Summary of the story:
The postman who delivered the letter discovered that Doris was holding a club and was about to attack the old widow Vera who had been paralyzed for many years, so Doris was charged with murdering Vera, the woman she had served for many years. Doris did have enough motivation to kill Vera. For many years, as Vera's maid, she has been tortured by Vera. Vera always asks the maids to work strictly according to her instructions.
When the daughter Shalena, who was a reporter in New York, learned of her mother's recent situation and rushed home, she had to face the unbearable memories of the past in her heart. The parental disharmony and the suspicion that his mother killed his father made him fled his hometown early to work in New York. But because of her mother's getting along, she gradually learned the truth of what happened back then: it was because of suspected that her father had molested her, that her mother could not bear to make up her mind to kill her father. Only then did she dare to face the deepest unbearable part of the past in her heart: the fact that her father had indeed molested her. In the end, Shalena helped her mother clear the suspicion of Vera's case, which proved that Vera was seeking suicide and asked Doris to help her settle it as soon as possible. As for the knot that killed her father back then, the mother and daughter understood each other.
Character analysis: Doris, Shalena, and Vera-three women who use evil as a protective color
Doris, Shalena, and Vera have all mentioned a sentence, which means almost: woman Can't live without being bad. And these three people did implement this sentence.
Vera is the strongest woman among them. She is a rich woman, she has been her own master since she came to the town. She requires the maid to strictly implement her orders and requirements, and those orders and requirements are extremely demanding. For example, all napkins must be hand-washed and then ironed; bed sheets must be dried with 6 clips; clothes must be blown to the south; toilets must be cleaned with soda water every day... She instructs the maids to work like a queen.
But she couldn't hold her husband in her hands like instructing a maid. When she returned to the town one day, she was already a widow, a happy widow, ready to settle down. The husband died in a car accident. At that time, the author who was watching the movie was suspecting that the cause of her husband's death might not be an accident, and it was confirmed later. Doris cried to her that the three thousand dollars she had saved with her hard work had been secretly taken from the bank by her husband and suspected that her husband had misbehaved her daughter. She said decisively and viciously: Accidents are a good friend of grieving women. A husband may die on the way back from his mistress, in an accidental car accident. Unable to grasp her husband, she decisively chose to vent her hatred and encouraged Doris to decisively end her husband. What a powerful and terrifying style. It was also because of her husband's infidelity that she was discouraged towards men. In the movie, she never interacted with other men anymore. Instead, she was domineering in her own villa, as powerful as a queen.
But after being paralyzed, her pain is self-evident. Compared with the pain caused by physical disability, the mentally difficult to continue to be strong made her even more unbearable. She can no longer wear silk pajamas, because she can only wear pajamas that are easy to clean because of incontinence. While lying in bed all day long, she can only rely on Doris's help when she has any need. Even the little porcelain pig I like a few meters away can't get it. She has been relying on the service of the maid, Doris, to survive, and she needs her help even in death. She knew the kindness she owed Doris, so she left her inheritance to Doris.
Vera is a strong woman everywhere, but she is actually not happy. The infidelity of the husband is the most critical reason. A woman’s happiness needs male care, but when a woman’s misfortune comes from the man she hopes to care for her, her misfortune is huge. Just like Vera.
Vera chooses to kill her husband due to the misfortune of her marriage, and Doris has long lost any faith in her married life with her husband. She did some resistance to this, but more to endure. And when she found out that her husband might have molested her daughter, she became unbearable.
Compared with Vera's role as the female side of the relationship between men and women, Doris is a role that exists as a mother who protects her daughter. Her married life is already dead. The reason why she chose to make do with her husband is for her daughter. Therefore, when she found the traces of her daughter being molested by her husband, she was very shocked and indignant. She immediately went to the bank to withdraw the three thousand dollars she had accumulated over the years in a calm manner, and was about to take her daughter away from her husband's clutches immediately. It was also because her husband refused to leave her own way, she couldn't bear it, accepted Vera's suggestion, and decided to kill the villain, her husband.
Although she looks strong and once fought back strongly in the confrontation with her husband, Doris' image is still weak. When she was beaten on the waist by her husband with a stick, she had no resistance. When she finally mustered up the courage to resist her husband, she chose to end the conflict as soon as possible because of her daughter. As a last resort, she didn't want to destroy the integrity of the family.
