Family movies are always the favorite genre. This movie is somewhat similar to the previous one I like [In My Father's Den], about a return, the past, and the relationship between father and son.
Some people ridiculed that the estrangement between father and son will not be released just because of an old warm family video. Then he may not have seen Michael ask his father in tears, "What happened between us, it was not like this before." He may have forgotten that in the darkened room after his anger, little Michael said goodnight to his father who had left. The accidental departure of the mother gave the final answer to the compromise and reconciliation between father and son.
The film's interspersed transition between memory and reality is very smooth. There is also a very clever connection, which is a memory paragraph inserted between the little Christopher ran out of the house and ran to the wheat field. At the beginning of the paragraph, Christopher's back disappeared, and the camera moved to the childhood Michael and Jane in front of the porch. At the end of the paragraph, the driving Michael saw his childhood self running oncoming, and in the rearview mirror Christopher, who was the same age now, appeared.
Many of the criticisms I read are aimed at the characters' lack of digging and in-depth, I don't think it is necessary, at least this is not another [American Beauty]. The grown-up Michael is the only main line of the plot. The fragments recalled in this movie are more brilliant and deepen in the narrative process. As other characters are interlopers, there is nothing wrong with coloring them. For example, with the appearance of Michael's ex-wife, what we need to see is the re-love of the two (which coincides with the trend of the movie's happy ending), and there is no need to investigate the rift between the two. The ambiguous relationship between Michael and Jane (an aunt who is about his age) hinted but not clearly explained, in my opinion, may be the only failure of this movie.
As Jane said in that somewhat out of control conversation, Michael's real purpose in writing the book is to prove himself to his father. Fireflies in the Garden will no longer be an attack that humiliated his father. I think this book was also written by Michael to his mother, a mother who relies on but wants to protect. In the end, when the mother passed away, the father had already understood himself, and it was a reasonable and reassuring ending to be burned.
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