The whole society is instilling in you: "Like a man, be strong" "Like a man, everyone who drinks margaritas is gay"
We did not grow up according to our own wishes. When you were a child, be yourself presumptuously, and then at some point in the process, you lost yourself.
——"Skate Boy" title
As the first documentary of Chinese director Liu Bing, "Skateboarder" uses delicate brushstrokes to outline the puzzles of three young people who love skateboarding. This kind of confusion is very common, and that is: domestic violence.
Studies have shown that in the United States, domestic violence occurs once every 9 seconds on average.
And domestic violence brings not only the emotional rift between husband and wife, but also the harm to the child, an irreversible harm.
Why does domestic violence happen? Why do we quarrel? Why are the children running away?
Director Liu Bing used his own personal experience with Fa Xiao to give an answer sheet.
zack (friend of Liu Bing, skateboarder, grew up in a single-parent family, and left the family at the age of 16)
Zack was once a fearless warrior.
At least when he was 16 years old.
When he saw a little black boy pierced in the ribs with a nail, he stepped forward without fear.
He yelled and cursed while driving away the perpetrator.
He saved Keire, a little black boy, and one of his best friends.
Keire once said: I want to be a person like zack.
There was a flash of light in his eyes at that moment.
Zack used to be a good father. At least when the child was born.
He is afraid that he is not good enough and that he is not doing enough.
Being lazy by nature, he even went to learn how to be a good father. Give up skateboarding, give up beer.
He said: I will give him all the possibilities I can give him, help him succeed, make him happy, and make him a good person.
Unfortunately, zack failed.
The one who defeated him was not in life, but in himself.
He would be troubled by not being able to take his children out of the house every day, and he would quarrel with his wife for several hours.
The bravery and gentleness he used to be, never returned. It is replaced by alcoholism and domestic violence.
Why does zack become like this?
Perhaps everything was destined when his biological mother abandoned him who was only two years old.
He tried to find his mother's shadow from his father, which was impossible.
The biggest drawback of a single-parent family is that you will never get complete warmth.
The lack of maternal love directly caused Zack to adopt a negative autistic attitude when dealing with family relationships.
Because in his subconscious, he doesn't know how to deal with the relationship with his lover, he has no object to emulate.
Escape has become the only way for Zack to redeem himself deep in his heart.
At the end of the film, under Liu Bing's questioning, the usually swearing and arrogant skater boy zack cried.
He finally expressed his concerns: I don't want to watch my children fail like me. I want to hide, I want to escape here.
He finally admitted that he was a loser.
It is difficult for a man to admit that he has failed.
That is a heart that has long been broken, a person who is dying, will speak.
Zack's heart is fragile. He has always thought that friendship, love, father, and children can replace the mother's position in his heart, but the result is obvious. He has never received love from his mother. He doesn't know how to love others or even himself. That's why he constantly flees, away from friends, away from lovers, away from children under the narcotic of alcohol. He thought that everything would be fine in this way, but his tears said it all, Zack had nowhere to run, and he ruined his life with his own hands.
nina (zack's girlfriend, who grew up in a remote and indifferent family)
With fair skin, bright eyebrows and big eyes, nina is so beautiful, she should have met better people.
In the middle and later part of the movie, the more I watched it, the more I thought about it.
But life is like this, you can't choose anything, especially love.
She grew up in an indifferent family since she was a child, desperately eager to be loved.
This is also one of the very ironic perspectives of the whole film: two people who have never been given love in their native family, only ask for it after being together.
I don't know what kind of sweetness Zack has given to nina, so that such a tattooed punk girl chooses to have a baby for him.
Cultural differences are okay, and the three views can also be grind.
But there is almost no antidote to the matter of "love incompetence".
Two young people who do not have the ability to love each other do not know what love is, and how to love each other, the consequences will be tragic.
We really shouldn't blame them.
Because it was not their fault in the first place.
This is the fault of society, the fault of the adults, it is the adults who gave birth to them, but chose to ignore their existence.
And they can only repeat the same mistakes and hurt each other desperately without knowing how to forgive.
In this process, the next generation has suffered the same vicious circle of neglect and violence.
Perhaps because of the passionate nature of women, Nina still missed him after she separated from Zack.
Nina's heart is kind, she just doesn't know how to express.
She didn't know what she could do to redeem the lost love.
At the same time, she is also facing confusion about her self-cognition.
Since mothers have given birth to their children, they must continue to accompany their children. Unless family conditions permit, they can hire a nanny to take care of the children. Otherwise, almost every child in an ordinary family is brought up by the mother.
In the process of raising children, the biggest problem that mothers face is not physical exhaustion, but mental torture.
When will I have my time? Is this all my life?
Where is my future? Who am I?
I guess that Zack’s mother’s departure may have something to do with self-identification. She could not accept the fact that she could raise her children at the expense of herself, so she chose to escape. This is probably one of the reasons why more and more young people are unwilling to marry and have children: I have not yet come to understand myself, how can I educate my children?
bing (Liu Bing, director of the film, skateboarder, suffered domestic violence from his stepfather for many years)
As the filmmaker, Liu Bing doesn't have many roles in the film, and most of the time his perspective is blurred.
And the key point he focused on was his mother.
