The shining core of a silent life

The movie "Still Live" tells a bland story.

John May is an ordinary and boring middle-aged British man who has been a grassroots street manager for 22 years. His job is to find the families of the unknown deceased in his jurisdiction and to organize dignified funerals. His life was dull and rigid—living alone, hanging clothes, pulling stools, flipping through photo albums, looking left and right before crossing the street, and every meal was the same can, bread, and pear. Silence, little fluctuation of expression.

Until he's going to be fired, he still has one last case in hand. In the process, his life finally rippled a little: a pie, a fish, a haagen-Dazs where the van fell, drinking whiskey with the tramp, peeing in front of the peeing in front of the pesky boss's car, and meeting a beautiful and kind girl.

Well, see here the spirit finally rises. Next, as you might guess, he booked a date with a beautiful girl and forgot to look around the only time on the way to buy a pet dog cup painted with the girl's favorite... His funeral was attended without a tombstone.

But as the film's English name goes, when the crowd disperses, his tomb slowly gathers the strangers he sent away before his death, and they come out of the air, silent and watching, and together they end the life of this man named John May.

This abrupt sigh reminds me of the seemingly rude apartment doorman Honey in "The Grace of the Hedgehog", who has a sensitive heart under the appearance of the hedgehog.

The Japanese gentleman finally opened this long-closed heart little by little through the key that "happy families are similar, and unhappy families have their own misfortunes".

It all ended abruptly.

The conflict in the movie story comes suddenly, will the beautiful girl in "Silent Life" wait? The precocious little girl in "The Grace of the Hedgehog" wouldn't have committed suicide, right?

Every silent life that we don't understand should have a unique shining core. For May, it was the book full of pictures of the neglected and forgotten people; for the female concierge, it was the hidden study, full of books, table lamps, and cats.

I think that under the appearance of ordinary people's mediocre lives, there must be something that can be called meaning, or sustenance of meaning, that takes us through mediocrity and hardship.