Americans are not as self-deprecating as the British, and more often than not they flaunt themselves. Flaunting that he was in a great democracy, flaunting that he had the great poet Whitman, and often referring to himself as "celibacy." Then we find out that the original movie is to attack these proud praises, think of the "American Dream", think of the "Beat Generation", this society has many inadvertent chapters, so that American pop culture makes people all over the world fascinated. But all you know is a few bits and pieces, because, as the American drama "Newsroom" asked, "Is the United States really the greatest country?" ”
In fact, the above and "Saint Vencent" has no half-cent relationship, because this movie is like boiling water that heats up, always maintaining the alternation of fantasy and reality, just from a child to dig out the bitterness of the underlying characters, although too dramatic, but the audience is happy to see such a scene, they will feel that the original life is like this, but we have never been tolerant, so there is the main theme of this film: saints are mortal, very ordinary. Slowly this movie made me start to think another way, are American children so independent? Yes or no, after all, children's nature is not used as a reference, they are often used as a metaphor for goodness, purity and beauty, and at first you look at the whole thing with a skeptical attitude, and at the end you find out, Oh, it turns out that this is all true.
So at the beginning of watching "St. Vincent", I didn't have any expectations, because it couldn't be as direct and pure as "Little Miss Sunshine" back then, and it wouldn't be as philosophical as "Special, Very Close", but I simply liked to watch Bill Murray's performance, because I knew that he never let the audience down.
This was a bad old man, and Oliver must have thought so at first sight of him, mean-spirited, dirty-looking, dismissive of people and things outside. Even if Oliver thought it was special, his mother Maggie certainly wouldn't think so, just moved to be his neighbor when the moving company's car crashed into his fence and tree, who knows if he planted the tree, he yelled for Maggie to lose money. The real unfolding of this story does not begin from here, but from the single mother Maggie to work overtime to pick up her son, and the son is born weak and is bullied in the new school, so he will run to the home of the bad old man Vincent, although the story has ten minutes before portraying the protagonist Vincent's lifestyle and his behavior, from the contradiction of the plot, this is enough to convince the audience.
Vincent is a veteran, living a sloppy life, likes to drink and gamble, and seems to have no nostalgia for life. In the beginning, a young pregnant Russian immigrant prostitute enters the camera, and like Vincent, she makes a big fuss and is full of helplessness about reality, and the two are both gun friends and friends. It is in such an environment that the little boy Oliver breaks into Vincent's life, and it is from here that the story resonates with the audience.
For such a typical American movie, it is full of the dirty life of the people at the bottom of society, the drunkards in the tavern, the gamblers in the racetrack who only want to make a windfall, and even the prostitute is a symbol of the low-level characters, pregnant and pole dancing, forced by the embarrassment of life, she had to do this. This is a typical American bottom society, but you ignore itself because of the warm temperament that the movie often emits, take Oliver's mother, the husband cheated, she took the child while working to cope with the husband and her fight for custody, the American people are obviously familiar with such a scene setting, they are not self-deprecating, because the reality is so, they spit out that they have lost fun, which is why the crime rate in the United States is higher than that of other countries. Brooklyn reports far more documentary shootings each year than any other region. Just back to the film itself, what kind of story does the director want to tell that is most important? Otherwise you think a grumpy actor like Bill Murray would be willing to come to this movie, obviously he has his eye on its characteristics, what is a saint? What does Saint Vincent stand for?
Although Oliver is thin, he sees the world and life innocently, never complains, never hides crying, is optimistic by nature, and is full of curiosity about the world. When he walked into Vincent's strange old man's house that day, the lives of the two of them were destined to happen unusually, Oliver's mother could not come home because of overtime, Vincent could only take care of the little fart, but he felt that he had done the work of a nanny, bluntly saying that it was 12 yuan an hour. Since then, Oliver has had more time to spend with the bad old man, he was bullied by the people at school, and Vincent taught him how to fight back, which he thought was a strong character that could not be feared. He took him to the bar and taught him how to speak loudly and how to defend his rights as a human being. Take him to the casino and let him know the importance of odds, the most direct things in society that allow a nine- or ten-year-old to absorb the best parts of it, and this is also the experience of social life that Western education thinks you can't touch in school.
