This is truly a beautiful and heartbreaking movie.
The pictures are amazingly beautiful, whether it is the heavy snow in Boston at the beginning, or the blue sky, sea water, sailboats, colorful town buildings in Manchester after that, handsome boys, melancholy men with decadent air, cold and bright winter colors... But it's not a romantic and warm line, and it's not a positive energy melody that is finally reborn - it is completely different from those movie plots that "press first and then improve", which is not played according to the routine.
Lee's brother died of a heart attack, and he was rushed back from Boston to Manchester, the city he couldn't stay in anymore. Because his brother's funeral needs to be taken care of, and his nephew has no one to support him, he has to stay, so his former love and old dreams overlap with the present world and become entangled in entanglements. Are those painful memories evoked by the old place or can't be forgotten even if they leave?
In that handful of ashes, are his burned paradise, his past warmth, his heart and all his future.
Maybe everyone is about to forget that he used to be a happy man. He would go out to sea with his brother and his nephew to go fishing. Laugh like a child with no worries. Until he made that mistake he could never forgive himself.
The camera captures Lee's eyes several times, indistinct, like an abyss of sadness and pain, desperate, as if the world seen from that eye is all gray. What I've always been most afraid of is a man's tears, but it still hurts Lee's eyes.
Lee and Randi met on the streets of Manchester, Randi cried heart-breakingly, but it was Lee's eyes that made me cry, so desperate and helpless, he still couldn't forgive himself, just like making a cocoon out of pain, He shrunk inside, no one could, never touch him again.
Then he went to the pub and had another fight, the only outlet for his emotions.
What we like to see is that the poor end up at the top of their lives, the lonely end up having a happy family, the people who have been hurt end up living a beautiful and warm life, the prince and princess endure hardships and end up happily together... how full Positive energy, how inspiring us. Why is this film so sad?
But why does this film have so many positive reviews, because it is not an illusory chicken soup, it holds a sword of reality and stabs us fiercely, beautiful and cruel.
I haven't been through Lee's experience, I can't empathize, the world has never experienced such a thing.
All I know is that when the storm rises, and Lee is in it, I may be able to hug him, but I will never be able to hug his heart and soul.
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Lee's character was originally It was Matt who was going to star, but he went to shoot the Zhang Yimou film. But I think Casey seems to be more suitable than him. That kind of dejected temperament is more suitable than the upright and brave face of Mengmeng. There are few smiling expressions in the film, which is really beautiful. The squirting between him and his nephew was his only firework scent.
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