The first film review written in my life, a serious spoiler.
Benny grew up in a wealthy family and can spend money at will, so he has all the conditions to complete the action. He watched a lot of violence from television media, video tapes, and movies. His father even took him to the farm to see the scene where a pig was killed. He photographed the moment of killing and death. His camera ignored death like his cold heart. All these "images of death and violence" were like milk spilled on the table, and Benny wiped them off easily with a cloth, just like he wiped off the large amount of blood oozing from the girl on the ground, without a trace of fear.
Only when the strange girl he invited to the house said "it's snowing" at the moment the pig was shot, did he (along with the audience) realize that the world is bigger than his gaze. The existence of cause and effect of heaven and earth. But that moment did not touch Benny's stiff heart. Then he shot the girl easily (pig gun). After dealing with the heart-shaking murder, the script described Benny's behavior briskly. He was not afraid and nervous, but first went to eat a dessert, drew for a while, and casually looked at the girl's schoolbag. Disposing of the girl's body in the gap is no different from cleaning the house. He was afraid of getting his clothes dirty, so he finished dealing with the blood stains naked. He made an appointment with his friends to go to the nightclub. He sat naked in front of the mirror and called. He looked at himself in the mirror and saw the blood stains on his body. The video recorded that he smeared blood on the body with his hands.
Then Benny went out as usual. At this time, the audience knew that Benny had killed someone and the body was still at home. With this premise, watching Benny's whereabouts, he went to find his sister, is he looking for her sister's help? While his sister was not at home, he stayed at a friend's house at night, and he just stopped talking. There was a trace of desire to confess in his heart, but it all ended in vain. In the end, this confession was expressed in his hair. He happened to pass by the barber shop and went in and shaved his head. At this moment, we can see the energy hidden in Benny's heart, the energy surging inside after killing someone is expressed.
The next story must be how parents should deal with this matter. The first is what happened to her mother. When Benny opened the door, her mother was arranging flowers. When she saw Benny's bald head, she was stunned in surprise. Then my father scolded blindly, "You shave your head like a prisoner, you have to be a model of abiding by the rules." . etc. Blindly declared morals and rules, the father’s mind was full of useless dogma and discipline. In these words, he never cared about the reason behind his son’s shaved head (shaving the head is so strong, indeed Did not arouse any real concern from his father) So Benny brushing his teeth in the toilet did not even look at his father. He did his own thing in the toilet nonchalantly, and finally only said to his father who was stiffly blocking the door, "I can Did you leave?" The script began to show the style of a father at this moment.
The next day, Benny easily lied and betrayed his friends in class. Immediately after returning home, Benny showed the video of the killing to his parents. The film directly presents close-ups of the faces of three people facing the murder video at this time. The first is the mother, her response comes from instinct and helplessness, frightening. Then it was Benny himself. He blinked when the gunshots rang out in the picture, and then his nostrils expanded slightly, showing an unbearable deep emotion surging. Only the father was expressionless, watching "normally", he didn't even blink when the third shot killed the girl.
After Benny fell asleep at night, his father and mother had a long talk in the living room to discuss countermeasures. In fact, it was only the father who was doing extremely rational analysis and the suggestion that he wanted to conceal the facts and smash the body. The mother's reaction was very interesting. She couldn't bear to smile after listening to her father's advice on smashing the corpse. This is a typical laugh, a light laugh at the moment when the extreme of absurdity is exposed (this is a common human response), she just keeps expressing her powerlessness and questioning her father "You are serious Is it?". Interestingly, the father mentioned that "they will think that the son has committed such a crime and the father is also responsible." This confession not only contains the blame from the playwright, but also contains the real root cause of the father's heart: weakness and absconding.
A huge lie is about to unfold. His mother took Benny to Africa and fled temporarily. His father will destroy all the violent and murdered Xue Zang in these days. In order to return to and maintain a peaceful life on the surface. For all the contemporary "similar groups of people" referred to in the script, this is an irresistible cloak of lies, a peaceful life that needs to be maintained.
Then the director used a lot of relationship shots to shoot mother and son in Africa. (In the previous chapter, the characters appeared mainly in single shots) Came to a backward country, as a tourist from a capitalist country, watched (largely using Benny’s video recorder) the backward landscape: everywhere outside the bus window Built-up buildings, poor street markets. The mother and son live in a high-end hotel. They experience the pastime time like all tourists, go to the beach to swim, visit places of interest, and play in entertainment facilities. This period was accompanied by the brisk pleasure brought by some travel, and at the same time, there were several unknown calls between mother and father far away. After a few days of play, it seemed that the murder was so far away.
In the last few days of staying in Africa, suddenly one day, mother and son lay on the same bed as the previous few days, and the son was watching the singing and dancing show on TV with ease. Suddenly in this superficial peace, the mother couldn't bear the surging of her heart, leaving tears.
This is the most touching moment in the movie, because all these lies finally reveal the true feelings. Only the tears of the mother's grief and sorrow watered the boy's heart, and only this moment was the moment of salvation for the entire movie. In the scam of his life, in the lies of his father, the wealth of the upper class, and the violence that is easily presented by the TV media, the boy finally met a soft and true moment of tremor. At this moment, the cloak of numbness and deceit was finally torn open. Sorrow, fear, regret, the roots of all goodness are revealed nakedly in the mother's desperate howling.
An interesting dark line is light and darkness. When the mother and son slept on the bed in an African hotel for the first time, the son couldn't sleep because the light in the room was too bright. The mother said whether to close the curtains, and the son said no. The light at this moment prevents Benny from falling asleep in the darkness (his room is always dark with the curtains drawn all the time), just like he saw the little Madonna on the wall of his home several times. It is the light brought by the Virgin (his mother), the light of sympathy and true heart shining in the tears of sorrow.
After this light, the movie ushered in the light. Benny went home and opened his room. The curtains were all drawn. The room was completely bright, and Benny didn't close the curtains again.
After that, the second most critical dialogue in the movie came. When my father had finished everything, he came to Benny’s bed and asked him: I just want to know one thing.
Father: "Why?".
Benny: "I don't know, I just want to know what's going on."
This line covers all the questions of the whole story: a teenager, in a numb (father's blind dogma without sincere communication), lies (father's lies), connivance (all the material wealth given by the father, a teenager's economic freedom) After growing up presumptuously in an environment full of insignificant visual violence, the answer given to a murder motive was only a soft sentence: "I just want to know what's going on?"
This includes serious consequences caused by the simple growth of minors and the aphasia of family education in the entire society.
Later, the film further attached the image violence that everyone thought was irrelevant to the protagonist himself.
Benny used a video recorder to record his father's incriminating evidence that night and handed it to the police. In the last scene, the audience saw the Benny family being taken away from the police station on the TV. The violence that was out of reach in the media, the violence that seemed to happen only on the screen, and the violence that didn't matter to you, finally fell on you. He eventually became the violence in the image.
Of course, from a human point of view, this is a father-killing movie.
2021/3/2
Shanghai
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