Winter is cold and snow is coming. When it snows, you can never find two identical snowflakes at the same time. During the avalanche, no one knew what the last snowflake looked like. There is no need to be confused and angry because of the avalanche, no snowflake is innocent.
Share good movies and add joy to life, here is what Ye Dong said.
The film I want to talk about today is very interesting. In my opinion, it tells 3 stories:
Chris
Chris is a team leader of the "Special Forces Against Crime" (BAC) in Saint-Denis, France's 93 department. What is this "anti-criminal special forces" doing? To put it bluntly, it is the police who maintain local order. So why not just call the police? This has to introduce the place of Saint-Denis. One of the most chaotic and poorest regions in France, Saint-Denis looks more like a "gate to hell", although it is the gateway to the north of Paris. All kinds of immigrants, religiousists, drug dealers, prostitutes, etc. are all growing like poisonous vines here. In such an environment, Chris naturally has a unique way to work well.
On this day, Chris and his partner Gwada picked up his new colleague Stéphane to report to the police station. Along the way, Chris teased Stéphane with his cynicism, but Stéphane sternly said he wasn't in the mood to joke. After arriving at the police station, simple equipment and meeting the Boss, Chris took the two to start a routine patrol. Oh yes, Boss also praised Chris in front of Stéphane for his experience and spirit.
Chris introduced the community to Stéphane in the car, such as who had been in prison, who had their heads cut off, who had bribed himself... In order to make Stéphane familiar with daily work more intuitively, Chris also brought With Stéphane, he went directly to search the bodies of the three "bad girls" who smoked to see if there were drugs hidden in the cigarettes.
In such an environment, it is not enough to rely on yourself, you must have a rich network of people. Chris took Stéphane to meet Le Maire, a black head of the local market. It was obvious that they were old friends. Nope, Le Maire enlists Chris's help to legally take down a street vendor who doesn't follow his rules. Chris is naturally very good, but this time there was an accident. It's not how tough the vendor is, but another group of people - gypsies who run a circus, go to Le Marie with sticks and axes and ask them to return Johnny, who is Johnny?
Everyone was at a loss, and almost started to fight between pushing and shoving. Thanks to the timely arrival of the three of Chris, the crowd was ripped apart. After Chris' inquiry, we finally found out that Johnny was a circus lion cub who was stolen by a black child and brought into the community. After figuring out the ins and outs, Chris assured the gypsies that the lion cub would be found and returned within a day, successfully preventing a riot.
Turning around and entering the house, Chris immediately asked Le Marie to pressure his men to find the little lion. Then, Chris took Gwada and Stéphane to find the lion cubs. What's bothering Chris is this: Stéphane is a guy who just messes things up and says sorry. No valuable clues were asked, and a diatribe was drawn from a black mother.
So Chris had another plan. He opened ins, because he knew that according to the habits of these people, the big things will be uploaded to ins and Facebook. Sure enough, it didn't take long for him to find the thief who stole the cub - Issa, a habitual petty thief.
As soon as they said they did, they started looking for Issa right away. In a football field, after a fierce chase, Chris finally catches Issa. But the kids who played football with Issa thought the police were bullying them as usual, so they picked up plastic bottles and stones to fight back - kids usually don't have so many interests, they are good and bad. . Issa was thus given the opportunity to escape, but was unsuccessful - Gwada's electron gun went off, hitting Issa.
What's even worse for Chris is that the whole process was filmed by a black kid's drone. Chris panicked. He knew the impact of a leaked video. He acted decisively, loaded the unconscious Issa into the police car, and with Gwada and Stéphane began to search for the whereabouts of the drone.
Relying on rich network resources, Chris learned of the whereabouts of the drone from another gang leader, but trouble came, and the video was obtained by a black man Salah who washed his hands. The Salah, who is neither Le Marie's control nor another gang leader, distrusts Chris and refuses to hand over the video. Poor Chris panicked. He was furious and cursed, berating Salah for his "misbehavior" and trying to violently take away the kid who filmed the video. The impulsive behavior of anger will only hit the iron wall, hit the head and break the blood. Chris didn't expect that Gwada and Stéphane would not support him either, and Stéphane, who in his eyes would only screw things up, took the initiative to ask Ying to negotiate with Salah this time.
Stéphane surprisingly got the video back, but refused to give it to Chris. Chris was struck by thunder one after another, and his stinky temper erupted along with his angry, twisted face that was white but darkened. They parted ways, seemingly ending the farce.
Chris returned home, the two children were still playing, and the wife was doing the housework. Chris didn't say anything, maybe he's still caught up in the drama of the day, he's still thinking about the damn immigrant kid, the damn gypsy lion cubs. Yeah, what about the little lion? What about little boy Issa?
Issa
Issa stole a whole sack of chickens from a Romanian chicken coop. He just watched terrified, terrified, and perhaps a little careless in the police station: his father was there berating him loudly, asking the police not to contact him, and he couldn't control Issa if he didn't want to. The entire police station was attracted by his father's voice. Suddenly, Issa panicked—he saw his father grab his shoe and hit him. Issa shrank to the corner, either instinctively or habitually holding her head to avoid it.
