The movie "Into the Valley" tells such a story. The girl who was dreaming was called Tob, and the man who came riding on a white horse was called Harlan.
"Retro" is a word commonly used in the fashion industry, which rearranges and combines elements that were once popular, just like those models who step on the back shoes, wear the sea soul shirt, and tie the red scarf. However, the driving force behind these collocations is to follow the fashion and lead the trend. Retro is only on the surface, but not in the heart.
So what is the retro from the bottom of my heart? It is a kind of disconnection from the surrounding environment and times. In the eyes of many people, this kind of retro is no longer a trend that can be pursued, but a very ridiculous "old fashioned".
So, when Harlan first served young people at a gas station, his thick Texan accent, "Howdy Ho," a popular greeting decades ago, was like in today's laser-fueled bars, suddenly Hearing "Hello, comrade" was extremely abrupt and made people laugh. So the young people in the car finally couldn't help laughing when they saw this stunned guy in a cowboy hat looking out of place.
At this time, Tob, a young girl who was also sitting in the car, couldn't help but look sideways at this slightly shy and dull cowboy boy.
Tob and his younger brother Rodney live in a single-parent family in an ordinary American town. Young hearts always feel monotonous in this quiet and comfortable place. Their father was a jailer, a typical middle-aged American uncle, strong and rude. As a father, he loves his children very much. Before going to the night shift, he did not forget to leave money to buy dinner for the children, but after all, this is a blunt and angular father's love. As a result, the young Rodney became cowardly and withdrawn, and the young Tob became more and more Rebellious and unruly. However, in this small town that kills their lives, all they can do is sit on the bridge, smoke a cigarette, and learn how to spit into the valley.
So, under the accompaniment of the traditional American folk song "Down in the valley", Tob developed a favorable impression and curiosity about Harlan, a migrant working boy. She invited him to go to the beach with him, and he did not hesitate to let the boss fire him and accompany her to ride the waves in the blue sea, play in the water, and bathe in the sun. Tob's lonely heart unreservedly ignited love. In fantasy and anticipation, she held Harlan to do what young couples are doing, bathing together, taking medicine, going to nightclubs, and secretly tasting forbidden fruit. Under the influence of drugs, Harlan stormed the street and gave a "speech" to people in the crowded traffic: "We don't belong in the car! You are all trapped in it!"
Tob and friends laughed, in the car The people also laughed, the man in front of him would not be a lunatic out of time, he was just drunk. In the endless traffic he tried to part the sea like Moses, he was so insignificant, everyone laughed at his idealism, and someone got out of the car and gave him a hug. The film has played here, the style is still warm.
However, cowboys are destined to wander with their feet, and idealism is destined to return to reality. Tob's dad is keenly aware of the cowboy boy's strangeness and refuses him to associate with his daughter. Yes, a boy who is about to say goodbye to his youth, but has no fixed career. He directs and acts in a duel in a western movie every day in a rented cheap apartment. He has nothing but dreams. The naive Tob thus increased her disgust for her father, and her rebellious character led her to infinitely long for Harlan, the symbol of freedom. She sneaked into the wilderness with him on a date, and rode a white horse to gallop on the foothills recklessly.
Realism, however, will reluctantly close the restless eyes of the dreamer. When Tob learns that the white horse doesn't belong to Harlan, but that he stole it from the farmer, unease and doubts still spring up in the dreamy love. So she began to deliberately avoid meeting Harlan, and the depressed cowboy could only numb himself with drugs and alcohol at this time, and was eventually kicked out of the apartment and slept on the streets. At this time, he was still willfully hoping that he could take Tob and fly away to realize the dream of the West. So he sneaked into Tob's house and packed Tob's luggage without authorization. But after Tob discovered all this, the man in front of him with his eyes shining with tenderness made her feel even more terrified. During the altercation, Harlan fired his pistol in a fit of rage and hit Tob in the stomach, and in a pool of blood and panic, he fled.
The film has since turned dark, when Harlan's true face is gradually exposed, we are sad to find that the boy has such an embarrassing past and unfortunate family, and his fictional father image can not meet his needs in life. , he sneaked home, broke through the door as skillfully as a thief, and swept away his belongings. Then he shot himself to create a wound, turned back to Tob's house, lied to Rodney that his father had shot his sister, and tricked this innocent child into his own desperation, just like the one in the fairy tale. The man who played the bagpipes and deceived the children of a village.
At this time, Harlan has long lost the cuteness when he played the guitar and told his dreams. Tob's life and death escape, stealing, and finally the clumsy lies make people feel contemptible for his selfishness. But he is a poor man after all. Everything he did, including kidnapping Rodney, was to realize his western dream and return to the real cowboy life. In the pursuit of the angry father and the police, he took the little boy and rode the stolen white horse and fled to the top of the mountain. What caught his eye were the newly developed houses in the valley in the distance. There were no farms anymore. Cowboys have long since withdrawn from the stage of history under the siege of urban culture. At this moment, Harlan's eyes were full of confusion, perhaps because of the bleeding wound, or perhaps because of the illusion that he deliberately deceived himself, and was finally shaken by reality at this moment. When the long shot slowly panned upwards, showing the fact that the modern community was built in the valley, it completely announced the end of the cowboy era, and it was also the bullet that really broke Harlan.
Fleeing in panic into a film and television base decorated as a western town, Harlan didn't forget to teach the timid Rodney how to overcome his fear of the dark. He really cares about the boy, but just like his obsession with Tob, his feelings are unfortunately reduced to a tool for self-gratification and escapism in his self-deceiving script. The next day, when the filming of the western film began at the film and television base, Harlan was like a dream pacing among the classically dressed cowboys, police officers, gentlemen and ladies, dancing with them, and a moment of spiritual opium made him enjoy the return. To that age of free exile, but only for a moment, and then he died.
After the police officer's persuasion failed, the identity of the man who had committed robbery and had a one-year prison record was completely exposed, so an angry Harlan shot and killed the police officer, but was also shot by Tob's father, panicking. In the middle, he broke into a villa in the valley, and the fish entered the mouth, which was also doomed to his end. The villa that stifled his fantasies of the Valley Cowboy became his last refuge, but unfortunately he couldn't find redemption here. In the cowboy's final "duel", he takes a fatal blow from Tob's dad, struggling to face the prairie and stops breathing.
Cowboy is dead. For this utopian who cannot adapt to the times, perhaps this is his best and only destination. He has committed murder, kidnapping, theft, etc., let him go quietly without trial. The two sides of Norton, who has always been good at performing mental problems, are not so much a split personality, but rather the "two mes" that everyone has in their hearts. One is natural and gentle, yearning for freedom and ideals, and the other is selfish Self-reliance, in order to achieve selfish desires without blaming the means, such a split in the opposite direction can only lead to the end of self-destruction.
At the end of the film, Tob, who survived the catastrophe, took Rodney, led by his father, to the top of the mountain, facing the town, and in silence, sprinkled Harlan's ashes.
On the highway that appears repeatedly in the film, there is still rolling traffic flowing into the valley.
Spring is over.
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