The daily endurance of the working class is an art in itself.
For many people, the life of the bus driver Patterson is not worth mentioning. Every day is the three-point-one line of the "Home-23 Circle Bus-Bar", and even the lunch place has been like a day for ten years. Choose to sit on the park bench in front of Patterson Falls.
There is no particular burden from my colleagues (mother-in-law wants to move together, cat’s diabetes, daughter violin training is expensive and practice makes a lot of noise...), get up before 6:30 every day, eat breakfast, go to work and drive No. 23 bus, Go home for dinner after get off work, take a dog named Marvin for a walk in the evening, have a drink at a bar called "Bar", and go home to sleep...
Oh, and Patterson doesn't have a cell phone.
"Patterson" depicts a life pattern that is almost impossible to exist in China (or even the whole world). Although it is not difficult to achieve it on a material level, in reality, very few people would choose to take such a path.
I really want to use "people cannot bear the power of loneliness" to explain such a realistic choice, but more often, "the speed of making money cannot keep up with the expansion of desire."
Patterson is a very ordinary member of the working class, and his life is not poor, but he is definitely not in touch with the word rich. A guitar of several hundred dollars can already make him frown as a bus driver. Of course it is not standard for the middle class.
Patterson's simple life is almost synonymous with boring under the modern consumption concept.
In the eyes of most people, it takes a week to go to an Internet celebrity restaurant to eat and check in (regardless of whether it is delicious or not), grab a tea that others can’t buy, or go to Iceland, Italy, France and the United States where others have no money and time to go. Take enough photos for 365 days of Moments, see the premiere of popular movies or advance the media field, crowded people to see popular art exhibitions (maybe even the artist does not know who it is)...
These are all the pieces that make up the fun of life.
"Whether life is meaningful" is not a topic that everyone will discuss, but we often discuss "whether life is interesting enough", and even on the small friends software, we have to take this out separately and become a lot of check boxes. One of them.
When asked "What is an interesting life", many people will respond to the examples mentioned above.
If the above is all or the essence of interesting life, the "Patterson" movie itself and the life scenes it constructs can be said to be very boring.
In the bar on Wednesday night, the director used several near-static shots to show the lives of other people living in the same city as Patterson.
Some people need company to pass the time (two men playing chess), some people need an audience (Doc strikes up a female client), some people are at a loss (a man sitting in a bar with a wine bottle in a daze), some people hesitate before choosing Qian (woman facing the turntable but not knowing which song to select).
Patterson sat in the bar and looked at these people quietly, and then at William Carlos Williams with MD (Doctor of Medicine) posted on the wall. Two extremely different living conditions in the same world have formed a huge here. Conflict.
For Jarmusch, the daily endurance of the working class is an art in itself.
"Patterson" is a love song written by Jim for the working class. It is a tribute to their creative and lonely life. In it, Patterson's hobbies can be poets, writers, painters, or Any other kind of art.
This kind of artistic creativity really exists in the hard-working people at the bottom, just like the little black brother who constantly scrutinizes rap lyrics in the laundry room. Even after a whole day of work (mostly manual labor), there is no Washing machine/dryer, but it still doesn't prevent him from polishing his rap work in the dirty and run-down laundry room on a night with no one, so he won the only time Patterson offered to show his favor in the movie.
In the eyes of the director, the little brother’s life is poor, but his passion for rap creation has ignited his entire life; Patterson’s life is simple and repetitive, but his love for poetry has changed his three points and one line. Get interesting.
Whether life is interesting or not, you can't just look at the appearance of life, but in this cookie-cutter form, how you perceive and create your own things.
The value of life (if you must look for it) comes from creation itself, and absorbing new things is an essential part of the value creation process.
A friend once asked me if my life at the three-point-one-line (home-gym-café) would be boring. I discovered at that time that the life I used to take for granted and enjoyment was so boring in the eyes of others.
Although they are home-gym-cafe three-point line, they are always absorbing new things (reading books, watching movies), outputting new things (writing), and constantly moving their bodies (doing Yoga and fitness), the brain and body are in an active dynamic.
Although the content of outsiders seems to be the same every day, it is not actually, is it?
The girl Patterson met in the old factory on Friday. She would write poems, would describe the articulated bus (articulated bus) as an accordion bus, split waterfalls into water falls, and appreciate a love Emily Dickinson's bus driver.
