The most "jaw-dropping" thing I've ever experienced in my life was at an annual meeting. A fat sister in her 40s in the company's finance department took off her glasses and took off her coat, wore a short skirt, and danced a wild Latin dance. Less than one meter six, she danced the posture of turning the whole scene upside down, becoming the highest point of the atmosphere.
Everyone was amazed that under her serious appearance, there was such a wild and cute side. I always remember this scene because it made me understand that everyone has different multi-faceted and possibilities, and there is only an opportunity for "self-discovery". The Japanese movie "Talk About Love, Dance" tells such a story: a desperate middle-aged man, after "cheating", the ghost made The gods fascinated by dancing, but thus out of depression and embarked on a journey of "self-discovery".
You and I who are put into orbit
Although the male protagonist, Sugiyama, is an ordinary office worker, in the eyes of most people, his middle-aged life is still decent. He was a middle-level cadre of a company, had a virtuous wife, a sensible daughter, and at the age of 40, bought a large house with a yard for his family. Ming ming started a good life, but Sugiyama fell into a deep tiredness. Because, since buying a house, the family and mortgage have tied him more tightly. In his own words: "Thinking of a loan is like selling yourself." One of the most common scenes in the movie is that Sugiyama is standing in the train every day commuting to work, tilting his head and looking out the window in a daze, expressionless.
It's like the trajectory of ordinary people in real life. In this track, there are long-set standards for a lifetime, and each point in time is clearly arranged: going to college, finding a job, buying a house, starting a family, having children, promoting, changing a big house, continuing to repay loans... Living according to the track symbolizes our social identity and group identity – this is the safest way for modern people to live. However, this orbit is both an umbrella and a cocoon for us to become numb creatures in it. This feeling of being pressed into some kind of living activity is not alive, like death. Everything around is gray, there is no way out, there is no hope in life, people are full of weakness, and more serious depression is caused by this. A visitor once told me more than once that he wanted to die. She is well educated, has a stable and decent job, is a good daughter, and a good employee. But this kind of life made her deeply tired, and even more and more felt that everything was boring, and she couldn't resist the desire to die. Sugiyama was not much better, and although he didn't want to die, he was about to suffocate. Getting up on time, taking the same train to work, sitting in the same workstation, doing the same job, there is not much development and challenge, and you will not be expelled. For many years, husband and wife, like a partner under the roof, the wife did the housework, he was responsible for repaying the loan, came home to say hello, and went to bed with each other. Such a life can be described as "as if alive and well, as if it were dead."
Psychologists say the 21st century is a time of depression. The following of the social track and the identification with the group cause a person's depression to evolve into a group of people's depression. This is the characteristic of the whole era of people. In a way, Sugiyama is a typical portrait of the "patient of the times". He commutes in the tram day after day, like an urban animal that repeats obsessively on the tracks of all orderly lives. Although the initial insensitivity can protect oneself, in the long run, it will only lose its vitality and go to confusion. Moreover, these life energies, which are hindered by external space, are all transformed into undercurrents surging in the heart. And man is in the middle of both calm and collapse, falling into a spiritual low.
A spark of life was found on the day of the "infidelity"
One day, Sugiyama was bored looking out the window on the train. Unexpectedly, his eyes were firmly locked by a picture:
In the window of the dance studio opposite, there is the figure of a female teacher. Since then, he has been looking at that window every day. Finally, one day, he couldn't contain his curiosity and got out of the car and walked towards the figure...
A beautiful female teacher means involuntary in life. And involuntary means that he is detached from the daily orbit. This "derailment" is Sugiyama's attempt to live outside the orbit, and it is also his "defection" to rationality day after day. Unexpectedly, at the beginning, it was only out of admiration for the female teacher that the mistake was misreported. But during the day-to-day practice, under the influence of other students, Sugiyama began to be curious about dancing. What surprised Sugiyama the most was that he met his colleague Aoki at the dance studio. Aoki was unremarkable in the company, and was often secretly disliked by his colleagues, and even privately studied Latin dance for 5 years. As he danced, he put on an American wig, and the frustrated man of life immediately transformed into the wild Latin prince and rolled up a dance storm.
There is also a middle-aged woman in low-level work, Obasan. Obasan's husband died early and raised his daughter alone. Although the work was hard, she rushed to class every night and passed out in the classroom because of overwork. Even so, she continued to practice hard in order to participate in amateur dance competitions.
In such a learning atmosphere, Sugiyama discovered for the first time that dance can be so important in a person's life, as if it were a spiritual pillar. Unconsciously, Fir also began to get serious. He would follow the teacher to practice the basic movements over and over again, would pace selflessly at the station, office, and home, and would go to the no-man's square, and his straight, listless body would continue to rotate. He even agreed to Obasan's invitation to participate in an amateur dance competition. In the diligent practice day after day, he began to gradually feel that the boring middle-aged body was full of vitality.
This reminds me of what was mentioned in the movie "Journey of the Mind": Every soul must find a spark to allow it to come to Earth, which is the purpose of people's lives. Some people have lost the spark of their soul, and only the mind is working like crazy all over their bodies, as if the body is no longer there. Until his soul alienated into a monster, wandering on the edge of the dark world, unable to find his home and direction. Once Sugiyama, it is also the soul that travels through the dark night. He starts by losing his link to his body and losing his channels of communication with himself. It wasn't until he encountered dance that he found the spark of his soul again.
Dance is another metaphor in this movie.