If "Life with a Glass of Wine" is a road movie for middle-aged people packed with wine, then this "Love Before Memories" is a road movie for the elderly packed with American literature.
There are three places where we cry.
1. John and Ella stopped in a park on the road when a girl suddenly greeted them. John has Alzheimer's and can't remember a lot. But when the girl greeted him, he remembered her name, remembered that she went to Columbia University later, and asked her how her studies were. The girl is already a mother of two children. She asked the children to greet the professor and said to the children, "This is the best literature teacher. He has influenced my life..." After she left, Ella pretended to be angry and said you are everything Don't remember, but remember this student? John said that because she studied hard and worked hard, it was really great.
Second, John's daughter also became a literature teacher. At a place to rest, John and Ella called her. The video is also handled very well. The daughter received the call on campus, and John said to her, "You don't know how proud I am of you." The daughter held back her tears and didn't cry.
3. When John suffers from Alzheimer's, he will always drag strangers (restaurant waitresses and the like) to say that he likes Hemingway, but others are not interested. The whole scene is very embarrassing. This small foreshadowing is buried at the beginning of the film. This is also one of the laughing points of this warm film. At the end of the film, he pulls another waitress and gushes about American literature. He finished Faulkner and said Hemingway again, but he couldn't remember the sentence he said about his favorite Hemingway. I thought it was another embarrassed waitress, but the camera turned slowly, the waitress looked at John with admiration, and blurted out the last sentence of "The Old Man and the Sea" "He only dreamed of places now and of the lions on the beach" ", the old professor called out happily, saying that's the sentence, he was glad that this strange waiter actually understood her, and then she said that her university thesis was about literature.
I don't know why, but I burst into tears in these three places. This film is about love, very touching, reminds me of Yeats' "When You Are Old". But it seemed to say something else. The love and pursuit of literature, the joy of being able to share with others, is as precious as love.
In fact, there are many details in the film that say that John is a very good literature teacher. When Ella helped him wake up his memories and put on a slideshow, he said that his students loved him very much and gave him a birthday; he always wanted to go to Hemingway's former residence, and throughout the film, Ella brought John to worship Hemingway's hometown. Memories would disappear and John would die. But he has influenced many people, inspired many people, and made more people feel the happiness and joy of literature.
I am reminded of the way Stoner, the literature professor in the novel Stoner, died, and the story says he just fell like that, with a one-page book by the bed/closet. I think the author should be saying that although he died after only one page of the book, Stoner was happy.
I kind of miss my English literature teacher again. She is a beautiful female teacher who is a little cold and unfriendly. I liked English literature very much and did well, but I skipped her class three times and was called by her every time. Before the exam, I deliberately acted coquettishly and asked her, hoping that she would open up: "Mr. Luo, I missed three classes, will it affect my score?"
"It will definitely have an impact," she said blankly.
But she gave me the highest grade in the class.
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