The story that takes place in the summer courtyard
After watching the movie, I realized that I had read the original work a long time ago. Thinking of the original work, I remembered that when I finished reading that book, a desire full of vitality emerged from my poor heart as if it had been watered by summer rain. I hope this story will be made into a movie. It should have the triviality of the world that Hirokazu Kore-eda is good at, and the dreamy innocence of Eiko Kadono. It not only writes the reality of summer and young people's lives like real watermelons and swimming pools, but also obscures the meaning of life of old people like the dazzling sun and unfathomable grass.
When I read or watch movies, I seldom do any research. I just follow the clues and check various backgrounds. Unless I am interested, the story is just there and the meaning is in my mind, and thatâs it. So now, many years later, I discovered that this story had already been made into a movie. I was surprised and felt secretly happy that my dream had come true. It is exactly what I expected, injecting a bit of reverie about meaning into the realistic life experiences. Young people and old people, growth and death, peace and war, loneliness and family love... half are the life we ââare experiencing now, and half are things in the past or about to become the past.
The boy's real and boring family life and the curiosity that flourishes in the summer rain and sunshine are the shovel, leaning against the old man's silent courtyard fence. They are curious about death and want to peep into the corrupting process of life in the most deathly corner. The three shovels tirelessly followed and watched, digging for the truth about growth and life inside and outside the isolated courtyard. But their "disgraceful" motivations became the driving force that forced the seeds of new life to emerge, and the humus of life they dug out became the nourishment for their emotional lives.
The boy's constant visits made the old man willing to reveal himself in the attention. He began to wash the sheets, renovate the house, clear the weeds, and tear off the cobwebs covering his life. The three teenagers, who had their own concerns, found fun outside of football in the noisy cicadas. They started by following an old man walking through the streets, and then were invited into the old man's yard to observe how a piece of glass was installed on the window and a piece of glass. How the rope is tied into a knot is the process, and the ending is the final farewell to the old man and the butterfly flying out of the dry well. They walked into a "fork in the road" on a whim, but were guided to a smooth road by their unparalleled experiences. Children who lack love gain the love of strangers, children who lack support gain the opportunity to support others, and children who lack the courage to save their loved ones gain the power to strive for happiness for others.
is born and goes to death. Everyone is tasting the feeling of getting closer to it, but they are unable to convey the most authentic and credible feeling. Because people who have truly entered death can no longer speak, the taste of death has become the most confusing question for people who are still living.
In that summer when insects were chirping and light and shadow were swaying, the old man's courtyard underwent a series of changes, from a dense forest of grass to a vast sea of ââflowers, from a world of snakes and spiders to a paradise of butterflies. Visible changes in scenery are used as a metaphor for life experiences and inner transitions that cannot be discerned by sight. A young man's curiosity about life and death is like the grass in an old man's courtyard, growing densely and vigorously. Only by solving them can light shine into the darkness and sow new hope for the land and soul that have been reopened and leveled.
Jungles of Grass and Thoughts on Desolation
Summer is the happiest season for teenagers. The water in the swimming pool is cool and comfortable, and the ambitions on the football field are high. But my mind, which should have been struggling with which ice cream flavor to choose, turned to thinking about the philosophy of life. Not only does summer speed up the metabolism of thoughts, but also their unsatisfactory lives stimulate their need to divert their attention. Even innocent children have their own troubles.
Yamashita returned from attending the funeral, and Hebian took this as an opportunity to ignite the thread of wanting to explore death. What kind of changes the death process will undergo, and how the body will react when it is close to death, are so mysterious and wrapped in a veil that no living person can lift. There was no way to experiment on himself by the river. He walked on the edge of the high platform with busy traffic below, thinking about the unknown world. Death is very simple, just jump down. He has many reasons to do so. His father left him and his mother and started a new family with others. He is young and mature, and he is good at housework due to the pressure of life and his sympathy for his mother. The empty emotion is the tangible hand behind him, which can easily push him down. But the story gives this loneliness a smooth and childlike excuse: even if you die, you can't tell others what it feels like to die.
Yamashita wanted to inherit his father's business of selling fish, but was accused by his mother of being hopeless. The docile and kind-hearted little fat man experienced drowning once in the film, which was a preview of death. Compared with this death that can cause anxiety and panic, when the glimmer of ideal is extinguished by a arrogant attitude, it is not another kind of disappearance. As for Mushan, he is the perspective presenter in the film, but his family situation is not revealed much, but from the limited information, we can still infer that he has the same troubled heart. On a rainy night, he was going to his home. When the camera was writing about him, he caught sight of his mother. She got up from the sofa in the living room and expressed her concern for his trip on a rainy night, but in the end she did not forcefully refuse. This is a woman who has a heart for life. Powerless mother. The absence of the father in the picture and the image of the exhausted mother prove the reason why the boy is curious about death - when there are problems in life, people will go to the opposite side to find solutions. When you are lonely, you seek the excitement of the group; when you are tired, you long for a hotbed of laziness; when you are born alone, you want to join in the excitement of death.
