1. Love and Death
Directed by Isabelle Cosette and starring Penelope Cruz and Ben Kingsley, Elegy, adapted from Philip Roth's novel The Dying Flesh A love story that spans the age gap between David Kopesh and schoolgirl Consula Castillo.
Love, family affection and friendship have been the three pillars to maintain the human spirit since the prehistoric times in Liaoyuan. What the film focuses on expressing is the love of the sexes, because in essence the love of the sexes is a generative type of other forms of love. Without human sex, there is no other human love.
The reason why "Elegy" has become a movie classic is because, like all literary and artistic classics, it shows the two core themes expressed by the human mind: love and death.
Death appears in two states in "Elegy": one is the disappearance of life, such as the death of the poet George; the other is the disappearance of youth, such as the aging of Caroline and David. When George fell to the ground and died at the meeting, when Caroline said to David, "David, you are getting older" and "Now, men look at me differently", it seemed that the entire human race faced The helplessness and grief of death came over all at once.
Heidegger said that all people are born to death, because death is the despair that everyone is born with. The dirge has been played since the day we were born. Therefore, love and death have become the eternal themes of literature and art.
2. The old man is also a teenage madman: David who fell in love
The sixty-two-year-old David is walking towards the beginning of Connella, just out of a strong desire to possess, so he adopts his usual technical line-accumulation and tactics of hunting women based on years of experience in dealing with women : Knowledge, talent, celebrity handwriting, Yago's paintings, photography, piano, wine. As the relationship deepened, he really fell in love with Connella. Connella's wonderful body, nobility in simplicity, pure heart, pursuit of knowledge and art, etc., made him feel affectionate beyond the technical line.
David, who is in love, looks like a teenager, a little clumsy and a little ridiculous. He was jealous of Connella's past with five lovers, and asked every detail of her past like a fool. He wanted to know who those five men were, and he was jealous of the madness, the closeness, and the indiscretion of Connie and those people. When he heard Connella talk about the joys of experiencing the first menstrual period with his childhood buddies, his seemingly hearty and mocking laughter belied a deep grief. When she and her friends went to the dance, he would foolishly follow the dance to prove that she was not going to meet other boyfriends. He wanted to own her present, past, and future.
An old man who has read so many women would do this. In the web of love, all the crazy and silly, naive and ridiculous, the old man is the same as the young man.
Only when he shared these things with his old friends and analyzed them together, did they come up with a solution rationally and wisely like a pair of old men. However, these reason and wisdom are still due to the lack of self-confidence caused by deep love: at this time, they seem to be clear: at a certain age, it is really difficult for them to be confident in the face of the other side of youth and youth.
3. The double elegy of body and spirit: David who quit love
As a professor of arts and an active media critic, David has almost all the charisma of a successful man. He is erudite, witty, witty, independent and unrestrained. In order to get rid of the shackles of the family and pursue a life of absolute freedom, he has divorced his wife and children for many years. Everything about him seemed so unrestrained and free and easy.
But the deep fear of old age and death enveloped him like the twilight after sunset.
Shortly after the film started, he had a long inner monologue in front of the raindrops outside the window: "I remember Bette Davis said 'Old age does not mean timid'. But Tolstoy also said: 'The greatest surprise in a man's life' It's just getting old'. Getting old quietly, and then you ask yourself, like I asked myself, why can't an old man play his real age? For me, how can I continue to participate in the comedy of life The sensual part? Because, in my head, I haven't changed at all."
At that moment, his back like a wooden sculpture was immersed in thought, shrouded in his surroundings, and there was boundless desolation. This desolation seems to be an old man's inability to deal with his old age, but in fact it is a lonely sadness that is worried about old age and fear of death. In the face of Connella's love, he found himself really old.
After falling in love with Connella, Connella invited him to her family patty again and again. He knew that this was Connella preparing to marry him and let him into his family. Again and again he made excuses to back down. The scene where he was sitting in the car with flowers and calling Connella reflected the hesitation, hesitation, and lack of self-confidence deep in his heart: no matter what kind of talent, demeanor, and temperament he had, when he faced Kang Nila's noble family, shining youth, when he was 30 years younger than him, he felt so pale, helpless and powerless.
So, retreating became his final choice after hesitating and hesitating.
When Hua passed away, in the face of the ruthless years, all the fame and glory of an old man will be lost.
Man, the aging of the body will eventually lead to the aging of the spirit - David used his own behavior to write a double elegy for being a human being.
4. Sorrow and Love
David, who left Connella, fell into an abyss of unprecedented pain. He had no intention of working, writing, or even eating, and his life was paralyzed. His friend George helped him, enlightened him, and even forced him to eat at this most difficult time. Slowly, his life began to recover, taking classes, doing shows on the radio, and playing tennis. Everything seems to be back to where it used to be without Connella.
However, one day two years later, when he received Connella's phone message, he slumped to the ground. He listened to the message over and over again, leaning against the wall. At this point, a line of his inner monologue sounded in the movie: "I finally understand that I have lived all these years to hear these words."
This is the true meaning of love: love, as long as it is loved, it cannot be forgotten. It lurks in unseen depths. People, under the surface of daily calm, always contain the deepest expectation of love.
The old man burst into tears when he learned that Connie, who was still in love with him, had breast cancer. Tears flowed all the time, without concealing it. This shot, along with the shot where he lets Connella touch his face with his feet, shows his love and pity for Connella. So far, David, who has suffered from lovesickness and lovelorn, and Connie, who has also suffered from love and fear of breast cancer, have been spiritually integrated.
In fact, Connera has also been living in torment for the past two years. Because she has always loved David deeply. After breast cancer, she realized more deeply, in loneliness and fear, David's place in her life: he was her attachment and the one who loved her most. So before the breast cancer surgery, at the moment of the New Year, she drove by David's apartment, sitting in the car and leaving a message on the phone to David. Waited a long time until David rang her phone.
They finally came together after going through Conniela's breast cancer surgery together. In the movie, the figure of them walking side by side on the beach is old-fashioned, but it is a symbol of a happy ending: a lover will eventually become a family.
"The reason why people can love each other spiritually must be that they share the same misery together, and over a long period of time, shoulder the bondage of common misery and cross the stubborn earth hand in hand." The Spanish philosopher Unamuno said.
Life is full of frustrations and hardships. Sickness, aging, loneliness, and death are all around us, and no one can escape the helplessness and fear when they arrive. However, the love that the soul embraces, the affection that is as warm as water, and the cordial friendship are like the drizzle of the spring sunset falling into the soil. Death, whispering the joys and sorrows of life in self-repair time and time again, silently praising the preciousness of life, is the true meaning of art. As Eugene O'Neill said: "We were born broken, we lived to mend it."
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