naive save the world

Serenity 2022-12-25 19:56:37

The director's other film is still my favorite - "Mary and Max". He seems to prefer to describe those "weirds", "losers" in our usual sense; and I prefer the way he describes them.

"Weird" has always been the favorite theme of many movies, but compared with Hollywood blockbusters such as "Rain Man" and "Forrest Gump", "The Life of Harvey" has a completely different temperament. Although Forrest Gump is described in first person and Harvey uses third person narration, Forrest Gump clearly uses orthodox "normal" vision, and Harvey, um, you I deeply felt the beauty of neurosis.

The beauty of neurosis lies in the fact that it seems to be imaginative, but in fact it removes complexity and touches on some of the most essential issues.
Harvey seemed sluggish, stitched in his head, struck by lightning, and turned into a magnet—no pain in sight on his face. It seems unmoved by the turmoil in the outside world - Poland was born in a year after a series of civil wars established its borders, the Nazis invaded when her parents died, fled immigration to Australia - all these changes can be scarred , seems to be just a background to his little "fakts".

There is a paragraph at the beginning of the film:
Some are born great
Some achieve greatness
Some have greatness thrust upon them ...
...and then .... there are others...

Most of us are here" others", at a certain stage in his life he suddenly realized that he was not gifted with excellence. But if excellence is the meaning of life, wouldn't most people be penniless in their lives? So there is a tangle of self-meaning. But who bothered about this when we were young?

When we care about the things we think are important—wars, money, fame, achievements, health, beauty…—the fool Harvey gives us another answer. He thinks it is important to discover those little beautiful "Fakts", such as the one who wrote the Bible and who said the earth is flat; for example, an elephant can't jump, no matter how hard he tries; for example, an ostrich's eyes are bigger than its brain; Like freezing a rubber band would make it tougher... Even if his wife died and his own health was deteriorating, he could still get pleasure from the prank of hiding his roommate's dentures.

The truth is that when we grow up to be serious adults who only care about the "important things", we lose our initial easy-to-happy nature, the ability to be happy with a single candy--it's called innocence. Innocent is you think that the singing of a bird is not less important than your winning lottery lottery. Innocent is that you are willing to see the world's most naked appearance. Innocent is that you feel the need to be happy for every little beauty. Innocent is you. Love the world more than yourself, and being naive is that you are willing to believe every word someone says to you and their kindness.

So naive is hard. Innocent is always vulnerable. That's why we rush to get rid of it when we grow up. I have always believed that the most intuitive way to judge whether a society is good or not is to look at the proportion of naive people in that society and their circumstances.

At the end of the film, Harvey sits naked at the bus stop waiting for the never-coming bus, with the thick book of fakts hanging on his chest. The subtitle reads the last fakt: life is like a cigarette, smoke it the the butt. Fool Harvey, lived, loved, felt. He saw the clearest world with his most innocent eyes.
Like his motto: seize the day.

PS About Harvey being nudist, that's how I understand it. When the rich take off their sable furs, and the powerful take off their uniforms, they take off their wealth and power, as well as those disguises and symbols. When naked, people are most equal. As Harvey said to his daughter: Every naked body is beautiful.

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Extended Reading

Harvie Krumpet quotes

  • Harvie: Thank you.

  • Statue of Horace: Seize the day, Harvie. Seize the day. Carpe Diem.