大象的眼泪

Tony promised a surprise to me if I was able to apply for 20 new jobs within two days. While I failed to hit the goal at the end of the day, with the submission of only 15 new jobs, my sweet Mr. Hairball decided to deliver the surprise as he was convinced that I have been making a real effort in order to accomplish that difficult task.

The prize came out to be a beautiful movie called "Water for Elephants" at Scotiabank Theater, starred by Robert Pattinson, Reese Witherspoon and Christoph Waltz. It was not among the movies that could give you an easy and amusing time on a Sunday night, but belonged to the category of movies that would truly help you think and feel. The story was about a veterinary student, Jacob, abandoned his studies after his parents were killed and joined a traveling circus as their vet. There he met the girl of his dream, Marlena, who was also the wife of his boss August. They fell in love while taking care of the new star attraction of the circus: a smart baby elephant. With overwhelming love for each other and inconceivable courage toward better future, they were able to defeat the brutality of August and the cruelty of the times.

I think the movie has chosen a very good perspective to tell the story, for the reason that a circus is always a place full of ironies. It supposed to be a place that brings out the most amounts of true joys, but it was actually with tremendous hardship and tragedies underneath. It looks like a place full of intra-species love and communication, but it was actually dominated by wildness and manipulations. After all, a circus show was just another lucrative delusion of joys, a typical bloody business as many of the others in the historical period of Mid-20-century America. While Jacob, on the other hand, who served as a representative of the scarcely existed humanities during that era, has made every effort to struggle for true love and true cares. The reward for him was a girl of his dream and an immortal life story to be shared with his deeply touched audience.

I was very happy to find Tony loved the movie all the same, although I am pretty sure that he could have some unshared feelings about it from a different angle due to his previous experiences. For that, I would like to respect and protect. “What if there was a happy ending for our past tragedies?” This is always a sentimental and magical question to think about. The singularity of the chance to live and the unrepeatableness of time have left us with a limited extent of choices as well as a great legacy of many unfinished yet unable-to-be-finished stories. In my eyes, it never harms to let the stories and pities finished with the help of movies and imagine for the moment about other possibilities of our own lives.

And I have my unleashed thoughts too. “Where were you when I was seventeen?”When Marlena asked Jacob, helplessly yet hopefully, at that dancing party, I could clearly remember similar words coming out of my own mouth in the far-away past. The answer to that question was nothing about where were you exactly when I was seventeen; it was everything about what I am going to do with my already changed demand and feelings for life now. However, a big problem in the real world about that is: the true courage in striving for better future could be looking very similar to the ungrateful boldness to screw up a pretty good life. People need wisdom to tell the difference between the two, otherwise there could be a costly price to pay for simply being romantic. For example, in the movie I totally understood Jacob’s affections for Marlena and I completely caught Marlena’s internal unsatisfaction in her marriage with August, yet I pretty doubt about how would Marlena immediately feel after August’s death. August was her husband. He was the right person for her to meet when she was seventeen. He was a super evil for everyone else in the world except for her. As an audience, I feel delighted for Marlena and Jacob’s living happily ever after. But did August deserve such an applauded betrayal and demise as that?

Love is truly beautiful, but love is also selfish. There is hardly right-or-wrong answer in any love story. It is touchy as long as it is real. - Once again ironically, these words came from someone who was somehow hurt by the love story that I am enjoying right now. I am always trying to feel, what exactly did Jacob see in that 1939 picture of the Winnie Brothers’ Circus Show at the very beginning of the movie? Cherished memory of his passed wife, grateful appreciation toward his own life, mixed feelings for his long-dead friend and enemy August? Despite all the complexity and ambiguity in his feelings, interestingly, that feeling reaches the bottom of our hearts and became something that we are all yearning for at the end of the day. When Tony and I, hand-in-hand, came off as the last two persons who walked out of the cinema that night, I could not help thinking about one simple question: if there is ever any audience for our own life, would they enjoy the show as much as we just did?

Jessica
May 16 2011

       大象的眼泪是看完战马之后才看的第二个有关动物的电影。我一直以为自己把动物看成是有生命的东西，而和人类一样，如果你和他不亲的话没法跟她交流或产生感情，我不会像其他人似的人家抱自己的孩子的时候觉得可爱而去摸摸那个孩子，也不会像其他人似的看到流浪狗就把她带回家，我会觉得流浪这就是他的天命。
    但是最近看这些电影，真的不得不佩服这些导演，是这些导演能够唤起我对动物的爱，或许在未来我不会因为觉得可爱而去养他们、宠他们，但是我以后看到他们就会尊重，我会认同有些动物骄傲的有些人没有资格把它像宠物似的对待。
    就像《大象的眼泪》的大象的骄傲是天生的、并不是像有些人类似的当他拥有物质财富之前在他人面前什么都做什么都抛弃，当有一天他有了一定的财富之后突然意识到高贵这个问题，之后才以高贵来伪装自己。这就像是马戏团的总监奥古斯丁（August），虽然他是这些动物的主人，但当大象抬脚的时候他还是说了“请你抬腿”。
   有些动物的骄傲、高贵就在这里，而这些东西是天生的，有些人有些物就不值得拥有这些，他们伪装的高贵面对真正的高贵的时候显得可笑而又卑鄙。。
   

整部电影都没啥表现力 没什么演员比较出彩 尤其那头象 略丑 还没啥灵性 看完就觉得是把小说的情节堆积起来 唯一庆幸的是没让我看睡着