Winners and Losers
Accompanied by heart-pounding beats, the film began to stare intently from the little beauty Oliver, and then we discovered that she was engrossed in watching the most glorious moments in other people’s lives-abstract The moment when she won the Miss America crown. Oliver watched over and over again and imitated the instant ecstasy of others, seeming to practice his future success and glory. "There are two kinds of people in this world-winners and losers." Then we saw Oliver's father, Richard, who was in middle age, was speaking passionately about his own rules of success-Nine Step success theory. However, at the end of the speech, amid the sparse applause, we found that there were only a few listeners sitting in the classroom of Norwegian University. The film "Little Sunshine" uses very refined but very precise pen and ink to convey the theme that will be discussed in the whole film: success and failure.
If the "winner/loser" that the American people often talk about is not straightforward enough, then the concept of "high handsome and rich/diaosi" that has been soaring on the Chinese Internet in recent years has sharply summarized people's understanding of success. . But such a set of crude words also reflects the worrying reality: the value orientation of Chinese society is becoming more unified, and success can almost be equated with wealth. Coupled with the Chinese people's mentality of "being more face than heaven", the Chinese society is gradually falling into the quagmire of the supremacy of money. Look at the many social phenomena now: young people’s pursuit of wealthy businessmen, comparisons all over the Internet to show off their wealth... even "money worship", "material desire", "utilitarian"... The attitude of being cast aside by others is gradually sweeping the social fashion in a neutral and harmless posture.
The
age setting of the characters in most of the failed "Little Sunshine Girls" cleverly covers everyone in the society. The young Oliver dreamed of success; the adolescent Dwyane was eager to succeed and tried to achieve success through personal struggle; the middle-aged Richard and Cheryl were struggling with the blow of reality; The grandfather in his twilight years chose to escape and fall for himself after accepting the cruel reality. This seems to be the life of ordinary people in this society.
There is also an interesting character in the story, Cheryl's younger brother, little beauty's uncle, and Frank who has attempted suicide. Unlike the little girls, who are the most prestigious Proust scholars in the United States, Frank actually belongs to the elite class of society. But the irony is that Frank's life, the gay man, plummeted after experiencing the fuse of love failure, and he finally chose to end his life, but even this attempt failed.
The existence of the character Frank raises the question: Is there a real winner? Many people, like me, may have wondered what kind of mentality the so-called "successful people" in the eyes of ordinary people are facing their lives. Do they live in the great happiness and joy brought about by success every day? The answer is likely to make mortals a little more psychologically balanced: every "successful person" will have their own worries, and even when they think of their own life, they may not think that their life can be called "success", they are the most profound. His memories may be the experience of countless failures.
Yes, failure is the norm in life. Even the "victorious general" Napoleon, one-third of the battles led by him ended in failure, until the defeat of Waterloo, which completely ended his military career. Failure is much easier than success. Only blame people for being obsessed with those glorious achievements and ignoring the countless failures behind the success.
We can say that every character in "Little Sunshine" is a loser. Frank has attempted suicide; Sheryl has also experienced failed marriages, and her relationship with Richard has also been in trouble; Richard has repeatedly hit the wall while promoting his success; his grandfather is addicted to drugs and even takes drugs. Overdose to death; all hopes of Dwyane’s life are pinned on one day to become a pilot, but he finds that he is color-blind and dreams broken overnight; even the innocent little Oliver, in front of other contestants who participated in the "Little Sunshine Beauty", Also reduced to a joke in the eyes of everyone. Their family, like a mirror, reflects the failure of the majority in this society who is exhausted but doomed to do nothing.
Mercedes-Benz Rickshaw
The character with the most personality in the movie must be the mini yellow minibus. In the second half of the movie, when the car with the broken clutch and the horn kept beeping even the car door fell down, I suddenly realized that this seemingly inadvertent plot setting is actually a metaphor for life. This car carries The rickshaw that helped the whole family gradually became a symbol of "life" itself.
