So I went to the cinema with the heart of admiring the masterpiece. However, after coming out, I didn't seem to be touched by the movie.
Until later, after watching different film reviews, I also thought a lot. I have to say that the movie is still very good. It's just that what many movies want to express is too vague, and it's hard to understand when sitting in the theater for a while.
The plot of the movie's story is very simple: Connor, a young man, loves his mother deeply, but his mother is suffering from a serious illness that is incurable and goes from bad to worse. I know my mother can't stay, but I don't want my mother to leave. Young Connor summoned a giant tree monster and went through a spiritual journey of self-salvation with it.
The framework is not difficult to understand.
But the confusion about the movie originated from the four stories told by the monster and Connor that supported the narrative rhythm of the entire movie. These 4 stories present Connor's thought changes in a subtle and interesting way to the audience.
What I want to say is my understanding of the four stories.
(In order to better understand the children's shoes who have never watched the movie, I will try to tell the story as much as possible below.)
Story 1: The Prince's Revenge (said by the monster to Connor)
The three main characters in the story:
1. The king.
The king turned out to have a kind queen, and the queen died of excessive sadness due to the death of three sons. Later, the king married another beautiful woman, but the new queen was a witch.
2. The witch.
Suspected of poisoning the king and ascending to the throne, he was rumored to have failed in the lure of the fourth prince. Later, he was suspected of killing the prince’s lover.
3. The prince.
In the name of revenge for the king, revenge for the lover, gather the army, summon the monster (a yew tree is also the monster summoned by Connor), finally overthrow the witch, become the new king, and live happily ever after.
In fact, every story can be said to be a psychological suggestion that Connor imagined based on reality. In contrast to reality, it was at this time that Connor's mother's condition was under control (in Connor's view, it was actually getting worse). He believed what his mother said to him, and her mother said that she would get better.
But my grandma didn't think so. Grandma wanted her mother to be hospitalized for treatment, and planned to take Connor to her home for easy care. Connor was 10,000 unwilling. He thought his grandmother didn't like him and thought she was going to separate him and his mother.
The story is directly related to reality: the king corresponds to the mother; the witch corresponds to the grandmother; and the prince corresponds to Connor himself.
Connor loves his mother, just as the prince in the story loves the king (or the position of the king). The witch is the one who destroys all this (killing the king), just like grandma dismantled Connor and mother.
However, the truth of the story goes in another direction: the king died of aging, not the killer under the witch; while the prince’s lover was killed by the prince himself, and used this to play and wield his army to regain the throne.
The truth is that the prince himself killed the
witch whose lover was regarded as a bad person, and did not do anything bad. Instead, the prince weaved a lie.
Behind this kind of truth is the contradiction in Connor's thoughts: In fact, Connor has already understood in his heart that his mother will never be able to save it. This is the truth.
However, Connor chose to believe the white lie his mother told him, but also the lie he told himself: Mom will get better. He is willing to deceive himself this way, because lies make him feel happy.
Corresponding to the lie, the prince’s beloved woman in the story represents the truth. But she was killed by Connor (Prince) in her heart, which symbolized Connor's refusal to accept the truth.
As for the grandmother, Connor couldn't understand. He thought she was the villain who separated himself and her mother, and the witch villain. But the truth is that grandma is Connor's mother's mother, and she also loves her daughter deeply. The witch did not harm the king, she also loved the king. She didn't seduce the prince, she just wanted to take care of him.
Connor told the monster that he didn't like the story. In fact, it also reflects that everything is just that he is unwilling to accept the truth.
Story 2: The pharmacist and the priest (said to Connor by the monster)
also first tell the main characters in the story:
1. Pharmacist: A greedy but clever pharmacist, the potion he makes can cure all diseases.
2. Pastor: believers who are loyal to the faith, think that the pharmacist is a heretic and appeal to the public to reject him, so that the pharmacist’s business cannot go on. The pastor has two beloved daughters.
3. Yew tree: potion material that can cure all diseases. The pharmacist always wanted to cut it off and used it to make potions, but the priest firmly opposed it.
The story is relatively simple. The pastor's two daughters were seriously ill and were incurable by the group of doctors. The priest could only ask the pharmacist to save his daughter. The pharmacist asked the yew tree to be cut down, and the priest allowed it; the pharmacist asked the priest to give up his faith, and the priest agreed to save his daughter. The pharmacist easily gave up his faith because of the pastor, and did not promise to save the pastor's daughters. Finally, the pastor's daughter died of illness.
The real background of this story is that Connor saw his mother's illness worsen and was hospitalized, and his belief that "mother will get better" began to collapse.
Like a loyal pastor, he gave up his faith in order to save his daughter's illness. In order to allow his mother to receive better treatment, Connor chose to abandon his stubbornness and move into his grandmother's house. Therefore, here, the grandmother's home symbolizes the renunciation of faith and is a place of compromise.
At the same time, the father who had divorced Connor's mother came back from the United States to see his son Connor. Connor originally thought that his father loved him, but he was "betrayed" by his father, which was another collapse of faith.
