At the beginning of the film, Martin faced the proctor who had also disciplined his father thirty years ago, and said with an angry eye: "History can be changed." This is like a declaration, suggesting the plot of the film. Leaving aside the last two parts of "Back to the Future", the story of the most classic first part only unfolds in the double line of the past and the present.
While trying to maintain the stability of history, Martin unconsciously changed history. The reason why it is said to be unconscious is that even if Martin intentionally motivated his cowardly dad, his original intention was not to change history, but to keep history from being changed. It is said that the director of the film, Robert, said in an interview that the film intends to reinvigorate Americans' confidence in the future, because the future can be changed. And I think it's not necessarily that simple. According to the logic of the film, and if Martin's attitude towards history is transferred to the future, then the future is only changed by chance, an accident in an effort to resist change, resulting in the exact opposite result.
When the past (the history mentioned above, properly speaking should be the past) and the future are connected in series, the real historical evolution is formed. After watching the film, my first question was why, 30 years later, when the Doctor learned about his future, the moment when the Doctor was shot by the gangster was the same as the first time: Is it long (or short) In the thirty years of his life, the doctor who learned of his "death date" actually completed everything that history "required" him to complete without any hesitation?
Can we really change history? If so, why does history repeat itself exactly the same for a completely different person?
That's the paradox of this movie. It gives a belief, or an illusion, that on the surface, we feel that we can change the future (it is impossible to change history, it is not scientific, it is a metaphor for the future), but in fact, The future has not really changed, what should happen will still happen, but the human situation has changed.
I have just been to the Shanghai Biennale, and many of the exhibits are related to the torture of history and the future. After watching, I paid for the follow-up readings, which are full of free speeches of "new and new human beings". There is an article by Paul Wernow that is very shocking. The author speaks of a sense of repetition of "déjà vu" stemming from a "false identification" caused by the extended reality of human memory. This false "memory" is caused by the repetition of history. The author states: "Everything I do and every word I say at this moment seems destined to repeat the process laid down "at that time," and it is no longer possible to ignore or change anything." How helpless! Human beings are coerced into history, and they play timeless tricks with it.
At this point, the film seems to have stepped into the typical territory of irrationality, the territory of Bergson's intuitionism. Bergson once said: "We feel that we are making choices and obeying our own will, but in fact what we choose is imposed on us, and what we will is inevitable." History is like a cycle, and diversity is, in a sense, contingent. As a genius mathematician, Pascal also recognized the powerlessness of human reason at this level, and was not saddened by the powerlessness of human beings in the face of the contingency of fate.
Pascal is a pioneer of existentialism. If this film is understood in this way, it may not be hidden some pessimistic philosophical atmosphere, even if its major is upward and optimistic. I don't know how the director thinks. I only know that he has made another film: "Forrest Gump", which is closer to a main theme, so much that it is abused by many inspirational essays. However it is not. Back to the Future, at least in comic form, asks the harrowing question: "Do we change history, or is history changing us?"
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