Old Dreams is a typical low-budget independent film. The plot of the film is very simple: at Kurt's invitation, Mark leaves his pregnant wife for a two-day trip to the forest. Therefore, if you want to understand this film, it is not important to study what the plot is about, but how the film presents this simple plot.
Old Dream arranges a lot of contrasts and juxtapositions in the film, such as the space inside the car and the space outside the car. As a relatively closed space, the car has been playing loud, gunpowder-smelling political radio; but the space outside the car is a completely different existence from the space inside the car, and the radio in the car is devoted to discussing which leader is racist At the time, the black youth outside the car window was happily playing basketball. At the end of the film, as Mark says goodbye to Kurt, the radio in the car blares again, bringing up the news of the recession. The next shot is of Kurt being lent money by a homeless man, seemingly to support the in-car radio.
The conflict between man and nature is another important contrast in the film. As Kurt said by the bonfire: "There is no difference between the forest and the city now, and the forest is also full of artificial traces." The existence of this conflict is shown at the beginning of the film: Mark meditates in the garden, but the sound that accompanies his meditation is not only the wind chimes, but also the cacophony of children. The kitchen walls are painted green, and Mark's wife is making a healthy-looking green smoothie, but the mixer is making a loud noise. Even as Mark tries to escape city life and head to the forest, the scenery outside the window shows this conflict: man-made machines keep appearing in the frame even as they move further and further away from the city. Along the river are man-made metal bridges and cranes along the river, and country cabins and forests are accompanied by huge agricultural machinery and trucks full of tree trunks. Around a warm campfire, Mark and Kurt had a great evening. But when they got up the next day, they saw a camp full of rubbish.
The contrast between the characters is the most important contrast in the film. Mark and Kurt represent two diametrically opposed ways of living in contemporary America: a normal lifestyle focused on work and family, and a hippie-free lifestyle. And both protagonists have lost their old joy in choosing their own way of life. When Kurt wanted to share an interesting tidbit of mutual friends with Mark, all of a sudden Mark remembered that he still owes him the rent. When Kurt thinks Mark is the only one who understands him and shares his theory about the teardrop universe, Mark responds politely. The dialogue of the teardrop-shaped universe seems to have nothing to do with the context of the film, but in fact it expresses the film's thinking about the world. He just lived like when he was young, but because of this he lost his good friend; his good friend just obeyed the expectations of the society and became a good father and husband, but he also lost his good friend. For both of them, they were just living their life, but no matter what they did, the old dreams in life were gone forever.
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