?About identity
There's a clip in which pupkin wants to meet comedian Jerry, but the receptionist never calls pupkin the right name. For the protagonist, the director did not give any history, which led me to think he was nothing more than a fanatical dreamer at first, and it was not until the last live performance of pupkin on TV that I understood the character's motivation. Pupkin was born into poverty, his parents abused alcohol and domestic violence, he was bullied at school, and he was not valued since he was a child. "I'd rather be the king of the night than be a coward for a lifetime." This crazy crime of pupkin is a bottom-out counterattack by a small person, and he urgently needs to complete his identity in the eyes of others. Frustration in childhood often leads to failure to enter adulthood smoothly, so pupkin shows the innocence and stubbornness of children.
?The heart of comedy is tragedy
While the film tells the story of a man who wants to be the king of comedy, it really can't be classified as a comedy. It's more absurd than a comedy, and there's a line in the film: I remember someone who's been waiting and forgot what he's waiting for. This line is an allusion to Samuel Beckett's "Waiting for Godot." Two homeless people wait for Godot, but who is Godot, and why is Godot so late? Pupkin and Jerry's "illegitimate fan" Martha in the movie are like those two homeless people. Both of them seem to be in a falsehood, pursuing fire and silver flowers, so that they can forget the meaninglessness of life. "Waiting for Godot" was born in the spiritual nothingness of the post-war world, and the protagonist in the film also showed his spiritual collapse in an absurd way. The movie shows pupkin's fantasy world with fast front and back fights, and there is a detail that is very thoughtful: pupkin's fantasy at the beginning of the film is always interrupted by his mother's voice, and at the end he knows his mother nine passed away years ago...
?Life is cruel
Pupkin reunited with the girl he had a crush on in middle school, and at that time he could easily say that he once liked her. "When you're mature, you can easily say what you should have said fifteen or twenty years ago," but it's too late. Life gives you regrets, but it also gives you the ability to make up for regrets after years, but youth will never return, and this ability will only make you more regretful. This may be the reason why time-travel theme resonates.
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