I asked LL and he said the central idea was this: No matter how much one tries to escape from one's roots, one can't get rid of it completely, Bill wants to escape chaos, barren hometown, anarchist mother, brother who farms marijuana, but in the end he comes back here In the environment, trapped in this chaos, in the end, I can only accept it, just like accepting a rainy day, although I am afraid, I can accept it calmly.
But vaguely, I think there is another explanation -
1. The film is called "Leaves of Grass", and there are two things off the title, a copy of Whitman's "Leaves of Grass", and the younger brother Brady grows marijuana by hydroponics .
1) "Leaves of Grass" got its name from a line in the collection of poems: "Where there is soil, and where there is water, grass grows." In the movie, Rabbi also recites a Whitman poem to Bill, " You don't know yourself, just because you have slept all your life, closed your eyes, and everything you do is a mockery of the past, but that's not the real you, you have deeply hidden your real self. - This kind of behavior I think it is - paralysis
2) of marijuana - paralysis
2, Sarandon played the mother is rampant in the 1960s anarchism product of a lifetime of drug abuse decadent all arbitrary .-- paralysis of life.
3, Bill is Get rid of fear and pursue the truth: learn scientific explanations about thunderstorms because of fear of thunderstorms. Study the social phenomenon of 60 years of anarchism because of fear of mother's foolish way of life. But he did not live to understand it, he daily Busy studying and commenting on other people's philosophical works, afraid to face up to one's own origin, afraid to go home to meet people, and even dare not to fall in love. - Still paralyzed.
So, maybe the younger brother looks smart and cool, but he is also numbing himself with marijuana, and the older brother looks smart and bright, but he is also numbing himself with philosophy. Can they get out of paralysis? can not! No one can, including ourselves, because reality is reality, reality and theory are always like two parallel lines that cannot intersect, as Bill said, God and us are like two parallel lines, although physics says that theory does not exist Two parallel lines will intersect sooner or later, but in real life, we can never see the point where the parallel lines intersect, so it is difficult to imagine seeing God when we are alive, so it is also difficult to imagine that life can be fully understood. , get rid of self-paralysis. But people are entangled, life is entangled, everyone wants to live more clearly, whether it is stimulated by marijuana or explained by philosophy, they can only be unconsciously paralyzed and possessed in the pursuit.
In short, everything goes back to Bill's speech at the beginning of the lecture: "Don't try to stand on the heights like God and say that you can see through everything. Everyone may feel that they have reached this height at some point, but, It’s best to remind yourself that it’s impossible.”
So the meaning of the film may not be as pessimistic as LL thought, people can get rid of their original life level, and the nouveau riche can become aristocrats after three generations. Perhaps more pessimistic than LL thought, life can only be entangled in the pursuit of truth and in chaos. Maybe the director didn't say anything at all, it was me who wanted to find the answer but couldn't figure it out. Paralyzed, I'm not cursing!
Oh, PS: At the end of the film, Bill and his natural poet girlfriend accept the thunderstorm calmly. According to my stupid idea, that is to say, where there are people, there are entanglements (just like where there is soil, where there is water) , where does the grass grow?), so accept the entanglement of this life calmly, you can pursue why I live, or pursue the chicken or the egg, etc., but don't worry or even fear about it. For example, some actors or philosophers give up their lives for this matter, just too much entanglement.
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