"If"-A May Storm Dream

Isac 2022-01-11 08:02:19

The film was shot after the May storm in France in 1968. It used the superb technique of combining reality and fiction to allude to the rich world of ideas of the students at that time. It changed back and forth between black and white images and color images. Fantasy and reality were both on the screen at the same time. Bold and original. The Paris student movement lasted for two months, and the huge waves set off in France directly sank President de Gaulle, which was already very difficult for the student revolution. Rather, let the audience comment on whether it is right or wrong. The historical merits and demerits are written by the victors, and they are only pioneers on the road of revolution. They are the most sensitive moments for ideals, beliefs, passions, emotions, lives, and rules. Emphasize the feelings of the inner world rather than the absolute control of rational authority.

The Paris students at the time were driven by their beautiful fantasy of foreign countries rather than their actual understanding. They tried to imitate China’s Cultural Revolution and Che Guevara’s revolutionary model to create a beautiful society with political equality, freedom for all, and improved living conditions. They were dissatisfied with the mediocre. The society and the backward education system were stimulated by the government’s arrest of students who had acted aggressively against American companies for opposing the Vietnam War, and the forced closure of universities that screened Che Guevara’s films, and a large-scale strike was launched. , The activity then evolved into a nationwide class strike and workers’ strike, which in turn affected a series of livelihood issues such as production and life, railways, water and electricity, and life in France fell into chaos. Although the situation subsided under the rule of de Gaulle, he also paid the price for his hesitation and twilight.

The film tells the story of the boy’s boarding school when the school started. Senior students were dissatisfied with the teacher's dictatorship, rigid system, backward education, brainwashing the lower grades, and so on. Because the narrative mode of fantasy and reality is synchronized, the film avoids the sharp criticism of current affairs at the time. It only gives a view of "if..." and enlarges the dream. It sharply satirizes the inhuman oppression and inhumanity of the boarding school at that time. The totalitarian rampage truly portrays the faces of a group of "hypocrite" teachers.

When black and white colors appear, they are often more subjective feelings and inner conjectures of the students, mixed with the dampness of the budding sex and the scorching heat of the blood of war, and the cynicism that protests against the formalism of the adult world and the rules and conventions: the female teacher touches the students naked. Our living utensils, the solitude of female and male teachers in the dormitory, the students singing in the lobby are like dolls of the same mold made in a factory, and Mike and the female shop assistant tear and kiss in the manner of a tiger. When our subjective emotions are greater than objective rationality, the various orders around us are always out of place: as small as the lights to be turned off at regular intervals, as large as the doctrines propagated by the pope. Suspicion and individualism occupy all the center of life. They don't believe in God, but they aspire to be God to save all living beings.

A lens wearing clothes, looking at a distant one, inadvertently interspersed with a lens of sleeping together, swaying the damp heat of lust

Regarding the causes and results of the student movement, there is not only the extraordinary vitality of the new wave, but there is no lack of critical violent contradictions. The most eye-catching scene in the whole film is that Mike and his friends are riding a stolen motorcycle and carrying like-minded girls in a field. Two boys stand in tandem with a girl with open arms. This picture not only shows the beauty of wild charm and the release of human nature, but at the same time it also exposes the superficiality of the boy's brain driven by sexual impulse. Unsurprisingly, the majority of ordinary people who have suffered undermining the social and economic order are the ordinary people in response to the times. This is also a sequelae of students becoming more and more confused after their impulse.

At the end, a few students led the female clerk of the fast food restaurant to massacre the military officers, enlisted students, parents, teachers, and religious people in the school, which made this revolution, which was good but uncontrollable in its original intention, draws people’s attention. The shadow of embarrassment: Although blood is rarely seen in the conflict, and the students are exposed to the danger of being counterattacked, the bodies of the old people who threw the street, the principal who tried to be a peacemaker and others fell in the ancient school. The state of affairs before the building changed its flavor and became a battlefield for the evil of human nature and the psychological expansion of blind followers.

Young minds are extremely sensitive to blood, death, and war in fascination and awe. They have both ignorant enthusiasm in the first awakening and fearless attempts. This is the driving force and source of all their actions.

Severe corporal punishment, enslavement of students, infill education, and rigid schedules are common problems for many school management. The irrationality exposed in the growth process of the school’s primary school students is also shocking: school violence, gang formation, and ignorance. As a handsome capital, evil forces rampant bystanders, and so on. Wanting to change the entire social atmosphere, but turning a blind eye to the unfair and unequal treatment of peers in one's own school, is undoubtedly a yearning for heroism and a failure of misappraisal of oneself.

In addition to the dictatorship of the school system, the film has to resist, as well as the overall depressive environment. At that time, when the United Kingdom was not a world-famous corrupt country, homosexuality was also considered a shameful and pathological behavior. Not only that, in the society at that time, girls were also required to maintain their virginity until after marriage and could only belong to the husband. The sexual depression of men and women is most directly reflected in the adolescents in the sexual enlightenment period: they are faithful to the body but repeatedly hit the wall, natural and happy things become unbearable, but the female steward in the school can be during the physical examination. In full view, the male students were asked to check their private parts half-naked. The contradictory thinking patterns in the adult world cannot provide a reasonable explanation for curious young people, because even they themselves are ashamed and afraid to find real answers. So violent suppression became the only means. Teachers used violence and brainwashing to eliminate students' dirty thoughts, while they themselves believed that hypocrisy was the only mode of survival in the debauchery, and that politeness was just a means of domination.

Mike, who likes to splicing posters, makes black and white posters and color posters overlap, which has a wonderful three-dimensional effect, similar to the structure of this film.

Comparing the student movement in Paris with the student movement that the Celestial dynasty cannot say, it is not the kind of cult that uses seemingly scientific explanations to confuse people's hearts and make sense. This is a group of groups armed with rationality and the supremacy of sensibility. They have many things in common: 1. Fight for legitimate rights His spirit is commendable, but the struggle movement is immature. It was not enthusiasm and blind ability to save. 2. It was blindly excited by a small group of ideal people with a large crowd of people who did not know the truth; 3. Most people didn’t use their brains. When the outside world is in trouble, blindly follow the trend, arm yourself with other people’s thoughts when you don’t understand the situation, and gain random benefits; 4. The unorganized and unrecorded movement is too idealistic, and in the end it is only a dystopian dream; 5. Students, The injuries and deaths of workers involve humanity and morality, but the masses who are unwilling to follow the trend but are affected by the movement’s life difficulties and even various tragedies are so innocent; 6. Those who have ideals and beliefs and uphold moral self-discipline and struggle to the last minute are worthy of admiration. Those who are irresponsible with lively talk can get rid of the calf; 7. Collectivism kills people, romanticism is life-threatening, and heroism has many evil consequences.

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Extended Reading

If.... quotes

  • Denson: Whips: Anyway, this homosexual flirtatiousness is so adolescent!

    Rowntree: Whips: What's the matter Denson... aren't you keen?

  • Headmaster: Education in Britain is a nubile Cinderella: sparsely clad and much interfered with.