Think about it, when the little girl grows up, she should also be an interesting person.
Water Falls
Water falls from the bright air.
It falls like hair.
Falling across a young girl's shoulders.
Water falls.
Making pools in the asphalt.
Dirty mirrors with clouds and buildings inside.
It falls on the roof of my house.
It falls on my mother, and on my hair.
Most people call it rain.
Correspondingly, those who go to work from 9 to 5, their three-point-one-line work and go home after get off work, although the three-point-one-line form seems to be similar to mine, they actually have no process of absorbing and exporting. The main thing is that the assembly line moves blindly, or it is purely fishing to kill time and other pay days.
For me, this kind of life is truly mechanical and boring.
But this kind of fun, the courage, ability, and even the sacrifice of part of the so-called "normal" life is also huge.
For example, I often test on the verge of starving to death.
The director strips away those unnecessary constraints in life, and restores the material (economic income and daily expenses) and social connections (transit Drivers, passengers talking on the bus, little girls who can write poems by chance, Japanese poets) and emotional support (Laura).
There is an indefinable balance between support and restraint, and the director has shown us a perfect, almost fairy-tale state.
Material support is something that every lonely spiritual thinker cannot leave, but excessive material needs will in turn affect the quality of independent thinking.
Human energy is limited, and one will inevitably lose sight of one another.
Patterson's attitude towards mobile phones (not owning smartphones) can be seen as a reflection of his extremely low material needs.
From this subtle setting, we can get a glimpse of the pure world that the director hopes to create, a spiritual world that follows the principle of minimalism and pursues personal freedom.
It is very important to Patterson's creation to reduce life as much as possible to the range of personal energy control and acceptance.
This is not to say that mobile phones are not good (when we discuss problems, it is always easy to go to extremes, either black or white), but that everyone's energy is limited. Mobile phones are a comprehensive media device with high concentration of information and temptation in modern technological life. , Can bring extreme convenience, but at the same time it will counteract the independent ability of the human spirit, a large amount of information constantly impacts the spiritual world, and the essence of the latter should be minimalist, blank and stable.
As Patterson said, the mobile phone is a kind of restraint, and material desire will also become an invisible backlash that restrains the freedom of thought.
Social and emotional support varies from person to person. Some people need it, some people don't, some people need it for a long time, and some people only need temporary support.
Patterson's degree of social connection is quite low, except for occasionally politely saying hello to his colleague Donnely, his main contact is only Laura.
Even Laura’s weekend cupcake farm sales were deliberately blurred by the director. Patterson himself finally had a conversation with Japanese tourists about William Carlos Williams in front of Patterson Falls, which almost caught up with his dialogue throughout the film. Sum.
Such a low degree of connection allows Patterson to observe life as a bystander without being too involved in personnel disputes, right and wrong, human relations and etiquette, but at the same time, he listens in life The people or things you see or see can be brewed in your heart to become creative materials.
The higher your connection with others, the more energy you need to allocate to deal with these relationships, and the less time and energy you can leave for yourself.
The emotional support of Patterson and Laura is what the director vigorously explores and displays in addition to Patterson's inner world.
In addition to not being rich or wealthy, Patterson's life can be said to be quite perfect, a large part of which is reflected in his girlfriend Laura who supports his creative hobby very much (even if he does not intend to use it as a tool for making money).
In addition, Laura also took care of Patterson’s daily life and eating in every detail. Even when Patterson carelessly dropped the secret notebook on the sofa in the living room and was bitten to pieces by Marvin, Laura did not say a word. "I told you already (it's going to be copied)" In this case, this kind of emotional support that does not involve personal desires is very rare.
And this kind of support is two-way.
Patterson not only wants to be the white mouse of Laura’s strange new recipes from time to time, but also pays for her sudden new ideas and dreams, such as wanting to be a country singer and buying a guitar for several hundred dollars (with instructions, DVD tutorials and these things can not hide that this is really a very expensive guitar).
The balance of life needs to be handled skillfully by both parties. Only one party is willing and working hard to continue, such as Everett and Marie.
Falling into an embarrassing life and ignoring the other's spiritual pursuits (if any) can also produce a lot of energy-consuming disputes, such as the husband and wife life of the bar owner Doc, and the use of the change bank change may become the fuse of the dispute.
