Out of love for “Repertoire”, catch up on this new film by the same director. The day of a young man coming out of rehab is more like a diary of images. The image of the literary youth in the last film continues to the present, he has almost reached middle age.wants to die but can’t, wants to live but has no strength to live on, more unwilling to self-deceptively pretend that there is still a very exciting living head, August 31 is neither the end nor the beginning, it is the emergence of numerous struggling inner rapids It is a small island that emerges from a myriad of struggling inner currents. The film is plain, stifling, and in contrast to the quiet life of a small European town, brings out a suffocating and anxious tone of depression. I have never been to Europe, but I think the director did not only convey the decadent European atmosphere, but he wanted to focus on the inner life of a kind of people.
Coincidentally, I watched Charlize Theron’s “Teenager”, and for the sake of argument, I’ll call this phase of the characters’ lives “post-adolescence”. It should be noted that this term describes those who, in my opinion, have had “adolescence”. in a sense, similar characteristics: indulgence, rebellion, defiance of mainstream norms, the search for passion, self-liberation and telepathy, the power to feel in art against the banality of life and the boundless imagination. In the words of our Chinese people, in addition to money, houses, cars, face, social status, and the basic dignity and security of their social attributes, there are a great many other things in the brains of such people, things that their parents are destined to feel uneasy about and that will dominate their life choices and completely eliminate the basic bottom line, leading to madness and self-destruction. I’m not sure if the term “literary youth”, which is a generalized entertainment and a big word, refers to this type of people.
Finally, inevitably, this category of people reached the age of 30-35, perhaps sociologists can give more accurate age data, and their friends around them who had fantasies together with the bad mix all disappeared in the days of mortgage repayment, childbirth, comfort and “normal”, who no longer talk about and pay attention to their own interests and the narrow reality of being tied to money. The reality of the world is not relevant. What is even more frustrating is that everything that attracted a young person with a love of fantasy, that magic, has disappeared. For them, growing old becomes a disturbing sin.
At least, in the Chinese context, I haven’t seen any stories describing this stage of this category of people lost without return. Perhaps, if the country has such a pen and a camera, it must be busy making money, always aiming at those fresh goods of the scenery, among which there are a large number of people who think they have come along the road of literature and art to a gorgeous turn of success. A fast developing society must ignore those so-called “losers”. In reality, I can always see the shadow of the film’s hero, who says: those who are happy are stupid.
From the perspective of the film’s seemingly running plot, the hero is conflicted. On the one hand, he wants to kick his drug addiction, get healthy and re-enter a vibrant life, those around him as a waste of time and drug addict eyes, always remind him that there is no place for him in this world; on the other hand, since adolescence to develop the “degenerate” and escape the pleasure, always tempting him to return to the old road of self-anesthesia On the other hand, the “depravity” and the pleasure of escape that he had cultivated since his adolescence were constantly tempting him to return to the old way of self-anesthesia. In his mind, love and pills, salvation or liberation, could not be sorted out clearly. During the day, every person he passed, every conversation he had, mirrored his anxiety and frustration. He rejoined the PARTY and found himself inexplicably sympathetic and hostile; he went to apply for a job and found himself unable to fit in; he dialed his ex-girlfriend’s number and left a message and regretted it. anachronistic wretch, superfluous, hung up and forgotten, an outsider with no way out. Can he find his own reasons for going downstream like this, or can those ten-year-old truths still be used to arm a misanthrope? If the film has any social significance, the director is clear about the social environment that invariably oppresses and represses or even binds dissidents.
I remember asking a young man with less than “positive” attitudes and values about life, “What are you going to do? Now that you’re like this, you’re not ashamed of having nothing, and you’re still doing it physically after daydreaming.
He said, “If you can’t do it, you can die.
Rot or cure, there will never be an answer. In my opinion, the main character is closer to the essence of being alive, more sober and more painful than those liars who are so eloquent and smug. The waterfront scene at the beginning of the movie, and the dimly lit room at the end after the main character gets a shot, form a hidden space that cannot be illuminated by the bright world outside in the early morning, which is the ultimate place for every person who has experienced mental shock to survive.
