The night before, I revisited a classic movie, The Burst Drummer.
For a long time, I always looked at it as an inspirational film, but this time I found out that the director was actually telling an anti-inspirational story
A paranoid boy, in order to become a genius, gives up everything that is still not recognized in the end.
Neiman, a 19-year-old sophomore at one of america's top music schools, chose the school because his goal was to become the world's top jazz drummer.
Abandoned by his mother since he was a child, he has become cowardly and paranoid because of the lack of maternal love for many years.
When communicating with others, he never dared to look up at other people's eyes, always avoided, and only when playing his favorite drums, his eyes would appear bright.
Once he practiced alone until late at night, the drums attracted Fletcher, the legendary mentor in the school, listening to the sound of searching for people, and the two "old enemies" in their lives met.
Fletcher, known throughout the school for his high musical standards and harsh and perverted teaching methods.
He tried his best to discover and develop the best musical geniuses, but years later, he still found nothing.
So he gave up, and from then on, all the musicians were just pawns in his hands, with the aim of playing the most beautiful ensemble.
As for whether the musician himself is talented, it is not at all within the scope of his consideration.
When he first heard Neiman's drums, he knew it would be a good pawn, so he threw an olive branch.
But out of his love of music, he still wanted to give the young drummer a chance, so he told him to wait for him in the practice room at 6 a.m. the next morning.
Neiman was so excited that he knew it might be his mentor's sole guidance to him, and all night he fantasized about what he would gain in the first class, so much so that he overslept.
When he opened his eyes in the morning, it was already 6:02, and Neiman rushed to the practice room as fast as he could, but there was no one inside.
He played smashed.
On the other side, just after 6 o'clock, Fletcher pushed open the door of the practice room every second, but he did not see the hot eyes he had imagined.
The practice room was empty and quiet, with only the second hand ticking, as if mocking him.
After a pause of two seconds, Fletcher turned and left the practice room, and in his mind Neiman had been abandoned and would no longer be the object of his training.
A fierce storm was about to sweep through Innerman, and innerman was completely unaware of it.
At 8:59:59 a.m., everyone got up, and just as Neiman was confused about this strange ritual, the next second mentor Fletcher pushed the door and walked in.
At this time, the time is exactly 9 o'clock, almost a second.
Neiman looked at his mentor with some uneasiness, and his heart was even more worried, and he seemed to know the seriousness of his own pigeons.
But the tutor did not see any expression on his face, and introduced him to other students and gave him a chance to get started.
Even if the previous two times were wrong, the mentor corrected it in time, without the slightest expression of displeasure, which made Neiman relax.
Just as he was playing the drum mercilessly, a folding chair flew in front of him, and he bowed his head to avoid it, followed by hysterical insults and insults from his mentor.
Every time he practiced in the future, the instructor would pay special attention to him, slap him once in a mistake, and hit him with tears and grievances.
But the paranoid character comes into play at this time, the so-called stubbornness, is not to hit the south wall and not turn back; the so-called paranoia, is to hit the south wall and not turn back.
In order to meet the high standards of the instructor, he became the core drummer of the band
Neiman gave up all social entertainment, including his lovely girlfriend Nicole, who had not been dating for a long time, because he felt that the act of dating his girlfriend would make him less time to practice, so it was better to break up. (You deserve to be single)
At this time, Neiman gradually became crazy on the road of pursuing his dreams. He was not understood, no one supported him, no one believed him, and his esteemed mentor Fletcher either struck or tortured him.
Finally, at an important performance, due to a series of force majeure events such as bus punctures, the loss of drumsticks, and an accidental car accident, which led to the failure of Neiman's performance, he broke out, because the mentor who witnessed his failure not only did not have a word of comfort, but also threatened him.
Neiman kicked over the drum in front of him, rushed to the stage and fought with his mentor Fletcher, accumulating days of anger, and with the sentence: I fuck you, it all broke out.
As a result of this, the school expelled him.
Unwilling to sit still, Neiman reported his mentor Fletcher's perverted teaching behavior to the school, and eventually neiman nor Fletcher was expelled from the school.
Disillusioned, Neiman put away the drums and tore off the idol poster on the wall, becoming like a salted fish, sluggish and idle.
Once wandering the streets, he was drawn to a poster on the wall of an obscure little bar that read, "Special guest Terrance Fletcher—his musical mentor."
Out of curiosity, he went into the bar and enjoyed the ensemble between the mentor and the bar band, and at that moment, the mentor was completely immersed in the music, and his face was intoxicated, and his heart began to touch.
When the music ended, he was still unfinished. At this time, the mentor found him, and it was too late to leave.
In an exchange with the mentor, he understood that the reason why the mentor had trained him with extraordinary means before was to help him break through his limits.
After the exchange, the mentor invited him to the highest standard performance in the country and told him that the performance could change his life.
Neiman agreed, and when he turned around, he showed a bright smile, as if he saw the dream waving at him, but he did not see the vicious smile at the corner of the mentor's mouth.
The show went as promised, and it wasn't until he took the stage that he realized it was a conspiracy.
The mentor's purpose was to destroy him, because the mentor already knew that it was because of Neiman's whistle-blowing that he had lost his job.
Sure enough, as soon as the instructor took the stage, he arranged a piece of music that Neiman had never trained before, and watching the expression on Neiman's face change from surprise to panic to anger, Fletcher was very happy, his purpose was achieved, and he successfully destroyed a musical genius.
But he was still too happy too soon.
After Neiman found himself deceived, he held the attitude of breaking the net of the fish and launched his own fatal blow.
He no longer relied on the conductor of his mentor, but was mainly anti-guest, and began to lead the whole orchestra with the sound of drums, completing a super high-level ensemble.
In the process, he pushed his limits and played the most difficult drum kit solo in history.
As a mentor, Fletcher, in the early days of Innerman's anti-guest domination, was full of anger in his heart.
When he slowly discovered that Neiman's level of playing had reached a whole new level, he began to become joyful.
In the end, with his help, Neiman pushed his limits and let everyone know a new musical genius, and Fletcher also achieved his goal of cultivating the top musicians, and cultivated the musical genius Neiman by mistake.
At this point, the story is over.
For a long time, I thought it was an inspirational movie, and I thought what the director was trying to say was:
You have to work hard, and very, very hard, never to improve, in order to be successful.
And, I really did it, until I had a physical problem and lay in the hospital for half a year, I began to reflect, is it really worth paying such a big price for a social level of success (rich and status)?
I think everyone has a different view on this issue.
But a very cruel point is that in the real society, the people who can really succeed are very few, most of them are doing good and not bad work, holding a high salary, talking about ordinary love, and they do not have particularly dazzling achievements, but live a plain life.
If getting ahead is the measure of success, then this life is indeed a failure.
But can you say that this life is meaningless?
In fact, it is not, because many people have worked hard all their lives to live this simple life.
To put it bluntly, if you can live the life you want, that's success.
Text: Little Dragon