Michael is a professor from England who came to California to give his presentation on providing service. He is also mentally troubled in that everyone sounds exactly like a dull 30-year-old man to him despite his or her gender and age. In addition, Michael is not happy, he is very sensitive and romantic and he cannot be satisfied in his normal life. So he set up a date with his high school sweetheart and mess it up; then he met this girl called Lisa who sounds differently to him and mess it up. In the end, he is still lonely and unsatisfied.
What interest me most about this movie are: 1. everyone sounds the same to Michael except for Lisa but Lisa turned into everyone else in the end; 2. A creative design which every face is that of a toy. So I'm going to try to analyze these two factors of this movie.
Voices
I was waiting for the third voice in this movie when there are only two in the beginning. I had a second of doubt that this might make the movie a work of minimalism, but the design of character images says otherwise. Every face presents each expression of a character with delicate differences, which indicates that the director cares about the character emotions. That's when I realized that the author is telling us that nobody is special enough for him to notice or make out the differences in their voices. So I began waiting for this person that can strike a difference for him. And this girl did come. A normal, plain-looking girl with flaws on her head as expected. And of course, she is also funny, smart and loyal. However, I was not surprised at all when Lisa became normal to Michael again and her voice returned to the dull baritone. For me,their relationship was little more than mere affection mixed with lust and alcohol. The author has not pretended to hide his intention on the three voices.
To be clear, Michael was most likely to be attracted to Lisa, we know that as Lisa was the only one that sounded different than everyone else. The crush between them results from his desperate needs to feel more. Michael is an old scholar who spends most of his life studying how to please people. Knowing all the tricks, however, makes him awfully hard to be pleased. He was way too sensitive, or in a way, too insensitive to feel anything around him. He is like a man who can only survive in the desert only with urine, and Lisa is the only fresh, drinkable drop of water that he must get.
One drop of water, however, will not keep a man alive for long. Lisa could never be enough for Michael.
I always believe that there is a huge distance between love and affection. Love is a bound that is almost unbreakable that grows with or without affection. Affection however is nothing but a combination of sexual arousal and a feeling of delight when one is with another human being or even creature. Based on my observation, what Lisa and Michael have is affection, and what Michael really needs to feel is love.
Many things change in a man after climax. And sexual desire takes too much a part of affection that most men will not even admit. Part of Michael himself has changed and thus part of the relationship that Michael pictured for both of them has vanished. So for Michael, Lisa was not Lisa anymore and “love” is only affection that fades away.
Besides, love can hardly appear when two sides of a relationship is so unequal. Lisa adores Michael very much and she does not think much of herself. She is therefore always nervous around Michael. When human beings get nervous, and self-abased, they tend to hide part of themselves and pretend to be someone else. When Lisa is sober, she is always telling herself to shut up is the best instance. Ironically, Michael likes her when she does not hide as much. When she showed nothing of herself the next morning, she turned into a completely different person and she turned ordinary.
The change of Lisa's voice is the clue of the story.
Toy-like faces
There is a very clear sign for the indication of the toy-like faces of characters where Michael's face fell off in his vision. When it fell out, we can see that everything else that belongs to the face stays. As far as I am concerned , the author was telling us that after years of studying how to please people, it became common for him that people never speak their own mind. For the simple reason that you will not be fond of everyone you meet if you work in the service industry , but you certainly need to be ardent and warm-hearted. While the truth still reveals elsewhere. For instance, eyes cannot lie as mouths, and that's why their eyes are still on their heads. You may not speak the truth, but there will always people like Michael or not half as good as him that detects the truth you are trying to hide. For Michael, everything is a lie,so everything sounds the same.
Generally I like this movie quite much for its complexity, yet I saw on the comment that many people hate it for that Michael is a jerk and he cheats. Although a movie about a cheater seems meaningless with bad influence on teenagers, we shall not understand him based on our own level of knowledge and moral standards even for properly enjoying this movie.
Human beings need more stimuli in life than what they normally get from marriage. To do that, some people change themselves; some suffer and the other go into disloyalty. For some, sex is only a kind of stimulus that needs to be triggered from time to time. It has nothing to do with love and commitment. For Michael in particular, he is way more sensitive than most people which make it unbearable for him to not feel enough. Actually, I will not be surprised if he spends most of his life searching for a refreshing feeling of love and excitement. For him, a mind-blowing love is probably like food and water to us.
Nevertheless, it should not be the point. The movie is delivering far more than the disastrous effect a cheating husband brings to his family.
As the production team must have made a lot of effort on this movie, we should not judge it solely with our resentment for the disloyalty.
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