Opening “Family Mess”: Chaotic but True Love
The co-directors’ well-crafted opening sequence sets up the rest of the story by showing each character one by one, revealing each person’s personality. This is a typical “messy but well-meaning” family. Mom and Dad are arguing about how to tell their young daughter about her uncle’s suicide attempt, while he sits next to his silent, troubled son with a strange melancholy in his eyes (he has vowed to remain silent in memory of nihilistic thinker Nietzsche); Grandpa rants about the lack of variety at dinner. I mean, this is pretty much a microcosm of every family gathering I’ve ever seen. The audience can feel a lot of resonance from each member, so they can have a certain sympathy for everyone’s point of view and see that everyone really cares about each other, even if the way they express it is a bit messy.
With a heart-pounding rhythm, the film begins with the young beauty Olive staring intently, and then we find that she is concentrating on watching the most glorious moment in someone else’s life – the moment of winning the Miss America crown. Olive observes and imitates others’ momentary ecstasy over and over again, as if rehearsing her own future success and glory. “There are two kinds of people in this world – winners and losers.” Then we see Olive’s father, middle-aged Richard, giving an exciting speech on his own success rules – the nine-step success theory. However, at the end of the speech, amid the sparse applause, we found that there were only a few listeners sitting in the huge classroom. The film “Little Miss Sunshine” starts with a very concise but very accurate writing to convey the theme that the whole film will explore: success and failure.
The majority of failures
The age range of characters in Little Miss Sunshine cleverly covers all people in society. Young Olive dreams of success; adolescent Dwayne longs for success and tries to achieve it through personal struggle; middle-aged Richard and Cheryl struggle with the blow of reality; the grandfather, who is in his twilight years, chooses to escape and degenerate after accepting the cruel reality. This seems to be the life of an ordinary person in this society.
There is another interesting character in the story, Cheryl’s brother and Little Miss’s uncle, Frank, who attempted suicide. Unlike Little Miss’s family, Frank, who is the most famous Proust scholar in the United States, actually belongs to the elite class of society. But ironically, Frank’s life as a homosexual fell into a slump after experiencing the fuse of failed love, so that he finally chose to end his life, but even such an attempt failed.
We can say that every character in “Little Miss Sunshine” is a loser. Frank, who attempted suicide, is needless to say; Cheryl also experienced a failed marriage, and her relationship with Richard was in trouble; Richard tried to sell his success theory everywhere but encountered many setbacks; Grandpa was addicted to drugs and died of an overdose in a foreign country; Dwayne’s hope in life was to become a pilot one day, but he found out that he was color blind and his dream was shattered overnight; even the innocent little Olive became a joke in the eyes of other contestants in “Little Miss Sunshine”. Their family, like a mirror, reflects the majority of failures in this society who are exhausted but destined to be mediocre.
Yes, failure is the norm in life. Even Napoleon, the “victorious general”, lost one-third of the battles he led, until the defeat at Waterloo, which completely ended his military career. Failure is much easier than success. It’s just that people are obsessed with those glorious achievements and ignore the countless failures behind the success.
Mercedes Benz rickshaw
The most distinctive character in the movie must be the mini yellow rickshaw. In the second half of the movie, when the clutch of this car broke down, the horn kept honking, and even the door fell off, I suddenly realized that this seemingly casual plot setting is actually a metaphor for life. This small rickshaw carrying the whole family gradually became a symbol of “life” itself.
Before their journey began, the family’s life was on the verge of collapse. However, as the journey progressed, everyone’s hope was completely shattered in this yellow minibus. Frank ran into his rival in love and business who was enjoying his vacation; Dwayne found out that he was color blind and missed the flight school; Richard’s publishing plan was once again in vain; Cheryl found that her relationship with her husband was gradually deadlocked due to the financial difficulties; Grandpa even lost his life, and even his body could only curl up in the trunk without dignity. Just when you think everything in life is bad enough, the yellow minibus will humiliate you with its annoying horn like a broken gong. In the end, Olive’s remaining dream – the “Little Miss Sunshine” beauty pageant – became the common hope of the whole family, and it was also their last hope for success and the last anesthetic for their hearts.
The truth about success
When the family finally arrived at the Little Miss Sunshine beauty pageant, they found how stupid and ridiculous it all was. The innocent little girls were trying to imitate adults, wearing gorgeous clothes that were not suitable for their age, wearing thick makeup, twisting their waists on the stage in a pretentious manner, and even rolling their eyes impatiently as soon as they turned their backs to the audience. The audience was immersed in such a contrived performance and cheered for the unreal and false halo. Olive’s real smile on the stage seemed so out of place at this time. Every aspect of this show was a satire on our society that worships success too much. Beauty pageants are to judge a person’s beauty or ugliness according to fixed standards, which is very similar to our society, which judges individuals according to fixed success standards.
At the end of the film, through the dialogue between Dwayne and Frank, the film expresses the attitude towards success and failure. Frank first uses Marcel Proust as an example. He never had a proper job, was gay, had no successful love, spent twenty years writing a novel that almost no one read, but he was probably the greatest writer since Shakespeare. He recalled his life and found that those days of failure and pain were his best years. It was these times that shaped his self, while those happy days were “a complete waste.” Then Dwayne realized, “Life is a fucking beauty pageant… If I want to fly, I will definitely find a way to do what you like, and fuck everything else.”
In fact, many people don’t realize that instead of following in other people’s footsteps and climbing along the “successful path” recognized by this society, “doing what you like” may be the most likely path for “diaosi” to succeed. In fact, this may be the most likely path for everyone to succeed. The world is always changed by those who stick to their dreams. Under the same conditions, dreams and interests are the biggest driving force for success.
The Last Dance
When the audience was looking forward to how the movie would end, the film gave everyone a nice surprise with the wild and passionate dance of Olive’s family on the stage of the beauty pageant. What better way to fight back against the hypocrisy of this society? This family used a dance that was not suitable for children to declare to the pretentious audience below the stage: Fuck hypocrisy, losers can still have a happy life.
In the end, Richard gave up his obsession with success, Frank finally found hope in life, Dwayne understood the value of family, and Cheryl eased her relationship with her husband. All this was thanks to little Olive. Her undisguised innocence shone into the family like a ray of sunshine, just as she comforted Dwayne’s sadness with a silent hug. Even with a slightly bulging belly, she was still a real sunny little beauty.
Finally, the yellow minibus was on the road again. This old car kept breaking down, just like everyone’s life, new problems kept appearing. But with everyone’s joint efforts, life can still go on. And no matter how it tries to crush dreams, everyone still needs to jump into such a life and keep moving forward. Finally, accompanied by the laughter of the family, the car gradually went away in the annoying horn sound. Yes, we are all losers, but so what?
