I remember that when I was about 20 years old, I bought "Andersen's Fairy Tales" translated by Ye Junjian, and for the first time felt that fairy tales should be written for adults. Because only adults can understand the tragic elements in fairy tales, and appreciate how this tragicness is enveloped and resolved by warmth, poetry and love, filling it with rich emotions and causing resonance in the soul.
In a sense, all fairy tales are lies. These are the words that we believed in when we were young, that we found ridiculous and criticized when we grew up, and those words that we couldn't help but re-chew and were moved by when we grew up.
The movie "Big Fish" is about such a fairy tale.
"My" dad is a storyteller,
he's seen witches who predict the future with glass eyeballs, he's the most admired football player, he's befriended terrifying giants, he's met his favorite girl At that time, time stopped, and even the popcorn stopped in mid-air. He wooed her in the daffodils all over the ground, moved her, and finally married her; the conjoined sisters on the Korean battlefield, the magician who turned a bad dog, the poet who robbed a bank and became a rich man... all kinds of bizarre Weird characters appear in his life saga, and he takes wild adventures and boldness along the way, until he has a son and his life settles down.
A story that he has repeated a thousand times and will never tire of it. The day his son was born, how he used his wedding ring to catch a huge catfish. This story has been told until his son's wedding, and the ending seems to have been rehearsed many times. "The only way to catch a woman who can never seem to be caught is to give her a wedding ring", his wife who was no longer young but still beautiful came up and gave him a tender kiss, everyone Warm applause, except for his son, he felt that his father had told lies all his life, and now he wants to use these lies to steal the limelight on his wedding day, it is really unbearable. Since then, the father and son have been separated for three years and no longer in contact. It was not until one day when his father died that his son finally understood that his father's love was originally hidden in fairy tales.
Like young people of that era, my father joined the army and became a salesman after recovery. He fell in love with a girl and married her. He had big ambitions, but he didn't make much money in the end. He stayed in the small town of Alabama, and there may have been some extra-marital episodes, but in the end he lived with his wife. On the day his son was born prematurely, he had no way to go home, which was a regret he had left in his heart for the rest of his life. Every little child repeatedly asks what I was like when I was born. Between telling the truth and compiling a fairy tale, my father chose the latter, and from then on, it went out of control and told a fairy tale for a lifetime.
The hero complex seems to be hidden in the heart of every father. These young men whose ambitions were tortured by reality little by little, and who eventually lived a mediocre life, were as excited and helpless as a new self when facing a newborn child. How do they convince the children how unique he is and how legendary his arrival is. Every father, consciously or unconsciously, chose the way of the father in "Big Fish" - first shape himself into a hero. Use fairy tales, the most tender lies, to make up for the dullness, gloom, and even pain of real life.
Recalling that when I was a child, my father's love was a mountain, and my father was an omnipotent magician and a strong man in the eyes of his children. He knew everything and could do everything. We all grew up in the worship of our father, we saw the future in him, and we are full of desire for the future. This is a child's most instinctive emotion. A child who has no father to admire since childhood is unfortunate. He must be full of incompleteness in his heart, or he will fall into depression since then, or make up an imaginary father to deceive himself. When the son in the story finally understood this, he became a father himself. When his son was bragging to his friends that his father was a giant and could do anything, he seemed to see a huge catfish. He knew that it was his father in heaven looking at him, and he himself, really and his father, also No difference.
The most touching part of the film is the last paragraph, the son of the father who has always despised the big talker. When facing the dying old man, he couldn't help but tell a story. He summoned all the characters in his father's story and asked them to see him off. Their faces were filled with joy, and their mother, the woman my father had loved all his life, stood in the water, waiting for him with a smile. The son hugged his father and put him into the big river. The father turned into a big catfish and swam away happily. Father muttered, ah, that is my legend. He stopped beating in his son's arms, and died peacefully and contentedly, because he was sure that in his son's fairy tale, there was love, understanding, and ultimate warmth.
Some people, who tell a story for a lifetime, become an immortal legend. Father is such a legend, because he used the fairy tale of fatherly love to give his son a childhood without regrets. Think of the fathers in the world, most of them do this. Are they still our heroes when they're getting old, short, and less brave, when they've got grey hair, when they're starting to look a little dull? Since when did we stop believing in their bragging, quarreling with them, getting angry with them, and despising them?
Maybe one day, when we become fathers and mothers, we can truly understand their deep love.
Bless all the fathers in the world.
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