Everyone has their own forest, the lost are lost, and the people who meet will meet again.
- Haruki Murakami
"Miss Bird" is an American youth film, since its release, has won a series of awards, including the Academy Award for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actress, Best Supporting Actress, Best Screenplay and other five nominations. The well-known director Xie Fei commented: "It is a very common story of youth growth, but it is done everywhere right! Accurate, appropriate and comfortable. ”
It tells the story of the heroine Miss Bird (Silsa Ronan) attending a church high school in a small city, but she longs for a free and open East Coast city in the United States to escape her poor family, her mother's discipline and a religious town, and the confusion and thinking about friendship, love, family affection, and faith that arise in the process.
<h1>01 Tearing in inferiority and conceit</h1>
Miss Bird was undoubtedly inferior. She joked with her first love, Danny, that her family lived on the "wrong side of the tracks" (meaning from a poor part of town); she didn't want her classmates to see that her dad was driving a low-grade car, so she asked her dad to park a block away from the school and walk to the school by herself; she lied to Jenna that her house was a small blue-and-white three-story building in the rich area...
In America, where materialism is rife, everyone is proud to make more money, and the so-called "American Dream" actually means "money, freedom, and happiness." Materialism swept through every person in society—Miss Bird was no exception, so she was terrified about the house and the car, and she lacked a sense of identification with her family situation. And this has aroused strong resonance with many viewers who have had similar experiences.
One case mentioned in David Miles's Social Psychology (8th Edition) is a case in which the University of California, Los Angeles, and the U.S. Board of Education conducted an annual survey of nearly 250,000 college students who had just entered the university. The most important reason to agree to go to college was for people who "made more money," from a half in 1971 to nearly three-quarters in 2003. This is enough to see the prevalence of materialism among American college students.
Yet Miss Bird's mother was a nurse at a psychiatric hospital, her father's job was being laid off, and her brother and sister-in-law, though graduates of the University of Berkeley, were cashiers at the supermarket— a profession that, according to her mother, could not be called. Attending Sacred Heart High School is already an affordable luxury school within the reach of mom and dad. All this made Miss Bird feel inferior.
But she is also arrogant. In order to increase her credits, she went to audition for a stage play, and she was not happy after passing the interview, because "everyone who participated in the audition passed", and later the troupe rehearsed "The Tempest", and she did not go directly. Danny asks Julie why Miss Bird didn't come, and Julie, as her friend who knows her best, teases: "She thinks she's too cool to act." Later, Julie told Miss Bird that the new play had a role assigned to her, and Miss Bird angrily said that there was no such role at all, just to let everyone participate. Julie's words: "You can only live in focus!" ”
It is not unusual for inferiority and arrogance to appear at the same time. Adler said in "Inferiority and Transcendence": "Each of us has different degrees of inferiority. "If a person wants to overcome the feeling of inferiority but does not manage to overcome the obstacles on the ground, he will numb himself with a sense of superiority. A high praise of the question "Why do some people have both inferiority and conceit" replied: "People who go from inferiority to conceit are generally characterized by: 'sensitive, irritable, and self-righteous'." On the other hand, Miss Bird, because of her family situation, is inferior, but her heart is invincible, thinking that she should be the main actor on the stage, and her heart has always been arrogant. In fact, this is a compensation mechanism for the inferiority complex.
<h1>02 Confusion in loving and being loved</h1>
Miss Bird loves her mother. When she first met Danny, she once played together late, and told Danny that no matter whether she came home late or early, her mother would always be angry. Danny said, then your mother is very strict. Miss Bird replied without hesitation, "But she loves me very much." ”
It was also a conversation with Danny. Danny said her mom was crazy and he was scared of her. Miss Bird went on to defend her mother by saying that she was not crazy, that she was just big-hearted and warm-hearted. Danny retorted that she was warm, but also crazy, angry that Miss Bird didn't say anything: "You are gay!"
