《男孩的生活》

    Since Leonardo DiCaprio finally got his overdue* Oscar for best actor, we’d like to share with you where he started. He made his big screen breakthrough* in 1992 at 18, when he was handpicked by Robert De Niro out of 400 young actors to play the lead role in “This Boy’s Life.”

    Adapted from the memoir* of the same name by American author Tobias Wolff, it is directed by Michael Caton-Jones and stars DiCaprio as Tobias Wolff, De Niro as stepfather Dwight Hansen, and Ellen Barkin as Toby’s mother, Caroline.

    After her divorce, Caroline packs her son into the old Nash sedan* and drives out to Washington State, hoping for a fresh start, and hoping that Toby will calm down and start doing better in school. Their journey’s end is the town of Concrete, where Caroline meets Dwight who wants to marry her.

    After the wedding, the mother and her son move in with Dwight, and the trouble starts.

    De Niro shows Dwight as a man whose low self-esteem* borders on self-contempt*, and who tries to cover it by finding fault* in everyone around him. He is a verbal bully, a liar, an emotional con man.

    Caroline perhaps sees her husband clearly enough, but has made a decision early in the marriage. She will not get in between Dwight and Toby. She is a bystander in the war. Maybe that works out all right for Toby, who is forced to grow up more quickly, to develop confidence* in himself, to learn to take a stand.

    During this time, Toby befriends his classmate Arthur Gayle (Jonah Blechman). Hoping to leave Concrete and live with his older brother Gregory (a Yale student separated from Toby and his mother by the divorce), Toby decides to apply for East Coast prep-school scholarships. Realizing his grades are not good enough to be accepted, Toby devises a plan to submit falsified* grade reports with the help of Arthur. After numerous rejections*, Toby is finally accepted by the Hill School in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, with a full scholarship.

    At the end of the film, following two years of marriage, Caroline defends Toby from Dwight during a violent argument and they are both seen leaving Dwight and the town of Concrete. (SD-Agencies)