This is undoubtedly another unforgettable "Lee Changdong-style" film, and many of the complex oppositions in it constitute my understanding of this film. The opposition between beauty and ugliness, between indifference and empathy, between men and women. These opposing conflicts even come together, focusing on the heroine and the poem, thus showing great tension.
1. Poetry
The core of the movie "Poetry" is of course poetry. There is no doubt that poetry is the same for director, screenwriter and writer Li Cangdong as his previous movies such as "Oasis", "Mint", "Green Fish", etc. It is a poem in a realistic sense, but a metaphor of a deeper level.
There is a role in the movie who teaches the heroine how to write poetry. In the movie, he explained the source of the poetry in this way: Facing the beautiful world, the poet who observes beauty and pursues beauty uses pencils, and on white and flawless paper full of possibilities. write it out. But after watching the movie, we will find that this is not the kind of poem named "poetry" in the movie, because the heroine failed to write a complete poem when she observed and pursued beauty. Flowers, touching the slight wind, feeling the pattering rain, all these beautiful natural things have not turned into poetry under the heroine's pencil. The irony is that the heroine wrote an elegy dedicated to the death of her and the girl and all women after she completely felt grief and despair and completely merged with the high school girl who was gang-raped and committed suicide by jumping into a river.
From here, the film's title "Poem" has become a kind of psychoanalytic work. It is not the poet who observes beauty who writes beauty on white paper, but the poet who faces ugly things, who will be full of struggle and pain. It is a poem of resistance and mourning written on the white and flawless paper by venting the heart that is unable to resist.
The beauty and ugliness
The opposition between beauty and ugliness in the film is everywhere. For poetry, the common conception of poetry is beauty, which is a compliment to beautiful things, including the heroine who learns poetry for the pursuit of beautiful things. As for the heroine, there is often a person in the film who praises the beauty and fashion of the aged heroine, and the heroine also enjoys the pleasure brought by this beauty. But from another perspective, beauty is an attribute that is easy to be judged superficially on the surface but ignores the inner attributes. This is reflected most vividly in the heroine. Whenever the heroine faces the reality that her grandson rapes the female student and the female student commits suicide, she tries to escape and deceive herself in the pursuit of beauty. For example, the first time the heroine heard about this from several male parents, her reaction was that she was confused and unacceptable, and then she went out and looked at the bright flowers outside, wanting to bring her with the beauty of the flowers. The ugliness that is far from reality can be used to write poems that are beautiful beyond reality; or when the heroine comes to a school for girls, she sits on a bench and feels the gentle wind of nature. At this time, she wants to write poetry, she wants to use The beauty of Feng is deceiving herself, because she is going to see the science classroom where the female student was gang-raped; the most obvious one is that the heroine is going to confront the mother of the female student, and she has to persuade her to accept compensation and not appeal, but in On her way to find the schoolgirl's mother, she indulges in the beauty of the countryside, forgetting the harsh reality, even while talking to the schoolgirl's mother. In this way, beauty has become the heroine's expectation of escape and self-deception. She hopes that beauty and poetry can tell her that this cruel thing is not reality, and the world is beautiful.
And ugliness in the movie is not just an image of cruel reality, but also often shows ugliness in the film to conflict with beauty. In the restaurant where the heroine heard about this for the first time, the male parents mentioned this when discussing it: That girl didn't grow up well, why did the children like her. At the end of the film, the female student is shown in front of us, and she is not beautiful. I believe this is not Li Cangdong's random casting, but an "ugly" but vivid reality to fight against the flashy and indifferent. beauty, so that the poems written by the heroine to feel "ugly" give a concrete appearance. In addition, ugliness is also shown in the female student's mother, a poor peasant with a hard life, and the heroine's appearance after her defeat. Beauty in the movie means indifference and avoidance, while ugliness means empathy and cruelty in the real world.
3. Indifference and Empathy
The more specific expression level of beauty and ugliness in the film is indifference and empathy. There was a scene in the film that I can't forget for a long time, the heroine came to her grandson's room after knowing the incident, her grandson was lying on the bed with his back to her, the heroine shook him hysterically and yelled "Why this! Why This way!", while his grandson ignored it indifferently the whole time. The heroine, as a woman, her self-deception makes her have a glimmer of hope for her beloved grandson, even if the girl he raped, she desperately shook him and questioned him, just wanted to see a trace of guilt and pain from her grandson , but received only hopeless indifference, and the beloved grandson and the scum who have no feelings for hurting women began to merge in her heart.