After leaving the police station, Issa did not go home, but was playing with friends. Watching his companions play the game of sliding down a height while sitting on the lid of the trash can, he and his friends always thought it was too dangerous. Speaking of danger, Issa recalled a story: In his hometown, a man was found stealing a battery car, and then everyone tied the man up and burned him to death on a tree at the entrance of the village. Issa added: If you steal something, you have to die, and when you die, you can't steal any more.
Issa went home with the stolen lion cub, and was told by a friend: Mom and Dad got back together again, and the family didn't want him to go back. Issa locked the lion cub in the basement and threw in a chicken.
Not expecting to be caught by the police while defending the next ball, Issa ran away. After crossing the fence and over the courtyard gate, there were police cars in front and chasing soldiers in the back, and Issa was still pushed down and grabbed by the side of several trash cans.
"Where did the little lion go?" "It was in the basement, but it disappeared." Issa's friends caught up, "What crime did he commit, why did you arrest him?" Police, the scene was chaotic for a while, and Issa took the opportunity to run away again. With a bang, Issa fell to the ground.
Issa couldn't open both eyes, first fell into a coma, and the whole person fell into a void space. Then, in this nothingness, someone suddenly opened a hole from above, as if someone had placed it there beforehand, and a sharp pain of burning and tearing brought him back to reality. A lacerated wound under the right eye was bleeding, and it felt terribly painful to touch. It felt like a burst of electricity, sending a signal to the brain when a person pressed a switch on his face, and the brain received the message and twitched violently, causing Issa to whimper.
Issa wasn't taken to the hospital right away, he just felt like he was lying in the car dragged in blood and flesh, going here and there. He was handed over to a gang leader, who had to be kept here because the police had not been able to find the drone.
Issa waited for the police, and the found lion cub, and they went to the circus together.
Issa also doesn't know why the circus owner put himself in the big cage - the moment the lion roars angrily, all he has left is fear. He was shaking, his legs were weak, he wanted to step back, the big hand of the circus owner was holding him tightly, and he was peeing his pants. When people are at their most dangerous, what they usually think about is not how to survive, but I am dead, and I am not optimistic at all. The circus owner finally won, looked at Issa's wet pants with satisfaction, and let him out.
Issa must not have been listening to the rhetoric taught him by that pesky cop "Pink Pig" on his way back in the cop car, his body dipped in his pissed trousers. The smell of urine mixed with humiliation rushed to his brain from under him, and he was beaten by Pink Pig again.
"Remember what I taught you? How did you get these injuries, it's you..."
Issa walked back, but not home. He rallied all the children who had long been dissatisfied with the police and the black bosses who only wanted to profit and not care about their fellow citizens. On the second day, they set up a cover and led three police officers into the dilapidated building. Under the light of the fire, fireworks, wine bottles, and various sundries were thrown at the police, and the black leaders who heard the news were also beaten by the group. .
The three police officers finally had nowhere to go. Issa picked up a Molotov cocktail and slowly walked down the stairs. The police officers were already injured, and some were bleeding. They begged Issa to stop. Issa didn't speak, the scars under the firelight were just describing what happened yesterday. Issa slowly lifts the Molotov cocktail, will the bottle hit the police? Will anyone die? we do not know.
We know what's coming, but we can't see what needs to change now.
Stéphane _
Stéphane came to work here because his ex-wife was transferred here, including his son, who he wanted to take better care of. Faced with a new colleague, he was a little restrained. As a newcomer, he obviously couldn't adapt to the way BAC works here - the police not only do drugs, but also know the prices of prostitutes' services like the back of their hands, and they search girls for no reason. He also rudely knocked down the cell phone of the girl who was taking pictures. When they go out, they don't even wear armbands. According to this Chris: they all know we are the police.
One of Stéphane's first assignments was to go into a restaurant and ask Salah about the whereabouts of the lion cub, which Chris said was because he was polite. Stéphane is indeed very polite, and he carefully asks the diners: Where is Salah? His rare courtesy to blacks didn't seem to work, and Salah only told him that lions are sacrosanct in Islam, that lions shouldn't be caged, that lions shouldn't be fed, that they know how to hunt.
Stéphane only got a free sandwich.
Stéphane felt that it was better to save Issa instead of looking for a drone;
Stéphane felt that it would be better to get the video back through peaceful negotiation;
Stéphane feels that the video coming back should not be handed over to Chris;
Stéphane felt that the shot was not a misfire, because he knew how the gun needed to be fired;
Stéphane hopes to persuade Issa not to drop the Molotov cocktail, because he is afraid of death, because he still has a family, because he knows that after the riot in 2005, these immigrants still got nothing.
Not because Issa they are black, they are immigrants.
Not because this land is temporarily called France, it really only can be enjoyed by French with white skin.
land
No piece of land has ever belonged to any man or any animal. The earth has existed for 4.6 billion years. Those who survived live here temporarily, those who couldn't survive changed places, and those who couldn't find a place or didn't find a place in time died.
