Reflection 5
November 17, 2006
I’ll start with my reflection since Les Miston is still stuck fresh in my memory. Something about the last scene that deeply disturbs me. The expression on Bernadette’s face. Something about that and the last narration of pity in the background. It didn’t fit and it shocked me.
The movie made me feel like I was stepping into the memory of the narrator. I felt connected with the scenes of the boys playing. Killing one another. It brought me back to a book I read and studied for Literature in secondary school. It was Susan Hill’s ‘King Of The Castle’. The story struck me and continues to scare me because it displays the abillity in children to kill. Reading that book and watching this movie really challenges me to ask…
” Are we born to kill? Are we born to hate? Are children really pure and innocent as we deem them to be?”
The ending of Les Miston made me realize that children, though they might not know it, sometimes have an inate understanding of things around them. The narrator said that he felt a sense of pity for Bernadette. Why? Love left Bernadette hurt and sucked every inch of life out of her. She never rode her bike. She wore black though she never did in the past. I was a child once, but how come I feel alot wiser now? Wisdom is a seed planted in all men. With the correct conditions, it will blossom.
I’ve also come to reflect upon my own life. I scare myself because there are somethings in my life that I hate with a passion. As more of these thoughts pour into my mind, I start to wonder whether we have must have a reason to hate. The boys in Les Miston said that they hate because they were unable to love. But we don’t love because we are unable to hate. Ah… Where am I going with all of this?
It’s amazing how these two strong feelings are so closely connected even though they are so different. It is no wonder these feelings usually define life because it is only through these feelings that one does really feel alive. As I am like the boys in Les Miston, my understanding of love is only so much. Thus my knowledge of life too, little. Right now, all I feel for myself is pity. Because just like everyone else, we are puppets of love and hate…And I am lost and only involve myself in games of make believe like the boys in Les Miston.
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Oh i found this on youtube. Enjoy!
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I have a thought for you. Truffaut was obviously affected by World War II. All the French were, and the film is about a childhood lived before the world war. Do you think that has something to do with it, that the innocence of youth, whether it be peace or love or honesty, will all be destroyed as we grow older? Or are we pulling something that’s not actually in the film. After all, I suspect most critics would call Truffaut a romantic.