The heroine's grandson is the most prominent indifferent spokesperson in the whole film. After he raped and caused the girl to commit suicide, he played rock music at home, watched TV, and played video games as if nothing had happened. It seemed that he didn't rape a woman, he just played with a toy and then Just throw it away. But he is not the only one who is indifferent. It can be said that indifference appears in all the men in the whole movie, without exception. The parents of the boys who gang-raped the girl gathered together to talk about it, never showing any pity for the girl, and only thinking about how to cover up their children, as if the children just smashed something, they just need to lose money and it's over Even in front of the victim's mother, she can still smile.
The other extreme of indifference is empathy, but the heroine is not the one who represents empathy from the beginning. At the beginning of the film, the heroine witnesses the desperate mother who lost her daughter and collapses on the side of the road, but at this time, the camera is like this. At the beginning, the center of the camera is the heroine, and the camera keeps following the heroine until the camera pans. To the mother of the female student next to her, the mother of the female student became the center of the camera, and the camera moved with the mother of the female student, the heroine bypassed the camera, and finally stood at the edge of the camera, becoming one of the onlookers , this meaningful long shot of the heroine, dressed in beautiful fashion and delicate make-up, begins with the indifferent onlookers. Later, when the heroine wanted to talk about this with the female clerk, the female clerk ignored the past with the feeling that it had nothing to do with her, and the indifferent atmosphere began to appear.
But in the heroine, it is not a turning point where indifference suddenly turns into empathy, but as her experiences in the story step by step destroy the temptation of self-deception and beauty, and empathy becomes bigger and bigger little by little. . In this incident, the heroine went from being a bystander at the beginning to becoming a participant in the incident. She attended the funeral of the female student, took pictures of the female student, went to the classroom where the female student was gang-raped, and went to the female student's funeral. Seeing the schoolgirl's mother at home, and walking through the river where she ended her beautiful life. The so-called poetic thoughts of the heroine are also slowly formed in this process. The heroine begins to be different from the indifferent people who see the schoolgirl as an object, she goes through the life of the girl, and she feels that this is a body with a soul as alive as she is. The most subtle thing in the whole film is the "complete empathy" that this trajectory finally achieves. It is impossible for us to fully feel the emotions experienced by others, that is to say, it is impossible to have real empathy. When we try to feel the feelings of others, we are actually feeling our own feelings that we have experienced or imagined to experience. , Others are sad because of lovelorn, and we look sad because the sadness we feel is the sadness we once felt when we lost love, not the sadness felt by this other person. So complete empathy is impossible in reality, but! It's possible in Lee Changdong's movies!
At the end of the film, which is also the last class of the choir, the heroine left behind her poems when she didn't come, and the heroine's daughter could not find any trace of the heroine when she returned home. The camera played the heroine's monologue and the heroine's poem. As the heroine recited her poem, the camera went from the heroine's house to the shade of the tree where the heroine often sat, to the bus stop where the heroine took the bus. This is where the heroine moves. Then the camera came to the school of the female student. At this time, the voice of reading poetry changed to the voice of a girl. Then the camera came to the science classroom, to the home of the female student, and finally to the bridge where the female student jumped into the river. The female student Walking from behind the camera to the front of the camera, turning her head and letting us see this vivid person, this is the most scene before her death, and the last smile in her life. Yes, the way to achieve full empathy is to fully become that person. In the process of reading the poem, the voice of the heroine becomes the voice of the female student. It is not that the heroine has finished reading and it is the female student's turn to read, but the heroine has become a female student while reading, and their time and space are in the poem. Interlaced in the poems, the transformations they achieve in a poetic sense. It seems that this is an open ending, but in fact I don’t think so, the heroine can’t be found anywhere, but after the poem is played, the heroine becomes a female student, and goes to the track that the female student once walked, and I feel it completely. The female student and herself suffered, and finally went down the same path of self-destruction due to despair as her female classmate. And this fusion, the fusion of an old woman and a young girl, seems to move the theme of the entire film to a more realistic level-the repression of women in the patriarchy, the irresistible desperation leads to another jump to the bottom of the river .
