When life always blocks our happiness, it also gives us a way to paralyze ourselves.
The film sets the story in a small valley in Montana, USA, which is constantly facing forest fires. The title of the film is Wildlife, but the film is not wild at all, and those fires that are heard from time to time only exist as a symbolic symbol. Conversely, the nearly two-hour film tells the story of the Brinson family of three slowly, without dying, just as life isn't supposed to be.
In the end, the Brinson family was truly able to move towards happiness, the underage son Joe in the family. He still carried out his studies in an orderly manner, his work in the photo studio became more in-depth and proficient, and finally he was able to mature and calmly invite divorced parents. Come and leave a family picture for him. It wasn't the father Jerry, who had no sense of self-respect and who wanted to leave the house, nor the lonely mother Jeanette who dragged her son into an extramarital affair.
But the focus of "Wild Life" is not a family accident, but a universal truth about how to face life bravely and patiently through the Brinson family.
Actor-turned-and still very young Paul Dano (director) has a sober view of the nature of ordinary life that is different from the post-80s generation.
At the beginning of the film, the Brinson family has moved to a completely unfamiliar place because of Jerry's reasons (not explained in the film). In this place, Jeanette lost her job as a temporary teacher and became a full-time housewife. Joe needs to adapt to the new 's school.
Jerry was fired from the golf course for gambling with guests without authorization, and this seemingly peaceful family slowly exposed the deep sea.
To make matters worse, when the golf course decided to re-hire Jerry, the self-respecting man turned down the job he had been given despite the family's financial deficit, opted for a long-term job at home, and didn't even bother to find a job in the supermarket even as a high school student. Any errands you can do to help make up for the family.
Even the first thing he did when he was fired was not to go home to discuss countermeasures with his wife, but to go to the supermarket to buy wine and drink, and even complained about the boss with his underage son Joe in the car, expressing his dissatisfaction that he was underappreciated.
Firefighting in the forest seems to be Jerry finding a new way out for life, but it is not. This job is a job that he and the homeless compete for. Not only is the salary low, physical requirements are high, and the risk factor is high, but it also requires staying away from his wife. Son.
This involves a very obvious question: why Jerry is reluctant to accept the return of the golf course, and is willing to go down this path.
This is exactly what makes human life very tricky. Why do we feel that life is not easy, or even more difficult the more we live, and in the end we can only live by it.
It's hard but easy to escape
Undoubtedly, life has given Jerry a very difficult problem. He was suddenly fired. He should have found a job as soon as possible, at least a transitional job. As his wife Jeanette said, do it first. After all, there are three Open your mouth, you have to eat.
But he refused to re-employ the original company, disdain to do some ordinary supermarket work, and chose to fight the forest fire.
In front of life, Jerry seemed reluctant to bow his head, but in fact he retreated.
All he needs to do is to let go of his senseless self-esteem and accept the reemployment of the original company; or refuse to reemploy, find a transitional job to tide over the difficulties of life, and find a career of his own at the same time. But his self-esteem was too strong, which led to his dismissal in the first place, and was also the reason why he could not accept re-employment and long-term employment.
In the end, he chose a job with a safety factor and a low salary, just to avoid the eyes of his wife and children (although she did not mean to blame).
While life always blocks our happiness, it also gives us a way to paralyze ourselves.
In just a few short decades, it has brought us countless sorrows, depressions, troubles, sadness, boredom, and frustrations, and it has never intended to give us half a breath. Those happy times are in these long and painful times. , seems to be a drop in the bucket.
But while we breathe in these pressures and worries like air, it miraculously, equally, and seemingly benevolently provides escaped possibility and variety to all.
The marriage is not happy, and there is still half an hour in the car in front of the house to escape.
If the work is not going well, you only need to concentrate on studying the constellations, and you can logically and logically attribute the unwillingness to Mercury retrograde.
In reality, if we are oppressed and dare not speak out loudly, we can incarnate as "keyboard warriors" in the virtual online world, scolding gods and ghosts, just to vent our grievances.
Work from 9 to 5 for a whole year, flee to another city for a few days, or resign for another company and continue to complain about colleagues and bosses to survive.
Too poor and too much pressure, Taobao can satisfy your pursuit of "value for money", cheap takeout can also satisfy your temporary appetite, no matter how simple the home is, and the minimalism of ins can satisfy your social pursuit of a local exquisite life.
When you are exhausted, there are even various religions for you to be devoutly attached to. Buddhism, Christianity, Islam, as long as you want to take a breath under your life, it seems that there will always be room for you to temporarily escape from it.
Life is too hard, but there are too many loopholes for you to take advantage of, there are too many back ways for you to choose, Jerry seems to have found a way out, but in fact he is just escaping.
