The first time I watched Mid90s was on a plane that took more than ten hours from New York to Hawaii. During the black and white blurry day and night, in the dim cabin with dozens of people, the color of Mid90s movie was slightly darker, just like wet rain. The weather is the same, I thought it was retro in the 90s. At first, I didn’t know what to expect. My visual impression of skater movie stayed in home made video, and the narrative recognition of boys living with violence in Bing Liu’s documentary Minding the Gap, I expected Jonah Hill’s Mid90s should be funny and absurd. Unexpectedly, it is a fresh sketch, very textured, and the characters are real. This is Hill’s first movie. I heard from an interview that he wrote this script for three years and changed more than 20 editions. No wonder the characters’ lines and actions in the script are so precise. They combined friendship, brotherhood, and family love in 75 minutes. The performance is remarkable, showing everyone's imperfections.
Big Brother: Oedipus Plot
The eldest brother was the first to be introduced as a supporting actor, and he was portrayed as a bully full of violence. In addition to fist bullying the male protagonist Sunburn, a large part of his conversation was related to or in the same frame as his mother. For example, the earliest shot was his birthday. Mom recalled that she was 18 years old and was breastfeeding her eldest brother at her birthday party. This sentence made the whole family seem speechless, and the eldest brother was super uncomfortable. The most classic one. The camera should have seen him wearing the mask of Bill Clinton watching Sunburn and his mother's conversation. The mother was wearing a white pajamas and could see the underwear inside. The big brother was naked, which made people think and was sexually suggestive. Then Sunburn apologized to her mother for being late, but her mother didn't seem to think it was anything but comforted him. We saw the eldest brother with an unhappy face next to him. In addition to the above scenes, when Sunburn asked the eldest brother for money, the eldest brother made a very special and deliberate decision to steal from his mother, and what was stolen was the money in the Mother's Day card. It seemed that he wanted to use Sunburn's hand to seek his mother's ambition. In addition, after Sunburn gradually self-awakened, the eldest brother told her mother’s "secret", saying that when she was young, she often took unknown men home, and she often heard them making love. Such obvious sexual hints confirmed his Oedipus. plot.
Sunburn: Self-abuse
The child Sunburn looks very naive and sweet, but he has suffered the most injuries in the movie. In addition to injuries caused by others (such as his brother’s beatings, he fell on a skateboard and his head bleeds), he also imposes on himself. After stealing money from his mother, he used a comb to brush his legs frantically, or he strangled his neck with a keyboard cord after hitting his brother. It stands to reason that such a small child who is only a teenager should escape punishment instead of self-abuse. From a spiritual point of view, self-abuse is actually a self-control behavior. The greater the uncertainty in the outside world, the more tortured oneself, the more a cry for help, and the desire to get the attention of the outside world.
Ray: Protector
Several of Sunburn’s little friends do not have very complicated personality lines. The motivation of Ray’s character is also well understood. He once told Sunburn that his brother was hit and killed by a car. He was hit hard at that time. It seems that It can explain why Ray is always the protector of Sunburn, and some of the big brothers are guiding him. I especially like Ray's final line saying: "You take life the hardest out of everyone I know, you know you don't have to do that, right?", it seems to be a solution to Sunburn's forced self-abuse.
Comments on the "black" race:
One of the most beautiful scenes in the movie is when the police start to chase people in skate park, all in slow motion with angelic music ( Philip Glass: A Normal Man Running ), I feel that this crime is very beautiful, maybe this is the director The freedom you are pursuing. Another classic shot is when Ray gave Sunburn’s view of black people, Sunburn said: "What are black people?" One is that the white kid really doesn’t know, and the other implies that a person’s race doesn’t seem to be the same. It's important. He can't see the difference in black and white. This sentence also laid a little foundation for the friendship between these people.
The last few thoughts:
The United States has made a lot of "Coming out of age" movies, especially those that are very popular recently, focusing on the awakening of young people, or the understanding of middle-aged people from the crisis. It seems that every stage of life has an awakening in the eyes of Americans. , Change, this is closely related to the individualism advocated in the culture, it seems that this kind of subject matter in China is still relatively small. Skate movies are even rarer, and some are labeled as youth subcultures. However, compared to the United States, which advocates freedom, which regards skate as a sport for cool kids, the country does not seem to take this seriously, or even as an illegal and improper gangster; skate is combined with hip pop, rap, and graffiti art. In contrast, there seems to be no local cultural soil in China to make these things come alive, and it seems that they lack a bit of soul.
Another point to chat about is the recent interest in the so-called extreme sports skate and surfing, which are different from group sports such as basketball and football. Both of these are solo sports, and they are more concerned with the psychological state of the athletes themselves. This seems to be why movie themes in team sports often involve heroism, and the moral values that are preached are absolute right and wrong, winning and winning; while skater movies are relatively more concerned about look within, and personality shaping is more delicate and sensitive. We see men in this kind of movies face their own demons and put some agreesive powers in men into this sport. Most of the characters in skaters and surfers have broken families and unhappy childhoods, and this The two sports brought new vitality to their lives. How men express their emotions is an interesting subject. Or these psychology are also related to the environment of the sport itself. Basketball and football are all on a limited occasion, but skate and surf are not in the same place, or it is the city streets, or the vast ocean, is it related to outdoor nature? Does contact also affect the athlete's own mood?
Anyways, until next time.
6/5/2019
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