Easy and Free is a French film released in 2014. The film's director and screenwriter are the same person, Benjamin Gedeger, who just turned 25 when the film was released in 2014. Perhaps because of his peers, Benjamin's presentation of the "waste wood" mentality of today's young people is really vivid and witty. Douban movie rating 8.3 points.
The film tells the story of Sebastian, a 29-year-old "firewood-scrap youth", who has no ambitions, no interest in work, and his favorite thing to do is: lie down. In the relationship with two friends, Sebastian experienced the doubts and accusations around him, and his heart went from initial satisfaction to dazedness to fear, and finally began to examine his life, from ideals to reality, and found the life goals and meanings that his heart really pursued.
The protagonist Sebastian's "enjoyment of boring" life is full of temptations and resonance for us in reality. On Douban, some netizens commented that "watching this movie is like picking up money", "Seeing Sebastian is like seeing another self". In life, we often express our true desires with such ridicule:
There are always 30 days a month when you don't want to go to work;
My dream is to sleep every day until I wake up naturally;
Going to work is a waste of time and youth;
......
Sebastian took the "idleness" that many people longed for but could not achieve as his way of life, but he was still unable to avoid being constrained by the "social self" and eventually moved to the social side. This film gives us the inspiration that we can really live in a way that satisfies ourselves to the extreme and truly express ourselves? If not, in what way should we socialize so that we don't lose ourselves in real life, and live repression and pain?
This article will revolve around the protagonist Sebastian from the beginning of insisting on the illusory "ideal self", to being influenced by the people around him into the "social self", and finally faithful to the heart to find the "true self", to explore how we can find the value of the self and positive life meaning in the society in the insistence on self-compromise and social compromise; finally, I will combine the protagonist in the film "four retrograde" to talk about the significance of symbolism to the theme of the film.
The protagonist of the film, Sebastian, is a scholar with 2 doctorates, 3 master's degrees, and 3 bachelor's degrees, and it is reasonable to say that after graduation, he should be able to get a glamorous job. But Sebastian has a unique threefold view: He thinks reality is boring. He doesn't like work, he's not interested in success, and his ambition is to lie in bed and be a peaceful and stretched person. So, after graduation, Sebastian slept, danced, and read every day, just not looking for a job.
I believe that seeing Sebastian's ambition, many young people have resonance, after all, such a idle life is almost the vision of many people. Regardless of the external reaction, living your life according to your own wishes is indeed everyone's expectation. This is actually an extreme individualism.
The German psychotherapist Fritz Pierce mentions extreme individualism in his book The Gestalt's Prayer: "I do my thing, you do your thing, and my life doesn't have to live up to your expectations. Your life also doesn't have to meet my expectations. ”
Sounds particularly in line with our values today. But we need to answer the question: Can I really live in a way that is extremely self-satisfying and truly self-expressive, regardless of external judgment and social pressure?
Sebastian was seen by his parents as an escape from reality after expressing his ambitions. His mother pushed him out of the house and let him rent a house by himself, hoping to help him enter the society. However, Sebastian did not apply for the social minimum guarantee to pay the rent as his parents expected, and continued to "do nothing". For Sebastian's "difference", the two roommates who shared the apartment went from initial understanding to final complaints, and finally chose to leave. Sebastian then felt that the "individuation" he insisted on isolated himself.
When Sebastian places himself in a "special" being, detached from human connection, he falls into loneliness and helplessness. We are social animals with the basic need to belong. And when we feel lonely strongly, we will long to establish a relationship with people and feel the presence of ourselves. Therefore, living a life entirely according to our own wishes is an idealistic state that can only exist in our imagination and cannot be achieved.
Sebastian was kicked out of the house by his parents and invited by his female classmate Anna to be a roommate, and he shared a room with another roommate, Bruno, and 3 of them. Here, Sebastian's insistence on the illusory "ideal self" has gained the understanding of the other two people, but his ambition to "not want to work" has been questioned and attacked one after another:
Accusations from classmates:
Anna and Sebastian's college classmates come together, and when they learn that Sebastian doesn't want to work, they accuse him, "It's not fair that you want people who are working to fund your vacations," "People like you are social cancers," and so on.
Passerby's Anger:
Sebastian reads a book in the park every day, but is accused by a passing woman for "disturbing her own life". The woman thought that Sebastian's laid-back behavior of doing nothing was unacceptable to those of them who were busy working all day and busy with their children, and in the end, Sebastian was ticketed by the police.
After this series of blows and pressures, Sebastian's mentality began to waver from the insistence on "ideal self", and he found a job.
Erich Flåm, one of the founders of American psychoanalytic sociology, proposed the concept of mechanical convergence in his book Escape from Freedom.
"Mechanical convergence: It is a man who feels lonely because of his freedom, and in order to overcome this loneliness, he makes himself like most other people. The same dress, the same taste, the same opinion, even the same dreams. Through this practice, the individual is integrated into the environment, he gives up his personality, becomes a robot, exactly like the millions of other robots around him, and does not have to feel lonely and anxious. But the price of his is expensive, that is, the loss of self. ”
Sebastian chose this job because he chose mechanical convergence, he has no sense of responsibility for the job, the job is just a waste of time for him. It's just that he doesn't want to be used as a shield by others anymore.