This is an escape but not shameful reason he gave himself. He was escaping his middle-aged despair, escaping his inaction, and being led by his own senseless self-esteem. He chose to walk away from his family, a little sacred but not The unwilling way to fight the fire in the forest finally ushered in his wife's affair and divorce.
Therefore, the escape time that these lives generously give us are limited, and in terms of the length of life, they are also nothing.
Or you will think that one temporary escape and another temporary escape, maybe this life can be fooled, but breathing in pain will only make it more painful. You're not escaping, you're just stealing your ear.
It's really too hard, too hard, to live well and truly.
This kind of difficulty is not because life itself is not easy (of course, life itself has its own difficulties), but because it makes you miserable and also provides too many illusions for us to indulge in it, let us lie to ourselves that we are The nature of life-changing suffering, but in reality, we're just shamelessly running away.
We are too longing for a happy life, and gradually lose the courage to fight and setbacks in life. While we are escaping, we are constantly wearing out this most basic survival skill.
It is very easy to confuse the suffering of life with the suffering of struggle. The suffering of life requires endurance, and the suffering of resistance requires the courage to face the bleak life.
Such courage and endurance are essential to life.
The more you can endure the pain of struggle, the sooner the pain of life will end, until the next round of setbacks arises. And until the last round of misery is over, endurance is the cornerstone that allows you to focus on fighting.
Jerry doesn't have that kind of courage and endurance, and Jeanette doesn't (but I think Jeanette is better than Jerry, at least aggressive).
On the day that Jerry left home and went to do the firefighting work in the forest, Jeanette didn't even get her son to eat dinner, lay in bed crying and comforting herself, saying that something will happen tomorrow to make life better.
Tomorrow something will happen to make things different
But no, for her, tomorrow is still an ordinary day when she is decadent and unwilling to cook three meals. If you don't try hard to change, nothing will change tomorrow.
In the face of these long and numerous setbacks, people who are easy to escape are always easy to question the meaning of life.
However, life is a meaningless ascetic ah.
It is precisely the focus on defining and searching for the so-called "meaning of life" that makes us waste the time when we can enjoy short-lived happiness. The sooner you face it, the more willing you are to look directly at these uncontrollable setbacks, and this meaningless time journey may leave you with one or two things that will make you smile from your heart when you are dying. At this time, you are qualified to discuss the meaning of life.
What is the meaning of life without hard work?
Jim Jarmusch once said, The daily endurance of the working class is an art in itself.
In addition to serious natural and man-made disasters, most of people's lives revolve around the decades-long protracted war, and protracted war does not require too much strategic technology, and endurance is the first rigid need.
You are patient, day in and day out, focused on trying to do everything well, patiently waiting for your ideal to blossom, patiently waiting for your life to turn around, and nothing else.
From this point of view, living itself is the greatest meaning.
On this basis, if you can find some things you like to do and people you like, please work hard to chase and work hard. This is what you need to pursue and find. The meaning is only after the end of the matter. Discuss things, at the moment you just have to enjoy the process of chasing.
Compared with the clear and limited length of life, our pursuit of what we love and ideal is itself a matter with no end or no result. You need to wait patiently for a result that may or may not be there. .
Uncertainty haunts you like a nightmare forever, and you need courage to persevere.
Everyone is Sisyphus punished by God, pushing the boulder up the mountain again and again, watching it roll down the foot of the mountain again and again, and start again. This is the essence of human life.
It's up to you to define whether it's meaningful or not.
Those achievements, fame, interests, prestige, and even failures are just by-products. You have no right to take these things with you when you die, and naturally these things cannot be the criteria for defining you during your lifetime.
Joe represents the kind of attitude that the director wants to live in the moment, earnestly and down-to-earth.
The three Brinson family have their own troubles. Jerry is unwilling to work for vulgar people and looks down on low-value jobs. Jeanette is emotionally overly dependent on men (husbands or lovers), and the problem of son Joe's life is that if he is in a pair of giant babies Under the shadow of his parents, he firmly held his life focus and emotions in his hands.
Although his father is cowardly, his mother is unwilling to be lonely and mediocre, he is dragged to live in different new places, he is forcibly dragged into those inappropriate dinner parties by his mother, he bumps into his mother's lover in the middle of the night, and prevents his irrational father from setting fire. A person firmly controls himself rationally in a state of not getting out of control.
He truly lived his life to the fullest.
Each of our lives is an adventurous wilderness survival, with wildfires threatening us forever. Some people have been aware of it for a long time and have fled before the raging fire. Some people lost their vitality and died after the fire, and some people were still confused about the world until they were burned to death by the fire.
Personal public number: DramaMatters
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