"Faith is half the cure", this is Connor's suggestion to himself-stick to the faith. In the story, the pastor lost the opportunity to save his two daughters because he gave up his faith, and Connor could not let himself become a pastor. Moreover, in reality, Connor heard that the juice of the yew tree can be made into a new medicine to treat his mother (this also corresponds to the setting in the story that the yew tree can cure all diseases), which strengthens Connor. Belief-Mom can get better.
So, how can you show your determination? Connor chose to destroy, destroying what he believed to be the abandoned place of faith-grandmother's home.
It can be seen here that in the story, the pastor’s daughters represent Connor’s mother and father.
However, the reality is that the mother's illness still cannot be cured, and the father still cannot accept him.
The pastor's two daughters eventually died of illness.
Story 3: The Invisible Man (said by the monster to Connor) The
third story is different from the previous two stories. It does not have a peculiar narrative style, but is based on reality and comes out suddenly.
In school, Connor has a classmate who always bullies himself. This classmate later got tired of Connor. He wanted to ignore Connor's existence and regarded Connor as an invisible person.
To be ignored means to be alone. Loneliness is the last thing Connor dared to imagine, because it represents the days when there is no mother by his side in the future. Connor could not accept this, and chose to prove his existence by violence, and beat his classmates severely.
Connor rushed to his classmates to be
invisible. People hate to be invisible. The invisibility mentioned here, I think, symbolizes Connor's self-enclosure: he does not want others to see his heart, and he does not want to show his heart to others.
The classmate was finally beaten into the hospital by Connor, so that other classmates were farther away from Connor.
People who are lonely are still lonely. Those who choose to be invisible and self-enclosed can only be alone.
Story 4: Nightmare (said by Connor to the monster) The
monster asks Connor to tell it the fourth story, which is Connor's nightmare.
Connor has been haunted by nightmares. In the nightmare, Connor's mother fell into the ground. Connor desperately grasped her mother's hand to prevent her from falling into the abyss of the ground.
The ground sinking in the dream undoubtedly symbolizes the long sleep of the mother after her death. But Connor firmly did not allow his mother to die.
Connor could only vent such a strong emotion in a nightmare. In reality, Connor closed his mouth tightly and restrained his emotions in the face of his mother, father, and grandmother. Because of this, Connor chose to deceive himself, chose to stick to his faith silently, and chose to close himself.
In fact, at the beginning of the movie, the monster said to Connor: "I am not here to save your mother, but to save you." Helping Connor to vent his true emotions is the purpose of the monster.
When telling the fourth story, Connor once again entered a nightmare. Still holding tightly to the mother's hand who was about to fall into the ground, this time, Connor failed to catch the end, and mother fell into the abyss. Connor hissed and cried, finally letting the strong emotion find its way out.
Back to reality, when his mother was dead, Connor and her mother finally got along, and finally said the words from the bottom of his heart-"I don't want you to leave".
I finally said what I was saying to my mother,
even though I was still reluctant to give up, it already contained the understanding that my mother was about to leave.
The four stories correspond to facing lies, sticking to beliefs, facing loneliness, and learning to let go, which are all necessary hurdles in the growth of children.
I think that monsters represent death. In fact, the monster's body, the yew tree, is located in a large cemetery.
The prince cheated the monster to help him seize the throne. It was a lie that Connor thought he could fool death; the sap of the yew tree could cure all diseases, which was Connor's fluke and illusion of death.
However, death will come.
The monster asks Connor to tell his nightmare and tells the fourth story, which is also to ask Connor to show his attitude towards death. In the end, Connor lay in the arms of the monster, which also proved that Connor had accepted and faced his mother's death. This is the transformation of growth inspired by death.
Just like the beginning of the movie, a sentence uttered in the voice of a monster: too old to be a kid, too young to be a man.
Death is a hurdle for a person to grow from a child to an adult.
In fact, everyone has a monster hidden in their hearts. Because death always comes with life.
As for where did Connor's imagination of monsters come from?
At the end of the story, Connor found a picture book drawn by his mother, which contained the same plots as the previous two stories. I think that is the fairy tale picture book Connor's mother painted for Connor when Connor was younger. Perhaps Connor has forgotten, but the image of this monster has been living in his subconscious.
Then why did mom draw this monster that symbolizes death?
On the last page of the picture album, the monster hugged a little girl, and the little girl smiled happily. This little girl is Connor's mother. I guess that was when my grandfather, Connor’s mother’s father died, the mother’s thoughts of her father turned into this monster that symbolizes death. (In the movie, my mother once took out grandpa’s projector to show Connor the movie "King Kong". King Kong is a monster, which is also a hint.)
The monster redeemed Connor's mother, this time he redeemed Connor again.
At the end of the last page of the mother’s picture album
, let’s talk about an element that runs through the whole movie-12:07.
Every time the monster appeared, it was 12:07. This time point was also the time point of the mother's death, which further confirms that the monster symbolizes death.
However, there is one thing I want to complain about. At 12:07 in the middle of the night, the electronic clock does not display "12:07", but "00:07"...
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