It was in Brazil, Rio de Janeiro, Central Station. Dora, a retired teacher, could make a living with her literacy skills and write letters on behalf of others. God knows she will take those letters home after writing them. Girlfriends who go out read letters together for fun. Girlfriends are kind. Every time they read a letter, she feels that she should help someone send it. But Dora is very hard-hearted. That could mean hope, and for Dora, the beginning of another new disappointment.
How rough is Dora, why is her heart so hard and cold? Looking at the chaotic Central Station, the endless crowds, the transit station of life carrying hope and disappointment, she must have seen too much ugliness.
She was eighteen years old. She saw her father who abandoned her and her mother for many years in a foreign land and said, "Do you still remember me?" Father was stunned for a moment, and said, how could I forget you, such a beautiful woman? That's when her heart died. This is the child who has not been loved by his father.
It went on like this for decades until I met Joshua. Joshua was very naughty and rude. His mother asked Dora to write to his father, but he asked his mother, how did you know she would send the letter. The child was right. Dora glared at Joshua hard. With her mother dead, fate joins Dora and Joshua, two people who have been hostile to each other from the start.
And then let's save, an old woman who is hard-hearted and doesn't take other people's hopes seriously, suddenly turned into a bodhisattva this time. Doesn't it mean to put down the butcher's knife and become a Buddha on the spot? Could it be Joshua's penetrating eyes, with a trace of hatred, straight and cruel eyes that do not evade, reminding her of herself before the age of 18, who still had a glimmer of hope to find her father? In short, she acted as the Virgin.
You know how poor Brazil is. Such a golden earth, dusty, boundless and white sky, old and ramshackle buses, and the ragged faces of the poor with ravines. One after another, covering the entire movie. From the messy Grand Central Station at the beginning, to what I saw along the way, it was the most ordinary people, they told all kinds of stories, they opened their mouths to express their hopes and disappointments, Some have joy, some have trouble, and some just want to thank God for the rain and land. You discover why so much simplicity and beauty are bred in this barren land. In those faces, there is a real humanity.
The faces interspersed in the film look beautiful under the golden land and sunshine. This is beauty, not those who hide under thick powder.
And so many of them are illiterate.
Moved by the simple humanity again and again, the truck driver who met by chance, aroused Dora's love fantasy but left her. Joshua's brother, hearing that Dora was his father's friend, insisted that she go to the house for dinner and let her read his father's letter. They always hit it off, but they didn't ask too much, and they didn't give anything in return. Their smiling faces are always so simple and a little shy, they are like people from heaven.
Except for Dora and Joshua. We knew they were two people who wouldn't trust anyone. Dora, in particular, lives a hopeless life by tearing up other people's hopes for fun. The other one went to pick up a spinning top and caused his mother to fall in the middle of the road and was killed by a car. After that, his eyes were cold, and he seldom even showed his sadness.
But this is the same Madonna and Child as in that portrait—a picture of high-sounding, beautiful serenity, noble elegance. It can be seen that the so-called holiness comes from these humbleness.
What the movie has to do is to show us how ordinary people discover the love and kindness that has been hidden in themselves for a long time, the kindness and love that have been cocooned by life and even forgotten, and see how Dora and Joshua are doing a little bit. Take your defenses off and it's -- as Dora said -- we're friends.
After writing to make money, Joshua was going to buy Dora a dress, and he complimented Dora like a real man - you look so good with lipstick on, you should wear this dress. Are they mother and son, friends, or lovers? All I know is that Dora has received her complete education of love. She no longer hates her father. In the process of following Joshua to find her father, she knows how helpless things are in the world, just like Joshua who thought she was abandoned by her father. Ya, only later did he know that his mother and his departure made his father become an alcoholic and lost his confidence in life, and his father went to them. His father loved his mother so deeply. What caused the separation between them? Poverty, backward, uprooted? Or illiterate, lack of communication? "I miss my father," Dora wrote to Joshua with tears in her eyes.
She finally completed her love education because she thought she hated the truth, the good and the beautiful, but one day she suddenly had the nerve to do a good deed, and was tortured to death along the way, but in the end she found that everything was the most beautiful, she completed herself.
The two most ordinary people, in the devotion and need for each other, became the Virgin and the Son. And the Virgin and the Son are by no means unattainable as in the portraits. They appear around at any time, such as Dora and Joshua who seem to be bad. This is the truth of things.
So the end of the film is very good, they are smiling in the tears of separation, it is a journey in life, and the curtain falls perfectly, after that, the memory will make everything forever.
Even in such a poor land, people still did not lose hope and still lived tenaciously. In the process, they helped each other, respected and loved each other, and never gave up their search for faith. This is the hymn of a nation, and this is the Brazilian The hope of a piece of land is also the most moving part of this movie.
From two humble ordinary people, the elderly and children, to all living beings on the land, the display of various social conditions, and the trickle of human warmth, let us know what is true beauty and what is redemption. The seedlings of hope are growing there. Under the seemingly ordinary faces, there are sacred souls, who are waiting to shine at any time, and they can shine.
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