Children's Day Is Over, but Watch These Films Anyway: We All Need to Stay a Little Childlike

A holiday gift for you, and for ourselves.

Children's Day seemed especially lively this year. "Give yourself a Children's Day" became one of the hottest topics on social media over the past few days. Plenty of people went to the cinema to see Doraemon, then came home to post about it on WeChat Moments and reminisce about their own childhoods.

Childhood is beautiful because, to us, it stands for simplicity, joy and freedom, like a blank sheet of paper or a little tune. Filmmakers in every era have used their work to remind us to hold on to that innocence. We have picked some of those films for you, in the hope that they bring a little beauty and longing to your holiday.

Hugo

The boy Hugo lives in the clock tower of a Paris train station. Every day he threads his way among gears and levers that gleam with a tempting metallic sheen. He is always dodging the station inspector, who hunts down stray children. Now and then he steals small parts, one at a time, from a toy shop, hoping to repair a robot his father left behind.

After enormous effort he gets the robot working, only to discover that the toy shop owner who once caught him is the robot's real owner, and that this fearsome old man is one of the world's first film directors: Georges Méliès.

The Méliès of the film is far luckier than the real one, and he owes it to the film's two children, Hugo and Isabelle. Had they not been so determined to fix the robot, had they not tirelessly chased the story behind it, had they not watched Méliès's films with such eager eyes, the film's Méliès would have been forgotten, even by the people around him. Perhaps only a child's innocence can find what shines brightest in a person.

Forrest Gump

This man, with an IQ of just 75, will probably never understand the complicated world of adults. He is like a child, and the only thing he knows how to do is run: run, run, keep running forward.

Yet this man, who like a child can only run, becomes one of the great heroes of his world. He becomes a football star and a Vietnam War hero. He reports the Watergate burglars and helps bring about the opening of US-China relations. He becomes a successful businessman, and he looks after the girl he loves for the rest of her life.

Next to Gump, our IQs, far above 75, turn out to be our heaviest burden. We hesitate, fret over every risk, hold back for fear of what we might break, and in the end we gain nothing and are left sighing over the time we wasted.

In fact, anyone can live the way Gump does. All you have to do is run.

Edward Scissorhands

Edward, an unfinished robot, has scissors for hands. He once lived alone in a secluded castle; then he is brought into civilized society and falls in love with a human girl, Kim. He quickly learns the townspeople's way of life and how to help them with their daily chores, but he can never read the deep, tangled thoughts of adults. As he pursues Kim, his sharp scissor hands keep turning his good intentions into trouble. The townspeople move from curiosity and admiration to suspicion and contempt, and Edward leaves the girl he loves and returns, alone, to his castle.

Edward is simple and naive, and feels nothing but goodwill toward a complicated world. He is also devoted and single-minded: he protects the person he likes at any cost, treats her well with his whole heart and tries to make her laugh. He is like a shy, slightly introverted child who longs for company but does not know how to ask for it.

The ending is a little sad, but Edward's kind, clear heart leaves the viewer with a deep warmth.

Kikujiro

Summer vacation has arrived, but the little boy Masao is not happy. He is lonely. All his friends are off to the seaside with their parents, while his father is dead, his mother works far away, and he lives alone with his grandmother. Masao decides to leave home and look for his mother. On the way he meets Kikujiro, an idle, unruly and odd middle-aged man, and the two set off together to find her. Masao does find his mother, only to discover that she has another, happy family. The journey home for the man and the boy begins in dejection but does not end in sorrow.

On the road, Masao meets all kinds of strange people: a yakuza boss, a hotel bellhop, a young man who can do robot dancing and his girlfriend, a wandering poet who steals corn with them, a fat man and a bald man on motorcycles... They fill out Masao's journey and help him step out of the shadow of losing his mother and into the sunlight.

The film is also about adults searching for their own childhoods. Kikujiro, the fat man, the bald man and the wandering poet are burly, bearded and tattooed; they swear, and they look odd and menacing. But as they spend time with Masao, their tough exteriors fall away, revealing a hidden kindness and innocence. This is not a trip of three adults and one child but a camping trip of four children, who chase, romp and play with Masao, returning to a state that worldly concerns have not reached.

