I thought it was a good-looking pure romance (love novel) when I was watching the drama, and it felt more like a Bildungsroman (growth education novel) when I made up the novel, until it became an excellent absurd human love in the aftertaste.
Two people, three times together, start the search up and down the three-layer realm.
Fortunately, he and she didn't lose their way after all, and they didn't want to let go of each other's hands.
three love relationships
February 2011 "I tempted you."
During high school, due to Lorraine (Cornell's mother) working as a part-time worker at Marian's house, Cornell and Marian, who were extremely polar in their social life, began to interact privately. At the beginning of the relationship, Marianne seems to be a straight ball, but in reality, she seeks care and love.
Under the action of youth hormones, they are agitated and confused, and they are exploring and confused. They use their bodies as a medium to explore nakedly. They have countless confusions, but they haven't gathered enough courage to ask the world. Her body closest to him, his spirit closest to her, in a place where only he and her exist, they become each other's world. Therefore, there is no indifference, no harm, and no shackles. Yet youth and ignorance make the world rip apart from within. The ant nest is actually very small. Cornell invites other girls to the prom, but the dyke of love and trust still falls short.
They seem so different. Cornell was born poor, gregarious and taciturn, a popular sunny boy; Marian came from a prominent family, withdrawn and arrogant, and was notoriously neurotic.
But they are so similar. They were all alone, Marianne was out like a thorny rose, Cornell was introverted like a crappy actor. Their loneliness all comes from sensitive and precocious.
Marianne was surrounded by domestic violence since she was a child. Her father died early, and her mother was tough and condoned her brother's abuse and beatings. She's smart, but she can't imagine what it feels like to be loved. Even if she clearly desperately longs to be loved.
Cornell was trapped in a cage that had to be nothing like a Waldron. Even if his mother's love and respect are given at any time, he also understands that the poor family background and the misdeeds of the Waldron family (mentioned in the novel, not disclosed in the play) cannot tolerate his mistakes. So he is too much in the evaluation of the outside world.
It wasn't until his friend Eric gossips about his secret relationship that died early at the prom that Cornell realized that what he had justified to hurt Marianne and himself was no one cares.
This was probably the most horrifying thing Eric could have said to him, not because it ended his life, but because it didn't.
He thought that he would stand up on horseback wearing armor and armor, and guard against shortcoming, but it was as if Don Quixote suddenly fell into a dream and found the wrong battlefield.
However, academically, thanks to Marianne You should study English, he did wither the green trees in the west wind last night, climbed the tall buildings alone, and looked to the end of the world . Originally intending to hide in his hometown and pretend to be normal people, he gave up his local law major and chose to go north to pursue his dream of English literature. Needless to say, Marianne also went to Fang Tianya, where Cornell happened to go. After all, she was smarter than everyone and she already had an academic path in mind.
April 2012 "I was frustrated sometimes but not lonely."
When they met again in college, there was a 180-degree reversal in the positions of Marianne and Cornell in their social life, but the popular Marianne really said what I would never pretend not to know you , she generously recognized the cramped Cornell at first sight. Unlike Cornell in those years, Marianne actively introduced Cornell, who was not very comfortable with college life, into her social circle. They were drawn back to each other and had what Cornell later recalled as the happiest period of their lives.
They continued the journey of discovery in high school, and they embarked on a more profound journey of Know Yourself compared to the scratch at that time, which also matched with each other's academic growth in college. Their peaceful and peaceful good time, under the camera, is a long and beautiful flow of small emotions, which is a stable world and a quiet time. However, the good times didn’t last long. Cornell’s place of work was going to be closed for renovations. Having lost his source of income, he couldn’t afford the rent for the summer vacation. Obviously, he asked Marianne for help to live with him for a transition. Cornell couldn't say anything. His vague statement was finally understood by Marianne as a declaration of separation, and the sense of abandonment made her thorns stand up all of a sudden.
If poverty is Cornell's nightmare, then not being loved is Marianne's hell. They are growing, and they are happy with each inch, but they have to endure the pain of growth after all. Inexplicably, they broke up again.
After breaking up, life was still going on, not to mention that their goodwill towards each other never dissipated. Unable to bear each other's withdrawal from each other's lives, they chose to stand together as friends, even if this often aroused the hostility of each other's other half. Gradually widening the belt and never regretting it, Yi Xiao made people haggard. Not just for each other, but also for learning.
It was also during this long time of watching each other but growing up that they began to examine themselves again and again, and they also retraced their relationship with each other again and again, and revealed their hearts to each other again and again.
July 2014 -"I'll go." -"I'll stay. And we'll be OK."
