This is a film directed by Scott in 2003.
It tells the story of a professional liar who was deceived himself. The film narrates not the tricks of the liar and the process of deception, but focuses on the psychological portrayal of the protagonist. The protagonist Roy makes a career of deceiving. Never miss a beat. Live alone after divorce. On the one hand, he made a lot of money by cheating him; on the other hand, his lonely life and professional guilt made his life very unhappy, and he got obsessive-compulsive disorder. His partner Frank hatches a scam, instructing Angela, a little con man, to impersonate a daughter he's never met. They both felt very happy when they got along, and Roy was especially glad that he had found his family again. Unexpectedly, the plot reversed, and Frank and Angela wiped out all Roy's property.
A year later, Roy is starting his life again, changing careers to become a real salesman. and reorganized the family. Encounter Angela in the store. When the two met, they didn't feel anger or contempt, instead they missed the past father-daughter relationship more and more.
The scammer industry, like prostitution, has a long and uninterrupted history. Today, it has become a very professional profession involving various groups and fields. There are low-end fields such as pyramid schemes, gambling scams, and telecom fraud, as well as high-end fields with extremely high IQ and careful planning like Roy. However, little is known about the lives and minds of liars. Especially a liar like Roy, when he calls himself a "deceptive artist", he always finds many reasons to justify his actions, feeling that he is relying on his ability to eat, and relying on his three-inch tongue to make the deceived high. If you offer ten times the price of the product, the money will be automatically delivered to your door. But in fact he couldn't convince himself of these reasons. Subconsciously, the innocent and deceived people he has perpetrated for himself have always struggled with a strong sense of guilt.
In addition, he is also a loser in family life. Fifteen years ago, his pregnant wife left him, and he lived alone in a large, luxuriously decorated, empty house with no one around. How melancholy and lonely it was.
Because of these unsatisfactory life, his obsessive-compulsive disorder became more and more serious. It takes three counts to open the door, and the left eye jumps involuntarily. Roy himself was miserable. These symptoms only disappeared when they saw their fake daughter.
By the end of the movie, I was happy for Roy's situation. As the saying goes, "bad things turn into good things", after Frank deceived Roy's property, he objectively helped Roy's liberation and saved Roy. Forced him to have a proper job, found a lovely wife, no obsessive-compulsive disorder, and his left eye stopped beating. The fake daughter has real affection for him.
What is the purpose of life? Many people have their own opinions, rich, powerful, loving, knowledgeable...etc. These are all good, but these are not the ultimate purpose of life, but only the means and conditions to achieve the purpose.
My opinion is: there is joy.
Like Roy, anyone who has a little concept of right and wrong and a little ability to think will not feel justified in obtaining ill-gotten wealth, nor will he feel at ease, and naturally there will be no happiness. Unless those liars who don't have the ability to think, cheat for a lot of fun, and cheat again and again, until they put on handcuffs and go out of the house, it's time to cry. This kind of silly crying and silly music can't be called real happiness, and they can't become normal people in society. Only when you become a normal person, with dignity, love and affection, with freewheeling thinking, and space to tell the truth, can you obtain the eternal happiness you desire. In this process, distorted desires and normal happiness always have constant conflicts. They can only do invisible things in the dark night. They also love the sun, but are afraid of the sun. The result of conflicts and struggles is always is painful. It's normal to have obsessive-compulsive disorder.
What Scott showed us, and hoped we understood, was such a story. Roy, the protagonist played by Nicolas Cage, is also in place. To him, I have never been very eye-catching, and I don't like him always frowning and grimacing. But here, although it is also suffering, it is too consistent with the character's character experience. Give full play to his acting skills. The corner of my left eye that jumps every once in a while, I tried it several times in the mirror, it's really not easy to do! There is also an attitude of being close and unfamiliar when getting along with her daughter, and the tone of saying that she wants to talk to the psychiatrist is really very good.
Roy explains his profession this way: "My job sometimes has to drive up the value of a product, even if it's worthless. Some people call it selling, others call it cheating." For those liars, especially Chinese liars, you can write it out in big letters, frame it and hang it on the wall, and keep it in mind at all times. Of course, it also applies to those salesmen who run the train with their mouths full. Compared with Roy's knowledge and methods, those domestic liars are still at an extremely early stage. Fortunately, the deceived is also in the initial stage, so that he can always succeed. But be careful to keep up with the times.
My rating: 7.0.
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