If life is going downhill, look for new things that will make life exciting. If you cannot understand death through your own experience, then watch the death of others. In the clean and bright summer life circle, they found the place where the sun is least welcome. It was a secluded dense forest, overgrown with grass, dilapidated houses, and old people living in the wilderness. He looked like he was going to die at any time, and with a non-malicious curse, the three children scratched the fence and began to peek day after day.
The scorching sun, hunger, thirst, boredom and the risk of being scolded could not stop the three people's desire to explore from branching out outside this courtyard. To some extent, they have reached a power balance with the grass in the yard. The wild and disorderly nature of the grass corresponds to their unfettered imagination and childlike innocence that lacked moral scruples in their early days of learning about etiquette. Under the steaming heat, the strong energy, desire for knowledge and the grass in the courtyard are both intangible and tangible references to each other, and they refute each other because of another layer of existential meaning of the grass. Grass externalizes the moral "savagery" that children ignore in their pursuit of the truth, and also refers to the desolation of their emotional land. In a situation where understanding, respect and love are insufficient, grass seeds called "boring" spread everywhere and grow into a solid green wall.
The meaning of grass is not only a metaphor for the "savagery" and desire of children, but also serves as a cover for the elderly with its lush appearance. His solitary image requires a barrier to complete, so the airtight grass becomes a barrier that cuts off his connection with the outside world. Green snakes walk through the trees, spiders build webs between the forks, and garbage is hidden in the thick forest of waist-high grass. The old man hid himself and concealed the past in an invisible way. He served as a soldier and killed people. He originally had a lover, but when he came back after the war, he chose to be alone. His worries were heavier than those of his children, so he was able to become the master of this deserted yard. The weeds growing freely in are invasive species. They are invading his house and life just like the war invaded the rest of his life. Others see that he needs to clear away the jungle-like green fields, but it is not equally difficult for him to enter the human world.
The more worried you are, the more lush the weeds will become, the more closed your life will be, and the more barren your yard will become. People often say that "appearance comes from the heart", which means that a person's appearance will have traces of what he is thinking in his heart. In the movie, the "appearance" here is replaced by the courtyard, which grows wildly under the abundant rain and light in summer, covering up countless thoughts.
The Vast Sea of ââFlowers and the Bright World
The young man shifts the focus of life and satisfies his desire for knowledge by observing the old man's diet and daily life. The old man needs to stay alert because his figure and life have been exposed. In the "courtesy exchange" of looking from the outside in and rushing from the inside out, their eyes will meet, which will lead to verbal and physical interactions. The child's peeping perspective through the weeds is a beam of light that clears the confusing courtyard. Under its scrutiny, the savage land began to revive, and the lives there became scrupulous and anxious, thinking about how to live more decently and calmly under the gaze of others.
The barrier between the two parties was worn thinner and thinner by the frequent exchange of words and deeds, and finally broke. The old man invited the young people to become participants in life from observers of life. He asked them to help with weeding and painting, and found a corresponding pit for their emotions to be buried. Then, a new life emerged from there.
The crowded weeds have been cleared away, and the yard has become open and flat. After the grass is gone, people come in, and there are other things that can fill the loneliness here. Three teenagers simulated lighting torches to set fire to the haystack in the middle of the yard, or they sat on the eaves in different postures. The old man would sometimes join in their liveliness and childlike fun, instigating one of them to sneak up on his companions with a water pipe. After working, they all sat at the door and ate watermelon. The sweetness of summer and the joy of sitting together merged into their wild state of mind where they had experienced hunger and thirst.
Swinging on the swing by the river, he is confused. Why does he not have a father even though there are supersonic planes? Now he has a grandpa who can temporarily take his father's place. Mu Shan once strayed into a dark corridor while stalking an old man, and would be frightened by the floating white coat and the chaotic image in the mirror. Now in the violent storm, he still dares to take risks, shakes off the previous psychological shadow, and rushes into the night. Rain curtain, just to go to grandpa's house to see if their crops are safe and sound.
said that the yard, which is not too big, brings together the interests of four people, and they discuss what flowers to plant. The old man knew the names of various flowers by heart. He originally understood life well and was good at living, but his desire for a better life became less strong after experiencing the war. So he will plan to plant seeds again in the fall, leaving the open space for a long season. But Hebian blocked this idea. He was a quick-tempered man with a strong will to execute. Why not plant in the summer, why not plant it tomorrow, why should today's wish be put to tomorrow? Will it blossom and bear fruit on its own in people's light meditation?
The yard will grow randomly according to one's own wishes in the perfunctory procrastination of "tomorrow after tomorrow", and life will also make other plans in the lazy procrastination. If you don't seize the time to grasp and take care of , it will deny you the opportunity to reshape and enjoy it in the future. The so-called flowering period is not determined by the season, but by human considerations. When people plant seeds into the ground, they cast their longing for the future, which is hotter than the sun and warmer than rain and dew. How much a person expects from life determines the probability of it blooming.
