Have you ever had the experience of being overwhelmed by the trivialities of life and feeling unable to move forward, you want to go back to the place where your life began, to trace the trajectory of your life, and to get some inspiration from it.
Everyone born in one place is a providential arrangement, regardless of fairness or not, whether the city or the countryside, are destined to be the original hometown. Many people use the first half of their lives to escape, and then use the second half of their lives to return.
The movie "Love To New Jersey" is a story that follows an emotionally numb young man back to his hometown and regains himself here.
▲ "Love To New Jersey" Phoenix Satellite TV Movie Station is being broadcast
Due to an accident in his childhood, Andrew (Zach Bluff) is full of guilt for his mother and must rely on his father's antidepressants to heal and forget the pain. During the 9 years he spent working outside the country, he got lost in the chemicals and became emotionally numb.
Andrew
Suddenly, a phone call from his mother's death brought him back from the city, and Andrew had to return to his hometown of New Jersey to confront the source of his suffering. Inadvertently leaving the medication he's been taking in Los Angeles, Andrew's buried feelings begin to ripple, and an encounter with the charming, cute but somewhat neurotic Samant (Natalie Portman) and high school friend Mark (Peter Sasgaard) brings some life to life, and Andrew's change begins...
▲ Saman
▲ Mark likes to hold strange parties
Love In New Jersey is self-written and directed by Zach Bluff. Zach was rumored to have wanted to make a film about his hometown of New Jersey, hence the birth of the film.
The settings of the characters in the film are all a little eccentric: a dull youth who lacks feelings, a deceitful girl with epilepsy, a friend who likes to skateboard in an unfurnished mansion... Zach succeeds in creating a full-bodied character, and the witty and slightly self-deprecating dialogue between them produces a sensual chemical reaction that collides with each other's lonely wandering souls.
For Andrew, the initial phone call seemed like force majeure, forcing him to return to his hometown. But it is precisely because of this opportunity that he can move towards a new chapter. Sometimes we have to force ourselves to face and discover the source of suffering in order to be reborn from it.
Someone in the film says to Andrew, "Everyone is anesthetizing themselves in their own way, like in a brave new world." In the dystopian novel Brave New World, people take psychoesthetic drugs every day to "instigate numbness", by giving up thinking to get happiness and settle for the status quo. People become animals that only know how to pursue pleasure, and the spirit gradually becomes insensitive.
Andrew's confession tells the story of the illness that has tormented him all these years. "I didn't cry when I grew up. I didn't cry at my mother's funeral either. I tried... I think about the saddest thing, the movie... The pictures in the life magazine that made me unforgettable, I concentrated, but there was no effect... In fact, I was so numb that it was the thing that made me feel the most sad..."
Andrew meets Saman while seeking medical treatment
Escaping the pain of the past is Andrew's anesthetic, and for years he didn't find the antidote, and no one even pulled him back from the lost. His father had been using so-called antidepressants to heal his emotions, but he had not tried to get close to his son's heart to help him resolve his knots. For the knot, the way they take is to keep silent. Painful experiences are not the cause, obedience to the direction of life is silence is the door of fate. This long period of silence buried Andrew's heart deeper and deeper, and the conversation between father and son became more and more awkward.
Parent-child communication is a cliché. In fact, when you lift the suppression of your own true thoughts and open your heart to communicate with your loved ones, you can avoid many problems. Imagine if Andrew had talked patiently with his mother and understood his mother's suffering, maybe the accident would not have happened; if Andrew had apologized to his mother, perhaps he would not have closed his heart full of self-blame and guilt; if Andrew's father was willing to help him get rid of the shadow of life from the inside out, would his life have been different over the years?
Escape is the simplest act of encountering problems, dreaming of unknown dreams in your own fantasy, looking back at the past life that cannot be repeated, but this will only stop moving forward. Failure to accept the past will only make the shadows bigger and bigger. Andrew did not accept his life and faults at first, and this escape did not make him happier, but formed a deeper deviation in his understanding of life, making him confused and world-weary. When he learned to accept, accept himself, accept his mistakes, he reached a reconciliation with the past.
