"Big River Love", released in 1994, seems to me to be a slow and leisurely nostalgic movie, and if you ignore the details of the movie, this film can be regarded as the protagonist Norman's memoirs of the town, which make up the town and Norman himself, and can be regarded as an autobiographical style drama.
In fact, the film was indeed adapted from the autobiographical novel of the same name by writer Norman McLean, who served as a professor of literature at the University of Chicago and taught Shakespeare and Romantic poetry, which was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1977, and in 1991, the University of Chicago also named a converted church building "McLean House" in honor of McLean's outstanding contribution.
At that time, the best-selling of "Big River Love", in the expectation of many people, the story of Norman and his family, but also after this small out of the well-known, the story's deep emotional foundation, picturesque landscape pictures have been shown very brilliantly, compared to the more exquisite story structure and plot, although the plot is not enough to attract readers, but in the story tension can be done to the extreme.
Therefore, although this romantic literary work born in the 1960s and 1970s did not arouse my interest at first, in the later plot spread, the romantic style emanating from the core of the story slowly attracted me, which is different from the realistic literature rooted in the soil of reality, and it is also obviously different from the stream of consciousness literature.
Adapting a work like this into a movie is probably the most enjoyable thing in the world.
<h1>1</h1>
The film "Big River Love" retains the romantic and realistic elements of the original work, and it tells the story of the family of the Presbyterian priest Revrent McLean living in a small town by the Detroit River in Montana, starting with the memories of the elderly Norman and pulling the timeline back to the childhood of the Norman and Paul brothers.
From father Revrent teaching them to fish with fake flies and teaching them to read; to his brother Norman going to college and leaving the town, to his brother staying in the town as a journalist; to returning to the town, the brothers reunited... The story tells the story about Paul, about the parents and the town and the emotions from the norman point of view, of which the most inked is the brotherhood between Norman and Paul, and these emotions, for various reasons can not be expressed in words, close to the town's Detroit River, has become the connection point of their emotions, witnessing this love that spans decades.
The name "Big River Love" also comes from this.
Speaking of this film, we must not be able to avoid the Detroit River, and we are fortunate to start telling this story from the Detroit River.
The Great River has witnessed the purest friendship between the brothers, and has also witnessed their friendship and love.
At a young age, his father, Refrent, taught Norman and Paul to fish with fake flies.
The float was thrown out from the direction of ten o'clock, the direction of two o'clock was withdrawn, back and forth, a total of four beats, as the float drew a beautiful arc in the air, the father's harvest was gradually enriched - the father's fishing skills left a deep impression on the brothers' minds, and whenever the father's prayer class was over, when there was nothing to do, the two ran to the river to practice fishing, and in the process of fishing, the brotherhood between the two became deeper and deeper.
Later, as they grew older, they became more impulsive and adventurous, and secretly borrowed a wooden boat from their family with their friends, marched in the rushing river, leaped under the waterfall, although the hull was badly damaged in the end, but the two brothers were not in serious trouble, and at the same time, they also created a feat that had not been successful by their predecessors, and the big river completely recorded their bravery.
But they were also punished by their fathers for such reckless behavior, and needed to compensate for the damaged wooden boat through part-time work, which was the only time in their lives.
Later, at the age of college, the stubborn Paul was reluctant to leave Montana and leave the familiar town, while the calm and mature Norman chose to leave the town and go to college at Damons College, thousands of miles from home, in 1919, two years after the outbreak of World War I (1917), Paul and Norman were separated, and when they met again, it was seven years later, in 1926, when Paul had finished college and became a journalist at the local newspaper, and Norman was still a scholar.
The seven-year interval is enough to forget a lot of things, but there are only a few things that are always engraved in the heart, and for Paul and Norman, these things are the love of the Detroit River.
The brotherhood between Norman and Paul when they met again had been diluted, and he did not know where to start their story, nor did he know whether he was still as familiar with such things as in the past, but when they came back to the River Oftroit, to this land born in Si, all the strangeness and uneasiness dissipated, Norman skillfully picked up the dried fish, played the classic four beats, and threw the float far away on the lake as in the past, quietly waiting for the deceived squat fish to bite the false fly, and gently retracted part of the line. Following the violent swing of the crouching fish to release a part, back and forth several times, the crouching fish was hooked, and Norman regained his past memories.
