Josh is a documentary film director who has made famous works. He and his wife are middle-aged, have no children, and live a peaceful but boring life. He accidentally met a young documentary director Jamie and his wife. The two couples can talk very well, especially the vitality of this young couple infected the Josh couple.
Jamie started trying to make a documentary of his own. In the process, he accidentally discovered a story about the US military on the battlefield in Afghanistan. Everyone was very excited. Josh, who had been in a career bottleneck, saw a certain brilliance from this young man and decided to help him as best as he could. He assisted him in shooting himself and introduced his personal network to him. But in the end, he found that he seemed to be used all the time.
The reason why "When I was Young" is good because from the beginning, the director used the case stories of two couples to write out the characteristics of the two groups behind them. What Josh is endorsing is a typical middle-class group portrait, stable, successful, boring, and scornful of new things and young people; while Jamie represents the group of young people living in the moment, poor but full Hope, live sunny and have fun, and never care about all secular stereotypes. Jamie's appearance coincided with Josh's middle-aged crisis. To some extent, this young man became the spiritual mentor of this middle-aged man. Josh deliberately changed his lifestyle and began to follow the footsteps of young people, from dressing to behavior.
A more interesting meaning emerges from this. When all their peers are parents, they begin a more certain and trivial life. Because the Josh and his wife have no children, and their lives with the young people, they are regarded as "problematic" weird people among their peers. . Friends' gatherings began to no longer invite them. And they were told, "We are very worried about your state." Friends persuaded Josh, "We are old." The implication is to warn them that they should mature a little bit and stop thinking about them. But Josh couldn't agree with this. This is the first point of view expressed in "Youth". When people are at the awkward turning point of "middle age", should they follow the inertia according to the established trajectory, or should they not consider age and just follow the heart.
If the description of the Josh couple is about the story of a mid-life crisis, then Jamie's clue is about the ambitions and methods of young people. In the end, Josh discovered that Jamie had been lying to himself. He had discovered the good story of Afghanistan a long time ago, but used a nearly tricky method to make himself voluntarily contribute personal network resources. He was a little confused. The other party invited him to join a party of young people, ride with him, and regard himself as a friend. Whether all this is a well-designed method or a sincere act.
So far, Josh has fallen into an isolated situation. His peers regard himself as "immature" children, while young people who seem to regard themselves as friends only regard themselves as a bargaining chip, a resource, A middle-aged person who has experience to squeeze. His confusion deepened again.
The director and screenwriter of "Youth" is Noah Baumbach. He once wrote the famous "Squid and Whale" and "Francis-Ha", and also co-wrote "Amazing" with the director of "Budapest Hotel". "Papa Fox" and other works. This time, he showed the embarrassment of this middle-aged man in crisis very thoroughly, but he did not lack a sense of humor.
Like all mainstream movies of this kind, in the end, he presented a soothing solution. After falling out with the young and ambitious Jamie, Josh found his way instead. He no longer succumbed to the lifestyle of young people, no longer imitated them, nor did he identify with the dull state of his peers. , But began to live on the trajectory that he believed in. In fact, young and old do not necessarily point to right or wrong, they are just an age state and mental state. There is no definite plan to follow, and there is no need to deliberately act young and mature, deliberately behave in a young moment, and deliberately stick to the rules in middle age.
At the end of the movie, the Josh and his wife flipped through the magazine and found that Jamie had become famous with the documentary and was complacent in the magazine. The wife said, "The devil is released." Josh has become transparent, "In fact, he is not the devil, but young." This attitude is truly mature, open-minded, not sophisticated.
(Text/Yang Shiyang)
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