——Jeffrey Germer (Sundance Film Festival Director) fell asleep
after watching this "Clay Biography" quietly on Christmas Eve. Woke up today and wrote a review.
In terms of production, it is a standard low-budget high-quality film that does not rely on too much computer technology, but it is a simple Nendoroid that evokes our hidden inner emotions.
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Characters
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Mary is a young rural Melbourne girl with mud-colored eyes and a gray birthmark on her forehead. She likes chocolate, condensed milk and Noble animations.
Marx has a pair of abrupt eyes and a pair of striking ears. He is a slightly bizarre 44-year-old middle-aged Jew in New York. He is obese, suffers from Asperger's autism, has cognitive impairment and is not good at interpersonal communication.
Such two people who have no friends in the real world, separated by the vast Pacific Ocean, have been communicating by letters for 18 years.
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Details and Tones
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Originally a bland narrative style, the focus was based on the letters of two people, but the characters were told with careful words and a slight sense of humor. It has become extremely vivid and delicate, and every detail of the two people's inner world is vividly described, such as the world is very confusing and incomprehensible to the autistic person, the ignorant girl's curiosity about sex, emotion and life, etc. .
The tone of the whole picture is dark and sad. For a cheerful person, it is undoubtedly a sad tragedy, but I feel a very beautiful story from the bottom of my heart, a dark childhood and a self-closed girl. Middle-aged men, a lifetime of comforting each other.
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Music
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"...When I was a little girl, I asked my mother what she would be like, would I be beautiful, would I be rich, things were unpredictable, no matter what, the future, unpredictable.. .” The
whole film is taupe tones, but the music is basically beautiful throughout, especially when Mary tried to commit suicide, the surrounding scenes changed, the photos of parents, Marx, and ex-husbands far and near, sad and beautiful music, It strongly expresses Mary's helplessness and reluctance to the world, which is deeply touching and makes you cry.
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Friendship and Tolerance
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"The reason why I forgive you is that no one is perfect, you are imperfect, and so am I, including the litter outside the door people." The
inferior Mary and the autistic Marx finally learned how to be tolerant to the people and things around them. Marx completed the ideal of life but regretted it. He finally forgave Mary, and Mary finally forgave himself. After giving birth to a child, he started another life. It was tolerance and friendship that made this taupe film warm and touching.
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End
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Marx says he irons every letter and mounts it in a special place. Mary finally saw Max, who left peacefully, and the stationery that covered the ceiling for 18 years.
"You are my best friend. You are my only friend." Max's long and heavy voice echoed in Mary's heart. She held Max's hand full of tears and looked up at the ceiling together with Max, looking up at their 18-year friendship. The emotional climax of the whole film.
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Thinking
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"When I was young I wanted to be anyone but myself, and Dr Bernard said if I was on a desert island, I would get used to being unaccompanied, just me and the coconut tree, and he said then I would accept Accept ourselves completely, then we won't care about our flaws, that's part of us, and we have to learn to accept it."
This line is quite impressive, everyone will have self-denial and self-denial at some point. Self-loathing thoughts, such as why I am not as smart as A, as beautiful as B, as polished as B, etc. You will also find shadows in Mary and Marx, you will feel that you are not beautiful enough, not cheerful enough, too fat, unpopular. But remember that you are an existence, the world is originally colorful, why pursue the sameness, the attitude we should aspire to and embrace towards the world.
"Dr. Bernard also said that human life is like a long sidewalk, some are well paved, some like mine have cracks, banana peels and cigarette butts. Your sidewalk is very similar to mine, but Not so many cracks, hopefully one day our sidewalks meet and we can drink a can of condensed milk together, you're my best friend and my only friend."
Love yourself firtst - the first thing we have to do is love Love yourself, love yourself unreservedly, everyone is fragile, and there is always a fragile heart hidden under those weird or beautiful bodies. We are always looking for the same kind and warm each other. No matter how eccentric and different you are, you are not alone, there must be a pair of eyes staring at you somewhere in this world.
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Finally, to add to the list, all the characters in the film are deliberately grotesque: Mary's alcoholic mother who loves to steal, her gay husband who stutters, her father who collects dead birds, a neighbor who suffers from a phobia of unfamiliar surroundings, including Asperger's Max and Max's near-blind neighbor Ivy, hardly a "normal" person appeared. In fact, the director is collecting a group of people deliberately, just like those autism and autism that exist in life , speech impaired, mentally retarded people, we are trying hard to turn a blind eye to their bizarre behavior, but they have their world, they are a being.
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