▲ Shouting in the rain
I believe that many people are impressed by this scene: three young people jump on the abandoned crane in the heavy rain and shout at the abyss, which seems to be a meaningless move, marking an unforgettable dialogue between them and life. At this moment, the three of them faded their defenses against life and expressed their inner feelings to the fullest, even the heavy rain could not extinguish their desire to shout at life.
Confronting his past mistakes and accepting the irreparable reality, Andrew began a new life and saved himself. At the end of the film, Andrew took the initiative to talk to his father, who faced the past and himself with his father, and his words revealed confidence in the future. He became more courageous: even though he knew that a kaleidoscopic life might still be relentless in taking what belonged to him, he was still fearless.
Someone once said that failure in life is the norm, and smooth sailing is a fluke. Life is a process of constantly making mistakes, some mistakes can be remedied, and some cannot be recovered. Still, these mistakes should not be an obstacle to our search for ourselves. Mistakes can bring pain, but feeling pain is also a part of life, we are born as human beings, we should have all five senses. Feeling happiness, feeling pain, creating pain, creating happiness, is the meaning of our existence.
▲ Let go of the past Andrew
At the end of the film, Andrew resolutely decides to stay in New Jersey for Saman, hugging his loved ones to an uncertain future. Perhaps the road ahead is still foggy and unclear, but if you find the navigator of self, you can guide individuals to open up the future in life options.
The two main actors who return to reality have also maintained themselves to the end. Zach is a low-key presence in the film and television industry, but he has never given up on his pursuit of acting and directing. For more than a decade, he has been uninterruptedly appearing in front of and behind the scenes as a lead actor or director, moving steadily on the track he has set.
Natalie is seen as a model for independent women. She gave herself a niche early on: "Be a smart woman, not a stupid movie star." Acting is the path she has decided since she was a child, but she only chooses to play the roles she loves. Along the way in the film and television circle of sound and color dogs and horses, she not only did not lose herself in it, but also insisted on determining her own value, rather than being kidnapped by the box office or reputation.
This way of living out one's own life, as Natalie put it in her speech to graduates of her alma mater, Harvard, said, "Sometimes your uneasiness and inexperience may lead you to cater to the expectations, standards, or values of others." But you can take advantage of your inexperienced characteristics to forge your own path, a path that is free from the shackles of 'what to do', a path that is up to you to decide the reasons. ”
Life is a long journey, and in order to make this journey meaningful, we must learn to discover ourselves and take unique steps.
Living in an era of globalization, there is no shortage of people around us who are like Andrew in the film. They crossed the ocean to a strange country, facing their relatives and friends across the sea, and their hometown was far away. I don't know how many lonely nights I silently swallowed bitter tears and carried all the difficulties and grievances on my own. At this time, you will feel that the moon abroad is relatively round.
"The day you move out, you'll understand. There will come a day when home is gone, and you will feel like you can never be saved, like the place you miss all the time doesn't exist. Maybe that's a process of growing up. It's not until you rebuild a family that you regain that feeling, and it's like reincarnation for your children, for the family you've built. I miss that feeling. Maybe that's where the true meaning of family lies—a group of people missing a fictional place. ”
This is a very classic dialogue in the movie Andrew, because he has not returned home for too long, Andrew thinks that home is a fantasy illusion, but he still has a new life here, like a baby who has broken his shell for the second time. Home is a place of no form, perhaps the most comfortable place for you, perhaps a place that has been beautified by wishful thinking. But it's still the most nostalgic, the most authentic part of a person's nature, the place where people trace their roots.
▲ New Jersey
People who have left home can better appreciate the preciousness of home and have a lot of feelings about the word home. For the wanderer, the time of the hometown seems to be frozen, and everyone who meets him maintains the most primitive posture. The return to the original nature of the hometown is the power to bring people back to their original intentions. When you feel lost in life, go home and find yourself.
Text: Rose
Editors: Fore Magic Song, Meng Xiaodu, Tear paper little sister