What is the life of a parent like?
It’s probably impossible to escape from firewood, rice, oil, and salt. It’s bland, boring, and even weird and annoying. It’s our most intuitive feeling about the life of our parents.
However, such an ordinary life is depicted as a gentle running account in the picture book of the painter Raymond Briggs, which is the story described in the film "London Family" adapted from the picture book of the same name.
Raymond Briggs was born in 1934, his parents were both born in 1900, and his life has experienced important nodes in human history such as World War I, World War II, the Great Depression, and the New Wave of Culture.
Ernest and Ethel, a milkman and a maid, two young men of similar age from the same background, live together in London, which has just returned to normal after the war.
Although they lived in poverty, their mother and mother took out a loan to buy their own cottage. Whether it was a home or a fence, Ernest and Ethel did it themselves or bought it from the second-hand market.
Ethel, who likes big families, finally only gave birth to Raymond because of the advanced maternal age, and perhaps because of the small number of births, the only child of the Briggs family can be preserved in the subsequent wars.
In the 1940s, the outbreak of World War II divided the peaceful family, and little Raymond had to seek refuge in the countryside.
Ernest and Ethel built their own shelters and participated in the war as firefighters and clerks. Although the house was torn apart in repeated bombings, luckily, the Briggs family were all in the war. He survived and was able to continue his work after the war.
In the 1960s, the Briggs and his wife, who had never seen the market, were very sorry for their son's abandonment of literature and art.
Raymond, who studied art, began to grow long hair and beards, and the obsessive-compulsive mother had to take out a comb every time to force her son to comb his hair.
In the 1970s, Ernest and Ethel, who were in their 60s, had their own TV sets and refrigerators. At the same time, they also tried to understand what homosexuality was and what the new wave was, but they were calm. to the end of life.
Even with different political views and different personalities, Ernest and Ethel spent 41 years together in those turbulent years.
A 100-minute movie is a running account.
Ernest and Ethel met at the right age, got married at the right age, bought a house, repaid the mortgage, had a child, and the child grew up with a generation gap, and began to complain about political unreasonableness.
Ordinary and ordinary, they are not beautified in a special context.
In the war, they are not heroes. They participate in it in the way that ordinary people should. As parents, they are not necessarily so enlightened.
If it weren't for the war, Ernest and Ethel's lives would almost never have made any waves.
After watching a movie, you don't even know where the foreshadowing is, where is the turning point, where is the high point, and where is the low point.
He is truly like our own parents, born ordinary, but full of courage and optimism to live a less peaceful life.
This may be the most fundamental happiness in life.
It's no wonder that when Ernest and Ethel passed away, I couldn't help but shed tears. I saw my parents and I saw myself throughout their lives.
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