Roommate Bruno's ambition is to be a sports news commentator. But he was afraid of difficulties and did not try, but chose other professions that went against his heart. Sebastian, like Bruno, abandons the mechanical convergence of personality choices in order to gain the approval of others, and in this stage of "social self", they feel more and more confused and uneasy in terms of no sense of value.
Teacher Wu Zhihong mentioned in his "The Birth of the Self":
"In the process of a person's growth, socialization and individuation are a pair of classic contradictions. Socialization is the process of individual integration into society; individuation is the process of becoming oneself. ”
Roommate Anna is a girl with a clear goal. She wants to live a good life, do a job she likes, and live a happy life. So she actively integrated into society and chose to go to her favorite company to intern. Her dream is to travel all over the world, and when reality does not allow it, she appears in the photos of tourists from all over the world in a photo-grabbing way. Anna tries to find a balance between insisting on self-compromise and social compromise.
Sebastian's first job didn't give him a sense of interest and joy at work, so he chose to stay at home. Anna told him: You are running away, in fear. You say that you like to dream and live a leisurely life is a lie, that is not real happiness. It was only then that Sebastian really realized that he had never considered what happiness felt like.
Eventually, Sebastian overcame his fears and stepped into reality, choosing a job closely related to his hobby, selling mattresses. At this time, his "social self" began to move closer to his "true self". At the end of the film, Sebastian has already achieved success in his career. With the support of his wife, he did the most desired job in his life, the housewife, and achieved the best balance between self-insistence and social compromise.
Insisting on uniqueness and social identity is not black and white, on the contrary, we have the need to maintain our own differences, and there is also the need to obtain social identity, only by balancing the relationship between the two, we can realize our true selves in the connection between people.
In the film, Sebastian has 4 scenes of a personal retrograde walk through the crowd, and these 4 pictures are a metaphor for the protagonist's gradual balance of self-insistence and social compromise.
For the first time, Sebastian wore a yellow sweatshirt and walked through the oncoming city crowd. At first, he was intimidated by the socialization of the representatives of the urban crowd, but soon he calmed down and moved forward, a metaphor for his intention to stick to his "ideal self" at that time.
The second time, in order to get the minimum guarantee, Sebastian changed into a red sweatshirt and went out to the mailing point to send a forged rejection letter, and he also retrograde through the crowd. The difference is that this set of shots uses direct overhead shots to fully show the protagonist rushing through the crowd without hesitation, metaphorically saying that Sebastian has firmly decided to live according to his own ambitions.
The third time, Sebastian successfully applied for the social minimum guarantee, and he finally solved the problem of livelihood and could live the life he wanted. Here, too, a overhead shot is used, a small red umbrella, alluding to the fact that he has a low-security "protective umbrella", but he is also about to usher in a greater socialization challenge.
For the fourth time, Sebastian's life at this time has completely changed, he has successfully integrated into society, met a lover, has children, and he has also lived the dream life of a husband and a child at home. As he walked with his wife through the oncoming crowd and walked to the middle, the crowd in the opposite direction suddenly turned and walked forward with them, metaphorically saying that Sebastian had finally found the best balance in insisting on self and social identity, and realized himself in the process of integration into society.
1) The only way to overcome fear is to face it head-on and try to solve the problem instead of retreating and hiding
From Sebastian's growth experience, it is not difficult to see that as a bully, he was very successful in the student stage. This also caused him to be afraid of failure and not dare to step into another stage of life. Sebastian has been hypnotizing himself in an escapist way that he doesn't like work and only likes to dream. Only by firmly believing in this, he does not have to look for a job and can avoid failure.
When Anna's complaint punctured his lie, he ran home like a little child and asked his mother: If I fall you will catch me? This is actually an indirect indication of Sebastian's fear of stepping into another life.
When he successfully overcame his fears and calmly tried to stabilize a bear in German, he finally tried to face the fears of life, found a job that matched his hobbies, and entered a new life.
Sebastian faces the fear of stepping into society, from choosing to escape to facing fear head-on, opening up another possibility in life. When faced with an unknown journey, fear is our instinct. But when we feel frightened and hide and stop, the world becomes smaller and smaller. Only by trying to solve problems and face them bravely can we take every step of life.
2, looking for fun in life, have the ability to make yourself happy
Richard, a government worker at the low-income claim office, is an ordinary person who can no longer be ordinary, ordinary looks, ordinary life, ordinary work. When he introduced himself, his tone was low, his face was bitter, he was like a friend and colleague in our lives, accustomed to the trivialities of life, life had long lost passion, and he had a muddy nightmare and a pool of stagnant water. But Sebastian's presence brought Richard's life to life alive, he read the books he sent, he began to dance, his life became interesting, and on his face we saw the joy of life again. In the end, Richard also opened his own scone house under the influence of Sebastian, fulfilling his long-standing dream.
In life, we are often dissatisfied and unhappy because of the complicated things in work and life. Over time, we gradually lost the joy of life, and lived step by step every day, without surprises or emotions. Only by taking the initiative to find small pleasures in life and discovering small emotions in life can our lives get out of the backwater state and come back to life.
The film "Easy freedom" uses a French humorous tone to explore the contradiction between self-individuation and inevitable socialization that people encounter in the process of growing up, showing the confusion, self-consciousness and confusion of young people entering society for the first time, and pointing out to us that the best socialization of a person is to have a basic adaptation to society without losing oneself.