Nowadays, most people live a married life, and they can't avoid a chicken feather, chicken flying dog jump.
Indeed, no matter how much love is in the air, it seems that it cannot withstand the years, and it cannot compete with the mediocrity and triviality in the fireworks.
But this hand-drawn film from the United Kingdom, "London Family", warms up the ordinary married life and makes life a different look!
Long before the release of the movie, the picture book of the same name was already well known to fans as a bestseller. The story is adapted by the famous British cartoonist Raymond based on the real experience of his parents, telling the story of Raymond's parents from meeting and falling in love, getting married for 41 years to finally passing away.
The story is told from the perspective and tone of the son, so that the whole movie has more narrative meaning, plus a frame of hand-drawn style pictures, so that even the ordinary trivial things in life can become warm and timeless, bright and beautiful.
As far as the main plot line is concerned, it is only about the daily life of a family of three in the United Kingdom: the couple lives a small life of constraints, usually likes to nag, mix, have a son, they love him tenderly...
But life is never going to be smooth. In the context of the big times, wars, political party changes, social welfare guarantees, and changes in the times are all affecting and changing such small people as them.
And for them, jobs, mortgages, children, old age, death... They are all life propositions that have to be faced.
All of the above, on the contrary, show the rarity of triviality, and even precious, yes, if you have also experienced the cruelty of war and rubbed shoulders with the god of death, you will definitely feel that as long as each other is still there, together with rice, oil and salt, occasionally quarreling and talking, what does it matter!
What's more, they have always accompanied each other, grown together, optimistic and positive to face and solve difficulties! I have to say that their concept of marriage and love can be regarded as textbook-level, and it is still worth our careful tasting.
In London in 1928, When Ethel met Ernest, who was five years younger than her, she was almost 35 years old, and seemed to have passed the age of impulsive adventure.
But when she opened the window to shake off the dust from the rags as a maid in a noble family, and Ernest, a milkman who passed by on his bicycle, thought he was greeting him with his hat, no one expected that the wheels of fate began to start, and they were about to risk a love affair.
In the next few days, the two were very tacitly waiting for a "hello".
Then, on the fifth day, Ernest took the flowers in his hand as if falling from the sky, "I think I should introduce myself, you have shaken the rag ash on my head many times before." ”
"My name is Ernest."
"My name is Ethel!"
Next, when you meet two people in love, dating, falling in love, and getting married are all natural things.
As for age, there is never a limit! It's not that I met you at the most beautiful time, but because of you, it's the best time!
After marriage, Ethel quit his job as a maid, and Ernest took on the responsibility of raising the family.
They spent over £800 on a house and need to pay off their mortgage every month! The heavy pressure of life ensued, and fortunately, they were all gentle and romantic people--at first the house was empty, and there was not a single decent piece of belongings, they filled it in one by one; what Ethel wanted, Ernest would try to figure it out.
The once cold and empty house is slowly decorated into a warm home!
Ernest was always a warm big boy, and Ethel was the typical stay-at-home woman, a little chattering. But in Ernest's eyes, she will always be a little woman who needs to be cared for and cherished.
They are also always enthusiastic about life, the flowers on the table never stop, they rarely complain when they encounter difficulties, and they always try their best to solve them, even in the face of cruel war.
Living with them, there is no vigorousness, some are just thin water, but who can say that this is not a kind of happiness? Perhaps, for them, having your three meals and four seasons is the most romantic thing!
Love the child, love the child's mother first
Ernest and Ethel both love children and dream of having many children to form a big family.
However, after more than two years of marriage, Ethel's stomach did not move, so anxious that she posted a picture of the child at the head of the bed! Ernest was puzzled, and Ethel cried in disappointment, and he immediately went around and hugged her in his arms, gently comforting her: "Honey, I know. ”
It was hard to get pregnant, and the two waited with great anticipation for the arrival of a new life, not thinking that the child would start early when Ernest went to work, and it was the ambulance that Ethel called himself!
When Ernest saw the ambulance, he was frightened and discouraged, and the first thing that came to his mind was his wife. He stumbled into the house, saw the midwife, and understood; and he was still worried about his wife, and asked twice in a row, as to whether the child was male or female, what happened, as if he did not care.
