The film opens in black and white. The black-and-white film is by no means just a symbol of the replay of the story, it is the heavy and dark childhood memory of Jacques - his father sacrificed his life to the sea. However, this did not become the shadow of Jacques' childhood. On the contrary, when he grew up, blue became the master and Jacques became the elf of the sea. If the river means the flow of time, then the sea is the stagnant eternity, and Jacques - not only Jacques, in fact, but also his father and his friend Enzo - desperately gave up everything, in their beloved blue waters get eternal life.
When the father went into the water for the last time, he told his son with a calm face: "Don't worry about me, if I am tired, there will be a mermaid to help me." The disaster happened unexpectedly, leaving a hoarse son. Years later, the son continued his father's path, even more so. The dolphin is his mermaid in the deep sea, his playmate, his blessing.
Suddenly I remembered Petofi's very vulgar poem: "Life is precious, love is more expensive. If it is freedom, both can be thrown away." It was Jacques - a man destined to belong to the ocean. This "French boy" with extremely restrained and deep romantic feelings, his love for the vast dark blue, cannot be tolerated by any woman. However, Joanna still loves him without hesitation. This energetic and attractive woman from New York City fell in love at first sight with a quiet, taciturn and persistent diver in Sicily. The first time she met her, he was intimidated by him. In his clear eyes, there was an innate wandering talent, pure, innocent, innocent, free, and there was loneliness in the depths of his eyes. He said to her, "I know you. In the lack." She was the mermaid on his shores.
In the deep sea, Jacques' heartbeat was extremely slow, and even tended to stop. Dr. Lawrence said that his blood was concentrated in the brain - this is only seen in whales and dolphins. The free Jacques swimming in the depths of the sea is the incarnation of dolphins. For him, the earth is just a rootless floating. Only by lurking on the bottom of the sea is the real landing and the return of life. On the phone, he tells Joanna stories: "How do you get to meet mermaids? Dive into the deep sea, when the water is no longer blue and the sky becomes a memory. You lie in silence, determined to die for them. They Come to greet you and test your love. If your love is sincere and pure, they will stay with you and take you away forever." The innocent Joanna held the phone with a smile: "I like this story. "She didn't know that her Jacques could only melt away the melancholy in her eyes when facing her beloved dolphin; she didn't know that her Jacques saw herself transformed into a cheerful dolphin when she was having sex with her orgasm. She jumped out of the water; she didn't even know that her Jacques had been taken away by the deep sea and the beautiful mermaid, and her soul would never return.
So separation becomes inevitable. The two faced the same problem: he was in the depths of the sea and "difficult to find a reason to come up"; she was on the shore, "difficult to find a reason to stay". Her love for him was so much wider than his love for it that Joanna, who was pregnant, could still say to Jacques, "Go and see, my love!" affectionately—of course, if it was a kind of Compromise in desperation is understandable, but I believe it is out of a kind of understanding, just like Jacques's "unreasonable" last wish to Enzo, it comes from the deep love in the heart, and no one is powerless to refuse. And only the vast sea can truly accommodate everything, including Jacques's simplicity and perseverance, Enzo's arrogance and ambition, and Joanna's infatuation and reluctance.
It is said to be an autobiographical film by Luc Besson, in homage to his youthful dream of diving (although the closing subtitle is "To my daughter Juliet"). However, I prefer to see it as a statement and hope of the director for the normality of reality, a spiritual sustenance, or a potential escape from the world. He has a well-known saying: "A movie is just an aspirin." Out of dissatisfaction with reality, anxiety about the city, turbulence about change, and anxiety about alienated humanity, Luc Besson is in this film. Expressed his anxiety and hesitation. However, this situation cannot be changed or reversed by him. He can only use the adjustment of light and shadow, like a pain-relieving aspirin, to temporarily relieve the mental tension and numb the pain in the soul. Spend a little more thought and use that pure blue and soothing saxophone to satisfy the audio-visual pleasure. I never thought it was a passive escape. I believe this is a conversion to primitive form—in fact, most works with natural landscapes and primitive features as their motifs mean this, and the Big Blue is no exception. Vaguely, it also contains the ecological meaning of praising the interaction, integration, resonance, understanding and tolerance between man and nature.
It is also said that in French, the pronunciation of the sea (Lamer) is very close to the mother (La mere), and in the film, the two have an inherent symbolic meaning. Jacques is to the sea, just as human beings are to the mother body, there is an eternal and hidden impulse to return. Jacques does not belong to this world, he is an angel who fell from the world, who came from the sea and is destined to return to the sea. Enzo is no exception. Although Luc Besson put a lot of symbols on him that symbolize the dregs of modern civilization, in front of the ocean, he is a simple and innocent child after all. Sleep peacefully in the arms of Mother Sea. Speaking of this, it is hard not to think of fatalism, or the reincarnation of fate, or the conversion of the soul. Man is destined to be born to death, isn't it just as the priest of Christ used to say: "From the dirt, to the dirt"? Death is a return. At the same time, Joanna fell into the vicious circle of fatalism unconsciously. Remember the conversation Jacques had with his uncle? "Why did she (mom) leave Dad?" "She didn't leave, she went back to America, which is her hometown." Years later, Joanna from New York fell in love with Jacques, who loves diving. Can follow the road that "mother-in-law" walked, leave her lover, and return to her hometown. When I watched "The Big Blue", I quickly remembered Takeshi Kitano's "That Summer, the Peaceful Sea", which are all slowly telling stories related to the sea, but the styles are very different. Perhaps the biggest difference between the two is that the latter implies a strong life force in the almost silent silence of the film, while the former implies the irresistibility of fate in the single-line narrative.
"The Big Blue" is really a good work, and there are many interesting interpretations in it, such as the shimmering coin in the title and the meaningful words of the priest; Humor lurking in melancholy; like those beautiful scenes that are pleasing to the eye and evoking feelings of pity. In today's film market where commercial blockbusters are filled with clamor, perhaps only a fresh and quiet film like this can purify the turbid air and purify the hearts of the audience.
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