And her daughter's departure made her frustrated. After being accused of killing Vera, he even refused to ask for a lawyer, but continued to anger the old police officer. She never missed her daughter. The importance she attaches to newspaper clippings can tell how much she cares about her daughter's happiness. She is not a gentle mother when it comes to getting along with her daughter. Her love for her daughter did not show many visible places, but devoted herself to cultivating her daughter to be a self-reliant person without relying on men. So she attaches great importance to her daughter's education.
Doris' role is a woman who is a mother who kills her husband in order to protect her daughter. But her misfortune is also obvious. The daughter's greatest happiness is the harmony of the family. The father is strict and the mother is kind, but she can't let her daughter get such happiness. In the end, the relationship between mother and daughter appeared to be cracked because of the killing of her husband, and the daughter left her.
Daughter Shalena is also a woman who seeks strength everywhere. When she grew up, she left her hometown with all her heart to avoid her mother, and only returned many years later. When she came back, her mother didn't even recognize her at first sight, and the relationship between mother and daughter was very tense. Her newspaper in New York was not as good as she wanted. She faced it with a strong attitude in her career, actively rushing to report and write news, but she was repeatedly stopped by her supervisor. In the relationship between men and women, she and her supervisor are at a disadvantage, and her distrust of her boyfriend makes it impossible for her to truly grasp her own happiness.
The root of all this lies in her victim's status. What happened when she was a child was a painful experience that she had never dared to face. The parents were not harmonious, the mother did not give enough visible care, and her father's molestation of her was her deepest pain. It wasn't until she knew the reason why her mother killed her father that she untied her heart knot with her mother, and gradually let go of what she had experienced on the ship.
Shalena also failed to get her happiness. Whether it is the relationship between men and women, career, or relationship with mother and father. It was not until the end that she dared to face the experience of the year, no longer blindly blaming her mother, and the mother-daughter relationship was restored. But there are reasons to believe that the impact of childhood experiences on her, just like her addiction to drugs, is not easy to get rid of.
We found that the three women need to rely on men in their respective lives to get their own happiness, whether they are men in the role of husband, men in the role of boss, or men in the role of father. But when misfortune comes from these men who are vital to them, they have no choice. Whether they choose to endure or resist, they still cannot get happiness. Even though they claim that evil is a woman's protective color, does evil really protect them? Obviously not.
Key scene analysis: solar eclipse-the moment when
the sun is covered. The most impressive scene in this movie is undoubtedly the scene where Doris kills her husband during the solar eclipse.
After winning, Doris's face showed the fear of the rest of her life. When the total solar eclipse was completely behind, the sun's brilliance suddenly appeared from the other side at the moment of being hidden. Under the brilliant light, the image of the heroine with the bright sun and sky clouds as the background, turned out to be as mysterious and great as a Virgin. After confirming that her husband had indeed died, she let out a long sigh of relief, with a rare serenity on her face. The eclipse itself contains a metaphor for women's subversion of men. Because the sun symbolizes men, and the moon is the incarnation of women, in general, the sun is always shining, and the moon is eclipsed. But at the moment of the solar eclipse, the moon obscured the sun's brilliance. The murder succeeded just at the moment when the solar eclipse was complete, and the arrangement was very clever.
But the instant subversion is destined to be a means of murder not long-term happiness. The solar eclipse is just a moment when the sun is covered, and it returns to nature after a few minutes, returning to the normal state of yang and yin decline. Although the heroine had a moment like a Virgin, she immediately fell into the picket of the police officer and the hatred of her daughter. Killing her husband did not bring her happiness. She continued to fall into the swamp of patriarchal society and continued to struggle.
In fact, the injustice of the patriarchal society to Doris always exists in the movie. In the bank, Doris admitted that if the account was opened by her husband, and she would not be trusted by the bank if she took out the money in the name of reporting the loss of the passbook, but the husband, a badass villain, could easily get it. Trust, take away the savings that his wife has saved hard. And the police officer still struggles with her husband's death more than ten years later is also Doris's helplessness. When her husband was alive, she never received judicial remedy for domestic violence. It is conceivable that even if she seeks judicial relief, there will be almost no results. For a woman who binds happiness to a man, her happiness is resigned to her fate.
But even if she worked hard like a daughter in New York like an independent woman, she still didn't get happiness. The success of the film lies in the helpless performance of this woman. Even though they struggled in every possible way, they still couldn't get rid of the shackles of fate.
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