A remake of the 1990 Italian film of the same name, Journey to Heaven is a family ethics film directed by director Cole Jones and starring Hollywood A-list stars such as Robert De Niro, Kate Beckinsale, and Drew Barrymore. Following the story frame of the original film, the film follows the emotional bond between Frank, a widowed retired worker in his later years, and his four children.
Unlike the whimsy of science fiction movies, this family ethics film focuses on presenting various realities in real life. The storyline of the film is not perfect, there are joys and sorrows, showing the original face of life. Compared with the height of science fiction movies exploring the unknown world, the film is committed to pointing out the emotional problems of the family in real life, providing people with solutions and triggering thinking.
By telling the story between father Frank and his children, the film reflects the problem of family education: in the name of love, parents place expectations on their children higher than their abilities, hoping that they will excel and become their pride, and completely disregard the children's feelings, trying to make their children the success of their dreams according to their own intentions. Frank's heavy paternal love made the children choose to escape, and David even paid the price of his life.
The parent-child relationship in this film is a common emotion of people, and the philosophy of life in it is also the life experience that everyone will get in life. The director connects the film image with the living object, presenting a unique charm of "the truth of life" in the film, and it is this truth that touches the softest part of the audience's heart. How to educate children is a problem faced by all parents, and this film will make every parent pay more attention and think about family education issues.
Family ethics films explore the emotional connection between people, but also explore how to correctly channel and eliminate people when they face the various pressures brought about by social life. The film will be people in the society to bear the double pressure of material life and spiritual world, in the small range of the family to be indirectly released, whether from the story framework or the storyline, the film reflects the authenticity of its existence, and also closes the distance with the audience.
(1) The director transplanted the Italian story to the United States, nesting the storyline in line with the reality of American society in the same story framework
The original Italian version of "Journey to Heaven" in 1990 depicts retired workers who have been widowed for many years, departing from Sicily to visit their five children in a major Italian city, and what they see and hear along the way and the warm affection when they meet their children together constitute the Italian humanistic and social customs of italian films. In the American version of "Journey to Heaven" starring Robert De Niro, the story framework of the original film is still followed, and the emotional entanglement of a widowed old man and four children has become the main theme of the film.
In the film, the widowed old man Frank and his four adult children live in different cities, and someone once interpreted the English word "family" as "father and mother, i love you", which is actually a good interpretation of Frank's American family structure.
The family is the smallest unit of social composition, but it is the epitome and refraction of any culture. Therefore, the connotation of the remade film has not lagged behind due to the changes of the times, and the theme ideas and life philosophies expressed in it still have the universality of transcending times, regions and races. Even when migrating from continental Europe to the American continent, it has shown great adaptability.
And this adaptability is reflected in the parent-child relationship and life philosophy contained in it are the common emotions and life experiences of human beings. Although this common emotion is presented by the director under the image construction of different regional characteristics, its unique charm of "the reality of life" points directly to the soft part of people's hearts and arouses people's resonance.
(2) The storyline in the film is not perfect, there are joys and sorrows, but it presents the original face of life
The film begins with the elder Frank's first family gathering eight months after his wife's death. Frank was a protective worker with wires before retiring, and his wife used to talk to his children on the phone, and after his wife's death, Frank began to contact the children. After the children shirk the family gathering for various reasons, Frank decides to surprise them. He wrote a letter to everyone, took his own medicine, and insisted on embarking on a "journey to heaven" despite the doctor's discouragement.
The first stop of the old man's journey is the residence of his son David, because he can't contact his son, after waiting outside the door for a night, he goes to his daughter Amy's house, sees the grandson who opened the door for him, and finds that his daughter's claim that her grandson is ill and can't attend the party is a lie. Later, Frank discovers that the seemingly loving Amy and her husband Jeff have separated. The children who visited next seemed to be hiding something from him, and neither was as happy as his deceased wife and themselves said.
Frank believes that what his children say to him has reservations and is not true. As the visit came to an end, Frank felt extremely lost and could not calm down for a long time. He meets a young man living on the street at the subway station, which reminds him of his young son David, whom he wants to see but has not seen, and when he is ready to help him, the other party will take revenge and attempt to rob, and the life-saving medicine is also trampled by the man. Frank shows affection for life, which may not be as he expected, and smiles back at him.
Without medication, Frank ventured to fly home after several unsuccessful attempts to contact the attending doctor, only to faint on the plane. When Frank wakes up, he sees his three children in front of him and asks them to be honest with each other, but gets the news that his beloved youngest son, David, has died. While Frank kept expecting and hoping for life, life poured cold water on Frank.
Although Frank eventually faces the death of his beloved young son, the other three children still give him hope and motivation to continue to live happily. Every minute and second of tears and laughter in the film together constitute Frank's later life: a mixture of tastes, both hope and loss, both happiness and sadness. The director did not deliberately beautify or sadize Frank's life, but restored the truth of this life through the film, after all, this kind of inausitivity and imperfection is the most real life.
