If a camera was aimed at me, and I recorded the process of watching the movie "Starting Line", and made a "direct movie", I would look like a crying and laughing neurosis in the lens.
"Starting Line", you can tell what it is about by listening to the name of the movie. The resounding slogan "Don't let children lose at the starting line" has affected the brains of many parents.
In this Indian film, the clothing store owner Raj and his wife Mitu, a middle-class couple who are already quite well-off, have their decent life completely disrupted because of their daughter's school choice. They are like two flies choking their heads in vain.
Mitu is a young mother who is overly protective of her children. She always imagines the problem to be extremely serious. "If you can't go to a good primary school, you can't go to a good university, you can't get into a good unit, you will be very lonely, and then your daughter will be very lonely. I can take drugs,” and so on, and the father Raj is a wife slave, and this family is also a model of a tiger mother and a cat father.
The couple wanted to get rid of the usual impression of "nouveau riche" and "old market merchants" of "not attaching importance to education", and desperately squeezed into the upper class, in order to let their daughter not suffer prejudice and go to school smoothly; If you want to take advantage of the policy and squeeze the places reserved by the state for poor students to enter prestigious schools, they have to pretend to be poor.
Taking advantage of the entry point of children choosing a school, the film connects the upper, middle and lower classes of Indian society, showing the contradictions and antagonisms between classes.
It is said that Marx himself is not a Marxist, but his class theory is proud to this day.
Watching such a movie, I can't help but sigh - it's really "the world is one".
The overwhelm on school choice and the anxiety about education seem to be the same all over the world. The upper class wants to maintain their superiority, the middle class who have lifted themselves out of poverty is afraid of slipping their status, and the destitute poor want to change their position.
But the fairness of education has been deeply marked with a question mark.
While that may sound heavy, the film progresses with joy for the most part. I admire Indians' sense of humour and attitude towards life.
Just like the protagonist in the movie was asked about his views on poverty, the protagonist said: poverty, does that need to be said? It is everywhere in our country.
But as shown in the movie, the people of this poor country are hilarious and humorous all the time, and they sing and dance when they get the chance.
The film depicts reality, with obvious exaggeration in many places, but because the issues it involves are typical, I don't find it too obtrusive.
For example, the Raj couple moved out of the traditional old market and came to the wealthy area, where they were excluded everywhere. Because they want to take advantage of policy loopholes to occupy the poor people's reading places, and they have to pretend to be poor and hide in slums. At this time, they tricked their neighbors in high-end communities to travel to Europe. The neighbor said, "Don't forget to share pictures on social networks!" So the couple living in the slums had to go to the photo studio to take pictures, pose in various shapes in front of the green screen, and then PS the background image to Paris...
Likewise, pretending to be poor is not easy. Not only have to endure poor living conditions, but also face the suspicious eyes of people around them. The Raj and his wife have to pretend to be rich and elegant, and they have to pretend to be poor, and they are really tired.
Although it is generally an exaggerated and funny melodrama, the film is sarcastic to reality, and there are many heart-wrenching points. For example, when Raj asked Shyam who helped him, Shyam calmly said that as a poor man, his name was insignificant, he was a shop assistant when he went to a restaurant, and he was called a coolie when he went to move bricks.
Another example is that the Raj couple learned to be poor. His wife Mitu and many women lined up to collect water. When they encountered a sturdy woman occupying the line, they shrunk at first. The sister next door persuaded her to have a fighting spirit, and Mitu went crazy at the shrew, showing a strong explosive force, and finally received the water.
Then the sister next door took her to collect the rations, and she encountered the unfairness of being short of two pounds. Mitu started to fight again, but this time he was defeated, causing everyone to run out of food.
Mitu said to the sister next door: Didn't you teach me to fight, should I fight?
The woman replied: This time is different, because this time, we are dealing with government workers.
——Meaning, you can mess with the savage citizens; you can’t mess with those in power.
Mitu asked again: Why didn't you tell me?
The woman who returned empty-handed and faced starvation said lonely: Because of poverty, this course is not so easy to learn.
- It sounds embarrassing.
What's more tragic, the Raj and his wife finally got a place in the school, but his neighbor friend, Shyam, who was really blood anemic, was not selected. When Siam discovered Raj's true identity, he complained: Politicians deprived farmers of food, builders deprived us of land, and now you rich people are depriving our children of learning opportunities. No wonder, if our children also learn English (a symbol of class status), who else will serve your children?
In the movie, the road of the poor is blocked. The children of the poor can only go to public schools. The public schools are in poor conditions, and no one cares about the children there. The 25% of the poor students in the good schools are desperately crowded out by the rich, and the rights of the poor are ignored.
Even if there are poor children who are truly blessed by God and are lucky enough to enter a prestigious school, they will not be able to get along in the school at all.
Even if there are very few poor children who survived successfully in the end, like the female principal in the movie who was originally a maid child, went to a prestigious school, and ended up with a daughter-in-law who became a mother-in-law for many years, the way she repaid her hardships back then was to use her current status to carry out Power for money - not sympathy to help the poor, but to continue to trample the poor.
As Raj said at the end, the originally beautiful education lost its true colors and became an ugly business.
The film directly expresses these poignant things, which is also the biggest reason I like it. I think the mainstream commercial films in our country are far from being able to achieve this kind of strength.
There are also many touching details in the film. Although poverty is not worthy of praise, in reality, the rich are not necessarily all indifferent and hypocritical, and the poor are not necessarily all sincere and kind, but most of the touching things in the movie come from those poor people who seem to be as cheap as paper.
When Shyam learned the truth about Raj cheating on him, he ran to the school to expose it all, but when Raj's daughter ran to her in a prestigious school uniform, called his uncle warmly and hugged him, he gave up The last trace of struggle and injustice in my heart.
As a poor man, he can only stay where he should be, instead of being happy with things and not feeling sorry for himself. He has great love and said to the Raj couple, who had been intimate with each other: "She is also my child."
Another thing that moved me was that the Raj couple anonymously funded the public school where Shyam's children were attending. Maybe some people would say that this was just compensation or even hypocrisy, but I think it's what it should be.
Although this humanitarian approach cannot change the status quo, people who are unable to shake the system can only do their best to do so. In the process, they have a better understanding of the slogan "Love and Sharing" advocated by those famous schools.
Maybe it's because I have a child of the same age as the protagonist, so watching a movie like this is extra resonant. "Starting Line" focuses on parents. Parents are the starting line for their children, but it also involves some real educational problems faced by children. For example, in the movie criticism, the current education pays more attention to talents and skills, rather than children's behavior.
Another example is such a small preschool child, from early morning to late evening, the homework is full, not to mention play, even the time for eating and rest is occupied.
Parents are very clear in their hearts, they all feel sorry for their children, and want to give their children a happy childhood. But as shown in the movie, when other children speak multiple languages and show multi-faceted talents on the stage, and your child is just "Little Star" as soon as he opens his mouth, few parents can bear it.
I don't even know if I can handle it.
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