Why learn boxing? Everyone’s answer is different: to not be bullied, to make a lot of money, to protect your family, to get a championship, to exercise… Everyone has a different answer. There is also a chicken soup for the soul: “I study so that I can talk to fools in peace; I practice boxing so that I can make fools talk to me in peace.” And my answer is: find the courage to stay kind and live through boxing, even if it sucks more.
“So bad I want to win, win once, even if it’s just once! I got the idea to learn boxing after watching a movie. The movie is called “Love of a Hundred Dollars”, which sounds like some kind of pure love movie, yet it is a scrappy counter-inspirational movie.
It will not let you easily guess how the story will develop next, and it will not let you see as you wish how the little guy succeeds in beating life, it tells the story of a scrappy girl who has achieved nothing, but there is no comeback and no victory.
The first half of the movie is all kinds of abuse of life, the second half of the strength of the explosion, and finally sore tears, frankly face, everyone wants to beat the opponent, even once to win, but the real opponent is actually the cruel life. The first half of the film, Ando Sakura as the female protagonist Ichiko is a capital loser. she is not intentionally ugly, but decadent without performance traces.
Whenever we talk about the self-cultivation of actors, we always think of her performance in this film.
Dead fish-eyed eyes, greasy and messy hair, bloated body, no aesthetic sitting and sleeping posture, sleep until sunrise every day, she simply does not care to help take care of their own cooking store, the whole day gripping a cigarette, playing games every day to kill their young nephew for fun, empty eyes reflect the emptiness of their state of life.
Ichiko’s lethargic state of life is muddled, as if age has no meaning for him: because at 32, Ichiko has no job, no family, and does not work at home, playing games all day.
After a family conflict, Ichiko left home. Finally, Ichiko came to work at the 100 yen convenience store where she often bought snacks, as a salesperson and cashier. This is when the hero appeared, a down-and-out boxer Kano Yuji, because each time only buy bananas, nicknamed banana man.
By chance, she got together with the unknown boxer Kano, but they couldn’t even talk about love. When extremely depressed, Ichiko chooses to learn boxing, she is eager to release her grievances and dissatisfaction, eager to obtain even just once the recognition.
Ando Sakura is not a cliché for the crush of boxer Kano, and did not say any exciting famous lines, “fighting each other, tapping each other’s shoulders, just that feeling ah”.
This is the highest level of the film, the pain of the decadence is slowly worn away, little by little, not a quick knife cut, and then a new life.
The ending of “The Love of a Hundred Dollars” does not end on a grand note, but the process of change of a son is enough to make people excited. Real life where there are so many sudden hit chicken blood inspirational events happen. This treatment method, so that ordinary people empathize with, “burning” not shallow not deliberate but small see delicate true feelings. Not to portray the suffering but portrayed the hardships of civilian life. Not the theme first but the bones of positive, give people hope and warmth.
From a loser who is too lazy to get up after falling to the ground, to a fighter who is in a frenzy because he wants to win, even once, even if it’s once.
The film is so hot that people want to cry. I want to cry not only because of the fierce boxing match in the ring, but also because of the desire to “really want to win one more time” even though I was rubbed hard by life on the ground.
The first half of the film looks like “The Life of Disliked Matsuko”, but in fact it is not. What Ichiko portrays is not just the failed life of an ordinary person, but the ordinary life of a failed but hardworking person. This is exactly what moved me.
“So painful, so painful, so painful, so painful, so painful, so painful…” Good pain is not only in the stage was beaten bruised, but also an ordinary person’s painful murmur of a failed life … From the beginning of the film dead fish eyes like eyes, bloated body, through learning boxing to the middle slowly a little boxer’s stance, to the end of the eyes, body, body, expression and boxing all like a change in a person, the gas field burning.
In the boxing ring of life, Ichiko ultimately failed to beat her opponent, although in the audience’s sparse applause she was finally able to pat each other on the shoulder with her opponent, and her opponent said a “thank you!
It was as if she had completed a baptism of life, and although she was still intact, she was able to embrace her opponent on an equal footing and get the respect she wanted.
But the struggle with life is more than just a one-time thing. There’s no revenge that we expect, no reconciliation that breaks down into tears, no final comeback, no applause for the winner, but a hymn to the loser in “Love of a Hundred Dollars”.
As Kazuko says, “I am a woman worth only a hundred dollars.
But through boxing, the heroine finds the courage to stay kind and live, even if there are many bad things. It is enough to make us move and reflect…
We try to live a good and ordinary life, trying to find hope, maybe never away from stupidity, but as long as we have the confidence to do what we really want to do, we should defy everything, forget about the indifference and disdain of others, completely self-talk and fight to the end.
Even in the face of life’s failures, Ichiko can do what Nietzsche would have wanted: continue to have faith in what you want, even if you don’t have it now, or maybe you never will.
Why learn to box? As a quote that gradually appears on the screen at the end of the movie, it is because we, as thousands of ordinary people, also want to live each day seriously and find the strength to live!