The most straightforward one was when Miss Bird and her mother went to buy dresses together. Miss Bird had to argue with her mother again because of her figure, and later she said, "I just ... i wish that you liked me.” Mom replied, "Of course i love you." But Miss Bird asked nonchalantly, "But do you like me?" ”
If she didn't love her mother, Miss Bird didn't care at all about her mother's attitude toward her.
And the mother is also Miss Bird's, the most typical scene is the scene of sending Miss Bird to the airport. Mom drove away and drove back crying, wanting to see Miss Bird get on the plane. Dad saw this mother and daughter who loved and killed each other very thoroughly, thinking that both of them were very strong, and Mom wanted to use her own way to help Miss Bird avoid detours.
Mom was a woman who lived peacefully in Sacramento. Colleagues have added a new baby, she will wrap a red packet, met when shopping, will also be enthusiastic about the baby's growth; know the death of people, she will personally go to mourn; after driving on the street after work, she will comfortably listen to songs, gentle watching the sunset... She is concerned about the lives and deaths of the people around her, and is touched by a sunset on the way to work, the so-called "this peace of mind is my hometown". She hoped that Miss Bird would be like her, entering a local university and living a peaceful and stable life.
But the detours of young people are inevitable. Zhang Ailing has an article called "The Detour That Must Be Taken", which says: "On the road of life, there is a road that everyone must take. That was the detour of youth. In Mom's "Fewer Detours" and Miss Bird's "Non-Detours", many contradictions broke out, Miss Bird once suspected that Her mother did not like herself, but there is no doubt that they loved each other, and Mother only loved Miss Bird in her own way.
<h1>03 Grow in escape and return</h1>
The film begins with a quote from the American writer Joan Didion: "None of the people who talk about California hedonism have ever experienced a Sacramentan Christmas." "This reflects the strong religious atmosphere of Sacramento from the side. Miss Bird begins the film by saying, "Do I look like someone from Sacramento?" The reason she asked this was because she was ashamed to let herself look like someone from a small city.
The biggest conflict she had with her mother was that she wanted to go to college in a culturally rich East Coast city, but her mother asked her to stay at the local university. In her opinion, everything about Sacramento is repulsive: religious, unfree and open, stifling ideas... There was also a mother who pointed fingers at her, and even how she folded her clothes, the clothes had to be arranged neatly, and she couldn't wait to escape.
At this time, she has no faith, no boundaries, and does what she wants, just like we were in adolescence. In fact, the image of her hometown and her mother is the same, they are the places where she was raised, and her frequent quarrels with her mother also show her dissenting her hometown and dissenting her own identity.
She worked hard to apply for scholarships, save tuition part-time, improve her credits, and finally she got her wish. However, after the small city girl arrived in the big city, she finally found that it was everything that had fed her, her family, Sacred Heart High School, her first love boyfriend, good friend Julie... Everything good and bad a little cast her at this moment.
Growing up means accepting yourself, accepting your own name, accepting your family situation, the fact that math is not good, not being able to play the heroine of a stage play, coming from a small city... Everything she had fought against suddenly dissolved as her goal was achieved.
Walking down the sun-drenched New York Avenue, she walked into the church. The prayers and songs that had been done every day suddenly became meaningful. And she called her mother and said, "I love you", which not only represents the relaxation of her relationship with her mother, but also represents her identification with her origin and hometown.
Miss Bird safely survived her adolescence during the struggle. When she reconciled with her mother and obtained her driver's license, she had a deep sense of identification with her mother and hometown, and she became "rooted". And we, like her, need to grow ourselves in contradictions, reconcile with ourselves, reconcile with our mothers, reconcile with our hometown, and even reconcile with the world. In one escape after another, we stumble; but the escape is very necessary, after all, in the process we identify with ourselves. As Yohji Yamamoto said, "I can't see this thing of myself, I bump into something else, and when I bounce back, I will understand myself." ”