When you think of the hippie movement, what comes to mind?
I'm sure Kerouac's "On the Road", Hopper's "Easy Rider", and "Song of the Road" by the Pain Band will definitely leave a name. As the originator of road films, "Easy Rider" has deeply influenced the values of a generation in the United States, and a so-called "New Hollywood Movement" has also been pushed to a climax after this film.
At the Shanghai Film Festival last year, I planned to watch this work. People probably always crave what they can't get, and I was looking forward to seeing this movie on the screen at the time, but I was always working overtime so I wasn't "happy", and that movie didn't end up happening. . In the two Shanghai Film Festivals, I only watched Godard's "Book of Images". I don't know when this year's Shanghai Film Festival will be postponed due to the epidemic.
I recently bought a motorcycle, and now it's spring season, so I plan to make up for this movie. By the way, to reveal a piece of knowledge, NetEase has a "public image collection plan". The term of copyright protection in my country is only 50 years, so theoretically, all film works published before 1970 can enter the public domain. If you are interested, you can find this movie in the Netease video.
The plot of "Easy Rider" is very simple. If it is introduced in one sentence, a pair of young people are buried here. They came from the road and they died on the road. If you choose a more complicated introduction, with the money earned from drugs, the knights bought two motorcycles to participate in the April Lent. They were not welcomed by people along the way, and they had to sleep in the wild. Stopped in bohemian communities along the way; got thrown in jail for marching without permission; beaten up in the wild by a group of orthodox Americans and lost their lawyer friend Hansen they met in prison; with lawyer friend money, and Prostitutes take drugs together in the cemetery. Finally got shot on the road by a traditional Yankee for not liking their long hair.
Indulgence, smoking marijuana, indulging in oriental Zen, motorcycles, music, etc., you can see almost all hippie elements in this movie. A passionate hormonal carnival, an absurd philosophical discussion, after a fateful trip, all this will always return to nothingness, the protagonist tells the truth of "I screwed everything up", but nothingness is also a kind of their pursuit. meaning. In that era, whether it was the ideal Woodstock of musicians, or the "bed peace" under the bed of Lennon and Yoko Ono, young people swayed their tireless youth memories with the spirit of burning calmly rather than lingering on. The absurdity and beauty of a generation have a generation, and the beat generation lived out a kind of bad beauty here.
Of course, this kind of beauty comes at a price. The freedom-seeking hippies are yellow-faced and skinny, arguing over who took some of the food, and sowing rice that doesn't know when it will grow. The belief that they will have as long as they believe does not save them from hunger and suffering. Spirit and material seem to be a product that cannot have both. And the knights themselves can only sleep on the streets along the way, even if the low-end motels are not open to them. Restaurants are not friendly to them, people hate them and verbally attack them just because they don't look like them.
In life, who does not love freedom, and who does not want to have freedom, so this movie attracts us ordinary people. The Easy Rider was just the choice of the times that broke down at the time. We are far from being like the saints, "people can't bear their worries, and they can't change their joys." If you ask me if I want to live like them, I may envy them, but not willing. After all, there is no basic material satisfaction, even a free soul is unbearable. If you gain freedom and material things, then the pursuit of freedom is too cost-effective, but there is no such good thing in life, after all, it is impossible to have both.
We love freedom, but do we really love freedom? There is a discussion about freedom in the movie: discussing freedom and realizing freedom are two different things. Everyone preaches that freedom is good, and we love freedom. But when they see a truly free man, they are afraid. The traditional American old man in the movie kills the Easy Riders with one shot.
This ending in the movie a bit exaggerates the contradictions of reality. Although more than 60 years have passed since the movie, in life, do we still have another pair of eyes for free people? For example, we have thoughts about people who have tattoos, such as our finger-pointing about same-sex love, such as our verbal sarcasm at people who choose another way of life because they are different from us, because they are not us. In the law, "freedom without the prohibition of the law", Isaiah Berlin used "positive freedom, negative freedom" to tell the rights of people, but why is it so difficult for us to pursue the blessing of freedom for others.
It's time to start making changes from ourselves, for those who can't close the "birds" wings. If you ask me what is freedom? I will tell you that freedom is to embrace ten thousand possibilities.
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