Meredith still cried when she died. I remembered that I used to cry and roll on the ground because I felt fat and stupid. I remembered that my mother took my book and said that it was because I read too much that it became strange. When I remembered despair, I felt that I had nowhere to go. I also want to jump. Last night, I was talking to people about the crisis of meaning that I couldn't get rid of since I was a child, and I saw the excerpt of "The whole world is outside me, but I am within me" excerpted from the first day of the new year.
The sadness of this film comes from putting in front of you the feeling that everyone has, day after day, hidden, and constantly resurfaced. It's all too real: that's the way it is and it can't get better. It's not so real, after all, most people don't even notice this grief, people don't think, don't read, don't know the meaning of the world is not theirs, can't imagine, their minds are defenseless. Pain is a wakefulness, and writing is to keep yourself from going mad. The male protagonist's writing is detached, and Meredith's photography is right in the center of the vortex. Children are indifferent to everything and teachers are like their future. This kind of indifference will one day become unbearable for a minute and a second of this life. They are haunted by trivial pains but most of the time live in a daze, and they hope to guide these children but can't do anything about it. And those invisible parents are the last people who don't know what the stars are? Are miserable teachers and irresponsible children better than them? Are these last men responsible for a world of general misery and general indifference, full of self-deceiving lies and comforts and meaningless pleasures? "Draw something positive, Meredith."
We failed, we let everyone down, including ourselves, and we were powerless to others, ourselves, and the world. The male protagonist says things will get better, but he doesn't believe it himself. He tried his best to take the lie as truth, and Meredith's death made that lie starkly presented as a lie. If being angry twice is an edge that the male protagonist can't handle in his own life, Meredith's death is the moment when he faces the same life situation of others, and the absurdity of the world itself opens up to him.
The meaning of teachers is only to maintain order and improve scores, and the meaning of schools is only the price of housing in the school district. The meaning of work is only to consume, and the meaning of consumption is only to be consumed. He sits in a broken classroom and reads, no one can be saved, fewer and fewer people can and will be saved, and people don't even need to be saved. He couldn't save himself either.
One can be an outsider by standing beside the pain, or one can give a form to the unfathomable pain, both of which can be achieved by reading and creating. The hero is still alive. Meredith is dead. She is so sad, and the male protagonist is swallowed up by the inner emptiness. "I'm not here. I'm hollow." The male protagonist is an outsider, he can have peace, but the movie reminds you all the time that this kind of outsider's peace is unreal. "I have never felt so deeply that my soul is so far away from me, and my existence is so dependent on the world." I am all within me, but I cannot escape from the world . Being and the soul are never divisible, and the wholeness of being in the world itself is a revelation of the falsity of the soul's detachment.
For existence, the necessary transcendental stipulation in the world itself is a harm to its absolute essence, and the unexpressed desire will bring about alienation from reality and the melancholy anxiety of being trapped in immanence, until the Oneself drowned in meaningless emptiness or unstoppable pain. The incomplete realization of essence is, on the one hand, alien and, on the other, self-contradictory. Being must define itself in itself, give the content of alien a form of self, give a style to the radicality and meaninglessness of being itself. Absurdism and existentialism, the former thinks that they can use absurdity to defend themselves but completely surrender themselves, while the latter thinks that they can create their own meaning and take responsibility as a human being, but they do not have a deep enough grasp of the fundamental and profound devouring of existence. The harmful fundamentals of strength and determinacy.
So giving form to suffering is so moving and so difficult, yet it is something that a person who has not completely lost his mind cannot escape. This is an unstoppable work, a cause to be controlled by transcendent, direct, extraordinary courage. Keep writing to keep yourself from going crazy. Or the pain, the absurdity of existence, will kill you.
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