Some things are beyond the reach of language, but we can still perceive. For example, this movie, its shouts and whispers, I can't say I fully understand it, but I still feel shocked. The beauty of art, even before we fully understand it, actually begins to appreciate it.
This is a special movie. Although I don't fully understand the meaning of it, I still watch it in a daze. For example, Agnes's strange and horrible breathing and moaning in pain, such as family doctor David bringing Maria to the mirror to analyze how the changes in the details of her appearance reflected her inner world, such as Karin's expression to Maria at the dinner table distinct dual character. It made me think, what do we want to see when we watch Western movies, I think it is the strong sense of freedom, the concern and thinking about individual existence, the shock it brings to me makes my thinking never stop. The instilled collective consciousness suddenly recovered, facing the inner pain and struggle that were ignored and forgotten under the collective will.
The three heroines have their own memories in the film, and Agnes' memories of her mother impressed me the most. Her love for her mother stems from the beauty of her mother, to a beauty that makes her jealous. Her attachment to her mother should be said to be a kind of inescapable without her mother's love. In the film, there is a set of dolls playing home furnishings. From the living room to the bedroom to the kitchen, all kinds of exquisite characters and utensils, such as those belonging to Maria, and those being made by Karin. In Maria's conversation with Karin, Maria mentioned how happy and carefree childhood was, when she seemed to have a vague sense that their futures would all point to a given pattern that was completely predetermined. It's just like how Agnes described her mother in flashbacks, peeking at her mother enjoying a moment of solitude in the park, watching her often lost in thought. Agnes said that when she grew up, she finally understood her mother's dullness and impatience, longing and loneliness.
I think Agnes and Maria are actually referring to the same fate as women, marriage, childbirth and family. This includes all the judgments of the society on the value of women, but ignores the independent personality of women. The dolls who played the house in childhood also constitute their life model, showing them the arranged life trajectory. Agnes walked to her mother, her mother looked at her with sadness in her eyes, she understood the hidden worries of fate but didn't know where to go. They touch each other's cheeks and feel the love while feeling the same helplessness in each other.
This helplessness is a kind of personality nowhere to be placed, but it is not specific to women. When I heard the pastor pray for Agnes, I suddenly felt that everyone was like this:
Above our heads is an empty and cruel sky, lay down your misery at his feet, ask him to forgive us, ask him to give us freedom from anxiety, from weariness and deep doubt, ask him to give us life gives meaning.
Being born as a human being, the role of family and society, the shackles of responsibility, and the false face all eat away at the true self. It's just that the film expresses a more delicate and sensitive beauty from the perspective of women, just like the touch and hug between the characters shown in the film. Maria and Karin tried to re-establish an emotional connection through touch. After Agnes was resurrected, she longed for the comfort of her sisters. Anna used her naked arms to give Agnes her final rest. Sometimes, language is pale and powerless. When human nature returns to its original nature, what it desires is pure emotion, and it does not need reasons and explanations for frankness and tolerance. Perhaps body language is the most primitive and profound understanding. . The touching of all limbs in the film is also an emotional touch, just like a scene of oil paintings, with a gleam of humanity.
Another thing worth mentioning is the composition and language of the film. The images make people feel like they are watching an oil painting exhibition, and the lines make people feel like they are reading a book. Women walking with umbrellas in the green forest, the heroine is wearing a white dress on the red background indoors, the woman at the table with the utensils and fruits on the table, a series of scenes is very similar to the typical European women depicted in traditional western oil paintings image. The most classic is, of course, Anna's topless holding Agnes, the god of death, and even showing the Virgin and Child in Western religious paintings. Different from the patriarchal aesthetic standards expressed by Chinese Ladies Figures, Western paintings of women express the freshness and agility of the inner world of individual life through their eyes and gestures. For example, when Agnes peeked at her mother under the white hollowed-out curtains in her childhood, it was a hot and secret love. For example, Maria stood at the junction of light and dark and looked at her lover David, conveying her dark and contradictory desire.
Love is difficult, and the opening of heart and soul is even dangerous. Others may be your hell, where there are armors made of scars of the soul, swords made of defensive eyes, labyrinths of language, and traps hidden by smiles. Behind that, of course, there is still a lonely heart trembling, and there is still a longing for communication. ——Shi Tiesheng, "Broken Pen in Sickness"
People are often so contradictory, eager to get emotions and stingy with emotional sacrifices. Under the framework of this indifferent and well-ordered secular constitution, emotions have become the weakness and fatal weakness of human nature. Just like Karin, after witnessing the painful death of her sister, she showed the extreme contradiction in trying to get close to Maria, a disguise that she would only remove at the most vulnerable moment, she finally accepted Maria's comfort. But that rapport is only present for this particular and brief moment, when Karin demands that Maria take responsibility for her feelings the next day, and Maria reverts to her cold, hypocritical face.
Thinking about it carefully, we have to admit that the connection between people in social relations is, in the final analysis, a chain of interests. Once the interests are touched, the human touch will be indifferent or even disappear. Maria will not be responsible for the feelings she gave to Karin, the brief warmth between them is just for each other to get through such cruel moments together, and then they will return to their separate and unrelated identities and roles. . In Agnes' memory, the sisters strolled leisurely in the green forest and whispered intimately under the swing. At that time, their relationship was still simple and beautiful, but such a happy moment was destined to be fleeting, and people's emotional needs It's not all the time, most of the time it's just for the sake of utilitarian life, don't think about it, or don't have time to think about it. It is precisely because of this that those beautiful moments can be so meaningfully engraved into our lives and become the glimmer of humanity.
Maria and Karin had agreed to give Anna a relic of Agnes as a thank you. After dividing the inheritance, Karin repented because of her husband's training, and neither of them wanted to leave Anna. They wanted to erase all memories of Agnes. Maria ends up giving Anna some money, not out of gratitude, but to satisfy her vanity. They all ignored Agnes' most important relic, the diary that belonged to her, and finally Anna opened it. Relatives are still so indifferent, so who in this world loves you the most? Maybe a friend of yours, a servant, or a stranger you've never met.
We went into the museum to see the artifacts and trace the stories behind them. We read the writings of our predecessors, known or unknown authors. We don’t know them, but we also develop the deepest empathy and love. The emotional resonance is so pure because we have never had a worldly complex relationship with them. Imagine if one day, you are dead, but someone is still touched by the things and words you left behind, and you will be resurrected in another form.
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