The two films "Manchester by the Sea" and "Floating Ghost", also starring Cassie Affleck, can be seen as two sides of the same question: In an intimate relationship, which one is the dead or the survivor more sorrow?
In "Hyman", Casey Affleck played a father who lost three daughters.
He is the one who survived, and all the pains must be borne by him.
He moved to Boston alone, working as a handyman, living in silence, but the wound brought it back to the seaside town called Manchester again and again.
There is warm sunshine and cold winter. Warmth is the climate, cold winter is the state of mind.
This middle-aged man was destined to be unable to escape the guilt, so he had to live without love. This is the sorrow of the "survivor".
In "A Floating Ghost", Cassie played a ghost C with a bed sheet.
He and M are a couple and live in a secluded house. No, a sudden car accident took C's life.
There is a plot in "Hyman". When his brother died, Cassie went to see him for the last time. He just watched for a moment, kissed his brother on the cheek in a daze, and left in a hurry.
A similar scenario exists in "Floating Ghosts", except that the person who died is C, and the person who came to see him is M.
Similarly, M is also at a loss. He saw C lying on the hospital bed, covered with white sheets, calm and cold, unable to distinguish whether it was "death" or "sleep."
But there is no doubt that C is indeed dead. The person who was hit by a car still had a scar on his head.
The real difference between death and sleep is the way of "waking up."
Just after M left, C suddenly sat up and got off the hospital bed, becoming a ghost with a bed sheet.
He returned to the secluded house, waited by M, and started a long wait.
This is the most special part of "Floating Ghost".
When we watch movies in the past, we always pay more attention to the surviving person in a couple, to see how he puts it down and moves forward.
But "Ghost" focuses on the dead person.
It uses the "perspective of the dead" to produce a very different mourning film. And the object of mourning is not the dead person, but the "lost love."
This love that is too late to say goodbye is cruel to the living, but to the dead?
Actually more cruel.
Because the living people have a future; the dead people have only the past.
When death draws the end for everything, C's life is left with only one-way retrospect. He can't use a fresh future to conceal the pain of the past, he can only linger in the past in a daze, looking forward to relief.
How to get rid of it?
do not know.
We had to look at this ghost in the sheets, wandering in the house, waiting by M at all times.
Through his hollow eyes, we seem to be able to see his expression, his sorrow, and his lonely body.
Of the two owners of this house, only one remains. And he was buried in the dark side of this house forever, without seeing the sun.
The thin sheets separate the two worlds and all the possibilities of contact.
The only thing he can do is to watch and accompany him.
There is a five-minute long shot in the film, always facing the hostess, watching her slumped on the ground, eating out the chocolate pie in front of her by spoonful by spoonful.
She was constantly cutting the food, constantly feeding it into her mouth, constantly chewing, and her complexion was cold.
Time passed by second by second, except for the mechanical feeding action and the rubbing sound of the spoon touching the plate.
Sadness just penetrated inch by inch, occupying all time and space.
In this time and space, the sorrow on the surface is the person who "eats", but the sadder is actually the ghost who "sees" standing not far away.
He looked at his beloved woman, trying to use food to relieve the pain, but failed completely; watching her rush into the bathroom, spit out the ineffective food.
He can only watch, but can't do anything. This is the complete sadness.
It should be said that compared to "Hyman", this movie has a deeper degree of "mourning".
There are at least some dramatic plots in "Hyman" to dilute the sad atmosphere.
But "Ghost" doesn't. Its grief is from beginning to end, silting up, flooding, accumulating small currents, and forming rivers and seas.
Even when shooting the couple's relationship, there is sorrow in the sweetness.
It's like the discordant piano that suddenly sounded in the living room when C and M were embracing and sleeping, heralding an accident early.
It is like a quarrel between C and M about moving:
M asks C: Do you want to stay here? C: Yes. M: Why? C: My dear, because there is our "history" here.
Yes, C is not talking about "memory" but "history", and the meaning of this term will not really be understood until the end of the film.
This house is completely different for C and M.
For M, it is just a haunted house with abnormal noises, a place that I wanted to move away early; for C, it is an object of nostalgia, an obsession that does not want to let go.
Later, we learned that C was in this house and had been waiting for a long, long time.