Liu Bing said that when he was nine years old, his mother moved him to Rockford.
My mother works in a pizzeria. A man who often goes to the pizzeria came to their house one day and became his stepfather without warning.
After speaking, Liu Bing gave a meaningful smile.
His smile is like saying: You are my dad, did you say hello to me?
Here we have to figure out a logic, we encourage remarriage, encourage twilight love, and respect the right of the elderly to choose their own partners.
But the premise is that if the children are young and need to be raised together by the other party, the consent of the children must be obtained.
This is a kind of respect, a kind of respect that I regard you as my own son and you regard me as my own father.
Instead of calling you Dad, you call me Xiaobi Zizi.
In this way, a woman's wrong decision directly led to a severe beating for seventeen years.
He was even pressed to the ground, choking his neck and out of breath, almost suffocating.
Even so, the cowardly woman did not resist.
She didn't even know that her son was beaten up by her stepfather.
She kept working, her stepfather kept violent, and her son kept running away.
The family got out of control in a mess.
And this is one of the reasons why Liu Bing wanted to make this film:
I want a statement.
I want to have an argument for myself.
I want to have an opinion for this family.
The stepfather is dead. Mother is not good at words. She just kept wiping her tears, her expression lonely and helpless.
It doesn't seem to matter whether it is said or not.
Seeing his mother crying into tears in front of him, Liu Bing found his answer.
"We cannot correct the past, we can only look forward"
keire (friend of Liu Bing, skateboarder, grew up in domestic violence, once ran away from home)
Keire is a child who grew up in a domestic violence environment.
He always looks silly, smiling all day, as if nothing can bother him.
Behind his smile is endless bitterness.
As the youngest child in the family, he should have been the most pampered, but what he faced was beaten again and again.
Just because: he doesn't want his son to inherit his father's inheritance.
Lao Tzu gives birth to you, Lao Tzu raises you, you have to listen to Lao Tzu, otherwise Lao Tzu will beat you.
There has never been an idea that crosses races and nations like Lao Tzu beats his son, and achieves such a harmonious unity.
Every time keire smiles, my heart hurts once.
How strong it takes to make a dark-skinned child smile so brilliantly in a country full of discrimination.
It takes how kind, so that a child who has been domestically abused can still choose to forgive after being beaten countless times.
He was eager to get his father's appreciation through skateboarding.
He didn't know how important his father was to him.
Keire left home after an argument with his father.
Since then, I started living alone, playing skateboarding while washing dishes in the restaurant.
The hardship is self-evident.
To some extent, only skateboarding witnessed his emotions.
You don't know, when he suddenly remembered that today is Thursday and he didn't have to go to work, his tone was relieved.
You don't know how lonely he was when he heard his friends watching videos and taunting niggers around him.
Keire was also full of anger at this world.
Keire once shed heartbreak tears.
But the smile on his face has not disappeared, he still chooses to embrace the world.
Just like what he said: Skateboarding brings me pain, but when the day is over, I will still fall in love with it, and I will not always be angry with it. Just like my dad, although he beats me, my love for him will never change.
From a technical point of view, Liu Bing's photographic talent is extremely high.
He takes advantage of the high mobility of skateboarding itself, with handheld photography and follow-up, to perfectly present the invigorating feeling of street skateboarding.
This requires good physical coordination and certain lens capture capabilities, which is difficult for ordinary directors to achieve.
Liu Bing also has ideas in editing.
For example, when talking with Keire about domestic violence, when Keire showed a confused and helpless look, insert a piece of past DV material: Keire broke the skateboard to vent his anger. Then the picture returns to the keire interviewed to create a progressive emotional tension.
For example, at the end of the film, Nina took her young baby to skateboard. The voiceover was Zack’s disappointment with herself. On the one hand, it was the father’s self-blame, and on the other hand, the child’s vision for the future. The weight of skateboarding increased suddenly. Now, it seems to be the heaviest toy in the world, which is heartbreaking.
He perfectly fits the theme of skateboarding teenagers, and uses the medium of skateboarding to successfully glue together countless trivial life fragments. The viewing experience is smooth and not dull.
And the most commendable is Liu Bing's super affinity as a documentary director.
For example, Keire reads aloud the diary he wrote on Father's Day.
For example, Keire wept bitterly in front of his father's grave.
Such a sincere picture, if it does not have superior affinity, it is impossible to relax the subject completely.
If the subject is not in a completely relaxed state, the documentary is soulless.
Of course, this is also inseparable from the fact that Liu Bing's subject is a friend.
The film begins in street skateboarding and ends in street skateboarding.
Skateboarding has become a witness in the growth trajectory of this group of teenagers.
At the same time, skateboarding is the only way for these teenagers to escape from life.
Time flies and the years flies. At the end of the film, the youth of the three teenagers reunited together in a montage.
For two hours, we watched them laugh, watch them cry, watch them get lost in their growth, watch them find themselves again.
A little skateboard carries too much.
But if they weren't abandoned or left out in the beginning, who would go skateboarding?
At this moment, I seem to hear my sixteen-year-old yelling:
"Hey! Mom, I found my skateboard!"
May all the youth have less pain and more warmth, thanks to director Liu Bing, and thanks to the skater boy.
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