For me, the movie viewing experience of "Smell the Fragrance and Know a Woman" is purely a reverse movie viewing. The so-called "reverse push" is not to watch the film backwards, but to watch the film starring Al Pacino in 1992 after watching "The Irishman" and "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood" starring Al Pacino. The experience of watching "The Godfather" back then was all but absent, leaving only the blurred face of Marlon Brando with a beard in the first film, and Al Pacino didn't seem to have left the slightest trace.
This 156-minute film is quite Hollywood-style. First, on a narrative level, the film's climax is a rather sensational, blind lieutenant-colonel-style statement that, while bringing the story to its climax, also saves Charlie from the danger of being expelled. At the end, in Charlie's subjective point of view, Frank returned to his niece's house, humorously and kindly brought his two great-grandchildren (daughters) to his room. It's the first time Charlie meets him, and it's through what Charlie sees, that Frank throws a backrest hard at the window, because outside the window his granddaughter is grimacing and yelling at him. The huge contrast between this before and after also made Frank's imagination suddenly taller. Of course, in the scene of Charlie's defense-style speech, the image of his tall and sturdy father has been shown. So on a narrative level, it's a classic happy ending, hello and me - Charlie's danger lifted and Frank changing his character. Second, the entire film highlights/emphasizes the mainstream American values. High school student Charlie actually reflects the shadow of class. At the beginning of the film, Charlie, who came from a poor family, is looking at the part-time information posted on the wall, while on the other side, several boys from wealthy families are discussing how to spend Thanksgiving. But this element of class did not become a theme presented in the film, but let two men with a father and son gap in age establish a father-like spiritual or emotional relationship through a Thanksgiving trip to New York. Charlie became hesitant and contradictory when faced with the pressure of the school asking him to tell the truth, but it was under the influence of Frank that he insisted on his position: no matter what, he could not betray his classmates. It's a pretty American idea, and a pretty Hollywood idea. As for Frank, after he retired from blindness, he lived a very decadent life. He was short-tempered, alcoholic and even tried to commit suicide, and even swears at his sister-in-law and his niece. Frank at this time was quite an American who did not conform to mainstream American values. But it was precisely during his trip to New York with Charlie that he was influenced by the latter. He regained the mainstream American values, became a so-called "good person", that is, "reformed", and returned to his niece's house. Become the image of a kind and humorous uncle.
However, in the last two-thirds of the film, through Charlie's own narration, the film explained Charlie's family information: his biological father died young, his stepfather was a person with a negative image, and Charlie had a bad relationship with his stepfather. At the climax of the film, Frank stepped onto the podium in the conference hall, sat next to Charlie, and emphasized that he was participating in this critical struggle against Charlie and another rich second generation on behalf of Charlie's parents. That said, Frank has been occupying Charlie's father's place to some extent. That decadent Frank can be described as the development of Charlie's jerk stepfather. And when Frank was generous and blunt at the school meeting, highly affirming Charlie's unwillingness to betray his classmates, it was another extremely positive image of a father. So in this sense, the film is not about the "growth" of a high school student, but about the "transformation" of a decadent man into a tall and upright father. This also means that the inner driving force of the film's story is to reshape the image of the father. If the image of the father/father carries the mainstream values of American society, then "Smell the Scent and Know a Woman" is really a very standard Hollywood movie.
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