Use a child's eyes to see the smile slipping, life fleeting; use a child's ears to listen to the roar of machine guns, the tragic song of war. ——Inscription
As if destined, I encountered this movie late at night when I was alone. Two hours are like a dream that you don't want to wake up from, and a baptism of the soul. In the fairy tale with a smile like a flower, I feel the hidden pain. I have no choice but to let the tide of emotion flow. I have no choice but to do nothing.
The story takes place in1938, a small town in northern Spain. Carol, who is dressed in a very boyish outfit—— A girl who has just entered puberty begins to be ignorantly wary of the world. My mother is Spanish and my father is an American pilot. At the beginning of the film, her mother takes her back to her grandfather's house in Spain from New York and begins this unforgettable trip. Carol, who looks cold and arrogant, is always expressionless until she meets Domi, a naughty boy who steals her hat and bullies her in a small town. That bad boy who always smiles so hard that his eyes are narrowed to slits, who is always full of bad ideas, and who is as brave as an adult when he is serious, unknowingly opened Carol's heart and made her long-lost smile bloom again. A deep friendship (compared to love, I prefer to interpret it as friendship) flows in the wilderness on a bright autumn day, in the small attic where we meet secretly, and in the pools with gurgling streams, enveloping the entire fairy tale paradise.
Not long after, her mother passed away due to a serious illness, leaving a long and slender defect in the beauty of autumn. Carol, who had a rare maturity among her peers, after grieving, even asked the teacher next door to write a letter to her father in her mother's tone, hoping to ease his father's pain with white lies. For Carol, in such a strange country that she calls her hometown, she misses her father more and more. A child who leaves his father is like a bird lost in its nest. She wants to see her father day and night, as if she has a home with her father. As an International Brigade pilot, his father really flew into the Spanish sky. This time, the tacit understanding between father and daughter once again radiated incredible power. Just as Carol was making a wish at her birthday party, an old-fashioned fighter jet rumbled into people's eyes. When Carol chased it desperately and shouted "It's daddy! It's daddy!", I thought it was just a child's wishful thinking. But when the small box arrived in the child's hands under the escort of a small red parachute, my father's letter and a small airplane model irrefutably overturned my self-righteousness. On his birthday, his pilot father airdropped a gift for him. What an unreachable happiness this is!
However, happiness is like walking on thin ice. Soon, Franco came to power and the dictatorship was officially established. The whole country was shrouded in the smell of tense gunpowder, and the Falange moved through the town like a ghost. The pilot father who opposed the dictatorship was pursued step by step and fled to the birch forest by the river. The brave Domi volunteered to help his father escape the pursuit, but unfortunately his young life was taken away by a bullet fired at his father. When his little wet body lay motionless in his father's arms, I seemed to see a young seed, just trying to struggle to break out of the ground, was crushed by the ruthless soles of his feet. Carol watched with her own eyes as her best friend went from living and real to gone forever. In a blink of an eye, life and death were separated forever. Her horrified eyes were filled with heart-wrenching pain, but she wanted to cry without tears. I think it was probably because her heart was bleeding! I have always believed that the death of a kind-hearted child must be more tragic than the death of a hero, and more like a storm, beating the rocks of people's souls inexorably.
When everything was over, Carol set out on her journey again, but this time she was on the way out. Behind the car window, two boys who had been inseparable from Duomi were riding the car crookedly while smiling and waving to her goodbye. She seemed to see Duomi among them, waving his arms and smiling like a flower.
Watching this film, I feel like a mountain that has been deserted for a long time. My already hardened heart is strongly touched, opening a tunnel to childhood. In the film, large tracts of clear sky, endless grassland in the wilderness, and red and yellow birch forests create a childhood paradise. Carol was riding on the branches like a boy. The trees were full of red leaves, and the thin wind was blowing. What echoed in her ears was the sound of waves. It turned out that the leaves of the entire birch forest were rolling and rolling in waves! A smug evil smile flashed across the corner of his mouth, he jumped up and threw himself on the green carpet of grass. Stepping on the falling yellow leaves, he walked hand in hand with his closest friends and walked away together……
This luxurious brightness probably symbolizes the color of children's hearts - pure and transparent, unstained by dust, as charming as amber. However, the director is not satisfied with this—— The construction of a perfect fairy tale led it to a kind of cruelty. He used this brightness as the background of the oil painting under war and dictatorship. The brighter the background, the dirtier the shadow of war. Use a child's eyes to see the smile slipping, and life to be fleeting; use a child's ears to listen to the roar of machine guns, the tragic song of war - in addition to cruelty, it is still cruel.
The more picturesque the place, the more wounded the soul is, the more cruel and mature it becomes. This is a cup of fragrant tea that adults and children can taste together. Sweetness and bitterness are intertwined with the flavor of life.
