At first glance , the name and content of [kindergarten teacher] ... I really vaguely thought that it was pedophilia.
Misunderstood, misunderstood.
In fact, in the whole process of watching the film, the progress of the plot also makes people think about it all the time :
Will it eventually lead to this...
Not really.
However, I always feel that the movie itself really wants to create such an atmosphere , intentionally leading the audience to guess on the topic of cross-border crimes.
But the theme wrapped in this film is much more complicated than vicious crime——
The entry point of the film is also different from the perspective of children in most themes involving children.
The little male protagonist Jimmy is only one of the footholds of the story, and his existence is the projection or even the contrast of the heroine's psychological state ;
The chaotic heart of the heroine is externalized by various people or things around her, pushing the story forward in an unclear direction.
Lisa is a kindergarten teacher, an ordinary woman, a tender wife, and the mother of two adolescent boys.
At first glance, she looks like most middle-aged women .
She stumbled upon the boy named Jimmy who was a poetic genius —and probably no one but her realized it.
She also loves writing poetry, but she can't get out of the bottleneck, as if she has found a life- saving straw .
She poured almost all her attention on the boy—
She became more and more obsessed with boys, bent on protecting his talent by any means necessary .
Although the story is generally relatively peaceful, the film is still quite psychologically thrilling ;
The heroine went farther and farther, and finally couldn't extricate herself, to the point of almost madness.
With stillness as the leading factor, it leads to the waves when the heroine is on the verge of collapse at the end——
From the perspective of others, she may have gone crazy; but how did this happen, is it really her fault?
01
middle age crisis
meet gifted children
The last scene of the film is nearly twenty minutes long and depicts Lisa's last day with the little boy Jimmy—
It was also a day of intellectual and emotional outbursts.
Lisa, hiding from everyone, took Jimmy to play by the lake, trying to activate his thinking about writing poetry.
But the ending was not what she expected.
Imperceptibly, she went from an ordinary woman with an ordinary family and an ordinary life to hysteria .
On this day, she packed her suitcases, walked out of the house without a word, and followed Jimmy to the place where he played.
No one knew where she was coming, no one knew where she was going with the boy.
From the beginning to the end, it may be difficult for the audience to understand her intentions , and it is even more vague here.
But her wishful guidance of the child was not the whole reason for her to lose her balance;
As a modern woman, all the pressures from family, work, life and spiritual world are all on her body.
All of this can be traced back.
After all, the cycle of the whole story is not long.
She signed up for classes and learned to write poetry simply because she loved poetry and art ;
But the sharing effect in the classroom is not good - she has always wanted to write beautiful poems, but it has been difficult to do so;
The weakening and disappearance of her dream is the fundamental reason that triggered her behavior of "protecting the talent of the young genius" and led to her mid-life crisis .
At the same time, the mediocrity in her life also made her realize that she and her pursuit of art are drifting away.
She kisses her husband because she still loves the family ;
But she packed up and left because she could no longer bear her mediocre life .
After Jimmy was taken away, the last bit of support in her heart for the protection of art has also been removed, so she has nothing to worry about and nostalgia for.
The previous dinner showed that the family is inseparable . For Lisa, the seemingly perfect family has collapsed .
In addition to the difficult reconciliation of the family situation, her poetry creation also fell into the abyss.
When she decided to put Jimmy on stage to read poetry, she accepted that she was not destined to do so .
The relationship, which had a mutual crush on the poetry teacher, also deteriorated rapidly .
The dream, and the confidant who met on the dream road, all turned and left.
She was not only moved by the poem itself, but probably also lamented the loss of the meaning of her life .
Apart from the alienation of the family and the overturning of her dreams, it was the people around her who made Lisa's obsession so magnified .
Not only the people around her, but also the people around the boy Jimmy.
Jimmy is a true artist, a gifted child, and someone to whom high hopes can be expected—but she seems to be the only one who understands the idea.
The boy's family life has little positive effect on the boy's talent.
