Received a fan message like this:
Hello ky. I'm an ordinary person with no characteristics, and if you're going to introduce yourself, I can't seem to say anything. I have a stable job, although I have not yet started a family but have a stable relationship, my parents and friends think I am doing well.
But actually I'm not happy. I used to be a spirited teenager with all kinds of visions for the future. But life was like a trap, and I was slowly stuck in a position. Such an ordinary life is not in line with my former ideals, but I have no chance to live a different life. I think the thing about getting old is real. ”
Coincidentally, today we just want to introduce you to a film about "the life of people facing boiled frogs in warm water" - "Revolutionary Road". Directed by Sam Mendes and co-starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet after Titanic, Revolutionary Road tells the story of an American couple married for seven years in the 1950s. Kate Winslet won the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress for the film.
I like the word "revolution", perhaps it is the nature of young people, just hearing these two words, you can feel scrappy and enthusiastic. The same is true of the two protagonists in the film.
Ky Movie Column Author / Xia Chao
Editors / ky Creators
Unconsciously, we grew up
The person he ever hated the most
The Wheelers live in a beautiful white house next to the road called the Revolutionary Road. Her husband, Frank (Leonardo DiCaprio), works as an office clerk at a company to assist with sales, and his wife, April (Kate Winslet), is a housewife. The two have been married for seven years and have two children. Among the real estate agents Helen, they are a model couple in this area.
In fact, they are not as harmonious and happy as they think. After a community amateur performance, april felt bad and in a bad mood, reluctant to party with friends to celebrate. Frank reluctantly drives her home, and in order to alleviate the embarrassing scene, he constantly compliments his wife on the way.
April felt that he was taking pity on himself, and the more he listened, the more angry he became, and the two stopped by the side of the road and quarreled. They are all very dissatisfied with their current lives.
The two quarreled bitterly, but they could not solve the problem, and they could only helplessly stop it. They have long lost the passion of the past love between them, and on the surface they live a "normal" life like others, but in fact they experience the seven-year itch of marriage.
The next day, Frank went to work as usual. He first drove to the train station, which was crowded with thousands of employees dressed in the same way as himself, suits and shoes, but all tired. He didn't look any different from them. He walked into the crowd like a drop of rain in a heavy rain.
Ride the crowded elevator with others, enter a cramped office, and sit at a small desk. Frank's father was an employee of the company. At first, he was very dismissive of his father's work, thinking that such a mediocre life was tantamount to wasting his life. And now he is thirty years old, and he has become exactly like his father.
April's situation also frustrated her. She studied acting when she was young and dreamed of becoming a professional actor, but now she is confined to family life, trapped in chai rice oil and salt, can only occasionally participate in amateur performances, and her acting skills are often ridiculed.
If the mediocre life is boring, then the mediocre self can only be described as desperate. In this case, April looked through the old photographs and recalled the sweet and beautiful old days when she and Frank had once talked about a trip to Paris. Frank felt that Paris and the United States were different, where everything was vibrant, full of exploration and discovery. His goal in life at that time was to truly feel the bigger world.
And this is the person that April fell in love with, had a brave heart, and longed for an extraordinary life. Just as they chose to buy a house, they chose this "revolutionary road" by avoiding the lot full of plumbers and carpenters, because they were determined to make a great revolution in the mediocre life.
Everyone who makes a living
They all fantasized about an exciting exodus
The faded and bleak life is heartbreaking, and April is reluctant to admit it. Therefore, she wants to launch a "revolution" in the current life.
Frank and the female typist who was having an affair went home after opening the room, and it was his birthday. The unknown April sincerely apologizes to Frank, and she also takes the children to prepare a birthday cake, which deeply touches Frank. Immediately afterward, April spoke of her revolutionary plan:
Selling cars and houses, moving to Paris!
Frank thought it was a joke at first. April further explains that the government secretarial work in Paris is well paid, and she comes to support the family, while Frank can continue the unfinished exploration before marriage to discover the real desired career.
Frank still found this impractical. April said that life is unrealistic now, and that settling here is to feel different here, but in fact it is just self-deception. She inspired her husband to believe in his potential. Frank believed her and promised to go to Paris in the fall.
After making this decision, Frank became happy and even began to be proud. He told his colleagues the news, taunting them in a condescending tone that made no sense at all in the company. Frank began to feel that he was a different person from them and would not be buried in ordinary life.
Friends were shocked to hear the news, and April explained that they didn't want to waste their lives here.
Ironically, the only person who could understand them was a mentally ill man, John. John is the son of Mrs. Helen, a real estate agent, and occasionally comes out of a mental hospital to spend time with his family. Mrs. Helen, in order to increase his socializing, took him to Frank's house as a guest. He was pleasantly surprised to hear the news that the couple was moving, and praised them as people who really dared to face emptiness and despair. John himself, because he was not satisfied with the pedantic life, was sent to a mental hospital by his parents for treatment.
Most crucially, the plan did improve Frank and April's relationship, and the two men's relationship began to heat up again.
Coincidentally, however, Frank's change in work was appreciated by the leader, and just when the boss wanted to form a new team, he invited Frank to join. The new job was exciting for Frank and meant a higher salary, so Frank got stuck in the lurch.
It was at this point that April suddenly said that she had been more than two months pregnant, which further exacerbated Frank's hesitation that the new child meant a heavier burden.
