Have you ever had such an experience: when you are caught up in the trivialities of life and feel unable to move forward, you want to go back to the place where your life started at the very beginning, to trace the trajectory of your life, and to get a little inspiration from it.
In my opinion, "Homecoming to New Jersey" is such a story of following emotionally numb young people returning to their hometowns and rediscovering themselves here.
Due to an accident in his childhood, Andrew was full of guilt towards his mother and had to rely on the antidepressant prescribed by his father to heal and forget the pain. During his nine years away from home, he became emotionally numb as he got lost in the chemicals.
When a sudden call about his mother's death brings him back from the city, Andrew has to return to his native New Jersey to face the source of his pain. Unintentionally leaving the drugs he's been taking in Los Angeles, Andrew's deeply buried feelings begin to ripple; his encounter with the charming but somewhat neurotic Saman and his re-encounter with his high school friend Mark bring him a colorless and tasteless life. A little bit of vitality came, and Andrew's change also began...
It is reported that the director and male protagonist Zach has always wanted to create a film about his hometown of New Jersey, so this film was born. Actor-turned-director is often questioned by the public, and thankfully, Zach proved himself to be a discerning storyteller with nuanced emotion and rich detail in his directorial debut.
Zac uses the theme of youth anxiety, integrates into his familiar hometown, and refreshes this simple story with humor, vision and one magical element: Oscar-winning actress - Natalie Portman. She plays Saman, natural, hilarious and endearing, the unfettered optimist who clings to Andrew's melancholic veil and makes him realize that life isn't all that bad after all. When Natalie's energy isn't on screen, the film's atmosphere is a little underwhelmed by the monotony.
The characters in the film are all set with a little eccentricity: an emotionally retarded youth, a deceitful girl with epilepsy, a friend who likes to skateboard in an unfurnished mansion... Zac successfully created The witty and slightly self-deprecating dialogues between the full-bodied characters have produced a perceptual chemical reaction, colliding with each other's lonely wandering souls.
Zac is also happy to put some abstract frivolity in everyday prosaic places like medieval knights at the breakfast table, alligator costumes on the ice rink. Taking advantage of the inner flaws of these characters and the small sense of abnormality in daily life, he deftly balances the gentleness of the film's small bridge and the protagonists' bizarre adventures in finding themselves, and skillfully piece them together into a moving whole.
For Andrew, the initial phone call seemed like force majeure, forcing him to return to his hometown. But it was also because of this opportunity that he was able to move towards a new chapter. Sometimes we have to force ourselves to face and uncover the source of our suffering in order to be reborn from it.
Someone in the movie said to Andrew: "Everyone is anesthetizing themselves in their own way, like in Brave New World." In the dystopian novel Brave New World, people take the psychotropic drug "Soma" every day, by giving up Think to be happy and be content with the status quo. People have become animals that only know the pursuit of pleasure, and their spirits have gradually become insensitive.
Andrew's confession of the disease that has tormented him over the years. "I didn't cry when I was growing up. I didn't cry at my mom's funeral either. I tried...I think about the saddest things, the movies...the unforgettable pictures in Life magazine. , I concentrate, but it doesn't work... The fact that I'm so numb is the hardest thing for me..."
Escaping the pain of the past is Andrew's anaesthetic, and he has not found an antidote for years, and no one has even pulled him back from his lost path. His father had been treating his emotions with so-called antidepressants, but he had not tried to get close to his son's heart to help him resolve the knot. As for the heart knot, the way they take is to keep silent. Painful experiences are not the cause, but obeying the direction of life and keeping silent is the key to life. This long period of silence made Andrew's heart sink deeper and deeper, and the conversation between father and son became more and more awkward.
Parent-child communication is a commonplace. In fact, when you release the repression of your true thoughts and open your heart to communicate with your loved ones, you can avoid many problems. Just think about it: if Andrew had patiently talked with his mother and understood her mother's difficulties, perhaps the accident would not have happened; if Andrew had apologized to his mother, perhaps he would not have closed his heart full of self-blame and guilt; His father is willing to help him get rid of the shadow of life from the inside out. Will his life be different these years?
Escape is the easiest behavior to encounter problems, dreaming an unknown dream in one's own Gensokyo, looking back on the life that cannot be repeated in the past, but this will only stop the progress. Not accepting the past will only magnify the shadows. Andrew did not accept his life and his faults at first. This escape did not make him happier, but formed a deeper deviation in his cognition of life, which made him confused and world-weary. When he learns to accept, to accept himself, to accept his mistakes, he reaches reconciliation with the past.
I believe that many people are deeply impressed by this scene: three young people jumped on the abandoned crane in the heavy rain and shouted at the abyss. This seemingly meaningless act marked an unforgettable dialogue between them and life. At this moment, the three of them lost their guard against life and expressed their inner feelings to their heart's content. Even heavy rain couldn't dampen their desire to shout to life.
Facing his past mistakes and accepting the irreversible reality, Andrew started a new life and saved himself. At the end of the film, Andrew, who took the initiative to talk to his father, faced the past and himself with his father, and his words revealed confidence in the future. He became more courageous: moving forward fearlessly, even though he knew that the ever-changing life could still ruthlessly take what was his own.
Someone once said that failure is the norm in life, and smooth sailing is a fluke. Life is a process of making mistakes, some mistakes can be rectified and some cannot be undone. Still, these mistakes shouldn't be a hindrance to our search for who we are. Mistakes can bring pain, but feeling pain is also a part of life. We are born with all five senses. Feeling happiness, feeling pain, creating pain, creating happiness is the meaning of our existence.
At the end of the film, Andrew resolutely decides to stay in New Jersey for Saman, hugging his loved ones into an uncertain future. Maybe the road ahead is still foggy and difficult to see the direction, but if you find the navigator of yourself, you can guide the individual to open up the future in life choices again and again.
Living in an era of globalization, there are actually many people around us who are uprooted like Andrew in the film. They have traveled across the ocean to a strange country, facing their relatives and old friends across the sea, and their hometown is far away. I don't know how many lonely nights I silently swallowed bitter tears and carried all the difficulties and grievances myself. At this time, I will feel that the moon abroad is relatively round.
"The day you move out, you'll understand. There's a day when the home is gone, and you'll feel like you're never going to get it back, like the place you've been missing doesn't even exist. Maybe It's a growing process. You don't get that feeling back until you build a family again, it's like reincarnation with your kids, with the family you've built. I miss that feeling. Maybe That's what family is all about - a group of people missing a fictional place."
This is a very classic dialogue of Andrew in the movie. Because he has not returned home for too long, Andrew thinks that home is an imaginary hallucination, but he is still reborn here, like a baby who has broken his shell for the second time. Home is an invisible place, perhaps a place where you are most comfortable, or a place beautified by wishful thinking. But it's still the most nostalgic, that's the most authentic part of a person's birth, the place where people go back to their roots.
Only those who have left home can appreciate the preciousness of home more, and have quite a feeling for the word home. For the wanderer, the time in his hometown seems to be frozen, and everyone he meets maintains the most primitive attitude. The return to nature that comes with the hometown is the power that brings people back to their original aspirations. When you feel lost about life, just go home and find yourself.
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