Lisa's own dreams have been put on hold for various reasons, and she believes she has an obligation to protect this talent;
As a result, more and more obsessions developed , and in the end, there was no turning back.
In her eyes, the whole world is blocked on Jimmy's path to becoming a poet, and only she is still insisting and maintaining.
From her point of view, she has done nothing wrong - the cruelty of this world is that it does not allow true poets to exist.
Maybe it was the world that killed her dream, so she desperately tried to protect Jimmy's specialty.
Whether it is "one-sided" or not, whether there is any suspicion of "salvation", the movie actually shows the "white privilege" to the audience in a subtle way——
Compared with Lisa's "hippie" family, Jimmy wants to do what he wants to do, and it will be more difficult.
Lisa is undoubtedly a kind person—
But she struggled in the mood of wanting to "rescue" and the guilt that it was difficult to "rescue".
Such setbacks engulfed her all the time.
She failed, and now Jimmy failed too.
02
Seedlings grow
Mindset is self-defeating
In the final climax of the film , Lisa's remarks also fully expressed her feelings——
Jimmy locks her back in the bathroom and hostility rises;
However, she still wanted to persuade Jimmy, not in an attempt to clear the suspicion, but in her stubbornness ;
But smart Jimmy called the police, making her give up hope completely.
She was miserable thinking about Jimmy's future , and presumably her own present .
Thinking that Jimmy might be as mediocre and closed as herself in the future , she finally broke down.
Maybe most people look at the direction of the movie and just say: This woman is crazy.
However, the reason why she seems to be "crazy" is the result of no one sharing her state of mind.
Lisa doesn't want to hurt Jimmy, and the film doesn't have any tendency to lead the topic to "infringement";
But she was completely disappointed , and she gave up her last attempt to protect the boy's talent——
Let the police take him, let his family take him.
Everyone didn't believe her, and Jimmy, who had been obedient now, also abandoned her .
In the end, she is still a middle-aged woman who is frustrated, and she has encountered the most complicated mid-life crisis;
Like many mothers and fathers , she pinned her unfulfilled dreams on a potential child;
It's just that her dream is not something ordinary people would choose, and the child she wants to raise is not her own child.
The way she used it was also extreme and deviated from the beautiful original intention.
This film is adapted from the 2014 Israeli film [Teacher] . The original filming method in the last scene is significantly different from [Kindergarten Teacher] :
For example, in the last part of the conversation, the original version did not show too much the perspective of the heroine in the bathroom , but told these sad lines in a "stuffy" way in the way of a boy listening outside the door.
In [kindergarten teacher] , the camera directly aimed at Lisa's face kneeling in front of the door, letting her express all her heartbreak directly.
Maggie Gyllenhaal also fits this perspective with her subtle and moving acting skills, amplifying Lisa's mood.
In this film, compared to the original, the lake that Lisa chose to take Jimmy to is much more secluded——
In my opinion, this is to set off the atmosphere of the movie ;
This undoubtedly casts another layer of psychological horror on the ending. It is difficult for us to guess what will happen next, and we cannot figure out her motives ...
This background is even more suspicious.
There is no filming of the heroine being taken away by the police, including the heroine begging the boy to prove her innocence;
This film leaves room for the audience , and we can all guess what will happen - but her pain and despair probably no longer needs any behavior or language to refute.
The racial element mentioned above is also discussed in the original version - the issue of class is undoubtedly the dark thread buried in this film;
And the heroine's complex midlife crisis involving many parties makes the film let us feel that this is an unavoidable tragedy from the very beginning .
This sentence is also a unique highlight of the film - the boy was sitting in the police car, although he had made a police report, he had already accepted Lisa's guidance psychologically ;
However, the reality defeated them. Hearing this sentence made people feel shocked and sighed.
The heroine's behavior is ambiguous, the director's intention is ambiguous, and the audience's understanding is inevitably somewhat ambiguous;
But isn't the world's harsh criticism of self, gentle criticism, and pursuit of human beings also ambiguous ?
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Text: Yorkshire Viking
The article comes from WeChat public account: Movie Detoxification
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