Nowadays, youth genre movies are no longer a fashionable thing. Among the youth genre masters such as Apato, Kevin Smith, Ben Stiller, and Wes Anderson, confusion and pain have become a kind of exaggeration. The condiments of comedy elements allow the audience to regain their lost passion and realize their desire to be wild in an irregular world, but it also allows them to see the impossibility of escaping from reality. These rules of youth genre that modern audiences have long been accustomed to, actually originated from one person, John Hughes.
Kevin Smith once compared Hughes to "the Salinger of our generation". This metaphor is really appropriate, because in the 1980s, when Hughes was the golden age of creation, he still remembered the spirit of resistance in the 1970s. The youth films of the new era are divided into two extremes: more and more cruel realism and more and more vulgar movies. Perhaps smoking, drinking, fighting, and fighting, such wanton and arrogant youth will never appear in Hughes’ movies, and the youth in Hughes’ movies will not show off the surging hormones, but hide all the surging and surly, it It's a comedy but it's not just a comedy. Hughes chose the rapids to retreat during the climax of his career. It was really like Salinger's, "When my lamp dries out, I know it's time to leave, and I will turn into a plume of smoke." Hughes's movies and his behavior are always sincere. It is in this way that he can keenly capture the hearts of the sensitive teenagers in the movie, so that countless audiences under the screen can empathize. After resolutely leaving after the creation of the box office myth, Hughes left the back of the people so cool, he is another Walt Disney.
Hughes' low-key is also consistent with his film temperament. He will not allow his role to challenge the moral bottom line of this society. He will not open his mouth in the movie to be the Four-character Classic. The youth wrapped in blood and drugs is not Hughes' youth. For Hughes, "love" is the most important thing. Although it has long since died, the audience who watched his film at the beginning of the year turned back and found that he had never left, and he was still watching for the youth of that generation. In the 21st century, Hughes' films are still pioneers, with otaku culture, anti-fashion, sloppy outfits, shining ghost ideas, cheerful spoofs, stupid and incompetent parents, and of course the number one enemy of youth: the school's dean of education. All of what Hughes created became the golden rule of youth genre films in the next ten years, but in the botched imitations such as Stephen Chow’s Fighting Back to School, we couldn’t find anything about youth. Palpitations and tremors. Are audiences in the new era reluctant to take time to listen carefully to the sincere conversations among the five rebellious teenagers? Have you no longer sympathized with Karen who was thinking about Seurat's "Sunday Afternoon on Big Bowl Island"? When more vulgar youth genres finally get on the train of sex comedy, it also leads to the way of no return that will eventually bury itself.
Hughes's sincerity lies in his willingness to listen to the voices of the young, willing to give them full respect in the movie, and even speak from their standpoint. The way Hughes evokes the audience's memories of youth is not to awkwardly insert "the idols we chased together in those years", nor is it to try to restore certain era details. Hughes's movie is legendary, but it is also gentle. What impresses the audience is not by appearance, but by fantasy. Who doesn't want to have a friend who talks about everything in adolescence? Who doesn't dream of becoming a skipped genius who beats teachers and parents? The audience's fantasy of youth is realized one by one in Hughes' films.
Youth is short-lived, and the time of movie stories in Hughes's representative works is only within a day. "Breakfast Club" a day of staying in school to review, let the five rebellious teenagers become like-minded friends. "Spring is not a reading day" also records a day of crazy and interesting life skipping classes. The greatness of Hughes is that he only presents you with the form of youth, but he never helps you define youth, because the meaning of youth is different for everyone. For some people, high school life is successful and happy, but for others, it's quite the opposite. The audience can always find their own shadow in Hughes's movies, because the protagonist in Hughes's movies has never had a fixed and unified character. Some of them are clever and humorous, some are not good at talking, depressed, some are sensitive and neurotic, and some are careless nerds, but one thing is in common: they will all face the troubles of youth and the choices that result from them. All are looking for proof of their identity. In other people’s lives, youth is crazy, with a young face and endless vitality, but Hughes believes that all this is just "looking beautiful". The cool Ferrari sports car is a symbol of indifference and affection. Those wit, The exquisite little mechanism was originally just to maintain a little secret. Hughes' movies belong to teenagers, he says everything they want to say, and deviant will always become a way to discover oneself. In "Spring Is Not Reading Day", Karen finally destroys his father's beloved Ferrari sports car, and he is ready to say goodbye to his cowardly past. "The school is a place where people lose their souls." Hughes must have ties to Bernard Shaw's words. Spring is so beautiful, wouldn't it be a waste of staying in the classroom? Youth is the same, is it a waste to follow the rules? Phyllis, the truant master, appeared again after the ending subtitles of "Spring Is Not a Reading Day", "The movie is over, why are you still not leaving?" Hughes wanted to say "Youth is long gone, you guys? What are these people still doing with fantasy?" Anyway, Phyllis became a hero in our minds, deceiving the dean of education, driving with his girlfriend, eating luxurious lunches, visiting museums, and participating in grand parades. This is youth, so wonderful. , Hearty.
I always wonder, what are the sad young people in Hughes' movies worried about? When Karen stood in front of the famous painting "Sunday Afternoon on Big Bowl Island" collected by the Art Museum of Chicago, we found that most of the people in that painting were facing the audience sideways, only the inconspicuous one in the middle of the painting. The little girl in white faces the audience. She is so small, but it has become the most attractive part of this painting. We don't need to worry too much about our own insignificance. In fact, we ourselves are the center of our own lives. Like Holden, we are all watching on the edge of the cliff, catching the children who are rushing towards the cliff, isn't youth like that? "I just want to be a catcher in the wheat field."
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