"Ever heard of the man who fell off a skyscraper?" Whenever he fell down a floor, he kept comforting himself and saying, 'So far it's not bad, so far so far...' In fact, it doesn't matter how you fall, the key is how you land! ”
- Excerpted from the narration of Angry Youth
This French film released in 1995 is certainly not an old film, but the director uses black and white pictures. Is it nostalgic? Is it a tribute? Or the visual preference, I don't know...
The question is: What do three idle little bastards on the streets of France have to play? This is going to happen in our lives, which are all negative teaching materials that affect the appearance of the city, anti-positive energy, and destroy the three views, and are things that teachers and parents and successful quality people are not ashamed of.
Leave that aside. Even the "story" content, just the absurd plot of the flowing account, is enough to discourage most people.
However, it is such a movie, after watching it, people can not calm down for a long time - yes, the anger, hippie smiley faces of the three little bastards, the kind of cynicism, the recklessness of righteousness (stunned), in you and I have had, the difference is: their youth is falling in a hurry, but ours is lost in slowness...
And when you find this, people have long lost the ability to resist, and even the courage to choose to fall. Yes, the pain of passing away, powerless to resist, is like a knife piercing into the chest.
"The subject of the film has nothing to do with politics"
The social context of the story of Angry Youth (literally "hate") is probably somewhere between the "May Storm" of the 1960s and the racial riots of the 1990s. Of course, this is all personal speculation, because the director did not directly explain these things in the plot.
Of course, student and workers' riots, demonstrations, conflicts, anarchism, radicalism... these seem to be the bones of modern French, but there is a point that these concepts are more or less labeled as democratic politics. Since it has a political flavor, it is difficult to say clearly what is right and wrong.
So the film moves the camera to the alleys and alleys behind the riots, to residential buildings, rooftops, abandoned boxing gyms, and even middle-class parties...
Thus a real France, irrelevant to politics and class orientation, is revealed before our eyes. Here, there are only dirty and poor citizens, idle, impetuousness and resentment of the police and people, and irrational buddy friendship.
Is this the essence of class contradictions and social insurrection?
"There is no incentive to move the story forward, except for the consumption of time"
At first glance, the story of the film is caused by a young man involved in a riot who clashes with the police and is seriously injured and hospitalized.
The three young protagonists of the film are the good friends of the person, and their anger, motivations, and goals seem to revolve around the friend who was injured. However, after watching the movie, you will find that the three people do not have any planning or purpose in a day, they just wander the streets, eat and drink, complain, smoke marijuana...
What is this called "angry youth", it is clearly a small asshole!
Even the director inserts those time subtitles like clues in the movie to make the day of several people more absurd, you can't see the end and direction of the story, only time is consumed.
"There is no class contradiction, some are just nameless fires"
When contradictions and conflicts occur in society, it is easy to think of class contradictions. But in this movie, if you take a closer look, you will find that there are relatives of the police in those street gangsters, and the words and behavior of the police officers are no different from those of ordinary people;
The little thinks every day not to cause trouble to make some money, and the policeman also wants to work steadily and earn a high income. If it weren't for police uniforms and police cars, you wouldn't be able to tell who was who. Of course, there are immigrants, there are Jews, there are black people, but you just can't tell the difference, you can only say that they are people at the bottom.
As for those who really pull away from the class hierarchy, naturally they will not appear in this area. The people at the bottom look at the upper people like the feeling of three young people looking at the Eiffel Tower from a distance, out of reach. Of course, in the movie, the three only can't catch the last train at night to pass by the high-society person.
That being the case, what exactly makes us mistake the contradictions among the people for class contradictions, and street fights and police law enforcement for class antagonisms? I think that's the question that this movie is about, where that "nameless fire" comes from.
There is a scene in the movie where three people have a sudden whim in the middle of nothing, and want to go to the hospital to see the injured friend, but they are stopped outside by the police...
Another "nameless fire" and another gratuitous conflict. Both sides of the conflict feel that the other is dangerous and ruthless. Both sides also subjectively feel that it is dangerous and ruthless. Anger is reasonable, but people can't find the source.
For that has nothing to do with brotherhood, class, or race. It was just a few seconds of hormonal impulses, a few seconds of irrationality.
I think society and those in power have played a role in fueling this "burning with rage" process. In other words, if there had been more listening and patience to young people and those at the bottom, there would have been no tragedies caused by anger.
On the contrary, those who stand at a higher level push all the responsibility to the people, allowing the people to resolve themselves through antagonistic conflicts. This is why "youth" is always born with "cruelty".
Looking at the French film "Angry Youth", many people have compared it to two other films of the same period - "Sunny Day" and "Guess the Train". The reason is naturally that the three films are all about "youth". However, the difference in Angry Youth is that the young people in it fall in radicalism, while the others rise in negativity.
Author: Taixu Palace
This article belongs to the original "Friday Literature and Art" and is prohibited from reprinting.
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