I've watched three versions of "Billy Lynn's Halftime Battle", whether it's 120fps or 60fps, 4K or 2K, Ang Lee raised the same question: being awarded a medal at a young age, and also Billy Lynn, who is unbroken but very attractive to girls, why is he willing to go back to that disgraceful battlefield to be shot?
In other words, why was he unwilling to stay and live?
It's not that he doesn't have a chance to live, he just can't find a reason to live.
His family, his people, and his comrades joined forces to send him back to the battlefield, but the first two were pushed, and the last were pulled.
Pushing means that all the interpersonal relationships in the so-called normal life are more skinny than the battlefield. Others are hell, and one person is a hell.
Ra, referring to Billy who returned to the battlefield, as a member of Class B, there are no more than two endings, killing the jihadists, or being killed by the jihadists. Billy's daily rush is to rely on each other in fear and work hard to survive like this group of stupid brothers who have been turned upside down by life.
His sharpness and ruthlessness make him a killing machine as easily as his Mujahideen counterpart. His determination and generosity allow him to become the heir of the mushroom and the protector of Class B.
In this world, the reasons for needing him to die seem to be stronger.
When he said "I love you" to his brothers, Billy was actually saying to himself that at this moment, he was not only willing to die like a mushroom to protect the group of people who were also blocking his life, but also because he accepted it. I feel happy and calm after knowing my own character and destiny.
Chapter 1: Unreliable Family
Unreliable family members are Lynn's first step to death.
His sister was severely disfigured in a car accident and was abandoned by her fiancé. Billy, who loved her sister dearly, threw a fist at his bastard fiancé. In order to settle his troubles, he was sent to Iraq by his father. From the perspective of onlookers, the logic of this choice is a bit strange. Since he desperately saved his son's life, why did he face more danger? First, maybe he was tired of worrying about the troublesome son, and wanted him to stay away from him. The second possibility is that because my father is a bellicose disabled man in a wheelchair, it is possible that he also participated in some battles that he was quite proud of. He is not only belligerent himself, but also hopes that his son will join the war to complete his pursuit of a sense of honor. But even when Billy returned with honors, he still struggled to squeeze a smile. What an unpleasant father, the days are indeed quite sad.
Then came a pair of groups, a housewife team composed of mother and sister-in-law. As soon as Billy returned with honor, his mother immediately entered the role of a heroic mother, and continued to play on the attitude of "I taught him how good his son is".
The sister-in-law's sense of catching horses walked out of the house, and the cute lines of "I feel like I have become a celebrity" are also eloquent. What Billy brings to them is not a life without the threat of weapons of mass destruction, but a pseudo-climax of existence as a low-level family.
Such a family, let alone the reason for Billy's greed for life, almost didn't show the emotion of "If you are not a hero, how can we be a martyr?" If I were Billy, I would feel that I am sorry for them if they are not heroes.
The one who cares the most is my sister. The relationship between her sister and Billy is the deepest, and Li An handles it most movingly. She cares about Billy and can't bear Billy to die. At the last moment, she has been trying to save Billy with the help of a psychiatrist. In the intimate interaction between the two, many viewers even saw the feeling of replacing the mother-child relationship, and even incest. None of these are false.
In fact, my sister never fully understood Billy's feelings from beginning to end. In trying to persuade Belgium, her focus was on herself, and she said to Billy that if you died, I would kill myself too. With a threatening connotation. It seems that, compared to the blow of Billy's death, what she can't bear is being "abandoned" by Billy, being disfigured in a car accident, and being abandoned by her fiancé is bad enough, if her younger brother also "abandoned" herself , how do you make him believe that life will get better?
Also, is she half-jokingly urging Billy to break up because she thinks sex is wonderful? A lady Frankenstein who wants to hit a random high school student on the street has almost zero chance of having a good sex life. She wants Billy to do what she can't do herself, so that she can be less desperate about her own failure like the hopeful loser parents.
When these could not stop Billy, she was furious and could no longer hide that she was actually standing on the moral high ground. She accused Billy: "Would you rather trample on someone else's country?" Hearing this sentence Billy was aggrieved, and his tears flowed into two lines: "I'm a soldier. I just want to make you proud all the time." Billy joined the army because of his sister, and he thought he could prove it with a medal. I did nothing wrong in the first place. But his sister could not be sure of him from the bottom of her heart.
What a sad family relationship, no one wants to really understand Billy, but instead just draws nourishment from him. Billy had absolutely every reason to hate his family, break with it, and live a better life. But he would rather die than do it.
In fact, Ang Lee was gentle in the end, and asked her sister to give Billy a hug and a word of comfort: "I have always been proud of you." Whether true or false, most of the time, the family members who have been with us the longest, including It may be difficult for us to do it ourselves.
Chapter 2: Unreliable compatriots
Unreliable people are the second accelerator. This throttle is the most innocuous and most provocative. From the "thanks to the crowd" who came to this tour without knowing what to do, to the reporters who thought it was an "honor" for Billy to fight hand-to-hand with the jihadists, and randomly asked them to show the "fighting state" of the halftime performance director, asking "killer" What does it feel like to die alone?” Rugby players who have a grumpy temper and who accuse the rugby field staff of Class B, “This is how soldiers are”, to slutty male fans who discriminate against homosexuality, they are black from beginning to end, almost non-stop. immortal? monster? Billy is looking into the mirror, one sentence is worth ten thousand.
Many people think that the failure of communication and misunderstandings is due to the different experiences and positions of the two parties, or that Class B does not conform to the people's imagination of heroes. Of course it makes sense. The people are taxpayers, and Class B spends taxpayers' money. Although their cost is their lives, they are still a group of children who were thrown into the battlefield in confusion, but they spend taxpayers' money after all.