Before their journey began, the family's life was on the verge of disintegration, but as the journey progressed, everyone's hope was completely shattered in the yellow minibus. Frank ran into a romantic rival and a career rival who was enjoying his vacation in the spring breeze; Dwyane discovered that he was color-blind and missed the flight school; Richard's publishing plan was once again hit by the water; Cheryl discovered that the relationship with her husband was due to life. Because of difficulties, he gradually reached a deadlock; Grandpa even took his own life, and even the corpse could only be curled up in the trunk without any dignity. Just when you think that everything in life is enough, the yellow minibus will humiliate you with the annoying horn like a broken gong. In the end, Olive's surviving dream-the "Little Sunshine" beauty pageant-became the common hope of the whole family, as well as their last glimmer of hope for success, and became the last narcotic of their souls.
How should Diosi live
when this family finally came to the "Little Sunshine" beauty pageant, only to discover how stupid and absurd it was. The little girls who were supposed to be innocent and innocent have just followed the appearance of adults, dressed in costumes that are extremely disproportionate to their age, with thick makeup, and artificially twisting their waists on the stage, even just turning their backs. To the audience, he rolled his eyes impatiently. The audience in the audience was immersed in the performance, cheering for the false auras. Olive's real smile on the stage seemed so out of place at this time. Every aspect of this show ridiculed our society that over-worships success. The beauty pageant is to judge a person's beauty and ugliness according to a fixed standard, which is like our society, judging an individual with a fixed model of success standard.
At the end of the film, through the dialogue between Dwyane and Frank, the film expresses the attitude of success and failure. Frank first took Marshall Proust as an example. He had never had a serious job, a homosexual, and had no successful love. He spent 20 years writing a novel that almost no one reads, but he was very Probably the greatest writer since Shakespeare. He recalled that in his life, he found that those days of failure and pain were his best years. It was these times that shaped his self, and those happy days were "complete waste." Then Dwyane realized, "Life is a fucking beauty contest after another... If I want to fly, I will definitely find a way to do what you like, go to the fuck Everything else."
Everyone is eager to get ahead. In a class society, each person's origin is marked by distinction between high and low, and success is often undisguised in collusion with destiny. In modern society, people are still obsessed with success, but the universal value of "all men are created equal" has created an illusion that everyone has an equal probability of success. Excessive emphasis on the value of struggle may be the biggest lie of modern society. "Born to be equal" emphasizes equality in law or human rights, while a person's family background, appearance, talent, and wisdom still cruelly separate people into classes. Success, after all, belongs to those few people who are favored by fate-more gold, or beauty, or wisdom, or talent.
In fact, many people don’t realize that instead of stepping on the footsteps of others and climbing along the “road to success” recognized by society, “doing what you like” may be the most likely path for “Diaosi” to succeed. This may be the most likely path for everyone to succeed. The world is always changed by those who insist on dreams. Under the same conditions, dreams and interests are the biggest driving force for success.
Losers like us.
When the audience is looking forward to how the movie will end, the film gives everyone a beautiful surprise with the wild dance of the Olive family on the stage of the beauty contest. Is there any way to better fight back the hypocrisy of this society? The family used a dance that is not suitable for children to declare to the pretentious audience: Fuck the hypocrisy, and the life of the loser can be happy.
In the end, Richard gave up his obsession with success, Frank finally found his hope in life, Dwyane understood the value of his family, Cheryl eased the relationship with her husband, and all this is due to Oliver Jr. , Her undisguised innocence, shone into the family like a ray of sunshine, just as she comforted Dwyane’s sadness with a silent hug, even with a slightly bulging belly, she is still a real sunshine little beauty .
In the end, the yellow minibus was on the road again, and this old car kept breaking down, just like everyone's life, with new problems constantly appearing. But relying on everyone's hard work, life can still continue on the road. And no matter how it does everything it can to crush the dream, everyone still needs to jump into this kind of life and move on. In the end, with the laughter of the family, the car drifted away amid the annoying horns. Yes, we are all losers, but what the fuck?
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