When the doctor told him that his wife was an elderly woman and that it would be life-threatening to have another child, he immediately dismissed the idea of starting a big family.
Ernest was textbook when his wife gave birth. Moms who love their children! This is the best commitment and role model a man can have for himself and for his family! Conversely, only those who love their wives deeply will instinctively rank their wives first in the subconscious.
Ernest and Ethel simply lived their own little lives, their sons growing up healthy and happy, while at the same time the whole environment outside was changing dramatically: Hitler came to power, and World War II inevitably broke out.
War means parting lives and deaths, losing homes, and destroying lives...
To escape the war, the couple sent their 5-year-old son to the countryside. And they, at home, make gas masks, build their own air raid shelters, and join the fire brigade to participate in the rescue.
War is suffocating and desperate, destroying people's will: London is hit by incessant air raids, death is playing out all around, maybe the next moment it will be its turn, I don't know when the war will end, when such a day will be a head!
But they will repair the gates that have been used to make war materials, they will hide in bomb shelters, they will grow up in the house, apply masks, grind their ears, cheer each other up, they will risk going to the countryside to visit their son because they miss him too much, and they will write in every letter to their son: "Your dear xxx"...
Even in the darkest and most hopeless moments, they still pour the greatest enthusiasm into life, and they can always see the light of the stars on the day!
In addition to the trivialities of life, there are also the pains and pleasures from raising children, and the contradictions and differences between them and children.
Ernest and the Ethel family are no exception.
As a child, his son, who was in grammar school, was taken home by the police for stealing. Despite being angry, Ethel still believes that her child is kind, and in the face of questions from troubled neighbors, she replies that he was sent back by the police because he helped the police solve the case.
I hope that my son will go to grammar school and have a good job later, but when my son wants to quit school to transfer to art, although Ethel is crying with anger, he still chooses to support him.
After the son got married, the mother hoped that the son would have children, but when the son told her that his wife had schizophrenia and could not have children, she expressed understanding and worry about them, and respected their choice, and never gave birth to it again, supporting them to live in the countryside that was more conducive to recuperation!
In fact, like most parents, they hope that their children will go to a good university, a good major, find a good job after graduation, get married and have children, take fewer detours, and don't toss around; and their rare point is that despite the nagging on their lips, when the child really tosses, they can understand and respect his decision. This alone has thrown many parents a street.
Because they understand that the best love is equality, trust, respect, and gentle companionship!
As the son grows up day by day, works, gets married, and becomes a parent, he also follows the years and grows old little by little.
In the end, people who thought they would always be together had to say goodbye to the world.
Together to the end of life, death can separate them, and there is always one person who leaves first.
Ethel went first. She had Alzheimer's disease and forgot about Ernest, who had been with her for more than forty years. In the most desperate and depressed moments, they all encouraged and comforted each other by hugging and kissing each other, and before she died, she couldn't even figure out "who he was", let alone a hug, a farewell!
The blow to Ernest can be imagined.
After her death, he ate alone, her tableware and the flowers she liked when she was alive; a man reading the newspaper, the loyal audience who liked to mix with him, was gone; a man who stayed up the long night and then greeted the dawn...
It was too difficult for him to get away with, and he wanted to see her as soon as possible!
They left less than half a year apart.
At the end of the film, the son and wife stand under the leafy pear tree, recalling the time when the tree was planted, when the war was raging, and the pear core he spit out was planted in the yard by his mother. This scene can't help but remind people of Gui Youguang's "Xiang Ridge Xuanzhi" that "there is a loquat tree in the court, and the hand planted by my wife in the year of her death is now as if it were covered." ”
The children of that year have grown up to become a family; the tree planted by hand has now grown into a towering tree, and the two people who accompanied them all the way are no longer there!
The world is different and eventually the same, old age and illness and death are links that everyone can't hide, the difference lies in "life" and how to "live".
Ordinary people's life, ordinary as si, as the lyrics say, get together and leave, sometimes, nothing is immortal, but if there is a lover who is full of foam to accompany you to spend a long time, spend a lifetime together, how ordinary is extraordinary!