However, what the rugby tycoon said is more ruthless and more accurate. This war with deep political ambitions is demoralizing, and it needs to rely on movies (performances) to restore popularity. The people didn't even have the mood to pretend to care. Class B performed political correctness at the press conference, and the people also performed political correctness in the face of them.
The most splendid part of this part is recognized as having two episodes. One is Billy's love affair with a cheerleader with big breasts and fair skin. When the performance ended, when Lala held his face and said "I need you", Billy almost believed it, he said emotionally "Girl, I almost ran away with you". Almost, it means that I still haven't made up my mind to stay. However, at this most critical moment, the girl slapped her face: "Where are you going? Don't you want to go back to the battlefield? You are an honored hero!" The 120-frame 4K details made Billy's The face looked as if 200cc of blood had been drained in an instant, and it suddenly changed from a flushed teenager.JPG to an indifferent adult.JPG.
The other is the mouth-to-mouth battle between the monitor, Billy CP and the football team owner. I won't go over this in detail, I just want to say that the so-called hooligan performance of the tycoon is actually relatively normal, and it is not particularly cheap in the Hollywood movies (the real cheap scale can refer to "Barton Funk"), I even believe that with the reality Compared with the tycoons in life, this man is civilized and polite, and it is considered that there is true love in the world and true love in the world.
The famous line in this scene is actually the squad leader Daim's "Everyone says you are a hero. When you need money, you close your wallet. Talk is cheap. Money screams." The squad leader knows that the tycoon is in business Well, he is the comprehensive embodiment of the client's will, just like his team loses wildly, and he can continue to build luxury stadiums, because the rich care about the box. He ruthlessly pressed the price, simply because the people's love for heroes is price-limited for a limited time. So he knew that his rants were meaningless, he couldn't get more money for his brothers, and he shot them out just to make his brothers, Billy beside him, make himself feel better.
From a personal point of view, the most splendid thing in the film is the irritable soldiers who like "Conan the Barbarian", and if they disagree, they choke up the slut boy fans who mocked them for being intimate and disgusting in the trenches. This move has also been unanimously approved and assisted by comrades-in-arms. There are two very wonderful close-up shots in 120fps/4K here. One is watching the bastard's complexion gradually turn purple, and Billy's eyes gradually changed from looking happy to looking fierce; the second is a violent comrade letting go After that, the facial muscles continued to twitch. Vicious because of pain, and pain because of ferocity, the B class, those people who hate the battlefield and can't be separated from the battlefield, have truly completed their character shaping at this moment.
Chapter 3: Class B is the most reliable
In fact, Class B is not "reliable". The encouragement and support of the comrades in arms is the greatest comfort for Billy to die.
It was the mushroom that started this "awakening". After teaching Billy and listening to his story, Mushroom saw the potential of Billy as himself, a heir to the patron saint. The "God" mushroom in the shot begins to "preach" to him, you have to find reasons other than God and the country to fight or even die. Facts have proved that Billy does have this potential. The moment he found that the mushroom was besieged, he didn't even want the cover of his teammates, and rushed up alone. This was the moment when the mushroom was about to die, and Billy felt the soul pass through his body. The 120fps/4K here gave birth to another classic shot. After Billy felt the soul crossing, Vin Diesel's face was noticeably looser, perhaps 21 grams lighter. After watching so many out-of-body scenes, I didn't expect Ang Lee to shoot it so straightforwardly, killing everything in front of him. In fact, from this moment on, Billy was ready to accept the fate of becoming the protector of Class B, but he himself hadn't noticed it yet.
The second person responsible for "brainwashing" the budding patron saint is the squad leader Daim. In Billy's recollection, when he was still in Iraq, Daim said that I watched you for a long time. You are different from those idiots. You are always calm when there is chaos. You belong here. The subtext is that if you don't protect those idiots, they will die. This time Billy did not refuse, he began to eat this Amway that "felt he was needed".
Billy was influenced by the psychiatrist's words (in fact, he didn't have PTSD at all), and asked Daim, what if you had a choice not to return to the battlefield? Daim replied forcefully: "But I didn't." The same dialogue happened twice, which is exactly the same as the answer "Need (reason)?" Billy didn't ask any more, he knew he and Dame were thinking exactly the same thing. The finishing touch was that after the brothers were attacked by the security guards at the football stadium, Damm said very bluntly: "Do me a favor and don't let these idiots have an accident, okay?" Then Billy looked forward to his back. The sister shook her head firmly.
Another thing I have to mention is the divine assist of my friend MANGO. I talked to another Mexican bartender about the reason for joining the army. MANGO said that I wanted to leave that ghost place from the beginning, and only found out after I came back, where else can I go? Going to Burger King for fries? Life sucks. Billy muttered. Although their ethnicity, skin color, religion, and origin are different, they are the ones who can truly understand each other.
When Billy returned to the fantasy chariot, the fantasy mushroom said to him, (to the effect) it's not terrible to die in a foreign land, because we and the people we care about are in the same trench, and now it's your responsibility . Billy smiled with tears in his eyes and said "I love you" to his brothers. This is a ritual that Mushroom designed to inspire his subordinates when he led Class B to fight for the first time. For Billy, this was also a coronation ceremony for him to choose to be a mushroom: Class B needed him more, and he decided to die for them.
Ending: This may not be a heartbreaking story
If you think that it is better to die than to live, this is indeed a heartbreaking story: Billy, who returned to his homeland from Iraq to receive the medal, was finally misunderstood and ruthlessly sent back to the battlefield by the people, and he and his comrades greeted more and more More crazy revenge of the enemies that they made with their own hands.
But for Lynn, it was the brightest moment of his life: as he said "I love you" to his comrades with red eyes and tears, his face glowed with relief from neglected loneliness happiness, a kind of calmness that completely accepts the character and fate.
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