The theme of infidelity is international and universal. The question of loyalty or disloyalty is essentially a question of loyalty. What should people be loyal to? Loyal to duty or loyal to happiness? Loyal to love or lust? I believe that no matter what stage of human development, this is an irremovable puzzle, so it can also be regarded as a philosophical question on the level of human existence. Since it is a philosophical issue, it is difficult to escape dialectics. The so-called dialectical in other words means that the father-in-law and the mother-in-law are reasonable. When you choose to be a mother-in-law and when you choose to be a father-in-law, it all depends on your actual needs. Therefore, if you are smart enough, you can be reasonable. The face of truth is often so ambiguous. Taking a step back, even if human beings can confirm the essence of truth, they still cannot stop trampling on truth in reality. For example, "infidelity", I believe that no matter how the truth becomes clearer and clearer, it will never disappear.
In this way, the crux of the problem is from loyalty or unfaithfulness to the possible consequences of unfaithfulness and the ability of the unfaithful to bear the consequences. People with a sense of morality have to endure moral punishment in the spirit, and those without a sense of morality, even if they can escape the spiritual punishment, may have to suffer more terrible consequences. The movie "Infidelity" superimposes these two consequences of punishment together, and the ending is collapse.
Edward (Richard Gere) and Connie (Diane Lane) have been married for 11 years and their children are 9 years old. They still maintain a loving, tacit and warm relationship. They can be described as a model couple and a happy marriage. An encounter in a tornado caused Connie to be sexually tempted by a young bookseller. After several ideological struggles, she finally indulged her lust. The wild and alternative sex of the young bookseller caused Connie to fall quickly and began the days of lying, deceiving and stealing sex. A lie needs more lies to cover up, and Connie's deception is soon noticed by Edward. Connie, who fell into lust, couldn't help herself while contradicting and blaming herself. When she found out that the young bookseller had other women, she was immediately freaked out and wanted to break with the bookseller, but she still became a bookseller freak in the fight. Captive of strong sex. After a woman is kidnapped by lust, she is really invincible. After Connie left the bookstore, Edward knocked on the door of the bookstore. Edward tried his best to keep calm, understanding the whole story of the book dealer and his wife's affair. Finally, when he fell on the slumbered bed that was just used by his wife and bookstore, he suddenly found that the crystal ball on the bedside was the gift he once gave to his wife. He collapsed and was in confusion. Lift the crystal ball and hit the bookseller. While dealing with the murder scene, Edward heard Connie’s phone message to the bookseller: Can’t bear the guilt of deceiving his family, and broke up with him. However, it was too late for Connie to give up, and the tragedy had already occurred. The police went to the home to investigate twice, and Edward and Connie cooperated tacitly, so they knew what they were doing. Finally, Edward went to the police station to surrender. The car stopped at the entrance of the police station, Connie blocked it again, the two embraced, and the film ended.
From the perspective of the story, the theme of this movie is very simple: infidelity is terrible and the consequences are serious. Such a theme is inevitably too mainstream and too conceptual. Fortunately, the plot of the story is carefully arranged, the rhythm of the narration is well mastered, and the performance of the actors is also very layered. In addition, the handsome male protagonist and the beautiful female lead make the movie still a lot to see.
But I can't always be satisfied with story-level things. If you think about it for a moment, behind this story, there are some things that are not so concise but more universal and philosophical. This is more interesting to me.
Generally speaking, this type of story basically involves the elements of love, sex, eroticism, marriage, interest, and loyalty, as well as the complex interlaced relationships between them. I use "lust" and "marriage" as two threads to sort out these relationships.
The lust itself is very simple. It is the attraction of both sexes. This kind of sexual attraction contains the collision and release of life energy, which is the essence of life. And beauty itself is innocent. Therefore, lust itself is not only understandable, but also worthy of praise and appreciation. Erotic desire is the core of love, but the place where love is greater than erotic desire lies in empathy, sympathy and sacrifice. With these peripheral things outside the core, love can become strong. And because lust is only lust, there is no package of empathy, sympathy, sacrifice, no matter how brilliant and dazzling it is, it is bound to be fragile. Some beautiful things have hidden traps of self-denial and the power of self-destruction. This is the case with naked lust without a package.
