Since the film is composed of three timelines, Sidney's student days, after becoming famous, and later on the wandering journey, reality and memory are intertwined between the virtual and the real, so it felt a bit messy at first. But as the story develops, the film gets better and better. What you are curious about, there are answers in the back. When all the doubts were solved, I suddenly realized that there were foreshadowings and clues ahead.
The news on TV read: "The best writer of our time, Sidney Hall, is gone."
Sidney's talent for writing was evident as a student. His subsequent publication, Tragic Suburbs, was shortlisted for the Pulitzer Prize. Fame made a series of changes in his life. At a book signing, a reader said to him:
"I've read your book so many times and it has really influenced the way I think. I think I know what to do now. The core of our country, inscribed in endless rows of houses, we live like this, should die like that."
The reader committed suicide a few days later. He felt guilty and remorseful.
Melody, who appeared at the door of his house with a small flower in his hand, was now his wife. Thinking back, they ate the same bad ice cream at the playground. Sidney asked, "Do you like it?" Melody said, "No, it tastes like duct tape." They talked about what they liked. Melody said she loves photography, loves Annie Leibovitz, that's her hero. Love Bob Dylan, love horror movies, love old Atari games and travel around. They left home together and agreed to go west together on May 25th when they turned 30.
But then Sidney cheated. Melody hurried out of the restaurant in the middle of an argument and left the asthma medication, and they were trapped in a malfunctioning elevator. Melody died of an asthma attack.
Sidney read aloud her own writings in her student-age classrooms, in direct and explicit language. After class, his former friend Brett approached him and said, "I like your article. It's candid." Then he asked him to help keep a videotape of Brett's father's crimes. And Brett will use this as key evidence to sue his father.
But one day the mother found Sidney's diary and called what he wrote "filthy". Because of the lack of communication, and because of the deepening misunderstanding without communication, in the endless quarrel and anger, the mother threw the videotape with the diary into the fireplace. Brett later committed suicide.
After a lot of grief, Sidney really returned to the western house he and Melody had agreed to on "May 25th" after his wandering journey as "Nameless". The poor physical condition made him faint, and he woke up in a hospital bed. He got Bishop, who was probably the only person he could talk to. Bishop had been a Pulitzer Prize finalist with him, and he had traveled far and wide to find him. Because Sidney's Tragic Suburbs, in a sense, rescued his son from pain and closure.
Some people live and some die because of his book.
If Sidney hadn't written "Tragic Suburbs," no one would have lived or died; if he hadn't had the diary, his mother wouldn't have seen it, and maybe the tapes wouldn't have been thrown into the fireplace, and Brett wouldn't have died; if he hadn't Cheating, Melody won't run away from the table and drop the asthma medicine, and even if they could still be trapped in the elevator, maybe Melody won't die.
Is it the seemingly small, insignificant choices that change the trajectory of life, like a butterfly flapping its wings on one end, causing a hurricane on the other end, or the first dominoes to fall and then to retreat. Or rather, this is the catastrophe and suffering that is destined to be experienced.
Sidney said:
"Once Melody left me, I began to gradually understand that, looking at the bright city lights outside, I was just a bunch of countless city lights. A small, insignificant pixel, buried in the whiteness of life In the noise. Just a momentary flicker in time. I don't want to be a martyr, I just want to be an anonymous person."
In fact, this episode of wandering really hit me. I sometimes wonder what the meaning of life is. Or the meaning of life is so huge that I cannot always perceive it in my trivial life. Because of ourselves, because of someone we deeply love, it has a kind and knowable meaning. Since he has lost his love, he will embark on a journey to find meaning, or simply give up his attachment to "meaning". He burns the "Tragic Suburbs" in every bookstore, abandons his name, and goes wandering. At this time, he had nothing, he was just himself, just between heaven and earth, alone, and spent some days. This is a period in which time is not used as a tool to measure the passage of time.
At the end of the movie, it returns to the original picture, a silent farewell to his father when leaving home, his first encounter with Melody, the first black and white photo Melody took for Sidney.
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