After Cornell won the scholarship, his life suddenly became more comfortable, and the sexy money allowed him to really set foot on a foreign land in the summer, and he could finally calmly say the words that were mistaken for breaking up in the past; With continued encouragement and support, Cornell unguarded him, speaking of his confusion and pain in his intimacy. Even though he felt a huge sense of shame when he said weird, revealing himself already required a lot of courage, and it was the first step in true healing. Having experienced Marianne's masochistic tendencies, Cornell's low self-esteem and depression, their reliance on each other is inextricable.
Because we understand, we rely on; because we understand, we cherish. If the fireworks of love are fleeting, then the light of understanding will never stop.
There is no need to say anything, the New Year's Eve kiss is in the noisy bar and the crowd's attention; if she wants to, then he is willing to travel up the river of time to appease her grievances over the years. He used to be so inferior and unwilling to be intimate with the dazzling her in front of others; she was so arrogant at that time, thinking that not showing in front of others was because she did not love. They spent years going around and around, and finally both of them were convinced enough in their hearts that He/she loves me. Even if they had to face another separation. They will not be departed until love depart them.
Suddenly looking back, the man was in the dim light. Not only Cornell to Marianne, Marianne to Cornell, but also literature to Cornell, and political philosophy to Marianne.
Privacy Love
From the period of Dare or not full puppy love, Cornell and Marianne's love has been saturated with a full sense of privacy. She and him, and even their love, have never been willing to show others. It was a small world that Cornell was particularly reluctant to share.
Maybe at first, it was because of fear, he was afraid that Marian, who was too sharp, would suddenly break the illusion of his good life.
Although, privacy also makes their intimacy thicker.
Most people go through their whole lives, Marianne thought, without ever really feeling that close with anymore.
Maybe then, because of his low self-esteem, he is afraid that Marian, who is too dazzling, can immediately reflect his humbleness and loftiness.
Although, intimacy also drives their more wholesome personalities.
If she was different with Connell, the difference was not happening inside herself, in her personhood, but in between them, in the dynamic.
For the privacy between himself and Marianne to be invaded by Peggy, or by another person, would destroy something inside him, a part of his selfhood, which doesn't seem to have a name and which he has never tried to identify before.
Perhaps in the end, it was because of cherishing that he liked his beloved Marianne, and because of their love, he kept a part of him, just as he also kept a part of her. This sense of integration makes them have a small world outside the world, enough to resist the malice of the world, and enough for them to love each other for a long time as the one.
Growing Love (Worthy)
Because of their imperfect families, and because of their sensitive and precocious dispositions, Cornell and Marianne both felt more or less in their adolescence the one-thousandth of the insufficiency that would never be filled. Yet they grow in love and understanding for each other, not only the growth itself, but the conviction that they are worthy.
It's Cornell's self-awakening:
He had just wanted to be normal, to conceal the parts of himself that he found shameful and confusing. It was Marianne who had shown him other things were possible. Life was different after that; maybe he had never understood how different it was.
It was Marianne's first experience of love:
She has never believed herself fit to be loved by any person. But now she has a new life, of which this is the first moment, and even after many years have passes she will still think: Yes, that was it, the beginning of my life.
It's Marianne's loveless confession:
I don't know what's wrong with me, says Marianne. I don't know why I can't be like normal people. Her voice sounds oddly cool and distant, like a recording of her voice played after she herself has gone away or departed for somewhere else.
From a young age her life has been abnormal, she knows that. But so much is covered over in time now, the way leaves fall and cover a piece of earth, and eventually mingle with the soil. Things that happened to her then are buried in the earth of her body. She tries to be a good person. But deep down she knows she is a bad person, corrupted, wrong and all her efforts to be right, to have the right opinions, to say the right things, these efforts only disguise what is buried inside her, the evil part of herself.
It is the source of Cornell's sense of value:
It's like waiting for a life to arrive and when the doors open nothing is there, just the terrible dark emptiness of the elevator shaft, on and on forever. She's missing some primal instinct, self-defence or self-preservation, which makes other human beings comprehensible. You lean in expecting resistance, and everything just falls away in front of you. Still, he would lie down and die for her at any minute, which is the only thing he knows about himself that makes him feel like a worthwhile person .
It's Marianne's no longer suspicious of being loved:
No one can be independent of other people completely, so why not give up the attempt, she thought, go running in the other direction, depend on people for everything, allow them to depend on you, why not. She knows he loves her, she doesn't wonder about that anymore.
It is Cornell's growth perception:
It's funny the decisions you make because you like someone, he says, and then your whole life is different. I think we were at that weird age where life can change a lot from small decisions. But you've been a very good influence on me overall, like I definitely am a better person now, I think. Thanks to you.
It's Cornell's progressive love confession
Marianne, he said, I'm not a religious person but I do sometimes think God made you for me.
It was Marianne who finally calmly loved and was loved
She closes her eyes. He probably won't come back, she thinks. Or he will, differently. What they have now they can never have back again. But for her the pain of loneliness will be nothing to the pain that she used to feel, of being unworthy. He brought her goodness like a gift and now it belongs to her. Meanwhile his life opens out before him in all directions at once. They've done a lot of good for each other. Really, she thinks, really. People can really change one another.
