There are also people who say "excessive reputation", but I think these people did not understand the film. Even those who scored high may only pay attention to the director's shooting time and so on.
Although I didn't fully understand all that the movie had to say, I felt that "Boyhood" was amazing based on the part that I understood. The director used such ordinary 12 years to make a movie, and he made it clear that the purpose of life is to clarify everything-the meaning of life is not the always memorable past, nor does it place many expectations. In the future, the true meaning of life is "to be grasped at this moment."
What does it mean?
Looking back on it carefully, there are many fragments and details in the movie that repeat this proposition, and I just grabbed the three big fragments that I remember deeply. These three clips are the little boy's biological father, his mother, and himself.
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1. Father
had a temporary party that day, this movie was three hours I watched the long movie twice.
The node where the movie was temporarily stopped just happened to witness the change of the little boy's father.
He went from a frivolous and foolish youth to a different family, a very ordinary middle-aged man with a wife, children and a beard.
At this moment, I was walking alone on the way to the appointment, and I felt like I had finished watching a movie.
Because I kept thinking about the plot in my heart: my father sold his cool GTO antique car and lied to his son like a rogue, saying that he had never promised him that he would give him the antique car on his birthday.
How did a nice and interesting young man become like this?
I conditioned and reflexively automatically made up for my father’s former chic and free spirit: he brought his children to camp and play bowling, and he always asked for the highly excited spirit of interaction with the children; he let his son break into the private house, picking up support for the election The opponent’s canvassing brand, because he feels that life needs some struggle. I was disappointed and thought with wishful thinking: time and life, after all, made him a boring person, a nasty father in the eyes of the child. That should be what this movie is about. (At this time, the boy is in puberty, and it suddenly occurred
to me that most adolescent children hate their parents uncontrollably, perhaps because most parents will also make uncontrollable and unpleasant changes during this period of their lives.) But I Still feel something is wrong.
Finally, the party was over, and on the way home, I figured it out.
Why use the chic happiness and innocence of a single man in his youth to compare with a middle-aged man who needs a caregiver to raise a child?
Even if it is the same person, if the time has changed, they still cannot be compared at will.
Because human beings are floating in the long river of time, changing their posture every moment.
Maybe at this time you really lost your adventurous spirit, your pure motivation, and your pure heart was grayed out. But please don't feel inferior because of these self-blame.
Because time is not just what you think it is, it is a straight line, a space. It's not that you move forward if you want to move forward, or move backward if you want to move backward. It is really a strange water that is as chaotic as an unknown universe. You are trapped in it like everyone else and cannot be controlled by yourself. You are floating in it, no matter what, you can't get detailed data for comparison.
Because all the moments that make up your huge life are like shining sand fragments in the water, they have no roots, and they will violently and disorderly churning with the slight shaking of the river.
Therefore, the "present" and "past" can not compare,
"now" and "future" can not compare,
"past" and "future" can not compare, he
who, regardless of good or bad, and there is no right or wrong.
So the meaning of life is now and now.
Don’t understand yet?
What is "now"? ——It is the future of the past, the past of the future, and the present of this moment at the same time.
If you live the present and this moment well, you will have the past and the future.
I also suddenly discovered that this may be the whole meaning of life.
To understand this, I went home and continued watching the movie, and found that this "changed" father, at this stage, can still bring happy memories to the children.
In the car, the birthday gift he gave to his son was a self-made set of Beatles records. After the Beatles was disbanded, his father collected the brightest sands of life and recombined the excellent singles of other members. stand up. At this moment, he talked about "balance". In his opinion, every member of the band is an integral part of the band. They are all the greatness of this great band, not just the John Lennon who will never come back (just like life is made by life Every moment is composed, whether it is a good moment or a bad moment, this is the whole beautiful real life, not those moments of life that can never be returned); this is a real, very beautiful overall The chieftain is also a real life, and he can go on without anything.
Besides, I also really like the song my father and stepmother sang on Mason’s birthday.
The meaning of the lyrics is obvious, "Eat too much, you will get fat, buy a dog, and the cat will jump."
All changes and happenings are reasonable, and [departure, in fact, has been carried out at the same time as arrival] (when you When you set another goal, don’t forget, at this moment, you are standing in the days you once expected, and you have reached a certain end). So, life is just taking a deep breath, enjoying every moment, enjoying this journey.
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2. Mom,
when the boy Mason was about to leave home for college, My mother suddenly lost control of her emotions: "I thought there was more than this in life, I thought there could be more in life."
