if "If..." (If....) The ending reminds many people of "The Elephant" (The Elephant). Bullied students are shooting guns on campus, showing the foresight of "What If" director Lindsay Anderson. He also stated that the film has a "prophesy" quality. If the tension between the students and the system continues...what will happen? "The Elephant" is based on a true school tragedy, and the prediction is tragically accurate.
But "If..." adopts a relaxed tone, abandoning the tight plot, and the description of violence is not particularly heavy. Outside of the main line, the student life of a boarding school is shown loosely; the leaders are so bossy that it becomes fun to play truancy, drink and grow a beard. Mike and his old friends took advantage of the school ball game to take a walk on the street, playing with the Shadowless Sword and other scenes, probably to pay tribute to "Four Hundred Strikes" and "Breakthrough": Youth is freedom! Although the director said that the film was made of realism, just show what they are, to show the phenomenon of power relations in the campus, there are both autocratic omnipresence, and the thrill of secret crime, the lighthearted and humorous tone has developed, but it has become surrealism. Mike and his old friend played truant to the coffee shop, but instead they got a wild "counterattack" by kissing the girl who was visiting the shop, which was obviously a sexual fantasy. The girl seems to be Mike's alter ego, a hint of the wildness in her heart being released. So she would appear out of nowhere when Mike was ordered to clean up the school basement, and there would be boxes of ammunition in the basement. How could that be? The girls even joined the final shootout and shot the principal through the head.
This kind of FANTASY does not seem to be a fairy tale, because it is too violent, but the picture is deliberately faded without blood splashing. Even the principal's forehead gunshot wound only bleeds a little. When he died, he had to make faces with "cross eyes". authenticity. But "fairy tales" are actually very violent. There is domestic violence and cannibalism. They just deliberately avoid blood. This is a deep irony of the invisible violence institutionalized in boarding schools. In a scene where Mike and his two best friends were flogged, one person was called into the gym to be punished, and the other two waited outside the door. The camera did not follow up. The violence inside was invisible, but it did exist. And at that time Mike didn't know the catastrophe was coming, because not being able to see made people less vigilant. On the contrary, the violence of the system is always looking at you, so pervasive that Mike and others don't need to make any big mistakes, they can be convicted with "general attitude". What kind of attitude is that? The four students, the Big Brothers, are well-dressed, and there are people serving them (all of whom are forced undergrads), and they are mature gentlemen, which is probably the reason why they are authorized by the school. But I didn't do damage, I just insisted on doing what I wanted to do. The problem was that comprehensive discipline invaded every crevice of personal space, and insisting on being myself turned into resistance. Youth is just to be free and have space to take a puff of cigarettes.
The situation in IF 2
is similar to that of "Evil". The boarding schools in Sweden in 2003 and the UK in 1968 are surprisingly similar. The school also allows the head of students to govern it exclusively. The protagonist of "Evil" is also unwilling to succumb. Institutional and direct violence has become a "thorn in the side of the student body". However, compared to the horizontal fragmentary depiction of campus life in "If You...", "Bad Boy" focuses on the protagonist's growth process and has a more in-depth description of the source of violence.
The evil protagonist Erik was originally a bad boy who bullied others. No public school was willing to accept it. His mother had to sell the property for him to enter a boarding school for the children of high officials. Erik originally wanted to cultivate his mind, so he and his roommates would train each other academically, but unfortunately, he was sloppy and refused to be punished, so he offended the head of the student. "If..." There is little personal background about the students, but the violence of "bad kids" is closely related to domestic violence: Erik knew that when the punishment was upgraded, he would be sentenced to detention on weekends and could not go home, so he avoided it. Violent stepfather, because stepfather always finds excuses for corporal punishment and beats him on the back with a horse whip. Erik, like Mike, tried his best to restrain himself when he was punished, even though he tried to take advantage of the loopholes and didn't want to "make a big deal". They were also whipped from the back, humiliated and wept without saying a word; Mike picked up the gun from then on, but Erik only knew how to bully the weak outside, and those in the school who didn't know the truth just scolded him as "evil by nature". But Erik in the boarding school began to change. He would rather be seen as cowardly than accept the so-called "challenge" (actually punishment) from the two-on-one student leader, until they put their claws on Erik's innocent roommate Pierre, and Erik gave birth to The idea of total surrender. However, Pierre, who was inspired by Erik, would rather be beaten until his nosebleed fell to the ground than give in. Instead, he inspired Erik to challenge the two principals head-on.
The handling of Erik's counterattack is very different from Mike's anarchy attack. Erik is violent but still deliberately restrained. First, he showed his powerful strength in front of everyone, knocking down two with one-to-two lightning; then he ambushed the most powerful student principal in the wilderness. If "if..." is the foreshadowing of "elephant", then it would be evil begets evil. That was also the beginning of the "bad boy". The turning point was that Erik had the support of a few elders and the encouragement of his friends. He mustered up courage and gave birth to wisdom, and faced evil without doing evil. In fact, how could he not resist being beaten by his stepfather? All are psychological factors. In the end, he was summoned to the room by his stepfather again, but instead of being punished obediently, he challenged him head-on: "You will be blind, your nose will explode, and your hands will be broken." The scene after the director disappeared, but we all know how the victory was.
Want to go deeper, is the ending of "what if..." really so evil? Why did Mike and his companions decide to fight back, not the four principals, but the pastor, principal and other adults? Or, they have seen through it all, and the principal who is full of "I understand you! Please believe me!" is worse than those students, because he wants the students to be "ugly", but he pretends to be a good person. ? So Mike and the others didn't "take revenge", the autocracy comes from the hypocrisy and irresponsibility of adults!
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