Not long ago, "Buñuel's 120th birthday" attracted a frenzy of condolences in the movie fandom.
Who is Bunuel?
He is a Spanish national treasure and godfather-level film master. He is known as the great director of the "Father of Surrealist Movies", and is also a good friend of the legendary painter and cross-border prince Dalí in the art world.
Dali even starred in his debut work "An Andalu Dog". This bizarre, chaotic and illogical work uses absurd metaphors to directly refer to people's secret spiritual world, and reflects modern human beings through distorted images and treacherous subconscious dreams. Repressed desires and instincts in the post-industrial era.
From the black humorous deconstruction and reshaping of the Last Supper in "Velidiana", to the six people walking aimlessly in the countryside in "The Prudent Charm of the Bourgeoisie", to the neutral consciousness of "Beauty in the Day" The repression and distortion of liberation, Bunuel always outlines abnormal social behaviors with absurd images and seemingly casual pens, criticizing modern civilization's suppression and alienation of human instincts, calmly It mocks the spiritual emptiness of the middle class.
The story of "Beauty in the Day" starts from the desire of a woman. The glamorous and elegant middle-class lady Severina refused to sleep with her husband after one year of marriage, but she had countless weird daydreams. She came to the underground club every day and became a prostitute willingly, earning the title of "Beauty in the Day".
She is very comfortable in the dual identities of elegant lady and slutty whore, but she doesn't want to meet a desperado in the underground club. The killer fell in love with her and tried to get Sevrina to elope with him, but Sevrina refused. he. So the impulsive assassin drove to ram Sevrina's husband, and died by the police in the shootout. In the end, her husband paralyzed her lover and died, and Sevelina finally returned to the family.
After her husband became a vegetable, Sevrina never daydreamed again, and everything was on the right track.
The action mode of the heroine...a bit familiar?
That’s right, a few years ago, the popular Japanese drama "Dayan" borrowed from "Day Beauty", and even the movie "Day Beauty" coined the term "Dayan". If you don’t believe me, look at the Japanese poster:
Belle de jour, the beauty of the day, is willing to be a flower that only blooms during the day, and Belle de nuit (the beauty of the night) refers to a prostitute. But the meaning of "daydreaming" here is not only the other side of Sevelina releasing her lady's mask in the daytime, but also the meaning of "daydreaming".
The technique of dreaming is also often used by Bunuel in the film. Throughout the film, Sevelina had four daydreams. Bunuel praised Freud’s psychoanalysis, and every day Sevelina’s daydream was a suppressed desire and disguise. A contented hybrid that rises up.
The first time it was in the carriage of the movie. The blonde and red Severina had a dispute with her husband. The husband changed his face instantly and asked the coachman to tie Severina to a tree. He also ordered the coachman to beat her and abuse her.
This dream obviously symbolizes Sevelina's sexual depression and sexual distortion. She must rely on some abnormal behavior to awaken herself and find the balance between the desire of the inner world and the discipline of the outer world.
In the second dream, Sephorina was dressed in a holy white dress and hung in a wooden shed by the sea. Her husband and her friends insulted her from a distance while throwing silt on her.
In the third dream, she and her husband’s friends got under the table for a while, and the husband not only didn’t care but even asked other people with interest: “What are they doing?”
Both dreams indicate that Severina is breaking away little by little from the noble, empty and regular self shaped by modern civilization, and moving towards the most primitive, most instinctive and most humane self.
In the fourth dream, she was tied to a tree in a red dress, watching her husband fight with others and finally win her.
This symbolizes awakening and return, and it also implies that Severina below will leave the underground club and return to the middle-class, comfortable, modern, and socialized life represented by her husband.
The opposition and balance between spirit and flesh, love and sex are the most superficial meaning of this movie. Severina was sexually assaulted at a young age, which made her always fearful of the attitude of "sex", believing that "sex" is a nasty behavior completely separated from love. So she refused to share the bed with her beloved husband, and becoming a "prostitute" was in line with Sevelina's notion that "sex is dirty", so she liberated the instinct that human beings could not restrain through prostitution.
Secondly, Severina's struggle is also the struggle of the human group in the self and ego. The human ego is formed by experiencing constant knowledge of the outside world and personal growth, and accepting moral discipline and social norms, while the id is not affected by any environmental education system, etc., and is completely born of the "pure one" of nature and spirit. Things".
The identity of the lady Severina is a sign of her civilized person, while the identity of a prostitute is a true portrayal of her inner personality. In the constant struggle and self-tearing, she broke through the barriers of reason and consciousness, and finally achieved The balance of self and id.
Exposing the spiritual emptiness of the middle class is also one of the themes. In "Beauty in the Day", Bunuel has always been eagerly mixed with a half-contempt and half-confused attitude to mock the hypocrisy of the middle-class people and dissect the anxiety of the people in the capital society. And confused.
Almost all the clients who patronize Severina are middle-class social elites, and none of them have some mental quirks.
A grumpy, abusive rich man.
Doctors with masochistic tendencies and role-playing.
Asian businessman with strange fetish tendencies.
Not to mention the corpse-loving old earl, let Severina pretend to be his daughter, put on a black gauze head and a wreath and lie in the coffin. This is his daughter's funeral, but it is also his and his daughter's wedding.
Such mocking and vilification of the middle class always makes people a little bit dumbfounded. After all, most of the film and literature works like to nail the middle class on a pole of shame and ridicule. People feel that the spirit is empty, and it has almost become a fashion of mockery. But we always have to admit that the middle class is precisely the representative of the backbone of society and mainstream consciousness.
The last and deepest level, "Beauty in the Day", through the distorted desires and behaviors of a civilized woman, reveals the alienation of people in the post-industrial era and consumer society, and the spiritual crisis of people losing their souls in modern civilization.
Severina, who wears a Saint Laurent suit, plays tennis and afternoon tea all day long, is indulging in ease and enjoyment. Apart from the experience of being molested as a child, almost nothing can distinguish her from others. In the emptiness, she began to pursue the excitement brought by the dual identity, the pleasure brought by transcending moral boundaries.
Civilization was originally a symbol of the continuous evolution of human society. Morality was originally a banner for evading evil and promoting justice. When applied to ethics, it became a shackle for humanity, and when it rose to social norms, it became a shackle for suppressing the soul. Perhaps the struggle between modern people and themselves will never stop.
At the end of the film, Severina faces her paralyzed and blind husband alone. The friend who broke the truth wanted to tell her husband about Sevelina, and Sevelina acquiesced.
Pushing the door open, she saw that her husband who had learned the truth had died in the blow.
Sevelina lowered her head quietly.
At this time, the carriage bell at the beginning of the movie rang again, and Severina smiled slightly. The husband took off his sunglasses and stood up from the chair. His blindness has been healed, and his paralysis has also recovered. The two embraced and discussed the next vacation in a low voice.
And the carriage that carried the husband and wife on the small road outside the window was never empty.
Is this Severina's fifth dream? In guilt, she had a dream of her husband being healed? Or, in the whole movie, the whole experience of Sevelina becoming a prostitute is actually just a daydream of a boring middle-class lady.
She has never left here, and her husband has never been injured. There is no wealthy businessman, no earl, no doctor, and no desperado to be a lover.
Some are just reconciling herself with herself in a grand hallucination.
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