Elma struggled to get up from the ground and ran towards the lighthouse not far away. He stood on the high lighthouse and looked at the moon in the sky. He leaps forward like a hero
(The first part involves spoilers, please skip it if you mind...)
1
The first film I watched in 2017 was the somewhat heavy Danish film One Day, a film based on true events.
The story mainly takes place in a boarding school called Godhavn and revolves around two brothers, Eric and Alma. When the brothers were children, their father committed suicide in the basement, and their mother became seriously ill. The two brothers, left unattended, were sent to Godhavn boarding school by their uncle. The tragedy also started at this time...
My younger brother has a dream to be an astronaut. His fascination with the universe and galaxies is one of the few joys in his life. While still at home, he surprised his mother by pretending to be an astronaut. But the surprise didn't last long, the rope broke, and the dream fell heavily to the ground. He also has an astronomical telescope, which is his most precious treasure. However, before going to the boarding school, he wanted to put the telescope in the suitcase, but his uncle stopped him: "You can't take anything there." The dream was stranded again.
The brothers then went to boarding school. When he first arrived, the principal of this school gave his younger brother Elma's dream a serious blow. When the principal asked Elma what her dream was when she grew up, Elma answered "astronaut" innocently, but what she didn't want in exchange was a slap in the face from the school teacher.
The headmaster told him ruthlessly: "Pride can not achieve anything." It seems that in this school, ideals are a shameful thing. All unrealistic ideals are not allowed here, only soulless bodies are needed here. Just like when the brothers were bullied by their older classmates, someone told them: "You need to give up your thoughts and become a ghost." Because only in this way can you protect yourself. Sometimes it takes a low profile to survive in peace.
However, the brothers were unwilling to be suppressed and tried to escape, but were eventually caught. The consequences were naturally another beating. The principal even incited the hatred of other students in the name of "punishing all the students" and asked them to throw their hatred and fists on these two brothers.
The oppression and exploitation of human rights in this school has almost reached the point of perversion. The teachers and doctors in the school are all cold faces. These children have no dignity in front of them. Elma was sentenced to hold the sheets naked in cold weather for bedwetting until they were dry. Elma has a foot problem and still has to do heavy work. There is also an old pervert with a pedophile in the school. In order to satisfy his own desires on duty at night, he goes to the student's dormitory like an emperor picking a concubine, chooses a child, brings it to his room, and "serves" himself. This plot reminds many people of a Korean movie "The Furnace". "The Furnace" also tells the story of a closed boarding school where teachers oppress students to dehumanize them. The principal in that movie was also a pedophile, with that fat body and wretched expression, I still feel a shadow in my heart when I look back on it. Therefore, no matter which country people are in, they may have suffered the same misfortune.
Compared with the cruelty of the teacher, what is even more irritating is that there is bullying among the students. When a group is weak, and the people of this group are still fighting with each other, then this group is destined to always be weak. Faced with cross-examination by prosecutors, they did not dare to point out the evil deeds of the teachers.
Even Elma, who was sexually assaulted, could only say "I like school" against her will.
The emergence of a hero always comes after a series of trials and tribulations. Elma started to fight because his brother Eric was seriously injured by the principal and was in a coma, and the principal refused to send Eric to the outside hospital for treatment in order not to let the outside world know.
At the time, Irma was watching the Apollo moon landing TV show with her classmates. Looking at Little Elma's excited and hopeful eyes, man has finally landed on the moon, and someone has fulfilled his dream. His dream is no longer empty talk, no longer arrogant ignorance, but can indeed be realized. He rushed out excitedly to tell his brother the good news, but his brother had already been beaten unconscious by the principal, leaving only a spot of blood on the ground.
When Elma went to Copenhagen alone, she met the only female teacher who had helped him at school. The female teacher took him to the prosecutor, who wanted to expose the school's misdeeds. However, they waited more than six hours and the prosecutor did not return. Alma walked out of the office building disappointed.
As she parted ways with the female teacher on the bus, Elma said, "I know what I'm going to do."
At that time, he should have already decided in his heart that he would do something to save his brother. He was filled with courage, and he became no longer afraid of anyone.
That night, he dressed himself up as an astronaut using simple tin foil and cardboard boxes. Accompanied by a burst of passionate music, he stood on the principal's car and smashed the principal's car with a hammer. The principal hurried over, almost furious. Just as he was about to beat Elma, a phone call from the prosecutor's subordinate rescued Elma.
Elma struggled to get up from the ground and ran towards the lighthouse not far away. He stood on the high lighthouse and looked at the moon in the sky. Like a hero, he leaped forward with all his might... At this time, the director used an imagery lens to express Elma's dream world. In the picture, Irma is wearing a real spacesuit, flying to the moon. It seems that at that moment, his dream also came true. He used his weak dream to counteract the cruel reality with a formidable force.
Elma knew that the prosecutors would only find out what was wrong with the school if she hurt or died. He used his petite body as a weapon to die and then live.
Compared to "The Furnace," there is some hope for the ending of "Someday." The brothers were taken care of by the female teacher, and the students who stayed at the school finally stopped being silent. Under the prosecutor's re-examination, they bravely raised their hands to tell the prosecutor the truth.
However, the last paragraph of the film still makes people feel heavy. The end of the film says: "Most of the students who entered the school before this time are still relying on drugs to relieve depression and fear, and now they are helping those children who are victimized."
