Chinese Version
2022-04-01，Friday, Drizzle
After watching the 2022 Oscar best picture movie “CODA”, I once again realized the value of the presence of true love in a family. The true love that can’t be pretended was revealed by the deaf parents of Ruby in sign language and the powerful sound that deaf people can’t grasp, which brought novelty and happiness to both sets of audiences. After a brief contact with her deaf parents, Ruby’s boyfriend commented that Ruby’s parents were so much in love, unlike his parents who were cold to each other.
In fact, the coldness from just one parent, not between each other, is enough to permeate every corner of a family. I think of “The Reader”, a film about human nature and ethics which won Kate Winslet the Oscar for best actress in 2009. When I watched “The Reader” for the second time, I again felt the cold atmosphere of young Michael’s family, while seeing Michael’s mother talking about their children at the dinner table with his father’s indifferent expression. I thought that Michael’s love for Hanna who was twice his age might has something to do with the indifferent and cold atmosphere of his family.
The movie “The Reader” also made me feel that there was sometimes an insurmountable gap between macro kindness and love versus micro kindness and love, because of different cognition or intelligence. In the court, as an illiterate, Hanna could not possess macro kindness and love for the deaths under her control, so she did not feel guilty about what she had done in World War II; although after the war, she practiced micro kindness and love to Michael, a sick stranger, by taking care of him, which built the base for the story of “The Reader”. Later, as a lawyer, Michael, based on his moral intelligence, helped Hanna who was sentenced to life in prison, in a macro kindness and love way; but Michael himself lost the micro kindness and love for Hanna when he was 15 years old, so he stayed away from Hanna by ignoring the letters Hanna sent from prison.
Coming back to our current affairs, it has now been more than two years since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. I now like to watch movies with simple stories full of difficulties and hope. “CODA” belongs to this category, because the film made me see the difficulties in deaf people’s daily life, and also presented to me the micro kindness and love, which brought hope to Ruby, from Ruby’s family and from her musical teacher.
The world has been fighting the pandemic for more than two years, the task is difficult and promising, and the outcome will not be a “man conquered the nature” tale. Sometimes I feel that the war against COVID-19 which started in 2020′s needs more macro kindness and love, which the illiterate Hanna lacks.
Little Episodes
1. “CODA”
Ruby, a high school student, who is the only person with hearing in her family of deaf parents and a brother, is very busy. She is busy helping her deaf father and brother to work like normal people while also attending school. She likes singing, but her deaf parents can’t understand the beauty of music as they can’t hear.
In the movie, the place where Ruby dived and swam with her boyfriend reminds me of the famous quarry of halibut Point State Park
2. “The Reader”
In 1958 after World War II in West Germany, 15-year-old Michael was very ill in the rain and ran into Hanna’s help. After recovering from scarlet fever, Michael brought flowers to thank Hanna. The two soon begun a passionate secret relationship. In 1966, Michael, a law school student, was shocked to see Hanna was on trial while watching a war-crimes trial of a group of women, all former Nazi SS guards.
3. 2009, Kate holding her Oscar Award, a statuette of a knight standing on a reel of film gripping a crusader’s sword.