When April hears about her husband's new job and worries that her plan to go to Paris will fail, the relationship between the two becomes tense again and quarrels again. April accuses her husband of being hesitant and unambitious, while Frank feels that he is enduring boring work in order to support the family and is doing his part.
Frank is reluctant to argue anymore, but when he goes to the bathroom, he accidentally finds the abortion tool that April bought. He angrily asked her why she was doing this. April's nervousness about having a baby annoys Frank. He accused his wife of being cold-blooded and would choose an abortion for the sake of his own ethereal fantasy.
April cried wordlessly. Frank came up with a solution: take a new job, have more pay to raise a third child, and he can afford counseling if his wife can't let go. He further reassured her that they could be happy here too and did not have to go anywhere else. April accepted somewhat reluctantly, and in a trance gave up her plan to go to Paris.
In fact, the revolutionary plan of the two sons was never really carried out vigorously, and at most in their minds, they turned over waves that were simply invisible to the outside world.
For most people, going to a new place, changing a new identity, and starting a new life are just things to think about—they must exist in fantasies, fill their real selves with chicken blood, but only exist in fantasies—in fact, we know in our hearts that there is nothing to live elsewhere.
Enduring life is also a revolutionary road
When colleagues learned that Frank was not going to Paris for his new job, they in turn ridiculed him for his whimsy. Friends reunite with them as they used to, and reassure them that "Paris is not as good as expected".
April drank wine and said what she really thought. She knew she didn't have to go to Paris. It's just that she's very unwilling. She watched her husband find enough reason to settle down here, and although he was not happy at work, marriage and children had satisfied him to a certain extent. And she herself is still involuntarily staring at another future, restless with a vague hope, unable to integrate into the current life, but unable to escape.
When Frank sends his friend home, April, perhaps to release the repression, has sex with another man. Subsequently, the two returned to their old days of triviality and quarrels.
Later, John came to visit with his parents again, and was emotional when he learned that the two had given up going to Paris. Frank explained that new arrivals need more money to raise. John said relentlessly that it was just an excuse, and he denounced Frank as a coward who used his wife's pregnancy to escape, and that April was just another coward who succumbed to his cowardly husband.
Frank and John quarreled and threw him out of the house. The couple was provoked to quarrel again.
Frank said john didn't know how to love people at all. He said he stayed out of love for his family, children and wife. April, on the other hand, says frank doesn't love herself at all, and she hates him. Frank was so angry that he almost made a move. He scolded April for not having a heart, why he hated why he wanted to get married, why he had children, why he stayed at home and didn't leave.
April ran in a panic to the woods outside the house, pacing repeatedly in the hope of calming down. Frank had been drinking wine and looking at her at the window. The two remained deadlocked until dark. The next day, they all exercised much restraint and pretended to be respectful as guests, as if nothing had happened.
This seemingly calm breakfast was tough for both of them. In fact, April's mind is already decided. After Frank went to work, she washed the dishes, called her children's school, went upstairs to get her tools, self-harmed the abortion, and called an ambulance for a long time. When Frank rushed to the hospital, April died of excessive blood loss.
Later, Frank changed his job, moved to town, and never returned. Mrs. Helen, the real estate agent, occasionally spoke to her husband about the couple, whom she no longer regarded as a model couple, who found them eccentric, and complained that they did not cherish the house on the revolutionary road, which made it difficult to sell now.
And her husband did not want to listen to these mean gossip at all, he did not complain or stop, but quietly closed the hearing aid and fell into a person's silence.
The film ends here.
This revolutionary road is poignant.
Frank and April, who had fallen in love with each other when they were young, had a spirited dream together that one day they would head to Paris. And time has turned them all into the "most boring adults" in their own eyes. They all feel the boredom of this day-to-day life, question where they once were, and despair because they can't find a sense of meaning.
Many of us are like this couple. After work, when I get together with old friends from school, a table of people can have a table full of spit. We are trapped, coerced by the system, by responsibility, by the needs of the economy, and we are constantly repeating the same life. On some extremely unpleasant days, we also want to shake our arms and breathe a life. But when he woke up, he still had to play the identity that had somehow fallen on his head.
But I've always felt that the worst thing is never to settle into a mediocre life. On the contrary, I find mediocre worldly pleasures real and sexy. The most painful person is the april in the film. She discovers the truth that she is mediocre, but she can't accept this fact- in fact, what person in the world is not mediocre?
She offered to go to Paris, but she could not believe this lie about the revolution wholeheartedly. She knew that there could be almost no new life in the distance. She still craves self-actualization, but can't find any way to convince herself. In her life, in addition to the sense of sleepiness, it is still a sense of sleepiness. The most painful thing is not those who have made the wrong choice, but the people who are unable to make a choice because of their uncertainty.
If April did not eventually die, but left Frank to pursue the meaning of his life, she certainly deserves praise; if Frank accepts that he is an ordinary person, working realistically and with peace of mind, then why doesn't he have a full happiness? These two seemingly completely different roads are not both revolutionary roads.
The "desire to become extraordinary" itself is the most ordinary desire of this era, and "ordinary" also has its own immortality. Life may be nihilistic in the final analysis, and meaning may be constructed in essence. It is important to make choices while holding on to and believing in your own choices. Of course, you also need to understand that each choice already involves a corresponding price.
On this revolutionary road, may you be benevolent and benevolent.
above.