The film "The Confirmation", translated by Chinese people as "hilarious father and son relationship", has the feeling of a pirated TV series on the street; the literal translation of "confirmation" is also unclear. The confirmation mentioned here is actually the "confirmation" in Christianity. It would be a pity to miss this good work because of the title.
The weekend before confirmation, the mother and stepfather, who were away, entrusted eight-year-old Anthony to his biological father, Walter, an alcoholic, poor, and not without paranoid carpenter. Father and son will spend two days together after a long absence, and of course a lot of bad luck awaits them, especially the theft of Walter's carpentry tool box, which makes him unable to continue his work in the future. During the journey to find the toolbox, the father and son met various characters and deepened their understanding of each other in the process.
It sounds like a relatively standard comedy + family + road healing story. However, the restrained performance and steady image presented by the film are still higher than those of the same type of small films. It is easy to understand that the director of this film is Bob Nelson, who was nominated for the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay for "Nebraska" in 2014.
Bob Nelson, who first directed the tube, still wrote the script himself, which is somewhat similar to "Nebraska". The new film "Confirmation" still depicts the relationship between father and son. It's just that the age of the father and son has changed, and the story seems to have changed from the confusion of the old and nowhere to the melancholy of the young.
As in Nebraska, the father is the subject of action, and the son is the point of view. No longer a black and white melancholy, the beautiful little boy makes the tone of the film a lot fresher. The big star Clive Owen, the actor who played his father, also deduced the distress and affection of a man well.
"Nielsen knows how to grab an audience's heartstrings and really make people feel connected to a story. His scripts deal with issues that all of us have - family, luck, hard times and moments of humor." Jiguang Films Mr. Hamilton, commented at the script stage of the film at the Berlin market.
Billy Wilder once showed how an alcoholic man almost ruined his life and the lives of those around him in "Lost Weekend" in the gloomy years after World War II. The weekend of Confirmation takes place in modern North America, a seemingly neat and peaceful neighborhood, and exposes the contradiction between the proletariat and the middle class.
Elf's eccentric son hid his father's wine store, while people on the block could pull out pistols at any moment. That lost old toolbox is of little value to others. For example, in the opening chapter of "The Piano of Steel", Walter asked his ex-wife what she could do, but she said, if something breaks, we can ask someone to fix it.
Poor livelihood is the reason why this toolbox must be found. It is also paranoid about craftsmanship and the pursuit of details. Only old things make him feel safe. The toolbox is similar to De Sica's bike for Walter. The story also develops in the direction of "The Bicycle Stealer", especially the few scenes in the second half, which clearly feel the same bitterness.
Compared with the unemployed youth in Italy, in addition to the pride in his craftsmanship, this man has more humor. Cynical about consumerism, and a few words about his son's stepfather at any time, Walter is not only a bitter character, but also an interesting person. He described his stepfathers as "Philistines" who didn't understand life, and told his son, who didn't understand the word, that it was a religion.
It's funny, because Walter and the people around him seem more philistine than the well-behaved intellectual stepfather. Half is his stubbornness, and half is his rejection of industrial civilization, "If God doesn't exist in the details, where is he?" You have to know that the chair you sit on and the clothes you wear are all made by humans. Walter told his son.
There are many, many conflicts that are difficult to reconcile, and are resolved by the children's well-meaning lies. Confirmation is no longer just a formalized ceremony, but his realization this weekend. The camera moved through the rusty saw with affection, not without pity, but sad but not hurt. The film left a relatively mild ending. It is hard to say what kind of person Anthony will become in the future. At least this weekend that has not been lost has been recorded in his precocious eyes.
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