2
As a photographer, the composition and light and shadow of this film are not to my liking. But there are a few parts worth mentioning.
For example, when the brothers tried to escape for the first time, a car drove by the road. At this time, the picture is a dark silhouette, which seems to indicate the failure of this escape. The brothers are in a dark predicament, how can they easily escape?
Sure enough, the car took the brothers back to school, and the driver and the principal were acquaintances...
This is one of my favorite clips. Because of her excellent reading skills, Elma began to read letters from their families to her classmates. One of the boys, every time his father wrote to him, was the same sentence. He wanted to know the current situation of his sister at home, but his father never mentioned it.
Seeing the boy's disappointed expression, Elma couldn't bear it, so she started to make up her own words. He made up his sister's recent situation and added his own fantasy about space. He used his own "fairy tales" to soothe the wounded hearts of his friends. At this time, the director used a backlight and called from behind Elma. Elma was surrounded by soft light, and when he read the letter, he was as warm as a little angel. Alma began to read letters to many of her comrades, almost every one of them adding those wonderful stories from space. Elma, let them see the hope of living.
This is the picture after the female teacher resigned from the school because she could not bear it. Carrying her luggage, she meets a pedophile teacher who has returned from the hospital. The two passed by and walked in opposite directions. One escapes from "hell", and one "devil" returns to "hell". The symmetrical composition has a desperate tension.
This scene is the silhouette of Elma when she returns to school from Copenhagen. The moon looming and hanging in the sky was a distant dream. And this lonely silhouette seems to be full of despair. What happened next, he vowed to fight to the death.
3
This story takes place in the 1960s. After so many years, do you think there should be no such thing in modern society? Unfortunately, such dehumanizing schools still exist in Denmark, Korea, and China.
In fact, when I first saw this movie, I thought of an American movie "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest". Although the film was not about a school, but a mental hospital, the two places had an almost brutal similarity. In a lunatic asylum, some people are not really mentally ill, just because they have committed a crime or some other ulterior reason, they are locked there. In it, there are also doctors ruthlessly torturing and imprisoning the "patient", in which the rights and dignity that the "patient" should have as a person cannot be seen. The male protagonist took a group of "madmen" and began to rebel against the lunatic asylum... This film won five main awards at the 1975 Oscars. If you are interested, I can write this film alone someday.
Now I want to talk about something that happened in China. I believe many people have heard of the Linyi Internet Rehabilitation Center. This is the first place in China to open an Internet Rehabilitation Center. A person named Yang Yongxin uses electric shocks to treat children's Internet addiction. You have to go through two thick security doors to enter the network ring center. There is a room 13 in the building, and there is a black treatment bed and five electric shock treatment machines in the room. Almost all the children who were sent here had to undergo electric shock treatment. When a powerful electric current passed through the body, only the person concerned would know the heart-piercing pain.
In addition to electric shock therapy, the Internet Rehabilitation Center also conducts mind control and brainwashing education on children. In that closed world, there is no freedom, no dignity, and no human rights. It was a gray area on the fringes of the law, within which a hierarchical military system was formed. Ignorant and ignorant parents send their children there, thinking that they can save their children's body and mind. They may never have imagined that what the children encounter in it will leave permanent damage to their body and mind. Some children couldn't stand it and jumped off the building inside, but as long as they didn't die, the center wouldn't tell their parents. Even if some children endure it, they will be forever alienated from their parents, and some even want to kill their parents.
A friend I met online was sent to a local special school similar to the Net Ring Center just last year. He disappeared for a long time and we don't know where he went. We didn't know what happened to him during that time until he came out.
Let's call him L for now. L is a TS, that is, a person who is a man, a woman, and a transsexual. L confessed his thoughts to his family, but what he got in return was the parents' incomprehension and long-term domestic violence. If L wants to be a girl, he naturally wants to have long hair. At home, his hair was forcibly cut several times by his parents. Later, he finally grew his hair, and his parents didn't care about him. He thought that his parents gradually accepted him. However, he doesn't know that a terrible conspiracy is approaching him.
One day, his parents told him to go on a trip together. He believed it, and was even a little happy. He never expected that his parents were about to send him to a place like hell. At that time, a van suddenly stopped on the side of the road, a few people got off from it, and they took L into the car without saying anything. His parents sent him to school and left. L didn't realize what happened until he went in, but inside he called Tiantian not, and he had nowhere to escape. On the first day he entered, his hair was violently cut off by the teacher. In the days that followed, he was bullied by the old students and insulted by the teacher in various languages and physically. If you are not obedient, your teacher will burn your arm with cigarette butts.
Later, L finally figured out the way to survive inside. In that kind of place, if you want to suffer less, you have to climb up and get the approval of your superiors. With some knowledge of his own, L quickly became a teacher's assistant, helping with some writing and teaching work.
L is one of the lucky ones, and he came out after only three months of detention. Some children have to spend two or three years in it...
But in just three months, L has been tortured to the point that he doesn't look like a human or a ghost. He used to be quite handsome in appearance, but now he is haggard and his whole soul seems to have been taken away.
Stories like this are still happening, and there are still many L's who were sent to this kind of place by their parents. But the good news is that the relevant state departments seem to have issued a ban, prohibiting institutions from using electric shocks, corporal punishment and other methods to get rid of children's Internet addiction.
Just like the title of the Danish movie, "One Day", one day, such a school will cease to exist. But when that day will come, we do not know.
I only hope that one day, China can also produce its own "One Day".
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