The banks of the Seine are not born to belong to the French, and the African continent is not born to belong to the blacks. After all, the axiom is that whoever has the strength can occupy this land, and whoever owns this land. This is the reality, certainly crueler than we verbally desire. Desperately looking for old-fashioned so-called treaties, conventions, etc., are just a fig leaf to hide the ambition to seize. If you want to keep the old peace, why not ask how much blood and tears the original covenant was built on? Does that count as legitimate?
Multi-angle
Every time I watch a movie now, I will re-imagine how the movie will be made from the perspective of another non-protagonist based on the known plot direction. Just like "Little Women", the author once told a friend that if it were shot from the perspective of Amy instead of Joe, the characters and the plot would be very different. Joe might end up being an overly smart and unreliable lover, and Amy would be miserable and lovable, but the final film will give us far less thinking.
In my opinion, this "Les Miserables" is not a movie with a particularly prominent protagonist. The protagonist Stéphane plays more of a guiding role, allowing the audience to observe these policemen and children from his perspective, and then think about immigration, Religion, racism, etc. So we get to see Chris who is prejudiced and rude, and poor Issa who has something to hate...but what if we look at Chris or Issa?
We can see that, in Chris's opinion: these evils are caused by these immigrants themselves. They live on the land "lent" to them by the French, they should be obedient, they should be good if they have soup, they should be " Real French".
From Issa's point of view: he also has legal French citizenship, and it is these policemen, these "Pink Pigs" who deliberately find fault every day. You should also get a good education like other native French citizens. If the government does not change, you can only grow wildly and become bad. This is not something we who stand on the moral and material high ground can attack with a sentence "You can be poor, but you can't be bad". I am too poor to survive, and what is even worse is that I have no competitiveness compared with others. Not only is the present dark, but there is no way to live in the future. Are you still good at this time? Of course, most sensible power-givers are the best at getting people to succumb to addiction by tightening and loosening. Some people will say that Issa didn't learn well by himself, look at his fellow Mbappe, he won everyone's respect by his ability. But how many Mbappe can there be? Mbappe's father is a football club coach, what about Issa? His parents didn't want to care about him, they were either disappointed with him or beat and scolded him.
There is a "vicious circle of poverty theory" in economics, that is, "poor because of poverty". From the perspective of supply, poor countries have low savings due to their low income, and less savings will make capital scarce, making it difficult to expand production, and low production can only lead to low income, thus falling into a vicious circle.
For Issa, he seems to be in such a vicious circle. So how to break this cycle? If we really want to keep repeating this cycle, wouldn't it be forever? The solution seems to be very simple, and we have heard a lot of such examples - a rural family let the eldest and second-eldest drop out of school to work, and pooled the efforts of the whole family to provide the youngest, a college student, hoping that the youngest could make the whole family escape poverty. This is true of small families, and the same is true of large countries. Get rich first and get rich later, everyone gets rich together. But in this way, I have a question that has never been answered: Are the people who got rich first really willing to go back and drive the people behind to get rich?
From my perspective on human nature, the answer is no. The greatest benevolence that the rich first can do is to improve the living standards of the latter to a certain extent, and then firmly maintain the gap between the rich and the poor, and stick to the rising barrier. No matter how big the cake is, how to divide it is more important. In this regard, even relying on the mandatory requirements of national policies to bring wealth first and then become rich may not be effective.
think
The film "Les Miserables" has a certain subjective color. As a black man, director Ladj Ly naturally shows the misery of African immigrants under the camera, but at the same time, he does not shy away from the dirty, messy and bad immigrants. It was shot relatively objectively. Poor Issa can steal and be violent. That's a good shot.
The author is now obsessed with movies that are narrated from a relatively objective perspective. Although the objective price is to sacrifice a considerable part of the subjective perspective of the characters' different views of right and wrong, the mood changes and the ups and downs of fun are more worthy of people's aftertaste. , to think.
This is like in daily life, such as "Zhang San and Li Si had a fight", if it is an acquaintance of Zhang San, it will become "My good friend Zhang San was beaten badly by Li Si." , Li Si is really not a human, come to sneak attack, come to cheat!", and Li Si's friends would tell me "Li Si did a really good job this time! He couldn't stand Zhang San's bullying, and he stepped forward to repair him. A meal." In the past, I would have listened to what these two friends had to say with great interest, but now I prefer to judge by watching a video of the cause and effect of the fight between Zhang San and Li Si at that time.
Movies should not instill something, but inspire people to think about something.
Even a popcorn movie is worthwhile if it makes you understand the meaning of "with great power comes great responsibility" after watching it. If I just told you about Prada, Chanel, rip-offs, etc., then making this kind of movie is tantamount to money laundering.
The gold and silver jewelry displayed in the window may be beautiful, but isn't it more rewarding to explore a gold mine? Sacrificing some of the intuitive and cheap fun, in exchange for a treasure of life-long benefits, which is more important, I think you know, the hard thing is to really choose.
thank you all
This film review was first published on the public account: Ye Dong said.
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