The film was adapted from the play of the same name. The play was full within a year after its performance, and it was hard to find a ticket, and won the Tony Award, the highest European stage award that year. The director has also directed a number of stage plays at the Royal Theatre. In the film, the fat man played by James Gordon has another stage play that we may be more familiar with - "One Servant and Two Masters". Gordon also won his first Tony Award for Best Actor.
The film is more like the top-notch version of "The Spice Girls" and the happy version of "Dead Poets Society". East Asia's memory of high school seniors is all about memorizing words during exams. In the European island country of Britain, there is a group of people discussing Hardy, Wittgenstein, Ye Chi and Wilde were admitted to Oxford and Cambridge, two of the best universities in the world, and could not help but sigh that their life experiences were so different.
The performance of the students in the film can make all Chinese students feel ashamed, yes, even Peking University and Tsinghua University are no exception. Because they are so nimble and we are so barren.
1. Quoting the scriptures according to the classics, witty words
Just a few excerpts from the film's dialogue show how witty the students' lines are.
Euphemism…(is) A verbal fig-leaf.
euphemism. . It's a verbal fig leaf.
“All knowledge is precious whether or not it serves the slightest human use”
—AE Housman
All knowledge is precious, no matter how small the contribution to humanity
-AE Horsman
And all this mourning has veiled the truth.
It's not so much lest we forget, as lest we remember.
There's no better way of forgetting something than by commemorating it.
All grief hides the truth,
Not that we will forget, but that we will remember,
Remembering is the best way to make people forget.
Sir. I don't always understand poetry.
I never understand it. But learn it now, know it now and you'll understand it whenever. And then you will have the antidote ready! Grief. Happiness. Even when you're dying.
Student: Teacher, I don't know poetry.
Teacher: I've never understood it, but now I'm learning, I'm starting to understand, and sooner or later I'll understand. Then you will have the antidote! Sad, happy, even when you're dying.
We studied poetry and slept in order to get full marks in the dictation exam. They learned poetry easily in their daily life, and they spit out half of Europe.
2. Reshaping a personal view of history
What is the origin of WWII? Germany's defeat in WWI? Hitler's rise to power? The rise of populist parties? These are standard answers in the history books. But aside from the standard answer, can you find a new angle?
The history we face is a fact, what matters is what kind of historical perspective to look at it. Churchill came to power during World War II, but it was another person who was more vocal at the time. Just because he had bad teeth, he chose Churchill by chance. If that person's dentist had been more professional, we might have been completely ruled by the Nazis.
How do you view concentration camps? How do you rate Hitler? In addition to the beauty that the textbook thinks, what other beauty is unknown? ... These questions have never been asked us, why should we ask them, just remember the standard answers.
3. Song of Youth
The most moving scene in the film is when Persia borrows a song to confess in literature class.
"Bewitched"
I'll sing to him, each spring to him,
I'll sing to him, each spring to him,
I will sing to him, to him every spring,
And worship the trousers that cling to him,
I envy the pants that can be next to him,
Bewitched, bothered and bewildered am I,
Bewildered, troubled and overwhelmed, that's who I am.
If the other party doesn't like you, you don't have to force it. In order to get admitted to Oxford's hug reward, it is enough to fight for the whole semester.
In order to thank the teacher, after graduation, a bold boy said to the teacher: "You give me oral sex".
Bold and vulgar, and rhetoric are the same person. This is a simple and beautiful song of youth.
4. The meaning of education
What is the meaning of education? Get into a good university? What is the meaning of reading? Get a high score in writing?
of course not. But why do we keep going down the wrong path. I don't need to say clichés, but beyond school education, how to educate yourself should be a life path that everyone should think about and practice.
Finally, this review ends with a poem.
Walden excerpt
(Thoreau)
I step into the jungle
Because I want to live a meaningful life
I want to live deeply
Absorb all the essence of life
destroy everything that is not life
lest when my life ends
Find out that you have never lived
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