The image of many characters in the film, each of them is not perfect, they present the most primitive and real state in all aspects of life. The director did not overly sculpt the characters in the play, but cleverly retained the roughness and imperfection that should be in the "reality of life". Just as life is often bittersweet, overly perfect is unreal, so everyone in the film shows their personality in imperfection.
First of all, Frank was not the ideal perfect father
He demanded his children with his own wishes and standards. When his wife was alive, he heard many things about his children from her mouth. Frank loves his children dearly, and in order to give them a good living and learning environment, he works diligently in a work environment that is detrimental to his health. The work of applying a protective layer to the wires, while giving his family the material wealth it needed, also left him with a fibrous lung. The illness made Frank in his later years dependent on drugs to survive, and his body was very weak.
In Frank's eyes, children were the greatest pride of his life, he was proud of them, and he showed off his children to the passengers next to him on the train. When he learned that his children could no longer attend family gatherings, he insisted on embarking on a journey to visit his children. But his love did not seem to be understood, and the children did not appreciate his concern——— they did not want to see their father, and when they had to see him, they made up as short a time as possible, and found reasons for this, made up reasons, and even lied.
The film's portrayal of Frank's character can be described as simple and ordinary, leaving the audience with the impression of an ordinary old man who seems to be familiar. Like the elderly in real life, Frank in the film is not a cool handsome old man engaged in extreme sports, nor is he an eloquent and powerful politician, nor is he a healthy and wonderful literary and artistic old man, he is just an ordinary old man who can no longer be ordinary.
Frank's love is as heavy as a mountain, but what the children feel is not the thickness of their father's love, but the pressure to avoid it. He loves the children in his own way, but he has no regard for their feelings or their abilities. Obviously, Frank is not an ideal perfect father, and his expectations form an irreconcilable contradiction with the children's realistic ability, making them struggle between the contradiction between affection and self.
Second, the lives of the four children all show a gap between ideals and reality
Frank's four sons and daughters all held different professions and lived in different cities. Although the four children are actually living unhappy lives and running imperfect lives, they are frank's most concerned family.
The eldest daughter, Amy, a successful advertising agency owner, works in the heart of Chicago, has her own independent office, and her family is in a villa on the outskirts of the city, forming the perfect family in Frank's heart with her husband and son. In real life, she and her husband are divorcing, and married life is not as harmonious and perfect as Frank seems.
Robert: Frank's vision of a musician has his own orchestra, and in real life he is just a drummer in one of Denver's orchestras, not the conductor he claims to be to his father.
Old Three Rose: A dancer in Frank's eyes, and rose in real life has long ceased to be a dance business, but is just a single mother living in Las Vegas.
Youngest son David: Frank's most beloved and cherished child, David, who liked graffiti and painting since childhood, became a painter under the encouragement of his father and engaged in a free artistic career. In reality, he chose to take drugs, because the gap between dreams and reality was always a gap that he could not cross.
The lives of Frank's four children all present a gap between ideals and reality, which can be said to be "the most real life is the most imperfect life". Although not perfect, all four people can face life strongly. So in the face of their father's sudden visit, they all hope to present their most perfect side and reassure their father, but the elderly father has long seen the clues. The character image depicted by the director in the film makes people feel extremely real and moved.
Director Cole Jones spares no effort to construct his aesthetic and artistic qualities in camera switching and picture presentation, such as: there are often long shots without dialogue, empty shots without characters and long shots with long lines in the film. Another example: Frank's daily life preparing for family days is presented in great detail in the camera, and sometimes even uses a fixed lens to show things that are slowly changing, thus reflecting the feeling of time flow.
First, as an object of symbolic representation and lens language, the film uses the telephone line that often appears to metaphorically portray Frank's empty and lonely personal image
Throughout his life, Frank has applied a protective layer to telephone lines, partly as his own work and on the other as a medium of human communication. Whether it's good or sad news, whether it's expressing joy or anger, every day people communicate their feelings through the telephone line, and in this sense, his profession has gone far beyond the superficial meaning of protecting the telephone line, which actually metaphorically implies a potential meaning, that Frank has become a protector.
When the children did not confess everything to Frank, the camera against him was always lonely, silent, and still. In fact, this is a metaphor for frank who used to rely on his wife to communicate with his children in the language of the lens, and has always been a lonely bystander in the lives of his children.
In the film, whether Frank is traveling or stopping, the camera often flashes the telephone line hanging in the air, and even a large number of empty shots will appear to show the standing telephone pole. The occasional voiceover on the phone, coupled with this slow and orderly rhythm, not only presents a moving sense of rhythm in the picture, but also vividly portrays Frank's empty and lonely image.
