The setting of this story is very attractive to me, when it first came out of the theater, my friend who has seen a lot of films could not help but say.”I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a setting before.”New, this is the film in the shell of the American comedy, leaving people the most different feelings.But what is new about it? The pairing of an older gentleman and a young queen is not uncommon. Lost in Tokyo, Coming of Age, and even The Beauty of the Moon all have similar settings. What I saw as “new”, and what struck me most about this film, was the rejuvenation of the septuagenarian.When you think about it, how much of Ben’s past is mentioned in this film? The past work, the dead wife, all with a small space to explain out, never the focus. On the contrary, it gives a new side: seventy-year-old people, must live with the past? Can’t we have a new beginning?
When we look at Ben’s internship, is it very different from when we started our internship at the age of twenty? He met a new company, made new friends, slowly started his job, won the trust of his boss …… and even wrote a new love song in the company. This is like what we experience when we first enter society, everything is new and unknown, and whether he is old or not has nothing to do with his enthusiasm for life, so he still seems like a young man exploring a new world.
The movie even chose a good image to represent this “new world”, that is, the Internet. This is really the field that people in the past could not understand and needed the most time to integrate.
Therefore, such a young Ben, together with Jules, who represents the new era of Internet women, can produce such a new spark.
Of course, Ben, because of his rich life experience, becomes Jules’ life mentor instead after gradually getting familiar with the environment. This line, in the movie, is almost an inevitable trend. I regret not seeing Ben’s own flaws, let alone the subsequent development of several other older interns. Is the brilliant Ben a special case? Or is this true of others with a wealth of experience? The film seems to give a hint of this, when another older intern helps Jules drive his car like a dog – but the poster’s “experience never gets old” is a very universal point. Just like “you’ve had more salt than I’ve had rice”, experience is always a treasure.
I have a few favorite moments in the movie. In script analysis, we call this moment when the audience/character suddenly realizes something a “beat”.
1. “They’re the ones who bought the red brick factory on the corner”
In the middle of the film, Jules is working late while Ben is still working late with his boss, and Jules is so upset that he brings a pizza to get close to Ben. The two of them talk about Ben’s past.
Suddenly, Jules mentioned the location of the company, which turned out to be a printing factory.
The next second, something immediately connected in her mind!
“It can’t be. ……”
It turned out that the printing plant where Ben had worked for forty years was the very place that Jules’ company had bought.
At that moment, I couldn’t help but weep. Because Jules and I understood this matter at the same time, so this moment happened quite naturally. There is no excessive padding, and no deliberate emphasis on the [Ben stayed for forty years of the printing plant closed down] and other information.
I just remembered that at the beginning of the film, Ben saw the job posting and talked to his girlfriend, where the certainty came from. The girlfriends overheard a sentence, “Ah, they’re the ones who bought the red brick factory on the corner.” Ben seemed to think about it.
Then, Ben was full of determination in preparing for the recruitment. I thought this was just the passion generated by the lonely old man’s love for life (which was indeed part of it), but now I realized that things were more complicated, and Ben’s image became more three-dimensional and positive again.
Imagine that the object that has replaced most of your most precious objects in life in the flood of the times, will you subconsciously hate it?
Ben, on the other hand, accepted it with aplomb, and went ahead with it – and should be eager to see what the “new world” in that place is like now!
2. “What do you really want to say to me?”
The biggest turning point in the plot occurs at the moment when Ben finds out that Jules’ husband is cheating on him.
But, this is not the “beat”.
Because of the discovery of things that should not be found, Ben became strange, smart Jules naturally immediately saw what was wrong.
On the plane, she couldn’t help but ask him, “What are you trying to say to me?”
It was like a woman’s sixth sense.
And she, it turned out, had a good idea.
When Ben was still hesitant to tell her, Jules spoke frankly first, “My husband cheated on me.”
Here, the audience’s expected “Ben told Jules, Jules will be how to react” of the beat immediately converted into “Jules so know everything, Ben just found out ah! “.
We, again, were put in Ben’s place.
It was only then that we found out that she wanted to solve her marital crisis on her own, even if it meant finding another CEO to supervise her and taking away her precious child-like company, just to get a chance for family harmony.
Only to find out the kind of complicated state she had whenever she went to kindergarten to face other parents.
It was only then that I found the little ambiguity of her asking her husband to accompany her on a business trip, but he seriously said he had something to do at the kindergarten.
Very natural, just like the real us would do.
This Beat, but also finally through the whole play Jules that line, “accept to find the CEO” – “because I want to save the family” – “found a seemingly suitable CEO” – “because of the family so against their will, give up their beloved career? ” – “No.”
3. There is also a favorite little beat, the moment when Jules’ assistant suddenly bursts into tears after Ben’s promotion.
The audience only began to look at her squarely, and found that the original twenty-four-year-old, work-smart little girl, really stress burst.
She has been working so hard, have not got the boss’s real trust.
It’s like you haven’t been looking at this little supporting character.
And her boss didn’t realize it.
This small detail really made me feel the director’s full of human concern.
Unfortunately, the story wraps up a bit hastily, relying on an apology speech from her husband to resolve Jules’ biggest conflict, which always felt too easy.
But this utopia full of fairy tales, need a happy ending.
In order to dissipate this unrealistic happy ending, the director let Ben take Jules in the end to play a Tai Chi, as in the beginning of the film.
The two rhythms produce four elephants, four elephants produce eight trigrams.
Yin and Yang contradict each other, and the cycle repeats itself.The world at the age of seventy is no different from the world at the age of twenty.