The whole film intersperses the past and the present, and the sequence of the story is scattered like memory, but it is well-tuned and it is effortless to appreciate.
I remember when I just watched it, I thought about the English title Louder Than Bombs carefully, wondering what exactly was compared with that explosion?
memory? that moment? That second?
The whole movie is about three boys surrounding the mother who was killed in a car accident. They tried to remember her in her remains, but found that the woman who had existed was different from what they remembered. Is it secret? Or is it just a necessity of life?
The director clarified the relationship between the family and the four people in a clever way. In this process, he also began to discover the secrets hidden by everyone bit by bit.
But not so much as a secret, it can actually be interpreted as a secret of life. Everyone has their own memories and cognitions. This is a message that cannot be conveyed completely, so that we can be different. And it’s very interesting that the director uses Isabelle’s career to explain this law. The same photo, different cutting methods will create different views and positions, as if I saw your goodness, others saw you. The evil is general.
Rather than being a secret, it can be explained as a kind of problem that must arise in life, or it can be said to be a kind of life's trajectory.
Looking back at our own memories, almost all are good. Even bad memories are usually slightly beautified and stored in our minds. We are often only willing to remember those beautiful things. The hatred in the mouth, after some time, the content is too squeaky to say, we all tend to keep the good memories.
Just like these three men, the wives or mothers in their minds are so beautiful; however, when the truth in reality is about to overthrow the perception of memory, such a mental explosion can be said to be no small thing.
"Bomb" represents two meanings in this film, one is the obvious car accident and battlefield explosion, and the other is the explosion of the hearts of three men.
This film uses slow motion to express what happened at the moment of the explosion. I like this kind of contradictory way of expression very much. At that second, people are almost frozen, without any reaction, as if floating in a gravity-free universe. The surroundings are silent, and the fragments are moving slowly in the air. The delay in that second is so long. For a long time, it seemed that the whole world was stagnating for this loud noise.
Until this long second has passed, the world has awakened, and gravity, speed, and sound have returned to the correct values, showing the art of explosion—all to zero.
And this whole process happens to be very similar to our mental state when we encounter drastic changes. Just like the three men, the second of staying in the explosion can be said to be so long that it seems that it will not end. The three are constantly in this way. Memories and reality collide back and forth, test one's own cognition, and even find another warmth because it is difficult to accept the loneliness brought by reality.
What’s very special is that you can find that the father-son relationship of these three people is actually very distant. My interpretation is that these three people each have memories belonging to Isabelle, but because of mutual resistance, they are unwilling to accept what is different from the memory." The image of "she" simply refuses to communicate, at least she is shrunk in her own world and can have her own memories and memories.
However, those sad and hateful memories will be covered by new memories. There is no such thing as eternal sadness. Those bad memories will only be watered down bit by bit. After the explosion, everything will be returned to zero.
Regarding the gap between memory and reality, how do we reduce the impact of the explosion?
The director gave a suggestion in this film-"communication".
At the end of the film, these three people finally opened their hearts to each other, and they all began to accept the fact that their wives and mothers had left, walked out of their own small universe, and were no longer buried in the unbearable memories of the past.
The memory of the mother caused a huge explosion. That second, the silent second, and the second floating in the universe lasted for a long time. When the huge explosion ended, the three returned to the real world. Begin to accept the weight, speed, and volume that life should have.
There will always be memories in life that must be reset. After resetting, we can start again. The "reset button" will accompany us throughout our lives, regardless of gender.
Someday, when you find that you are about to be swallowed by the silence after the explosion, you should press that button without hesitation and let everything go to zero: let new memories, memories different from you, cover or repair the broken ones Recall that every time I reorganized, I had to learn to withstand the impact of the next explosion.
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