"Learning Dad": It's time to go to the fire of reality movies

I watched the newly released film "Learning Dad" over the weekend - probably because I had lowered my expectations before watching the movie, so after watching it, I felt that the film was a little better than I expected.

As another film that shows and sells real anxiety, "Learning Dad" is very good in terms of content presentation, at least the situation types and character labels are rich and typical enough, which is emotionally valuable to audiences with relevant experiences, but that's all.

Compared with ridiculing this is another "more accurate, wonderful and insufficient" film, I want to say that the current domestic reality movies have formed a serious path dependence on the routine of "peeping big with small and supporting with large", so that there are works like "Learning Dad" that finally rely on self-paralysis to muddle through...

In any case, that's enough for me to write a long article.

[Friendly reminder: There will be spoilers below.] 】

First of all, let's talk about the good shooting of "Learning Dad": complete, accurate, full, directly hitting the pain points of education without randomly demonizing the pain points.

The film has a clear main line: for his son Lei Xiaomi, Lei Dali has successively experienced the triple calamity of "fighting" for public primary school recruitment, "rolling" private primary school special recruitment, and "fighting" for aristocratic primary school interviews, and finally returned to himself.

In addition to the sharpened protagonist father and son, the film also adds three groups of supporting families in different situations, namely: Brother Huo, who actually grabbed the enrollment quota for his son, and then returned to reality, with a happy family; unscrupulously forced his daughter "sister" Liu Zhenzhen, who was excellent, won the results but lost family affection; Gao Yalin, who successfully succeeded in making her son Lucas top and herself mixed into the circle, has an unknown future.

"Learning Dad" tries to show the human state of education involution in a multi-angle, multi-level, and panoramic manner, without using critical or whitewashed filters to distort reality, which is a calmness that transcends the "anxiety" attribute of the subject itself.

Moreover, the film does not shy away from the root cause of these phenomena, that is, cross-class prayers/ambitions, which are desperate for children to do their best, which constitutes the basis for "Learning Dad" to touch people.

Some people say that in order to highlight its own story logic, the film sacrificed the minimum character logic, such as Lei Dali was originally an ordinary father who was not very fastidious, but later became a crazy parent who only wanted his children to go to a good school.

For this, as a parent whose children are also in the early childhood stage, I think that a lack of logic is a normal phenomenon, because similar situations abound in reality.

In fact, a scene at the beginning of the movie has said it all: Lei Dali thought that he had won the enrollment quota by relying on the trust relationship, so he spent money to hire someone to line up for him, bought a breakfast on the morning of the primary school admission, and walked leisurely to the school, but the school notified that the quota was gone, all parents began to run forward, and Lei Dalian, who was hit by the smash, finally ran up...

This is the embodiment of the inner logic of many chicken and baby parents: being wrapped up by the general environment and the people around them and running forward.

Lei Dali began to find connections, fight for household registration, and buy school district houses to grab an enrollment qualification, in addition to following the crowd, largely to avoid his father-in-law from bringing his son to Shanghai in the name of "high-quality education" - but once he fell into that group frenzy, it was difficult to extricate himself.

Because few people can be truly detached in their children's education, you can always see parents who are more involved and desperate than themselves, and after the "arms race" begins, they often can't stop.

Therefore, we see Lei Dali who puts the cart before the horse, and when the "source of pressure" father-in-law has died, he still longs to ask his sister-in-law to send Xiaomi to an aristocratic school, and he hates himself because of this.

As everyone knows, his wife, who was born in a scholarly family, would have taken a fancy to Lei Dali back then, because he was cheerful and talkative rather than his "excellent" in the secular sense, so he couldn't help but change his crappy and give up his book to the end, which is also a sad manifestation of the alienation of people by reality anxiety.

At this point, the advantages of "Learning Dad" are almost finished, it is a movie with more than enough accuracy and excitement, everything is based on the conclusion and effect first, but ignores the rhythmic coherence of the story and the authenticity of the details.

For example, the least point is wrong: a child (family) who is close to kindergarten to primary school simply does not have the time or space to start from scratch to complete the three roads of public primary school qualification certification, private primary school specialty student assessment, and cross-provincial primary school enrollment.

There are too many symbols, labels, and examples in "Learning Dad", but there is a little less "human taste", which is similar to the temperament of its content, and it has to be said that it is a kind of irony and regret.

In addition, I want to mention my "selfishness" - the role that pokes me the most in the film is the little girl "sister", after her parents divorced, she became a "good student" under the pressure of her mother, but she just wanted to return to her father's side to live.

This role with little ink is very much in line with my impression of a certain type of child in the current utilitarian education environment: excellent grades, versatile, high probability of unhappy life, and very rational and cool, even if they understand that their parents are for their own good, they will not have much gratitude.

When the pursuit of scarce resources and the requirements for student assessment are "crazy", it is equivalent to acquiescing to children's deception or hypocrisy, although this is certainly not absolute, but relatively speaking, it is indeed such precocious, actual children are more likely to come out.

The first children who grew up like this, now grown into society, almost all of them chose to break the cycle of anxiety, at least not to take their children to live a similar life again, because they understand the consequences and costs of this life.

"Learning Dad" is basically from the perspective of adults, and it does not add more of this type of child's perspective, which is not its problem, but I hope to have a sharper and more equal attention in the future.

Finally, it is necessary to say the biggest flaw of "Learning Dad": forcibly giving the story an indefensible ending.

Lei vigorously accepted the reality and took his son back to his hometown, Lei Xiaomi and Arrow both went to ordinary elementary schools, but they looked "excellent", and with a few words of education burden reduction policy adjustments, it gave the audience a weird hint... Like, the problem has been solved.

But we all know very well that the problem has not been solved in reality, and even because of some efforts to treat the symptoms but not the root cause, the problem has become more difficult to solve.

The ending of "Learning Dad" is better to show Lei Xiaomi their ordinary and happy life, so that it can also explain the meaning of self-reconciliation - now this self-deceptive ending, to say that the good point is to carve a boat for a sword, a wood to ask for fish, and a difficult point, that is, to open your eyes and say nonsense, drawing a tiger is not an anti-dog.

I found that since the success of "I Am Not the God of Medicine", domestic reality movies have become more and more fond of imitating its routines, no matter how the film was shot in front, and finally have to add a big background big data to "value", and recent films are all like this without exception.

In such a climate, there was finally a film such as "Learning Dad" that denied the theme of its own story in order to sing a high profile, and the "negative typical" did not run.

This also reminds everyone that it is time to cool down the reality movies that "issue first", otherwise we will see more and more absurd works.