and he couldn’t reach the father’s family role at all; only Jingdong was the only one in this family. Reluctantly support its male responsibility.
The third place is not obvious in the movie. What Jingdong saw when he drove back to his hometown and took his mother out of the hospital corresponded to the part of his revisit at the end of the book. What JD.com saw after returning to his hometown after many years was that the town was the same as his childhood rundown and ignorance, almost unchanged. The youngsters do nothing and rely on some bad tastes to pass the time; the middle-aged people cling to their former occupations, which did not bring life to life, nor did they give the children more education and hope; the old people were still in a daze, sitting in front of their own doors Or in the sofa. When I read this, I was thinking, isn’t my hometown also in this scene? Nowadays, many people say "the hometown you can't go back to", which is actually the scene. In addition to the complicated relationship between neighbors, it is the decline, dilapidation, and lifelessness of the hometown. It is not difficult to save the material, but it is another matter to save the mind.
Before reading the book "The Elegy of the Country Folks", I knew very little about the bottom American people. After reading "You shall fly over your mountain like a bird", on the contrary, I can better understand the struggle of the people at the bottom. The difference between the two lies in the influence of religion on the family, but the similarities are both: education and family. JD’s family is full of violence. There are not many positive things that accompanied him when he grew up. Instead, he worked hard to advance in this dilapidated environment, studying, joining the military, college, and finally entering the middle class. After graduating from law school, he actually advanced in his career as a lawyer. Later, he entered the investment field and moved with his family to the capital of Ohio. Until the movie mentioned, their family settled in Cincinnati. .
When I finished writing this film review, I was thinking about myself. I was born in the northeast rust belt. Although I am not a member of rust, the northeast has faced the same situation of hillybilly for two decades. The exodus of jobs and population, the decline in the quality of education, and the trial of the farm model have forced the original Northeastern people who are not wealthy face what happened to the Jingdong family. I once thought that through education, we can get rid of material and spiritual poverty from generation to generation, but in recent years I have slowly dispelled this idea. In addition to the responsibilities of the government, the family and the individual are also very important.
There are also two small details in the movie, which I think are quite interesting to me personally:
1. Jingdong even drove at night to the interview the next morning. I once drove from Cincinnati to Washington DC and spent the entire day on the highway. Only the radio and the music on my phone accompanied me, but I still felt exhausted. However, JD.com was able to interview vigorously the next day.
2. When Jingdong and his girlfriend stated their family situation, the girlfriend chose to laugh more. I think this should be a common belief among Americans. Marriage is a matter of two people, not two families.
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