Why was she lost? Why does she feel that she has been busy all her life and hasn't got anything?
Because she never values "now".
Even at this time, this single mother had a difficult journey, and finally completed her mission of being a mother. She sold her big house and told her children plainly that she had no obligation to provide them with a warm home. She thought she was already relaxed and wanted to go. Find your own life. But at this moment, she found that her life seemed to be empty and empty.
Indeed, no one can deny her seemingly positive life course:
she divorced her first husband, who could not take up family responsibilities, while raising two children on her own while attending college. Later, he married his own professor. This person has good financial ability, but later became drunk and committed domestic violence to his mother and children. However, his mother was able to obtain a degree and became a university teacher after the divorce. Then she married a young prison again, but she felt tremendous financial pressure again, but she survived until the children were all grown-ups and went to college.
But is it really positive to live like this?
In fact, on the surface, she keeps divorcing and breaking with the present, which is known as changing the present. In fact, she is ignoring the present in a way and pinning all hopes in a vain future. She did not wait for the moment when Mason’s biological father matured. She discovered the professor’s violent tendencies, but did not make any effort to change the status quo. She only wanted to complete her studies with the support of the professor and leave him to live a new life. When the family suffers financially, she thinks that she can be relieved until the children are grown-ups, and her mother is always looking forward to the future, but she forgot that the previous future is the present now. But she can never grasp the present, nor the past and the future.
As a result, she has nothing in her heart after working through most of her life.
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3. The little boy
Mason is a lucky man, because he is in the film At the end, I ran into a young girl who was not pretty, but knew that "now" is the true meaning of life.
She said to him,
"Do you know why everyone says to seize the opportunity? I think it should be the other way around. It's like, the timing seizes us. The timing is always there, just..."
I know that there are some words that we can understand right now, but for a while, the words cannot understand.
Young Mason smiled at the girl beside him.
Timing is always there. Timing is not rare in a century. Timing holds us firmly in our hands, but we don’t think we can see it, but the timing is actually passing by you every minute, but you always don’t recognize it. Out of it, has been missing.
But, Mason, at a young age, does the teenager in this movie really understand this?
He still seems to be an ordinary kid who doesn't have much sense of life, and he doesn't seem to have become very special. He is still a dull and daunting ordinary kid in college.
But humans’ understanding of the true meaning of life may not be a gradual process of maturity.
Because some old people who have lived to 80 years still don't understand the true meaning of life (such as my grandma), but young people like Mason seem to be able to grasp this truth by nature.
You see, the director has already laid the groundwork.
In high school, the director arranged for Mason to like photography. It seemed like a literary arrangement, right? But what does photography mean? It means shooting moments of life. He is fascinated by the moments of life. The director arranged Mason to focus on "now".
On the way to the university, on the way to another journey of his life, the director also deliberately arranged for Mason to stop and take pictures.
Some beautiful details. So I believe that Mason in the movie must be a teenager who knows how to "be caught at this moment".
Think about it,
do you feel lonely and sad suddenly inexplicably?
Obviously the family is complete and the body is healthy, but in the trance, there is always a kind of helplessness in the heart?
This kind of feeling may be the panic and entanglement of the whole mankind about the unknown meaning of life.
This is where the overall human insecurity lies.
It is precisely because of this confusion and anxiety that there are various religions that explain the coming and going of life and the meaning of life.
All this may be just because we sometimes think about the past and sometimes worry about the future, but we never really know and enjoy the "now".
But human beings are such a thing. We have the concept of "infinity" in our minds. We keep wanting better things, such as lifespan. Humans will not accept death more calmly because they can extend their lifespan. In his mind, there is always the concept of infinity, so human beings always compare with the future and the past, and cannot concentrate on the "present" at all.
Sometimes when discussing this kind of "focus on the present" with my dad, he will understand it as a life attitude of having fun, not knowing the past, and not caring about the future. In fact, what I mean is to do everything you are doing now and enjoy every moment of life, then the future will be better, standing in the future and reminiscing about the past, even if it is not satisfactory, it is also a part of life. The real and beautiful part of it.
In short, I think it took the director 12 years to piece together the fragments scattered in the river in a way that we can understand, so that humans can take a closer look at ourselves and let us discover that the true meaning of life is "this moment."
Maybe the director didn't know what the movie would be like 12 years from the beginning of shooting, but the real time and life still gave him the ultimate answer.
It can comfort us more than religion, soothe us, and allow us to live on this planet in the universe briefly and down-to-earth. I think "Boyhood" has done it.
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