Absurdity
Cornell and Marianne are too typical absurd people. They are clearly aware of their abnormality, they have also tried to blend in with the crowd, they are also suffering from the irrational silence of the world, and even themselves "I will always be a stranger to myself".
Camus said in The Myth of Sisyphus,
The world itself is incomprehensible, and all we can say is that. The so-called absurd refers to the conflict between irrationality and the desire to be clear. The absurd depends on people, and more or less depends on the world. The absurd is the only connection between man and the world at present, tying the two together, just as only hatred can bind the world.
This separation of people from their lives, of actors from their backgrounds, is precisely the sense of absurdity. (Camus)
Marianne had the sense that her real life was happening somewhere very far away, happening without her, and she didn't know if she would ever find out where it was and become part of it.
The work gives the author's life a meaning. (Camus)
He couldn't explain aloud what he finds so absorbing about his emails to Marianne, but he doesn't feel that it's trivial. The experience of writing them feels like an expression of a broader and more fundamental principle, something in his identity, or something even more abstract, to do with life itself.
In certain lucid moments, the mechanical aspect of their behavior, their senseless posturing, makes everything around them foolish. (Camus)
They were attended only by people who wanted to be the kind of people who attended them. (litterary events)
If people appeared to behave pointlessly in grief, it was only because human life was pointless, and this was the truth that grief revealed. He knows that a lot of the literary people in college see books primarily as a way of appearing cultured.
During their adolescence, Cornell and Marianne had already felt the separation of themselves and the world, an existential philosophical speculation that made them feel out of tune with the world around them, and became part of their lives as they grew up together. It has also become a part of the other part of their self that they have achieved together, and they have overcome the sense of meaninglessness of life and the impulse of self-destruction through each other, through the highly compatible spirit of each other.
In addition, there are discussions and reflections on various topics in the novel, which has become the best treasure trove to search for the story behind the drama, which makes the plot still extend beyond the screen. But the advantage of this play is that it is really just a visual language tool to tell, the original flavor of the novel is still in it, but it adds a bit of image aesthetics. A large number of psychological descriptions that cannot be presented in the film seem to have been filled with emotions in the silent still life and the close-up of the stay.
Cornell talks ex-girlfriend Rachel
He had thought that being with her would make him feel less lonely, but it only gave his loneliness a new stubborn quality, like it was planted down inside him and impossible to kill.
Cornell talks ex-girlfriend Helen
To be known as her boyfriend plants him firmly in the social world, establishes him as an acceptable person, someone with a particular status, someone whose conversational silences are thoughtful rather than socially awkward.
Marianne introspects:
She knew that if she wanted to speak, everyone would probably turn around and listen out of sincere interest, and that made her happy too, although she had nothing at all to say.
Cornell's introspection:
If anything, his personality seemed like something external to himself, managed by the opinions of others, rather than anything he individually did or produced. Now he has a sense of invisibility, nothingness, with no reputation to recommend him to anyone.
talk about money
That's money, the substance that makes the world real. There's something so corrupt and sexy about it.
on feminism
It's nothing worse than this mostly, it's just this all the time, nothing but this, and long empty weekdays wiping down surfaces and wringing damp sponges into the sink.
There's always been something inside her that men have wanted to dominate, and their desire for domination can look so much like attraction, even love. In school the boys had tried to break her with cruelty and disregard, and in college men had tried to break her with sex and popularity, all with the same aim of subjugating some force in her personality.
It depressed her to think people were so predictable. Whether she was respected or despised , it didn't make much difference in the end. Would every stage of her life continue to reveal itself as the same thing , again and again , the same remorseless contest for dominance?
Talk about Beipiao
I just feel like I left Carricklea thinking I could have a different life, he says. But I hate it here, and now I can never go back there again.
talk about depression
Internally he felt nothing. He was like a freezer item that has thawed too quickly on the outside and was melting everywhere, while the inside was still frozen solid.
talk about love
It just happened, like drawing your hand back when you touch something hot.
His appearance is like a favorite piece of music to her, sounding a little different each time she hears it.
Sexual but not lewd, sad but not sad, no matter how confused and troubled, all believe that the protagonists have the young power to break out of the new world. The lens is delicate, so delicate that the corners of the eyes and brows are full of emotions. Various still lifes and backgrounds seem to be soaked in the stream of consciousness of the protagonist.
The myth of growing up more difficult than others because of being sensitive and precocious, and finally having some joy and understanding because of each other's side, hurting each other because of youth, and sadness in both places because of clumsiness, but by your side I never Not alone, but by my side you are not afraid of the absurd.
For the growth story of youth love, the best imagination is Cornell and Marianne.
View more about Normal People reviews