Second, Frank, after being honest with his children, metaphorically becomes a participant in their children's lives, completing the perfect fatherhood
After the trip, Frank finds himself in the hospital and his children, and the first thing he says when he wakes up is, "I finally got my family all in the same room, what about David?"? Frank, who was honest with his children, learned the truth this time, and David had died in Mexico from a drug overdose. Then Frank saw David in a dream. His ears echoed the childhood conversation he had with David about the painter.
David came to Frank's bedside in a dream and guiltily said, "I'm sorry, Daddy!" "It's not your fault." Whatever you do I'll be proud of you! David! David! Frank suddenly woke up, there was no David by his side, only the sound of the wind through the corridor, whimpering. And when another Christmas Eve came, the children also went home to spend the holiday with their fathers.
After being honest with his children and learning the truth, the director's shot did not shoot directly at Frank's old tearful face, but covered his face with a wrinkled hand, revealing a wrinkled brow and unquenchable tears, and the sadness of losing his son in old age was self-evident in the shot. The reunion with his beloved young son David in the dream not only metaphorically describes Frank's inner desire for family affection, but Frank finally realizes the redemption of his own soul, but also highlights the truth of the lens language.
The film is ostensibly about a journey to heaven, but in fact it hides the exploration of parent-child relationship. Through the "reality of life" presented during the journey, it reflects the contradiction and imbalance between the needs of parents and children. How to educate children and how to deal with parent-child relationship is a problem faced by parents around the world, and this film also makes every parent pay more attention and think about parent-child relationship.
(1) Respect the child's wishes, let the child be true to himself, and choose his own life path
Frank's father image abounds around us: on the one hand, he loves his children deeply, even if he works hard, he has no complaints, and he must create the best educational environment for his children; on the other hand, he has expectations of children beyond their abilities, and when he is dissatisfied with his children's performance, he will be harsh. In fact, Frank loved his children deeply, but his mountain of fatherly love made the children avoid it, and David even paid the price of his life.
In real life, many parents not only let their children develop according to their own expectations, but even force the task of Guangzong Yaozu on their children. Therefore, they often do not consider the interests and feelings of children, arrange children to attend various tutoring classes, learn to dance, music, painting, etc., children seem to have their own strengths, but under the pressure of their parents, they are not happy.
A person's life is full of countless choices, and whoever can make a rational choice will control the fate of life. Artificially controlling or forcibly shaping children will only bring endless harm to children. After all, children will eventually leave their parents, if they do not have the right to choose from an early age, they will lose many opportunities for exercise, and it will be difficult to choose a path suitable for their own development when they grow up, and it will be difficult to meet challenges and competition.
Therefore, parents should learn to respect their children's wishes, understand their true needs in their hearts, let children do things according to their own wishes, develop their hobbies, interests and strengths, and choose their own life path independently.
(2) Recognize the true meaning of parental love, focus on cultivating children's independence, and let children fully reflect their personal value
When Frank knew that his son Robert was not a band conductor but just a drummer, Robert confessed to him: "It's percussion, it's a good fit for me, it's under pressure, and I like that." I can travel, earn a lot of money, and have no worries. It is not difficult to see from this that it is precisely because he has been regarded as an independent individual since he was a child, so Robert is more concerned about his own independence and personal value, rather than being subject to the authority of his parents like David, and embarking on the road to suicide under the pain of not being able to become famous.
In contrast, the "nibbling old people" that appear in today's society are not unable to find jobs, but they have voluntarily given up employment opportunities, and they not only rely on their parents for food, clothing, shelter and transportation, but also often spend a lot of money. The root cause of this phenomenon is that as a parent, they have not realized the true meaning of parental love, and they have taken care of their children's affairs from an early age, which in turn has caused children to lose their independent self-care ability and sense of family responsibility.
Frank learns the true meaning of fatherly love from this journey, but the price he pays is the life of his son David. At the end of the film, Frank stands in front of his wife's grave and tells her about his journey to heaven, "All I know is that if everything starts all over again, I'll ask the kids to be less. As long as they're happy, I'm relieved that I know I shouldn't always treat them like children, I can't instruct them to do anything anymore, they have to find their way. ”
Although the "nibbling on the old people" in society is a minority phenomenon, it is enough to make people think deeply. Because of this, on the road of education, we must recognize the true meaning of parental love, consciously cultivate children's independence, and let children fully reflect their personal values.
By analyzing the tragic and joyful life, the gap between ideals and reality, and the sense of rhythm in a slow and orderly manner, the film truly presents the emotional ties between Frank and his four children, which not only reflects the problems of family education, but also arouses the audience's attention and thinking about this issue.
The black and gray telephone lines that extend all the way in the film, ordinary and inconspicuous, gradually disappear into the sky against the background of the sky, but they are undulating and staggered, silently following all the way, just like Frank's deep father's love, which may not be brilliant, but has always been with it. This is the most touching place of this movie, it does not need to render too much family affection, only need to narrate the bits and pieces of real life with sincere emotions, and this simplicity and beauty can deeply touch the heartstrings of the audience.