This is a sad story. Years ago Lee had a perfect life, with a loving wife, three lovely children and friends who embraced him. But due to one mistake on his part, everything was buried in fire, his children died, his wife hated him and he himself had no way to forgive himself. He grabbed a police officer’s gun and attempted suicide, which ended in failure.
And so the story begins.
1. No one can understand anyone’s pain
Lee was a caretaker and was responsible for fixing any problems the people in his house had, such as blocked toilets, leaking drains and so on. When the night came, Lee would go to the bar and order a drink, and if someone accidentally bumped into him or kept looking at him, he would get upset and go straight to the people in a rage. When I first saw the film, I found it particularly incomprehensible why the protagonist was such a grumpy, bad guy who would get into fights at the drop of a hat. However, as the film follows Lee’s past life, his wife who loves each other, his three adorable children, his loving brother, and his funny nephew, and a group of friends who tease each other. Until, that is, a fire. The fire started with Lee, who smoked some drugs with a friend in the middle of the night, felt the children were cold and lit a match, which ignited the house as he went to the supermarket to buy something, killing all three children tragically. His wife blamed him for one thing and he couldn’t forgive himself. So he moved house and paralysed himself with a bottom-feeding job. When his friends saw the unobstructed “home” that had been temporarily made for him, they questioned heartily, “What kind of home is this?” Friends advised him and the police told him that he had only made one mistake. Yes, just a mistake that he had no way to reconcile with his past, and that for the rest of his life he would never be able to forgive himself for who he was at the time. Everyone ended up treating Lee with either forgiveness or sympathy and went on to forgive him and reconcile with the past, except Lee who was trapped inside the fire. After the fire, all that survived was the shell of Lee. In this world, the so-called sympathy is just a kind of pity, no one can really share their pain, those so-called understanding, but just can’t bear to look at him. The only thing we can do is to learn from our mistakes and not to let our life be a life of regret.
2. Getting back up and facing life is far more difficult than grief itself
When you encounter pain, many people say, “Why don’t you just walk away? Why don’t you choose to make peace with yourself?
That’s easier said than done! There will always be times when you are unwilling to make peace with yourself and keep stubbornly living with yourself. Lee’s brother loved him and trusted him. His brother, who had passed away, gave Lee custody of his children and trusted him even though Lee had once caused his wife to be split up by his mistakes. In this way, the brother wanted to put Lee back on his feet. But Lee was angry, he couldn’t walk away from the fire and every time he moved, he would carefully wrap a picture of his three children in a scarf. He would try to get himself drunk and would fight over people’s unintentional gestures. His nephew’s school, band and team were all in his old city, and Lee didn’t want to stay in a city full of memories of the fire, especially when he met his remarried wife on the street, whose words of sorry and I love you made his eyes well up when he hadn’t even cried at his brother’s death.
Just how sad, how upset, how painful must it have been to become the walking corpse he now seems to be? Lee eventually chose to give custody of his nephew to a friend’s family, telling his nephew that he couldn’t control it, that he couldn’t overcome the fire, that every time he got drunk, he would think of his three children in that fire, and that he was always, unwillingly, and unable to step out of the past. Thankfully, he has slowly started to try to come out. At the end of the film, he hopes to rent a two-room house in another city so that his nephew will have a place to sleep when he goes.
Conclusion.
There are millions of regrets, and each one is different.
Not everyone will reconcile with themselves in the face of regret, and not everyone will understand your pain.
All we can do is to cherish what is in front of us and not to create regrets again.