Every film fan asks themselves the question: why do you love movies? For Uncle, watching films is a way of gaining peace of mind, just like meditation in religion, which allows you to isolate yourself from the real world and know the world through the stories of others. It won’t give you the answers to your life, but it can somewhat dispel your confusion. For many of you, tomorrow is the start of the post-holiday “mourning class battle”, so today I’m going to continue to recommend a film to you. But considering that you must have already drank chicken soup to your stomach, I will only provide a bottle of pure water for your soul today. The movie is called “America’s Sweetheart”.
The story begins with Star, the heroine, taking her brother and sister to look for food in the rubbish. The haul seems to be good, but the biggest surprise is a bag of frozen chicken that has puffed up. After collecting the food, the trio stop a car on the side of the road, but it is clear that no one is willing to give them a ride. At that moment, a hippie-inspired van passed by. Perhaps as fate would have it, Star followed the vehicle with her brother and sister to the supermarket. The group, though everything had to express epilepsy without looking like addicts, just danced to themselves to ‘We Found Love’ playing in the supermarket. The man in the passenger seat saw Star jumping up to the checkout counter and “leading” the dance.
However, he dropped his mobile phone due to the strenuous movement and was soon kicked out again by the supermarket security guard, which Star saw. Star picked up his phone and went out to return it to him. The handsome man introduced himself as Jake and persuaded him to join him in starting a business in Kansas – selling magazines door-to-door. The two men have an infinite amount of goodwill, but the longer you’re in society, the harder it is to trust people. Delivering a rare smile, Star finally declines Jake’s kind offer and Jake leaves in his car. But back at his filthy home, a wave of irritation rises again in Star’s mind. Especially when his jerk of a father comes home and puts his arm around him.
Unfortunate families have their own misfortunes. The next day, Star takes his sister and brother to find his birth mother, a fat woman in heavy make-up. As you can imagine, the “mother” has no intention of supporting her own flesh and blood. Desperate, Star escapes into the night on the pretext of going to the toilet. You can’t tell if this escape is courageous or cowardly, because God has not given everyone enough courage. Often, all you can rely on is a pair of running feet and a blank mind.
The next day Star approached Jake and his group, who were staying at a motel, to join them. It was here that she met the real boss of the group, Krystal. After a quick chat, Star was inducted as a new member of the group. The hierarchy of the group began to emerge as Krystal and Jake drove ahead in a sports car, with the rest of the ‘minions’ trailing behind in a van. In the car, Star meets a group of friends from all over the world. Is this the life she wants? She can’t say. Sometimes life is like that, just a desperate struggle for an unknown future. At the motel Star signed the contract and Krystal gave her the rules: 20% for herself, 25% if it was cash, and the rest to be handed over. Star agrees, but all she cares about is Jake.
With a chanting success story, the group got into the car and headed to the affluent area to get to work. Jake, as the ‘new student mentor’, is responsible for working with Star to sell and teach her ‘sales techniques’. The sales techniques involved pretending to be students, religious people and so on, and using various tricks to get subscribers to subscribe to the magazine. But on the first try, Star lost the business.
Star wants to make money but has difficulty understanding how to do so, or rather she is unwilling to learn any earning skills, preferring to selectively ignore the difficulties of survival with a false moral standard. In other words, she keeps running away. The only thing that keeps him going is Jake, a team manager who sleeps with Krystal and acts as a “sex toy” for the boss. It’s only at work that the two of them are able to vent their frustrations, strolling through a wealthy residential area where, as the song goes, “We found love in a hopeless place”.
At the bottom of life, one would cling to any hope. But naturally, Krystal is aware of this and, unhappy with the two men’s income, she boosts management efficiency with a feminine authority. Star, who is unwilling to be cheated out of her money, and Jake, who doesn’t have the guts to make his relationship known, become the outcasts of the world. The two make love in a robbed limousine and have intercourse in a wild meadow. Under pressure to perform, Star is forced to “earn extra money” from oil workers, and Jake is furious at this. Krystal, who finally has a new “playmate”, tells Star the truth: You think I don’t know about your affair with Jake? Every time Jake seduces a girl, she gives him $100. Star is just the equivalent of $100, and Jake has been driven away by her.
As life goes on, Star is disillusioned but understands the true nature of love. From rich neighbourhoods to industrial areas to poor streets, the team looks for opportunities in anyone’s pocket. This time, Star arrives at an alternative underclass family. Dirty rooms, three young children, a drug-addicted mother …… Isn’t this a living replica of your own family? Star finally realized that life was a net from which there was no escape. She goes to the supermarket to buy food for the family, then resumes her familiar bewilderment and rejoins the workforce.
But that day, she suddenly finds Jake back. With helplessness and exhaustion, God knows what he had been through. Whether hope has been rekindled in Star’s heart at this point, or whether all faith has been smoothed out by the rough life, we do not know. All the film leaves the viewer with is a look in her eyes that is still full of confusion. This may seem like a short introduction to the film today, but it is actually nearly three hours long and is shot in a documentary style that is both literary and realistic. The film takes a transcendent view of all life’s misfortunes, but it doesn’t reveal any sadness, nor does it explain any upward mobility.
Because life has no answers. Every moment, we make our own history and write our own epitaphs. If there is any miracle in life, it is us, resilient and confused, proud and frightened. Maybe you’re going back to “work” tomorrow, so take this bottle of “pure water for the soul”. It may quench your thirst one Sunday afternoon.