On screen there are green fields, a deep blue sea, clear running water and croaking frogs. Everyone finds their own childhood in the scenery of summer.

The Young and Prodigious T.S. Spivet

The young hero, Spivet, is "too smart", so he never fits in anywhere. At school his classmates treat him as a freak. At home his father always prefers his younger brother, who has a cowboy's temperament and tastes, just like their father, while Spivet is merely a little homebody who loves blueprints and science. Trying to fit in, he records a sound-wave diagram of his brother's gun; the gun later goes off while his brother is playing with it, and his brother dies. Spivet is consumed by guilt and drifts further and further from his family... until one day he learns that his perpetual motion machine has won an award, and at last he has an excuse to run away from home...

Spivet does not go looking for adventure. He simply hopes that out in the wider world he will meet people who like and accept him, and that he can untie the knot in his heart over his brother.

Even a genius with an unreachable IQ has a soft, kind heart, and wants only to be treated gently by the world.

A Story of Yonosuke

On a noisy campus, Yokomichi first meets Kuramochi and Yui Akutsu, and over the years of their friendship he watches their love blossom and bear fruit. Later he briefly dates his closeted gay friend Yusuke Kato. His own love life is much like anyone's: he is drawn to a woman of the night, and he falls for an innocent girl.

If there were a contest for collecting "you're such a nice guy" rejections, I think Yonosuke Yokomichi would win it. Yet of this ordinary man, his friend Kato says: looking back now, just having known Yokomichi feels like a stroke of luck. Indeed, the lead could hardly be more ordinary: just a big-hearted, helpful, straightforward young man (a bit player, really).

Moonrise Kingdom

On a small island called New Penzance, a troop of Khaki Scouts is camped at Camp Ivanhoe. One day two troublesome kids, Sam and Suzy, stifled by the adult world, run away together. The scoutmasters panic and form a search party to comb the island. On one side, trouble dogs Sam and Suzy's headstrong escape: they get separated, run into bad people and stop trusting each other, yet their hearts stay steady and sincere. On the other side, the adults who stand for "order" are in a flap, their relationships hopelessly tangled... The children, who ought to be innocent and carefree, turn out to be the gloomiest and oddest of all, yet only the two of them share a love that is truly steady and pure.

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

The boy Charlie Bucket is lucky enough to win a golden ticket to the world's biggest and most mysterious chocolate factory, and he joins four other children on an adventure through the factory of its eccentric owner, Willy Wonka. Inside, the factory is dazzling and full of wonders that turn reality upside down: chocolate waterfalls and rivers, edible flowers and grass, all kinds of strange candy, squirrels working as laborers. The other children cannot resist the sweets and are swallowed up by the factory. Only Charlie completes the whole adventure, and in the end he inherits Wonka's business and takes over the factory.

The film's fairy-tale chocolate factory seems to exist in a child's wild imagination. It is also as simple as a child's way of thinking: good and evil, black and white, nothing in between. The greedy, the arrogant, the vain and the willful make no attempt to hide their faults inside it, and they pay the price. Charlie stands for a plain innocence untouched by human malice.

E.T.

If you met an alien, what would you do first? Run away in terror? Walk up and study this curious creature? Or catch it and see whether it might fetch a good price?

The little boy Elliot does none of these. Behind the grown-ups' backs, he takes in the poor little alien E.T. and looks after him and protects him with great care.

A wondrous bond slowly forms between these two children, equally kind and sensitive, both longing for love and care. When E.T. is sad, Elliot feels gloomy too; when E.T. falls ill, Elliot feels ill along with him.

But a secret like this cannot be kept forever. When Elliot's mother discovers E.T., she quickly pulls Elliot away from him. Soon people in protective suits and police cars surround the house so tightly that nothing can get through.

The grown-ups need not have made such a fuss. How is E.T. any different from us? The foolish prejudices rooted in adults' minds simply do not hold up. Seen through Elliot's child's eyes, every creature is a friend.

The Red Balloon

The little boy Pascal finds a red balloon in the street.

