While watching this movie, I thought of lines from another unrelated movie. Mathilda asks Leon in "Killer Leon", "Is life always this hard, or is it just when you're a kid?" The answer the little girl gets is "Always like this". This may have been the benevolent answer, and we all know the famous tragedy: there was a child, and he grew up.
Just like Leon is to Mathilda, there are always some people who become important passers-by in our life. They stay for a short time but make a deep impression on us. You can say that he changed my life or that he only changed my memories for the moment he stayed. I don't know how to measure how many dreams the female director Zana Briski brought to the 8 children in the red light district of Mumbai, but these are only fragile dreams, we are all being crushed by the wheels of the times, Zana Briski's cool power, After all, it is impossible to stop the operation rules of Mumbai's red light district.
So the news that Preeti, one of eight children, is still a prostitute in the end shouldn't come as a surprise. I carefully compared the expressions of the children and adults in the film. Even if the children said that they could not find a way out and hope, they still had a momentary carefree light when they laughed. These lights disappear on the face of an adult. The process of this passing is difficult to speculate, but when delving into it, an unspeakable desolation emerges.
"Born in a Prostitute" was controversial when it won the Oscar for Best Documentary in 2005. The main argument is that the female director has no right to intervene as a viewer, let alone appearing in the image of a powerless savior for her own viewing. in the field of vision. Seeing and being watched has always been a tangled topic. John Berger made an interesting assertion about the female nudes in Western oil paintings in his "The Way of Seeing". He believed that the nudes were the product of the bystander, and the women in the paintings were used to satisfy the desires of others, while they themselves could not. Have any unreasonable thoughts. Indeed, the spectator seems to have a higher class and more rights than the person being watched, and can decide to watch or not to watch, to approach or to withdraw. I remembered the stage when I was stubbornly believing in the truth of fairy tales and took it for granted that I named myself the protagonist of the story. Then one day I suddenly thought, maybe I'm the abandoned supporting actress, maybe I'm the down-and-out little person who contrasts with the protagonist? Immediately felt cold hands and feet, and finally decided to quit the story, the safest to be an audience. Then the question arises, when you have made up your mind to be an audience, do you still have the right to go on stage and try to change the ending of the story you don't like?
When Kevin Carter raised his camera and carefully waited for the vultures to open their wings and pounce on the little African girl lying on the ground, thus achieving a classic with great visual impact in the history of photojournalism, he only regarded himself as the audience, and strictly Observe the audience code of maintaining the original ecology. This has become the evidence of the whole world's verbal and written criticism of him. I was wondering, if Kevin Carter not only chased away the vultures in time, but fed the little girl well enough to bring her back to America for higher education, would people turn back to blaming him for being too involved? Let me think a little bit wickedly, or the best measure is to drive away the vultures but ignore the sufferings in the lives of girls more than the vultures, because the poverty and backwardness of the third world countries in Africa or Asia really supports the superiority of many people who are well-fed and well-fed and can point fingers. feel.
That may be part of the award for "Born in a Whorehouse," and part of "Raise the Red Lantern," or, more recently, "Slumdog Millionaire." Some critics have criticized Slumdog Millionaire as third-world porn for Westerners. In the context of the financial crisis, what comforted Westerners was not only the perfect ending of a slum boy and girl getting married, but more importantly, some hidden voices: "Look, there are so many people who live miserably than us. much". We don't have to be in a hurry to get rid of it, we all rely on a sense of superiority to live to some degree. I still remember that I was willing to go back to Mao Deng San after watching "Flight from the North". Wang Cailing in "Li Chun" brutally said that you are my friend because I am worse than you. It is easiest to watch the suffering of others. In contrast, exposing one's own scars is much more painful, so the outdated "Revolutionary Road" was silently ignored by major awards.
Both filmed in India, "Slumdog Millionaire" has certain similarities with "Born in a Prostitute". The courage of the little boy to jump and the creativity that can't be defeated by despair are in the same line. It's just that that bit of comedy ending in "Slumdog Millionaire" is false, and the truth is in "Born in a Whorehouse." Most of the time, the "It" in It is written is not someone destined to be together, but suffering that no one can change. There is also a little boy in "Born in a Prostitute" who says he wants to take a little girl out of this place. We all know how much coincidence it takes to make this statement come true. So much so that even the Who Can Be a Millionaire show has a title tailored for you based on your experience.
Even if even Lord Leon, whom I admire so much, has come to the conclusion that life is like this, I still want to weakly question whether they accidentally fell into a short-lived dream, or the nightmare has been too long? What exactly is always like? Is suffering really the norm in life?
I like that "for whom the death knell tolls" metaphysical interpretation. We are all part of this world, so when one of us dies, the rest of us all die a little bit too. So can it be said that when one of us begins to despair, the rest of us are also deprived of a little bit of hope. Probably the line between seeing and being seen is blurred. We can never pray to get out of the way while watching.
Paper-filled absurd dreams, but, so pretty.
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