The appeal of “The Voice of Joy” for me actually came from the short 45-second commercial before I watched the video on Acuity, as that happened to be its trailer. I admit that I was completely captivated by Johnny’s 4-second, but tender “stay with me” line. So I couldn’t wait to buy tickets for “The Voice of Joy” when it went live in the school lecture hall.Unfortunately, the song was not sung in its entirety in the movie, but only in one or two lines during the audition scenes. Miraculously, I had never heard the song before and there were no emotional scenes in the movie, but I actually had a physical reaction, tears and goosebumps. This is something that has never happened before.
But that’s not what I want to talk about the most.
The night I just finished watching, I was still disgusted with myself, is not young, how will be so easy to be a cartoon to fill the chicken soup to cry?
The next day, I always feel that I should write something for my tears, and after thinking for half a day, I think that if I still write the ideal and reality, life and dreams, then I can only write an elementary school essay.
In fact, there is a design in the movie that made me go back and think about it for a long time. That is, Lucita in order to go to rehearsals, and did not hire a nanny, she launched their own ingenuity, made a set of machinery, to replace her to complete the children wake up, make breakfast, wash dishes, tell her husband the location of the car keys, to the children to take the school bag to school, the night to tell the children bedtime story this series of work. I remember the whole cinema laughing, especially the children, and of course me. However, the plot of the movie later, but I could not laugh: until the set of machinery went wrong, as well as the program is written in order and the same life suddenly fell into chaos, Lucita’s husband Norman only found that the mother of the child is missing.
A wonderful irony, a sad metaphor, reveals the objectification of man.
What Norman needs is not a wife full of passion for music and love for life, but a machine that can take good care of his 25 children, tell him where the car keys are in the morning, and hand him a piece of cake when he returns in the evening, without giving him any trouble. Even the kisses he gave her were perfunctory.
However, it is not entirely to blame him, Norman is like this because he is also just an objectified part of his workplace, living the same lifeless, unchanged life.
That night he said between half-asleep and half-awake: “It’s the same, every day is the same, I don’t know how you get through such days.”
Maybe people tell the truth when they are sleepy and drunk.
What’s even sadder is that the Lucita’s are not the only ones who are objectified in the movie.
There is also Johnny, who for his father is the walkie-talkie, who must be at his beck and call, who must be with him at all times in desperate times whether he wants to be or not. Once he was not able to do these, his father thought of is to give up the child.
My biggest fear since I was a kid was letting down the people I cared about.
So when Johnny’s father slammed down the phone in jail and left, I could really understand how Johnny felt: the music he loved most in life was not recognized by his own father. But although his father objectified him, he did not see his father as an object. Although his father was a criminal gangster, although his father never gave him real respect and understanding, his father is still a father, blood is thicker than water, and nothing can cut it. That’s why he had the impulse to steal the alleged “100,000” prize money, but then he saw his own entry form “very good” when hanging back, put down the butcher’s knife and play the piano. At that time he was really a singer with soul.
And Ash, her boyfriend also needs a girlfriend who is not an independent self, talented, but an object that exists only to complement him and only praise his music. Once Ash fails to do this, all he can think of is also to give up this girlfriend and look for another, which could be Becky, Amy, Ruth, etc.
There’s even Moon Burroughs, except he’s not being personified, he’s objectifying himself. He equated himself with that big theater, so when that once-glorious theater came crashing down behind him, he felt his life was over. He thought he valued the theater because it was a dream that his father had used all his savings to buy for him, yet he turned his father’s expectation that he would pursue the love of his heart into a shackle for himself, which turned him from loving everything about the theater to loving that building.
Mina, arguably, is someone who is not objectified, and therefore I feel she is the luckiest one. She has a family that loves her and they don’t love her because of how good she is or how good she is, just unconditional love.
So, I guess what struck me was the struggle and effort of the characters in the movie to get rid of this sadness, and the ease and sigh of relief afterwards.
When Lucita took off her housewife outfit and changed into a sexy black dance dress, Lucita on stage was like a sultry and beautiful queen, hooking 10,000 people and igniting the passion of the whole audience. So much so that Norman could not believe that was living beside his wife for years of ordinary and unexceptional, he rushed on stage after giving a deep kiss, is no longer perfunctory.
When Johnny’s father broke out of prison like King Kong, in the city of tall buildings and bright lights, recklessly fleeing madly, I really cried a lot. Johnny’s father is indeed an uncompromising outlaw, but in the past, he died for money, this time, it was for his son. That meeting between him and Johnny out of everyone’s sight was extraordinarily moving. The father knew his own identity, he died to block the fishy and dangerous coming behind him, but only wanted to give his son a calm blessing, not to add a touch of unpleasantness to his son in the world of others.
Ash finally stopped appearing as her boyfriend’s backup singer. The stage belonged to her alone, she could come alone and play her own music, she could turn the venue upside down all by herself, making Becky in front of the TV jealous and her ex in front of the TV smitten and upside down. From then on, no one could try to cover her light.
Moonbeam passively picks up the old business of washing cars and polishing them with all the fur, but it’s impossible to do it well because there’s no desire to do it at all. When his good friend Eddie unzipped to reveal a soft, white wool, I was really touched too, it turns out, Eddie is not a heartless rich kid. The friend’s unfailing, Mina’s a heartfelt song, let the moon Burroughs on the ruins of the stand, no building so what, I care not these.
We are actually all being characterized by ourselves or others, only this transformation in the movie can be very conceptual, but not in life.
This is perhaps what makes it more difficult for me.