The young man went all out to sow the seeds with the belief that they would bloom tomorrow. In the prosperous summer, cosmos take the place of weeds, as if they are full of life. âs proposal to plant flowers by the river in advance is a gentle resistance to the old man who gives up and compromises easily, and is also a kindness deliberately arranged by the narrator of the story. The old man reunited with his granddaughter in the sea of ââflowers, and passed away after experiencing all the beauty of the world. He had experienced the punishment he deserved, and the world had forgiven him with the emotional comfort of a young man and the romance of the sea of ââflowers.
In the brand-new courtyard, the boy cheered for his grandfatherâs plan to visit his former wife. That day he wore neat clothes and trimmed his scruffy beard. He also bought four bunches of grapes and waited for the three children who had finished the competition to eat them together. The summer courtyard suddenly had many smells, the smell of cosmos, the smell of starched clothes, the smell of razors remaining on clean chins, and the smell of their mutual communion. They swirl over the courtyard with the summer steam, creating a psychedelic rainbow rarely seen in this troubled world.
Butterfly Paradise and a Calm Life
Butterflies in images often imply beautiful things, but the butterflies in "Summer Garden" are often dead.Their wings are entangled in the spider webs, waiting for the old man to carefully pick them off, then devoutly wade through the grass and deliver them to the dry well. The process and path of is the process and path of the old man's pilgrimage. The hand that shoots people from the front holds the fragile dead souls and places them in the tomb of the soul. He has been living in self-blame.
On a rainy night, the rain washed away the handful of loess that covered his old memories. During the war, he and his comrades were hungry and passed through a village. Because they were worried that the villagers would leak information to the enemy, they killed them all. He chased a running woman for a long distance and saw her hair flying with the beating of her body. That woman and her hair all have the rhythm of butterflies. After shooting, he discovered that the other party was pregnant, and the fetus was still moving in his belly, like a butterfly that unfortunately fell into a spider's web, struggling for life. When the author of the original work
wrote this excerpt, he did not imbue these three children with a clear sense of right and wrong in education and a youthful spirit that dared to shout when encountering injustice. It gives a harmonious atmosphere to a world filled with evil and good, light and darkness. Children are frightened by the war, but they treat the elderly dialectically. They retain the compassion and timidity of "I would rather not have heard this story", but do not forget to continue to show love to each other. Their calmness represents the era's re-acceptance of the elderly, giving the parties permission to escape from guilt and enter a more calm and peaceful life.
When his granddaughter came to visit him, he denied his true identity, but soon after, he had the courage to visit his former wife. He relieved the burden on his heart and finally felt calm, walking down the street like a light butterfly. The movie does not show the scene of the reunion of the two affectionate old people, because since there is no passionate rebuke, there should be no boiling longing. Like butterflies fluttering, calm and indifferent, after thousands of sails and floods have passed, the body and mind no longer bear the gaze of onlookers, nor the emotional impact of relatives. Living peacefully in silence and silence, there are openings and closings, but no great sadness or great joy. Calm and calm, this is the greatest gift to a criminal.
The three teenagers returned happily from the stadium, only to find that their grandfather who was waiting for them to eat grapes together had passed away. They hugged the old man, who had shaved his beard, and the grapes were scattered and lay on the floor. Mushan picked up a few and handed them to his grandfather's mouth, crying and asking him to wake up and eat them, as if he could really wake up.
When the three teenagers wanted to search for traces of death in the old man, death did not come. When they were familiar with and indulged in the taste of life, it came quietly. This is death. You cannot predict it accurately, but you can only learn to accept it calmly. Accepting it will suspend all the happiness you are currently experiencing. When the child said his final farewell to his grandfather in his courtyard, butterflies finally appeared in the painting in a vivid manner. They flew out of the abandoned well and returned to the abandoned well. This is a fairy tale-like scene in the film. The dry well is a passage connecting life and death. The old man's practice of delivering dead butterflies into the well is tantamount to erecting a monument to mourn the innocent. His seclusion next to the dry well is a "grave guarding" with the nature of atonement. ". The butterfly flying out of the dry well has the nature of rebirth. It can be an old man whose soul has been forgiven, or it can be the undead soul who has been comforted. Therefore, the boy who saw the butterfly also moved towards the rebirth of emotions and thoughts. They lingered among the butterflies, shouted goodbye to the dark abandoned well, learned to forget their sorrow, smile at the passing, and move towards the future with a mature attitude.
The lush and lush season has passed, and so have the lively and lovely years. The old man went to his death, and the young man watched his death. Their day and night together verified a human truth: our fear of death cannot dilute the joy of time. summer is over, and there is still next summer. Although life cannot cycle like the four seasons, there is still plenty of tomorrow to wipe away the stains of yesterday. The summer sun is charming, and the journey of life is long. You know that it will be bumpy and full of laughter and tears. Why should you add another scorch to the fire and give up the relaxed and soothing pace?
