Let's talk about the translation of the name first. The original name is "A Ghost Story", which means "ghost story". The translator translated it as "Ghost Rebirth" according to the plot. This is the most apt translation of the name in the video I've seen.
The director is David Lowe, and he must be a slow guy. And those directors of gangster movies and gangster movies go to two extremes, where the heroes can kill countless people in a minute, and here, the camera is set in a dim scene, and can be motionless for a few minutes. When the audience is about to fall asleep, they switch to another scene without any hassle.
The protagonist of the story is called "C". The woman's name is "M". The two are lovers. Live together in a big house in the suburbs. C unfortunately got into a car accident one morning and M sent him to the hospital where he died. M left with great grief, but C turned into a ghost, and walked on the way home, took the white sheets of the hospital morgue, and dug two holes in the eye area.
Remember that C is already a ghost at this time. He can see people, but people can't see him, and he can't communicate with people. He can only watch and think silently. I remember that ghosts are also expressed in this way in "The Love of Human Ghosts". This is different from our Chinese view of ghosts. Chinese ghosts can seduce souls, collect debts, find substitutes, and enter people's daily lives. American ghosts haven't evolved to this point yet.
C came back home, watched M's life, watched her sadness when she missed C, watched her write down her feelings into a note when she moved out of the house, stuffed it into the crack of the wall, watched her have another new love, in The scene of kissing in front of the door.
Seeing this, if you think that the film is showing the shortness of people's pain and the fickleness of emotions, then you underestimate the director too much.
C continued to watch in this house, how easy the owner was, how much laughter, how much sadness. Later, the house was old and was torn down by the powerful excavator, and a skyscraper was built. Until then the time is bizarrely reversed. Just responding to the old saying: "I saw him raise a tall building, I saw him feasting on guests, and I saw his building collapse."
C, as a ghost at this time, his position is very strange. On the one hand, he cannot participate in the colorful life of human beings, and can only be anxious by the side; Dimensionally, to observe people's lives and appreciate history. There is a saying in China: People are doing it, God is watching. There are a lot of derogatory meanings in this sentence, which means don't do bad things, God remembers it, and will punish you sooner or later. And what the film shows us is: people are doing, ghosts are watching. Even if people have a vague feeling about this peeping ghost, there is no need to be afraid, because he is something of another world and will not have any influence on his own life and life. Only a ghost is left watching and pondering the meaning of life.
In the film, it is said that at a party after the house changed hands, a man who drank too much published a grand essay, to the effect: "What is the meaning of life? If it's not for money, it's for people to remember. Live him. A writer wrote a novel, Beethoven wrote the Ninth Symphony, we build our achievements little by little, all to be remembered? There must be a day in the future when the earth and the sun are destroyed , Humans moved to other planets and became primitive people, hunters and scavengers. Suddenly one of them hummed the melody of the Ninth Symphony, which gave everyone a little bit of hope and made people feel that there is no such thing in the world. Just fear, hunger and hatred. So humanity survived and civilization got back on track.”
Remember that it is only a means, and the ultimate goal is to let people feel the hope brought by "Ode to Joy". Even if the house is torn down, after many times of reincarnation, the stars have moved, the vicissitudes of life, people are still stubbornly surviving and multiplying. If one day, this world does not exist, and this part of human history is not empty. The thoughts, emotions, pains and joys that God has bestowed upon mankind will be eternal.
In the understanding of the film, there may be another kind of pessimism, so let's not talk about it.
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