Although the narrator who killed Ru Ai is Allen Ginsberg, I think the real core of this movie is Lucien Carr. The multiple levels and complexity of this character in it, honestly fascinated me.
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Lucien Carr, as he himself claims, is a special person? The answer is yes and no.
At the beginning of the movie, we saw Lucien, young, beautiful, arrogant and unscrupulous, with a charming and rebellious temperament. The viewers in front of the screen, like the freshman Allen in the film, are all attracted by his temperament. . He dared to act arrogantly in a cautious school, resisting the old-fashioned dogma and boring world in the verses of Whitman Yates Henry Miller. He used alcohol, cigarettes and psychedelic drugs to lead Allen into a long time The world that I yearn for but is unacceptable.
Just like at the beginning of the film, Allen opened Lucien’s dormitory door. Lucien sat inside, with a cigarette dangling from his fingertips, looking at you with a smile but not a smile, so you are willing to follow you to the end, you are willing to be in the book Dedicated to others in the museum, willing to do all he wants you to do, lest he leave you one day.
In the film, Lucien's mother said that David used a net to capture her son. In fact, the answer is just the other way round. It was Lucien, who knew his charms clearly, and then he netted them without fear.
What about after the net live? He made them his "guardian angel", what about himself? Once he chose to create the banner of "New Vision" with his partners, and once he chose to board the ship with Jack to go to Paris.
David once said to Allen, We are the ones he need but never want. We are the ones he need but never want.
Lucien in the center of the network, what exactly does he want?
This brings us back to the question we had just now. After all, Lucien was not as special as he had imagined, at least, as he had hoped.
All great artists, whether writers, painters, or musicians, must face one thing soberly, that is, the short life and its nothingness.
Killing Ru Aizhong, mentioned many times that life is a circle, constantly circulating. This is the truth of life, and it is also the reality that everyone is experiencing-it looks endless, but it only exists between the needs of the universe. Everyone is acting in accordance with the daily rules and looking at it. In fact, Meaningless. People are born, grow up, get married, have children, and finally get old and die, and soon will not be remembered by anyone.
Most people follow this process ignorantly. Only those who are spiritual and looking at the world with pessimistic eyes can perceive the sorrow of daily life and their own powerlessness. They are unwilling, they shout, they fight, and live on the path of pursuing their own meaning, hoping to get out of this circle spiritually and break the calm water.
For Allen, Lucien was the one who broke the surface. He knew the meaninglessness of daily life, so from the beginning he chose to mock all the rules of life and hate mediocrity and old classics.
But he has one of the most fatal weaknesses, that is, he will always use a method to deal with the oncoming monsters of reality: escape.
Just like Allen escaping from his hometown in New Jersey, Lucien, from the moment of self-awakening in his life, with that kind of restlessness, began to escape, escape from life to the world of poetry, from the world of poetry to "The New Vision" "The world, fleeing from the world of "The New Vision" to the world of the sea, allows his guardian angels to deal with all the obstacles that hinder him from escaping.
But the fact is that he can never finish what he started with his own hands. Maybe every time he thinks it will be a good solution, a safe home in spirit, but just like "The New Vision", it is very It is fragmented, and all that can be achieved is a night attack on the library, a childish revenge against tradition, and there is no way to really cause waves.
This is his own circle. He escaped from the circle of ordinary life and fell into another circle, cyclically, living eternally in the process of escaping.
But no one can run away all the time. In fact, everyone has to face life. It is not a tiger on the road, but the road itself.
Great writers rely on their works to create a spiritual self, break the circle of life, and open up their own path, but it must be a path full of loneliness, death and pain, only freedom and self. .
But Lucien has no way. He has no talent to support himself. He has no courage to choose to go alone. He doesn't even have the courage to confess his love. He is supported by other people's nutrients and becomes a source of other people's nutrients. In the end, he can only rely on losing both. To repay.
In a sense, he is the most painful and pathetic person. His spirit lives in mid-air. He can’t really look down on the void of life as a writer, nor can he return to reality and confess himself. Give mediocrity.
In this matter, he is not special at all, he is the incarnation of all the depressed, sad, restless, but unable to get liberated young artists.
(Of course he is a hundred times more beautiful than most literary and artistic youths.)
Lucien mentioned Rimbaud twice in the film, once when he was drunk and reciting Rimbaud’s poems in the morning light, and once by him Before the trip, he fought with the people at the registration office and claimed that he was Rimbaud.
This is definitely not an accidental arrangement, but more like a veiled symbol of the director. This blond, beautiful, and poetic teenager is comparing himself to an outstanding poet like Rimbaud, and behind him is even similar to Verlaine. Such old admirers hurt each other in the same dispute.
But after all, he could not become Rimbaud. Rimbaud did not live beyond forty years old and left behind many poems. In fact, a young poet who is full of spirituality like Rimbaud often does not live long.
And Lucien, in the film there are three similar descriptions of suicide, one is a joke, one is in the background of Chicago, and one is in prison. He did not die.
But a certain part of him did die in some sense.
David, who was loved by him and despised by him, has become a part of him. People who live in other people's nets are actually also caught in the nets. When he killed David with his own hands, what he killed was the one in his body. Originally restless, he still has a soul of hope. After that, he had no reason to continue to flee.
He is the longest-lived of all people. Instead of becoming a writer, he became an editor. He had two wives and three children.
He finally gave up one circle and returned to another circle.
This is nothing strange. Although it is not so intense and extreme, it is a process experienced by many people.
Life is a circle, and there is nowhere to run away.
After all, life is a circle, and there is no place to run away .
PS: Two of my favorite passages in the film, one is Jack's friend, and the death letter sent by him, he slowly reads the mourning poem to himself. The accompanying scene is of Lucien killing David, Allen sleeping with a stranger who looks like Lucien, and William injecting drugs into his vein.
Everyone is tossed and turned in pain, cannot live, cannot die, cannot gain, cannot lose, cannot give.
Only escape.
The other picture is the final freeze frame, with Lucien's newspaper hanging on the wall, together with other pictures of Columbia students.
Lucien said before that they were just powerless attempts, trying to make themselves remembered, otherwise they would soon be forgotten by history.
Lucien who said this, just completed the surprise attack on the library, the first action of The New Vision, the future seems bright, he thought he could be remembered by his talents and actions, but the irony is, In the end he went to this wall, in the form of a murder.
Just like his later life, in the end, it was because of Allen, Jack and William, who had gathered together because of his inspiration, that the description of this murder made him a special but not special one in the long river of history. Shadow.
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