The film "Better World" contains two levels of antagonism, namely the antagonism of the position of the father's role and the antagonism of the form of violence. These two levels of antagonism jointly elaborate on the core issue of the film-the meaning of violent justice. Ford.
The Reign and Absence of "Father"
The two groups of families presented in the film have their own family conflicts. Elias’ parental relationship is on the verge of breaking up, and his father has long worked in an African refugee camp thousands of miles away. And Christian's mother died of cancer, and there is a big gap between him and his father.
In summary, it can be seen that Anton and Klaus have their own problems, and neither of them can be regarded as successful fathers in educating their children. But a deeper level, the "father" of the identity of the place depends largely determines the child's disposition.
Elias’ father Anton worked in Africa for a long time, and the long-term absence of his father’s image was the root cause of Elias’ cowardice. Boys’ original cognition of “violence” and “power” often comes from their father-this is derived from a kind of Oedipus complex. Freud’s psychoanalytic theory believes that Oedipus jealousy of his father will appear in the growth process of boys, and subconsciously want to replace the father’s exclusive mother’s love, but because the father is more powerful than himself, he often considers his father psychologically. Try to imitate his father's behavior and attitude. However, the absence of Anton’s fatherhood made Elias lose the support of his ideal personality on both physical and psychological levels.
There is a very interesting passage in the film. When Elias returned home after being bullied at school, her mother saw her son in a bad mood, so she joked with him. I have to say that Susanna Bill has the sensitivity and delicacy of female directors. This kind of scene usually occurs between father and son, and the absence of Anton's fatherhood makes Marianne have to assume the dual identities of "father-mother".
And Christian's situation is relatively complicated. Klaus is not like Anton. His fatherhood is not absent. However, he has always neglected Christianity, and there is always a sense of alienation between him and Christian. Therefore, Klaus's fatherhood is "reign" but "inaction". This situation of "reign" and "inaction" makes Klaus's father image unable to form a "castration" of male power to Christian. Threat, without this threat, Christian has the subconscious to rebel against patriarchy. When Christian’s mother was suffering from cancer and his father chose to give up treatment, his inner self-consciousness of rebelling against patriarchy was naturally released. Of course, he transformed the dissatisfaction and longing for his mother’s departure into hatred and hatred for his father. hostility. This is the root cause of Christian's irritability and irritability. The "reign" of his fatherhood allows him to have an image and ideal personality that he can rely on since he was a child, and the "inaction" of his fatherhood allows him to be easily overthrown in the process of growing up. The threat of male power (father).
So when Christian faces school gangsters and Lars, these male figures who are stronger and more powerful than himself, he will not feel intimidated, but instinctively wants to overthrow and defeat them.
Differences in forms of violence
The converging point of the whole film is on the two characters Elias and Christian. These two children strung together two families and two continents. Elias was originally cowardly and civilized. He didn't use violence. This was caused by Anton's long-standing precepts and deeds to him, as well as his lack of fatherhood. And Christian used violence to solve the gangsters who had been bullying him, so that he tasted the sweetness of violence. At this time, his values began to swing back and forth between his father and his friends, "civilization" and "violence".
Here, Susanna Bill once again demonstrated her heart-warming spirit, and she arranged a scene where Christian Elias used her own gunpowder to blow up the "castle". This bridge segment is very symbolic. It not only implies the rising flames of violence in Christian and Elias, but also alludes to the reality that the barbaric and primitive violence has nowhere to vent in a civilized society. The behavior of the two children blowing up the "castle" with "gunpowder" and Africa, where armed and unrest coexist thousands of miles away, formed a subtle echo and echo.
Taking the "gunpowder" bombing of the "castle" event as a turning point in the drama, the second half of the film spent a lot of time depicting the different "forms of violence" between the two continents.
Africa is a land full of riots and turmoil. Those gangsters who live in this inadequate zone can open their stomachs to pregnant women and use the sex of their children for gambling. In the civilized society of London, car repair workers can slap people indiscriminately. Susanna Bill used parallel editing to show the differences in the forms of violence in different social properties.
Violent justice
At the same time, Susanna showed a kind of justice of "resulting violence with violence"—the African refugees finally joined forces to kill the gang boss, and Christian Elias finally blew up the car, both are manifestations of "resulting violence with violence".
This self-referential reference to violence and justice is concentrated in the character Anton. He had fantasized about using rational and civilized power to discipline those who used "violence" for no reason, but all had little effect. In the end, he cured the leg injury for the gang boss based on the principle of equality for all and the healer saves others. When the gang boss saw the pregnant woman he had personally killed, he not only did not repent or embarrassed at all, but also instigated himself to rape. Corpse of pregnant woman . Until then, the beliefs and norms Anton held in his heart completely collapsed, and a powerful world of "violence against violence" vaguely appeared on its ruins.
This is the topic that Susanna Bill is going to discuss—what kind of posture should a person in an eternal confrontational social relationship choose when facing unprovoked and purposeless violence?
In fact, in the first half of the movie, Susanna Bill already had a very clear direction. After Christian used a knife to teach the bully who bullied Elias, he had a conversation with his father in the car:
Christian: If I don’t fight back, they think I’m a bully
Klaus: You call, he fights, and the matter is endless, don't you understand? That's how the war came.
Christian: Unless you fight to death for the first time, it's you who don't understand.
I believe that the director agrees with the statement that "resulting violence with violence" has violent justice, but the outcome of "resulting violence with violence" is likely to hurt both sides. If Susanna Bill really agrees with the so-called justice of violence, then she has the responsibility and obligation to present the most likely consequences of the practice of “violence with violence” instead of bluntly using a happy ending. The ending and destiny behind "violence control" are slightly omitted.
Susana Bill can be more cruel, linking "violent justice" with "cost of death" and discussing the issue of "whether justice at the cost of death is worth practicing" is undoubtedly more profound and meaningful. s. It's a pity that Susanna didn't dare to take this step.
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