MovieChat Forums > The Dreamers (2004) Discussion > This movie is not about arrested develop...

This movie is not about arrested development and childish behavior

posted 13 years ago by Daannny
8 replies | jump to latest

I had to write this post just to disagree with the pseudo-intellectuals who want to see in this movie a concretization of hoax pop-psychology theories.

First of all I don't think making a game out of sex is a childish thing.
Sex is also supposed to be a game, to be a fun way to create complicity between two or more people. Even chimps make games out of sex, so far for the idea that animals use sex just for reproduction.

Sex doesn't have to be a serious, haughty and full of faux responsability thing.
In fact I would worry more about the psychological state of someone who sees sex like a serious task to load with an heavy of psycho-bubble burden than of someone who can see the playful nature of sex.

Also I don't think the twins suffered from childish immaturity and were avoiding adult responsabilities. When people talk about "adult responsabilities" they depict a world where young people are carefree and have nothing to worry about and were older people don't have free time, don't know how to have fun and have huge responsabilities that weigh extremely on their shoulders.

Well, this world don't exist. For the majority of adults the extent of their responsabilities end with having a job and paying a bill. Certainly nothing to lose your sanity for. In fact most adults have a lot fun, take everything superficially, shut themselves in their family middle-class world while letting their intellectual capacity fade as muscles that are not worked-out and actually consider the tame task of working daily and paying the bill as something requiring even less responsability and effort than the responsabilities of teens and school. Because let's face it, the majority of jobs people do are not something that can be called "a huge responsability", they are even more of a game than the games small children game, they're actually easy, easier than school for sure. So I really don't know where this dichotomy between young people enthusiasm for life and adults serious and hard life come from. The young people part is true, it's the adults one that is a lie and something that makes them appear like hypocrite in the eyes of younger people.

So I hope people will stop talking about mature young people not "growing up and accepting adult responsabilities" just because they don't accept to conform to adult fake self-importance and seriousness. And would stop using the meaningless word "adult responsabilities" seeing as for more people their adult life is actually more responsabilities-free than any other stage of their life.

In fact for more "adult life" is a perfect way to choose a life of conformity, mental dullness and alienated life withing home and work-place with no need to expand one's mind, confront with the world or accept new responsabilities.

[–] lubin-freddy 13 years ago

Though I agree with the OP, I think that the issue is not of "growing up and accepting adult responsabilities", but more about the boundries, real and imagined, between the outside world and the inside places we often retreat to. Whatever one thinks about "responsibility", something very real was happening out in the streets in May 1968. They tried to remove themselves from it.

The question is not concerned with any "shoulds", as in "what should they have done", but rather of the price one pays from that kind of denial. It's a conflict for which Bertolucci gives no simple answer.

I want to shake every limb in the Garden of Eden
and make every lover the love of my life

[–] Daannny 13 years ago

lubin-freddy, you're right
It's indeed what was happening in the 1968 that proved "adult responsabilities" have nothing to do with anything.

The 1968 riots in facts started with young people rebellion, the "adults" actually were the ones pretending nothing was happening and isolating themselves in their perfect borgeois lives and jobs. So rather than acting like children as most claim when describing this movie, they were acting like "adults", like the other adults out there pretending nothing was happening, distancing themselves from the disatisfication and believing in political lies. It's actually "children" and "childish people" who have still enough rebellion energy and ability to see the emperor has no clothes who would actually avoid daydreaming in order to fight for their cause.

That being said I think we all live in denial all the time. I don't think humans are ever objective and ever see the reality. We all see a personal interpretation of reality influenced by our emotive state and our "drugs". And by drugs I mean music, television, love, sex, food. We all try to live in our personal world of pleasure and the older we grow the more we fear the unknown and crave the perfect stability of a closed mind that doesn't accept any new information or any new experience.

If nothing their denial was typical of older people, of parents or those who have the same job since a lifetime and not child-like and infantile as many said. But to say the truth their denial was typical of human beings. In fact riots and rebellions are always accepted by a minority, the majority of people doesn't want to risk what they have for whatever cause. There was lot of denial even during World War II and fascism.

[–] lubin-freddy 13 years ago

Today it's easy to be in denial, when you can watch Fox news.

I want to shake every limb in the Garden of Eden
and make every lover the love of my life

[–] 13 years ago

[deleted]

[–] Daannny 13 years ago

No, it's not you don't know what you're talking about since you can't even argument your point of view

[–] 13 years ago

[deleted]

[–] mnbush 13 years ago

"concretization"? "arguement your own point"? Jees, why should anyone take your ideas seriously? you can't even write them down cohesively!

[–] pas_si_simple 12 years ago

So the twins' nearly grotesque sense of entitlement, insularity, enmeshment/boundary problems (problematic b/c they basically became detached hermits by the end of the film), and easy hypocrisy coupled with pseudo intellectualism = not-childlike behavior? ok i'll give you that it's not "child like" but to call it mature is... not correct either imo.

I do think the psycho-sexual exploration between the three was interesting and definitely showed a coming-of-age reckoning for all three, but still the twins characters aren't exactly mature... they're typical for ppl of their age... messing around and making mistakes and learning for themselves. the twins are different/odd because they cling to each other as they float through their enchanted lives with enabling parents where they can partake in supposed revolutionary violence so lightly.