The setting of Patterson’s refusal to own a smartphone comes in handy again here.
First of all, its function is of course an extension and answer to the quarrel between Doc and his wife. Compared with Doc’s object chess hobby which is not well respected by his wife, Laura not only fully supports Patterson’s creative hobby, but even has it in a subtle way. There is no intervention in the trivial matters of life such as mobile phones.
When support is mixed with personal emotions and selfish desires, it will become an intervention, and the more the number of interventions and the higher the degree, it will become a bondage.
Laura has a good grasp of this balance between support and respect.
Not owning a mobile phone is a habit that is almost impossible in today's society. It is extremely vulnerable to intervention, especially pressure from relatives and friends.
Don’t think that only the important life events of the right age will be pressured by people around you. Any social behavior that deviates from the orbit of social norms, regardless of whether it affects other people, will be pulled back by the society in tough or subtle ways without exception. "General".
The ultimate execution of these powers is of course everyone living in the society. No snowflake is innocent.
Laura did not require him to have a mobile phone because of Patterson's maverick, which further strengthened the mutually supportive but relatively independent relationship between Patterson and Laura.
After ending the conversation between Patterson and Doc, the director also specially gave Everett and Marie this pair of shots. Everett was still pestering Marie and talking about some things. In his eyes, Marie was not an independent at all. A living individual, she is just a symbol of love in his own world, and the least respect is not obtained.
Just because these material/social and emotional support and restraint have such an indefinable balance between them, you will never know how interesting people who seem to see through the suffering of life are tumbling in their hearts.
Patterson lives like a sponge, has a unique softness to life, can absorb and transform the weight of mediocrity and the pressure from the life cycle without changing his own volume and shape. All his thinking and resistance to life melted on that face with almost no expression.
Adam Driver performed well the ordinary life of such a retired navy soldier. In the almost same seven-day scene of "Patterson", his performance was ordinary and not boring, and the violence subdued the scene of "suicide" Everett. The play just rightly caused the emotions to explode, the expression changed from shocked and overwhelmed to indifferent again, and the subtle facial expression control was just right.
But everyone who can live in peace with life never has a truly peaceful moment in his heart.
Their hearts are constantly fighting against something in order to maintain the calmness of life, this kind of deep-rooted struggle, which is incomprehensible and inexplicable in words.
Everyone’s mind in society is in a state of conflict and contradiction, but some people externalize it more obviously, tearing their lives to pieces; some people internalize these conflicts, the more immobile the surface is. The inner struggle may be stronger.
This kind of inner heart is surging, there are countless rocks, and any small mistake may lead to irreversible consequences. There are countless losers. Victory is temporary. You need to fight continuously to continue to prolong that fragile victory.
Those who seem to be peaceful and happy are the easiest to suddenly decide to die one day, because he knows that he might not be able to win the next game.
Anyone who knows how to float on water knows that the only key to successfully floating on the surface of the vast ocean is to give up 100% control of the body and let the body be handed over to the floating sea like a piece of dead wood. Whenever you want to tighten your body, you will sink immediately.
The same is true for life. The more you want to control life in your hands, you will be dragged into the breathless seabed by it, and you will lose yourself.
The relationship between life and self is a pulling process of control and review. The less you struggle with life, the more you will pay attention to yourself. The more you give up, the greater the depth and breadth of self-examination. In life Instead, they can live more comfortably.
So, even if you decide to be an interesting person, the process may not be so interesting, but it's better than living a lifetime, right?
"Patterson" is easily reminiscent of "The Elegance of the Hedgehog" in 2009. Like the latter's Mrs. Michel, Patterson has also successfully found a perfect integration into the secular identity in the turbulent world.
Patterson's driver, Michelle's concierge, the elegance of the former is all in the secret notebook, and the latter is the secret study that outsiders never enter.
The last poem of "Patterson" is about a fish, and the fish is an extremely symbolic element in "The Elegance of Hedgehog".
Little Paloma planned to end her life on her 12th birthday, just because she didn't want to live in a transparent fish tank like a fish without knowing it, "Patterson" wrote it in the form of a poem:
Would you rather be a fish?
First published in [one] APP
Personal public number: DramaMatters
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