Since the day M left, C has stood at the window and watched her leave. He watched the car driving in the warm sunset, all the way away. But the house became colder and lonely, darker than the grave.
Will M come back?
do not know.
But C, is willing to wait.
There are new tenants in the house one after another, a single mother and her two children, a group of young people partying here all night, and a bald man talking endlessly about the eternal truth of the universe: all memories, existence, and immortality are all Delusion, everything will eventually be destroyed.
For these people and thoughts that prevented M from returning, C used the supernatural power of ghosts to drive them out.
In the end, the house fell apart and no one wanted to live. The bulldozer arrived unexpectedly and smashed it into pieces and turned it into dust.
C's waiting seems to have come to an end.
In the ruins, C saw the ghost in the next room with the embroidered quilt. Her wait was even longer, so that she forgot who was waiting.
At this moment, on the ruins, she finally had a thought: "I don't think they will come back!" After that, she lost her soul, and the sheets fell to the ground, limp.
If "death" is just "death", then the sheet falling at this moment is "death of heart."
With a "wow", all attachments, expectations, and hopes have all disappeared.
And is this also the end of C?
After the house collapsed, a new building was built on the rubble.
However, C did not lose his soul, because the fire that he was looking forward to reunion had not been extinguished. So that when he jumped down from the high ground of construction, destiny did not end his waiting, but gave him a new way of waiting.
As I wrote in the previous article: the dead have no future, only the past.
C actually traveled back hundreds of years ago, returned to the starting point of the building of this house , and waited for the "reunion" in a "first sight" way.
That's really a stroke of magic.
And we finally understand the meaning of the term "history". C’s experience from life to death witnessed the whole process of this house from its establishment to its collapse. The love between him and M is embedded in this history, becoming one of the most touching and heartbreaking footnotes.
The owner of the house keeps changing, and in the sheets, the people sleeping in embrace are always different. But for C, the house and him have become one, and the sheets on his body are the best testimony of his love with M.
However, those who should come still have to come, and those who should go still have to go.
C's waiting is not so much waiting for M's return, as it is waiting for a real time to say goodbye.
what is that?
Disheartened? All thoughts are ashamed? No love to die?
Maybe it is.
But I think the story has another meaning, not so negative.
Remember that in the opening subtitles, the film quoted the first sentence of Woolf's short story "The Haunted House": Whenever you wake up, a door closes gently.
"Haunted House" talks about a pair of dead lovers who went back to their former house to search for treasures, and finally found their most precious thing, which is the trace of love.
Although "Floating Ghost" does not tell the same story, the core is similar.
M is destined not to return.
Just like the dialogue at the beginning of the film.
M said: Every time I leave a place, I will leave a note with verses written on it. So every time I want to go back, there will be memories waiting for me. C asks: Have you ever been back? M replied: No.
When leaving the house, M also left a note. That means that she won't be back either, which is no different from every time she left before.
And this note has become the biggest suspense of the film.
What is written on it that makes C disappear in an instant after looking at it?
You can have a lot of guesses. For example: I will not come back again. For example: you don't have to wait any longer. Or, it's just an incomprehensible moving sentence.
But I think it should be the sentence in "Haunted House": The Treasure yours.——This is your treasure.
This sentence has appeared in the film. It appeared when M took his new boyfriend home, and C angrily scattered the books on the shelf. The page where one of the books opened was Woolf's "Haunted House", and the camera gave this sentence A big close-up: The Treasure yours.
This is C reminding M of what this house means to them. Their treasure is hidden here-the radiance of eternal love in that heart.
In the end, M also left this sentence on the note. He responded to C in this way, telling him: Yes, this is our treasure, and I can only leave it intact if I leave.
At that moment, C also understood that the sentence used to remind M was actually for himself.
Life and death are separated, leaving behind a complete love worthy of a lifetime. It's good to have it. People and houses are not things that "memory" must rely on.
Let's go.
From beginning to end, C did not wait for M's return, but just a sentence from M: This memory is equally important to me. It is not a house that can be moved away, but the rainbow that floats in life is mottled and can never be erased.
This is enough.
"Whenever you wake up, a door closes gently."
However, you don't have to worry about it.
It's not a ghost, but someone who loves you, came to see you.
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