Author: Liu Qing
At the observatory, james Dean, the male protagonist, watched a teaching film and heard a narration: Human beings, lonely beings, are just a small episode. It is a scene with strong symbolic meaning, and the emotionless narrator speaks of the loneliness of human beings under the stars, echoing the isolation of teenagers growing up. It's a tragedy through and through, but a good tragedy comes at the right time when the opportunity comes to make people strong inside... The growth of each individual can be a protracted battle, even if the battle situation is different, the details of the battlefield and the war are different, but the feelings of struggle and heartache are the same.
Behind the classics of the "youth narrative", there are too many stories of youth and strangles; furthermore, the glory of youth that is praised is not overcoming countless setbacks and pains.
In the Analects of Yang Goods, it is said: "Poetry can be prosperous, can be observed, can be grouped, and can be complained about." "Poetry can complain" is an uncut part of creation, which literally means that good poetry can express the pain in life, and poetry that expresses painful emotions is often very moving. Poetry is like this, and it extends to broader creations—like movies, as well. The works on the theme of youth in the film are of course bloody and romantic, and some of them arouse strong empathy in the image narrative, casting complex and affectionate gazes towards the shadow of youth. Whether rhetorical or realistic, the symphony associated with "youth", "can complain" is an indispensable part.
Director Truffaut once wrote: "All films about adolescence are period dramas, and they send the audience back to the student days, back to our beginnings." He wrote this passage in honor of his idol, the French director Jean Viggo. Born in 1905 and died in 1934, Jean Viggo left only four films, which added up to no more than 200 minutes in length, but had a profound influence on later Generations of French cinema. Truffaut broke into the film industry with "Four Hundred Down", setting off a "new wave", and this film was born under the influence of Jean Viggo's "Conduct Zero Points". If you define "Zero Points", then it is the "king of kings" of youth films. The 41-minute silent film has no strict dramatic structure, no clear story, and is a farce of a group of boarding school boys. The title "Zero Points for Conduct" refers to the harshest punishment a teacher can give to a student. Old-school boarding boys' schools are like tightly run procedures, life and study schedules are in order, the immutable order and the nature of male adolescence are constantly in conflict, and in a stereotypical little world, boys throw their infinite vitality into one trouble after another. Between the opposition of nature and order, one side of the adult world cannot be defined as an evil villain, but it is inevitably boring. Jean Viggo presents an innate passion that is not accepted with the image of almost daydreaming, the use of desks to play stacked music and the pillow fight in the dormitory, these classic passages transcend the momentary pranks of "bear children" and continue to recall the fanaticism and sincerity of adolescence in the hearts of new audiences.
"Zero Points in Conduct" makes people see the inevitable "confrontation" in growth. This "confrontation" is of all kinds, sometimes the object is clear, it is a conflict with the will or rules of adults, and sometimes it is inexplicable, it is a "rebellion without cause". "A boy wants to become a man as soon as possible." One day, director Nicholas Ray wrote this sentence during a break in the writing of the script, and soon after, he made Rebel for No Cause. In this movie, there are three teenagers who have a fierce conflict with their original families, and they experience a roller coaster of life and death love and hate in 24 hours, a group of children who have lost the protection of their parents, still innocent, but about to lose control. One of the most significant passages in the film takes place at the Griffith Observatory in west los Angeles, which is built in the style of a Greek temple, and the director uses this place as a clear metaphor to give the whole film a strong Sense of Greek tragedy. At the observatory, james Dean, the male protagonist, watched a teaching film and heard a narration: Human beings, lonely beings, are just a small episode. It is a scene with strong symbolic meaning, and the emotionless narrator speaks of the loneliness of human beings under the stars, echoing the isolation of teenagers growing up. It's a tragedy outright, but a good tragedy comes at the right time to make people strong inside— when a small-town youth watched "Rebel for No Reason" and decided to run away from home, he wrote a lyric on the road: "How many roads do you have to go to become a real man." A few years later, he released a record with the cover photo showing him wearing the same red jacket and jeans as James Dean in the movie, when he renamed himself Bob Dylan.
The growth of each individual can be a protracted battle, even if the battle situation is different, the details of the battlefield and the war are different, but the feelings of struggle and heartache are the same. "The Boy and the Eagle" is not a well-known novel outside the UK, the author was a teacher in a public secondary school, and extracted material from his coaching experience to write the story of this "boy who can't see hope in a depressed mining town". Director Ken Lodge penetrated the text into British reality while making a "novel adaptation" film. A low-class boy from a single-parent family is in a tense confrontation with the whole world, he can't find his place in his home or school, he is thrown into the social school prematurely, and he uses stubborn street survival tricks to maintain his life. Until he encounters a wounded eagle, he builds an unprecedented spiritual fortress for himself when he is alone with the eagle between heaven and earth, but the eagle eventually dies. It is a bitter film that honestly recreates the hard side of reality, namely that children are not immune to structural injustice, and it is difficult for them to have the strength to fight back in the face of the targets of fate. Even so, the boy in the movie says to his teacher, "Eagles can't be tamed, they're wild by nature, they're not afraid of anybody, and that's what makes them great." Ken Lodge said that the phrase was given to the British working class, and of course, the "eagle" symbolized all the young people who grew up barbarically.
Fellini recalled the twists and turns of filming Armacord and wrote: "I was nagging about bits and pieces of the old past, because the wild adolescence almost controlled my life, and I didn't know what to do with it... The affirmation of a lost world and the feeling of re-acquaintance with ourselves are sweet, because repressing our true identity is one of our natures. As Fellini presents in several autobiographical works, the scars of adolescence can always be attributed to ethical conflict, and reality does not allow the natural passions and impulses of life to open up "other possibilities" of life.
In this regard, Hitilova's Daisies is both a rebellion of the female voice and a myth of youth. The film is very bold, and at the beginning, the two girls are zombie dolls, they say, "We don't know anything, what should we do?" Then they enter the well-organized world of "decent people", endlessly wreaking havoc, and in the sweet "chaos", they become more and more vivid. In the Czech Republic in the 1960s, "Daisy", with its wildflower vitality, became a radical manifesto, and the director conveyed a clear attitude with a free and colorful picture: if the maintenance of an ethical order is at the expense of individual diversity, in such a system, "destruction" is possible to break free from the lifeless black and white world, experience the colors of freedom, and young life can be artistic or hedonistic, in short, it can be indifferent.
If "Daisy" is astounding because it is bold, Sorenczeva's "Enchanted Jessner River" is like a gentle song when a thousand sails have passed and you look back. Solonceva is the widow of the outstanding director Du furenko, "Charming Jessner River" was originally Du Furenko's memoirs, as the wife of the undead with endless love for her husband, filming a man who crossed the waves of devastation and returned to the other side of the teenager in his imagination - after the shocking waves of fate subsided, "teenager" is the place where reality and fantasy meet, "teenager" is noble because of freedom, the child passes through a large field of sunflowers, the sun shines on the flower field, the sun shines on the child, this scene in the movie, It is a passion beyond time, and this passion is the privilege of "youth".
In "Wenxin Carved Dragon", there is a saying that "mussel disease becomes a pearl", which literally means that although the pearl is good, the price is the pain endured by the mussel, and the author extends to the dialectical relationship between rhetoric and reality. The same is true of films about "youth narratives", behind the classics, there are too many stories of young strangles; furthermore, the glory of youth that is praised is not overcoming countless setbacks and pains.