It is a red balloon with a mind of its own. When Pascal lets go of it, it quietly stays by his side. When Pascal feels lonely, it circles around him to comfort him. When Pascal wants to play, it plays hide-and-seek with him.

The neighborhood bullies see the boy and his red balloon and burn with envy. They sneak off with it, but the balloon always finds its way back to the boy. Refusing to give up, the bullies finally set a trap and corner Pascal and the balloon against a wall. Their slingshots burst the balloon, and it slowly drifts to the ground.

And then all the balloons in Paris rise into the air. Balloons of every color, every size and every shape fly up. They fly to Pascal and, jostling and nudging, lift him into the sky, higher and higher, higher and higher...

When you are at your lowest, your childlike innocence will bring you the gentlest comfort.

Amélie

Amélie has what others would call an unhappy childhood: she loses her parents, is kept away from school and has few friends, yet she still has a warm, kind heart. One day the death of Princess Diana makes her keenly aware of how fragile life is, and she resolves to carry out a series of plans to help others. She helps a reclusive, depressed old neighbor, a grocery assistant bullied by his boss, a former tenant who lost the keepsakes of his childhood, a café colleague unlucky in love... Each deed is tiny, but in the film's warm colors each seems deeply meaningful.

One Douban user commented on the film: "I often do things like this myself. Why do people applaud when it's in a film, but in real life I get treated as an idiot?" (@Zheng/) More than 100 users marked the comment "useful". Keeping a childlike heart in real life, it seems, means being able to take a few knocks!

Big Fish

Ever since Will was little, his father has told anyone who will listen, at great length, about his legendary life. As an adult, Will dismisses the stories as absurd boasts and lies. He knows his father's stories well, yet feels he does not know his father at all, and the two drift further apart. Only when his father is dying does Will return to his side, and he finally understands that the strange tales his father told are the truest portrait of his life.

Faced with a cold, cruel world, Will's father explains it in a romantic voice and manner. A strange birth, a night visit to a witch, a great athlete, outwitting a giant, meeting conjoined twin sisters, a werewolf ringmaster, a trip to a ghost town... He looks at life through a child's pure eyes and tells his whole life as a fairy tale. Reality may be gray, but in his telling the father keeps its bright and beautiful side.

Love Me If You Dare

When one person asks the other, "Dare you?", the other must answer, "Dare." That is the rule of the game. The little boy Julien and the little girl Sophie meet through just such a childish prank.

Nobody expected them to keep the prank going for ten years, stuck in an immature way of relating in which neither ever says what they mean. They swear, disrupt class, pee in the principal's office, wear their underwear over their clothes... They keep up this game of dares for more than ten years. They dare to do anything except admit they love each other, so they hurt each other, paying back "a tooth for a tooth" like small children.

In the end they carry their recklessness all the way through: they finally confess their feelings, but the place they choose for it is... a construction site.

Fantastic Mr. Fox

Foxes have had a bad image in every age and every country. In Investiture of the Gods, the nine-tailed fox Daji uses her beauty to bring down a kingdom. In Aesop's Fables, the fox flatters a crow and tricks it out of a piece of meat.

But the Mr. Fox of this film really is fantastic. Up against three greedy, cruel farmers, he is willing to go to war with them to feed his family. He loses his tail to their gunfire, but he still comes home a winner.

Has this film changed how you see foxes? We hope that afterward you can look at foxes, and at the world, without prejudice, just as you did when you were a child.

Cinema Paradiso

In a small town in southern Italy, the mischievous little boy Toto often sneaks off to the cinema, and in time he becomes friends with the much older projectionist, Alfredo. Film reels, light and shadow become the greatest joy of Toto's childhood. One day Alfredo puts on an open-air screening, but the film catches fire. Toto drags Alfredo out of the flames, but Alfredo is left blind... So Toto takes over as projectionist. As he grows up, Toto falls in love with Elena, a banker's daughter, but their love comes at the wrong time. After they part, Toto leaves his hometown to chase his own dream...

At the end of the film, Toto and Elena meet again after decades. Many viewers may sigh at the cruelty of time or marvel at how love endures, but perhaps the dream of cinema he has carried since childhood deserves our admiration just as much.