After sweeping the European and American awards seasons, "Manchester by the Sea" was finally released in mainland theaters. This is the first film released by the National Art Film Screening Alliance on a special line. The film lineup is very limited, but it is the most outstanding summer file that cannot be missed. one of the movies.
Manchester by the Sea tells the story of a broken heart, a heartbroken man stuck in a heartbroken past and unable to get out of it, with nowhere to seek redemption.
The movie is divided into two lines. In the main line, Lee, played by Casey Affleck, is a repairman who is taciturn, decadent and depressed, and mechanically shuttles between houses to complete his work. After learning of his brother's death, he returned to his hometown, Manchester by the sea, to deal with the funeral. According to the brother's will, he will be the nephew's guardian. But Li had no intention of playing this role. He wanted to take his nephew to Boston, but the nephew insisted on staying in his hometown.
In the process of the main line, a sub-line also kept flashing back, which revealed why Li fled his hometown and why he was decadent and depressed. It turned out that Li had a painful memory in his heart. When he bought beer and walked in the snow, his house burned down because of his fault, his wife screamed wildly at night, and his children died in the fire.
By the time the secret was revealed, nearly an hour had passed since the movie. The director uses flashbacks to deal with this most painful memory, restrained and cold. The psychological trauma caused by a disaster to a person can be photographed in various ways, but the film hides all the sensational and painful process, leaving only the cause and effect. Instead, it accurately conveys the painful pathos and how it completely crushes a person. pressure. From then on, Li was like a walking corpse, his heart was broken, and he lived a very "mourning" life.
According to the usual thinking, the movie should have a big turning point, allowing Li to walk out of the "mourning" and regain the light. For example, he was forgiven by his ex-wife and suddenly became enlightened; for example, in getting along with his nephew, he was redeemed; or he met someone and regained love...but not in "Manchester by the Sea". The ex-wife apologized to Li and told him that she loved him and hoped that he would not be in so much pain, but he just shook his head, shaking his head, unable to say a complete sentence, and fled in a hurry; the nephew wanted him to stay in his hometown, he told him "I can 't beat it', he just couldn't overcome the past, couldn't overcome the pain...
You all go to a better future, and leave me heartbroken and heartbroken; you all have the right to pursue a better life, but I just can't reconcile with my past self. On the surface, Manchester by the Sea seems to convey a philosophy of mourning, looking at those stuck in pain with a gesture of understanding and compassion. Some media commented before that "bereavement" is a kind of spiritual opium. "Depression, confusion and confusion are not conducive to personal growth and family harmony." way to end the infinite pain of 'mourning'". But is this really the case?
For a long time, we have been kidnapped by a so-called positive philosophy of success, just like the employees of many barber shops, real estate agencies and restaurants who do group exercises and shout positive slogans at the door of the store every morning, such as Values are not impossible, the point is that they should not be the norm that society as a whole and all people must live and follow. In the eyes of some people, mourning is decadence, but what they don’t know is that in the face of the huge trauma in life, being able to live in mourning is a kind of perseverance and requires great courage. We often only see that some people are mourning, but we do not see the burden behind the mourning, so living in this way may have exhausted all his efforts. Don't rush to judge other people's way of life if you have never experienced other people's experiences and moods.
I like how the end of the video is handled. After his brother's funeral, Li and his nephew pushed and shoved each other, chatting all the way, with a tenderness of sympathy for each other. Unconsciously, they climbed the gentle slope, they accepted each other, they left the pain behind, and they went into the distance. Life goes on, even mournful, but we know they survived.
And as the poet Rilke said: "There is no victory at all, holding on means everything."
- starting litchi sharp commentary -
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