Looking back at Paul, Norman felt familiar and unfamiliar: Paul's fishing technique was no longer the four-beat that his father had taught, but a completely new method of fishing that belonged to Paul himself. He had grown from a former fishing enthusiast to a master fishing master, and developed the vivid and interesting game of fishing into an art that, in Norman's words, Paul was born with.
In this way, the river witnessed the beginning of their friendship and also witnessed its reunion.
Later, Norman met the beautiful Jesse and fell in love from then on, and Norman's way of making overtures to Jesse's brother was to take him and Paul to the Detroit River to fish, and the strange emotions between him and Paul, relying on the width of the big river, flowed slowly.
This is the way of life of the town, and it is also the way the town communicates.
Although this exchange did not work much, Norman eventually won Jesse's love, the two soon became married, during which Norman also received a letter of appointment from the University of Chicago, inviting him to become a professor of English literature, Norman, with his father's consent, decided to take Jesse out of Montana and go to Chicago, before leaving, he and Paul and his father, came to the big river again, picked up the fishing rod, waved the fish in the air, and the familiar time was like yesterday.
But it was also the last time they fished together.
The day before he left for Montana, Paul died, he was beaten to death with the butt of his rifle, he left nothing but a pile of debts and enemies, after Paul's death, his father spoke less, Norman did not change his itinerary because of such a sudden change, and the next day, he left Montana as originally planned, leaving this town full of memories.
At the end of the story, the young Norman returns to Montana, back to the familiar river, as the beginning of the story, throws out the fishing line in his hand, and plays the song of life that belongs only to him and the River of Detroit as he did in childhood.
……
<h1>2</h1>
The story also returns to the beginning of memory again, forming a ring structure that we are more familiar with, a fishing scene almost covers the entire life of the character, the meaning of the big river for the character itself is not unimportant, if you only say such a story, he is not the best, but when it comes to this emotion, I think "Big River Love" is much better than most of the works I have seen in the past.
The romantic narrative style adds a lot of points to this film, reminiscent of the beginning of "Brokeback Mountain", the cowboy text of same-sex emotions can also burst out of strong emotions, and stylistic choices can often determine what a film will pass on after it is finally formed, including ideas, culture, attitudes, and the value of the film itself.
Especially in this kind of drama film based on "emotional borrowing", the performance is more prominent, in Tim Burton's film "Big Fish", the insurmountable emotional gap between father and child is finally crossed through a strange but warm fantasy story, so the story becomes the carrier of emotion, completing the task that emotional communication cannot complete.
Emotional expression is not shy, but sometimes, we still need a substitute to help us express it, in "Big Fish" is a fantasy story, in "Brokeback Mountain" is the shirt of the lover, in "Big River Love", it is the Troit River, the romantic style always has a power or characteristic, with "image" expression, the "figurative" person or object to give abstract meaning. So we see that the mountain is no longer a mountain, the water is no longer water, we think of the distance when we look at the near place, and we see that our friends miss their old knowledge, so the thick nostalgia also gushes out, and all the memories of the hometown are vividly remembered.
Norman's love for Paul and his parents, his attachment to the town, are tightly tied to the Detroit River, just like the century-old family of Macondo in "One Hundred Years of Solitude", thriving here, but also sleeping here, it is a memory that can never be forgotten, but also a nightmare that can never be broken, in such a story, there are not too many thrilling adventures, nor too deep emotions, only life, only themselves, only a trickle that does not hurry, written as a nostalgia, buried too many regrets and helplessness.
<h1>3</h1>
Paul owes debts because of good bets, which eventually leads to the disaster of killing, there are many hints in the film, Norman tried to rescue Paul several times, but to no avail, the relationship between him and Paul, relying on the river to maintain, but other than that, he did not know his brother at all.
The same goes for fathers.
He was a completely different person from his father and Norman, but when the light passed and the old days were gone, the original Paul had become an adult, had his own direction in the rushing river, and between the far side and the hometown, love and hate, life and death, he had his own choice, the two separations of the brothers in the story, the first was the separation of the hometown and the distance, the second was the separation of life and death, but neither did the love between the brothers be cut off - even if the river branches, it will eventually merge into the ocean, and so will life.
My father's last speech at church probably made us less confused: in the life of the great river, the close family is often very different from us, we can't understand him, but we can still love him wholeheartedly.
Speaking of "Big River Love" again, I remembered the scene where norman and Paul brothers were fishing in the river, and I remembered the young Paul immersed in fishing.
And the river that witnessed most of their journey...