4. Men and women
This film is undoubtedly a feminist film, and all the oppositions between beauty and ugliness, indifference and empathy will be presented at this most realistic level - the opposition between men and women. It can be said that this is a story of an old woman and a young girl who feel the despair and pain in their hearts through time, and many places in the film highlight this stark opposition between men and women. For example, the heroine and her grandson live alone in the same room, and the heroine and the male parent of the five boys who gang raped the female student appear in one shot at the same time. In more detail, at the beginning of the film, the body of the female student is floating on the water towards the shore, and the witnesses are a group of young boys playing on the shore. It is worth noting that generally speaking, the shore The witness can be a boatman, a fisherman, or even a mixed group of boys and girls. But the setting here is a group of little boys, and I don't think it's a random arrangement.
And the difference between the film's indifferent male and the empathetic heroine underscores feminism. In a patriarchal society, men are generally misogynistic, and women are often sexualized and objectified. These tendencies under consciousness are constructed by the patriarchal society and put into the unconscious of men and become part of their natural thinking. The indifference to female students shown by such men in the film is because they objectify them, treating a living woman as a toy to satisfy their desires or an inanimate thing that has nothing to do with them. There will be empathy and empathy for things. And the male president is a typical misogynistic image. He is an old man who has lost his healthy mobility and reproductive function. He takes medicine to make himself erect and asks the heroine to have sex with him. One of his lines is "Please, I want to do it again before I die, to be a man again." From his expression, it can be seen that in his eyes, becoming a man is determined by practicing sexual activity And he is eager for the heroine to realize his last sexual activity for him without considering whether he has feelings for her or whether the heroine is willing, he selfishly wants to obtain a kind of male dignity through women, and at this time whether women have or not? It didn't matter whether the feelings were willing or not, it was enough to satisfy his fantasies about men in positions of power.
And this kind of sexualization and objectification of women by men is very common in patriarchal society, and it has a long history. How many women have devoted everything to fight against it, and more than a hundred years have passed since the first feminist movement, even for women There has been great progress in rights, but it is difficult to fully understand the misogyny that remains in people's minds, and the desperation of these oppressions and struggles makes heroines and schoolgirls or thousands of women jump into that death. River, and at last leave a death lament dedicated to all women. As for the story of a group of little boys witnessing female students at the beginning of the film, I think this means that they are still constructing their own gender cognition, and the little boys who have not yet fully penetrated gender differences and misogyny, witness a young boy with a vivid soul. The loss of women's lives can be felt in this death lamentation dedicated to life.
5. Miko
At the end, I want to talk about the heroine named Miko. Choosing an old woman as the protagonist means that the woman has experienced how much the patriarchy has given her as a woman, and the connection between the old female role and the young female role makes this completely empathetic ending possible. with meaning. But what we have seen from the beginning of the film is that a female character who pursues beauty and enjoys a happy life, we can see no traces of vicissitudes in her. As mentioned above, all the prominent oppositions in the film are gathered in Miko, these oppositional contradictions make her full of struggle and unbearable, and the way to endure all this is to escape, and the most perfect escape is forgetting. And there is a very interesting detail is that Miko went to the hospital. She saw the doctor with a pot of camellia. Miko said that the flower represented pain, and the heroine at this time was the heroine who represented beauty and oblivion. Her delicate makeup bloomed. A bright smile, and at the end of this episode, Miko looked at the pot of camellia again, and the smile that Miko revealed slowly disappeared, and the last shot was a close-up of the camellia (and the camera was shot from Miko's angle to the camellia) ), implying that the real pain has been reminding her all the time.
Li Changdong gave her the most wonderful way to make her achieve this contradiction and struggle logically, that is, she suffers from Alzheimer's disease. And it can be seen from her many memories of her childhood that perhaps she also forgot a lot of the pain she suffered on the way to this age as a woman, so she blindly pursued fashion and beautiful poetry to achieve a This protective mechanism of forgetting and self-deception thus becomes a bystander to the suffering of beautiful and indifferent bystanders. On the other side of this struggling contradiction, the forgotten side of Alzheimer's disease has been reminded all the time, so that it cannot escape and cannot be forgotten. A schoolgirl who died at a young age and took on everything, she wrote a poem of defiance and mourning with her side as an oppressed woman who finally prevailed.
This final review, like the Song of Anais, is dedicated to Miko, schoolgirls, and every strong woman.
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