Lust and love are sometimes easy to confuse, but the contest between the two can eventually show a contrast of strength. The young bookseller is a person who knows how to enjoy life. He distinguishes lust from love very clearly. He seduces Connie with a very clear purpose, which is to realize lust, not to pursue love. He regards sex as a thrilling and adventurous game, which can be played on the bed, in the corridor, or in the bathroom of the restaurant. He only focuses on the pleasure of sexual venting, and does not care that Connie is someone else’s wife. Said that he did not care about the non-specificity of the erotic objects. Of course, he himself doesn't have to be dedicated to Connie. In addition to Connie, he also has a great interest in other women, which can also be infinitely exciting. It is said that Connie also came for lust, but in the process of stimulating lust, she confuses it with love—requiring specificity. At this time, she forgot that she was originally someone else's wife. Her stealing behavior itself was a denial of specificity. It was ridiculous and even domineering to ask a man who played a sexual stimulation game with herself to be specific to herself. Here, a question that needs to be clarified is whether there is love between Connie and the young bookseller. The road from lust to love is sometimes not far away, but as shown in the movie, they are Obviously, he didn't develop into love, except for going to bed fiercely, there was no other communication and empathy between them. Perhaps, Connie, like many women whose bodies are more sensitive than their brains, confirms Zhang Ailing's ironic words about women-the road to the woman's heart is through the vagina. However, women whose brains are not sensitive enough to the level of Wang Jiazhi are also "rare and rare." Besides, Wang Jiazhi's emotional world is a desert except for Mr. Yi, and although Connie is stealing sex, she still has love with Edward. When lust and love were in a contest, Connie fell to love almost without hesitation.
Wang Jiazhi's revolution did not defeat lust, and Connie's love defeated lust. Disloyal to the revolution, it seems that there is no stronger sense of guilt brought about by disloyalty to love. When Connie has love, she can still be tempted by other erotic desires, but if erotic desire threatens love, she still chooses love.
Connie and the bookseller's original erotic beauty, because it involves the betrayal of love and the choice of love and eroticism, has gradually become self-denying. Finally, when Connie prevented her husband from surrendering, not only did she completely abandon the beauty of lust with the bookseller, but also completely ignored and denied the life value of the book seller, who once brought her lust to burn and made her want to stop. At this time, her life has become worthless in her life. The beauty of Connie's lust was completely transformed into the ugliness of lust.
Of course, since Connie’s love happens to be unified with marriage, in addition to love, the power to overcome lust is the power of the structure itself, that is, the power of the interests represented by marriage. It can be said that the combined effect of love and marriage interests in the same direction can easily revolutionize lust.
What is the happiest marriage? Marriage that is both loving and beneficial. What is the most unfortunate marriage? Marriage without love and profit. However, even if it is a happy marriage with both love and benefit, it is still unavoidable to be tempted, because the greed and curiosity in human nature can never be eradicated. However, smart people know that happiness requires protection and cherishment, know which is more important than happiness and temptation, and know to withdraw their feet before danger comes.
Let love, marriage, and interests finally overcome the temptation of lust. This is a universal mainstream value that is universally accepted by people all over the world. However, while interpreting this universal mainstream value, the film slightly exposes a shortcoming, that is, its disregard for the value of the individual life of booksellers.
In the argument between Edward and Connie about the reasons for surrendering, it was all about their marriage, family, and children, and there was not a single word about the value of the bookseller's life. It seems that the bookseller is a damn moral sacrifice. This is in line with the moral indignation of some Chinese towards the "third party." It's just that the "third party" here is male rather than female.
However, after all, the "third party" (bookseller) did not disloyal to anyone, but paid the price of his life for the marriage of the disloyal person (Connie). Isn't he the most tragic? The film's complete disregard of the life value of this character is a humanistic and humanitarian failure.
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