Oliver began to fight back, and began not to be afraid, which seemed to be a turning point in the story, but in fact, it was only an inevitable result. There are a lot of life details and character portrayals that are not very delicate, but overall, this is a superior small and medium-cost film production, and can make the audience have a good heart, you may feel too much soul chicken soup, but if such fantasy and beauty are stifled, the world is really like the seven deadly sins: the world is beautiful, worth fighting for; Morgan Freeman followed up, I only agree with the first half of the sentence. The topic of American class has been repeatedly seen in movies, and the genre of films has also been seriously distinguished, such topics as realism, surrealism, etc., such topics emerge in an endless stream, not so much that there is only one Jia Zhangke in China who is attacking society, but rather that he just does the same thing as most American directors, but the meaning and value are not equal.
At the end of the story, Oliver describes Vincent as "What is a saint?" in front of the whole school. "On the face of it, one might think that the saint I have chosen is the least saintly; he does not like others and others do not like him; he is short-tempered, cynical, drinks too much, gambles, curses others, lies and deceives, and spends a lot of time with the night lady." If you dig deeper, it's not fault. Born in Brooklyn, the son of a first-generation Irish immigrant, Vincent learned many things a child shouldn't know: fighting, cursing, and gambling. In 1965, as a member of the U.S. Fifth Army, he went to war with 450 soldiers and heroically rescued two wounded officers; but I want to tell you that Mr. Vincent's best way is to explain to you what he did for me? When I first came here, no one accepted me, but he accepted me, he didn't need to, but he did because that's what the saints would do. I visited his wife, who had been married forty years, had recently passed away, and although she didn't remember Vincent, he had washed her clothes every day for the past eight years because the saint never gave up. He taught me how to fight, how to stand firm and be brave, how to speak loudly and be charismatic, because the saints would fight them for themselves. He taught me how to gamble and race horses, but I learned about risk and desperate bets because the odds of life won't work against you. Vincent's cat, Philip, ate high-grade cat food while Vincent ate only canned sardines because the saint was brave enough to sacrifice. Yes, Vincent is flawed, very flawed, but like other saints we have studied, because as a result, saints are mortal, very ordinary people. ”
Saints are universal, and saints are mortals who are not afraid of life.
You may be touched by what Oliver, a nine-year-old boy, said, and I am moved, because this kind of education is what we lack, this kind of life is something we can't detect, because the values we accept are destined to let it slip away. This independent masterpiece is very American, it and our lives seem to be far from the same and not very in line with, it is more inclined to life of the American drama, if you are used to watching the life of the American drama people should have a strong sense of substitution, it is not as violent as those commercial masterpieces, not as atmospheric as art films, in fact, when we watch a movie, more desire is still a sense of resonance, and revelatory, or no long talk, is two words: good looking.
I think again when I was in art school, when my teacher said to us in the first class: What I teach you is how to watch a movie, instead of asking me if a movie is good. But after watching the movie for a long time, you will find that the sense of physical and mental pleasure is more difficult to come by than the sense of worry, and you may know that the teacher's statement is too sharp, because the movie is really good, but I don't know how to watch it.
Some time ago, people used to say: My dream is to live my life in my own way. What does the movie actually teach me? Nothing, it's still a conversation between myself and myself, nothing more. It's just that we should be sorry that there is no such asshole in life, at least your life will be very fun, no longer just wandering around the classroom and home. Life really needs such an asshole to help you find the best part of yourself, the most authentic self.
The final credits are dedicated to the film's best actors: Bill Murray, Naomi Watts, Melissa McCarthy and Oliver Jetton Lieboch Jr.