In this age when individuality and characteristics are always emphasized, every blockbuster movie wears a gorgeous coat more or less. This coat can be as ostentatious as "Parasite", or as full of air as "Irishman" and "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood", or as "Rome" and "Burning", looking at its ugly appearance but sullen in its bones. In the past few years, those masterpieces that you can remember that make people clap your hands and applaud, all have some "selling points" that are not necessarily gimmicks but unavoidable. But gradually I will start to reflect on whether my indulging in clever and fancy art has actually led to a further and further distance from the real world. Is the film a "sugar-coated" charm or a real prism.
Juxtaposing Ken Lodge's new work this year "Sorry, We Missed You" with the above-mentioned movies will give people such inspiration. In recent years, there have been too many works related to class contradictions, immigration issues, or equal rights movements. Perhaps, the scarcity of films focusing on the working class on the market has created the "freshness" in our eyes. But in fact, this "freshness" is what the film most disdains to explore and present, and it is even more shining because of the stripping of these embossments.
The brilliance of the movie is inseparable from the wonderful performances of the two leading actors. In particular, the heroine Abbie, with her gentle eyes and a neither humble nor arrogant attitude, accurately shows us how people are further compressed in the face of the pressure of life without losing their dignity. The scene in which she mad at Maloney on the phone in the hospital is believed to be one of the most moving movie moments of 2019. This image is very touching, largely because we see our own shadow in it. Who doesn't have a boss who is always invigorating, a customer who doesn't care about feelings, who doesn't experience the work schedule of racing against the deadline every day, and the time lost little by little in the long-distance commute. The hard work and gritted teeth, persistence and embarrassment we have in our lives, isn't it the attitude that Abbie tried to maintain on the verge of losing each other again and again. I believe this dignity to be kept is across class, education level and social identity.
The male protagonist Ricky is a slightly different character. If Abbie's image is more stable and refreshing, like gurgling water, then the former is dazzling sunlight, occasionally radiant and occasionally a bit too direct and rude. In fact, like his son Seb, he is a risk-bearer. He is willing to make double efforts on the choices he believes, and he also bet on double the fate, leaving no way out. This is a slightly angular and tragic character, but the director is not obsessed with paying attention to and analyzing the "flaws" at the personal level, and he did not empathize too much. Instead, he shifted his attention to the system behind the tragedy. Sexual factors. The film reveals how in this “efficiency first” environment, employers exploit workers in the name of “empowerment”. The lack of basic living guarantees, the collapse of orderly family relationships, and the “every second counts” laborers have become slaves of time and progress under the guise of “self-employment”.
The film intentionally or unintentionally tells us that the economic division of labor and technological progress are completely and irreversible for producers and consumers to upgrade their pursuit of efficiency, but we often ignore its harm or simply fail to notice its occurrence. . When humans are still looking forward to the machine replacing themselves one day, it is very likely that they have become that machine in the first place. Ken Rocky raised this question without evasiveness, but at the same time, he bravely proposed a solution or an attempt to rationalize it. We saw that Ricky stumbled up from the bed after the "worried catastrophe", leaving a note, and then went on to work. The ending of the movie is that the boss Maloney and his wife Abbie sing red cheeks and white cheeks, pushing their lives miraculously and moving forward again.
I think this is what really touches people in this movie. The continuation of life has never depended on additional meaning and strength, let alone those things that are metaphysical or that only exist for a moment. The answers we found in many other works that were once believed to be true may not be as powerful as this note left by Ricky to his family. In fact, after most conflicts, no jade or stone is burned, because people always fall and rise almost instinctively, choosing to forget. I think the essence and end of life is that after we have been swallowed by our own choices and bruised by bad luck and not strong enough, we continue to move along the way we came.
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