Julie lives with her husband in an industrial city in northern Italy. After experiencing a car accident, she became nervous about gains and losses. The inner anxiety of impermanence makes her often make some unexpected actions, buy bread that others have eaten, always feel that she is sick, and habitually curl up her body. She is afraid, "Fear of factories, streets, colors, people and everything." The factories she saw were cold, noisy, and yellow smoke. The streets were full of rubbish. The colors were colorful, including yellow smoke, white fog, black water, gray houses, and gray garbage. People? The husband is basically absent, and the relationship between the son and himself seems to be increasingly estranged. Anton once said that a modern city is "a bloody desert covered with human bones." What she saw was such a bloody desert that scared her.
From the appearance of symptoms, Julie is indeed sick, but is she really sick? The protagonist in Kafka's "The Metamorphosis" even became ill with a bug. Is Kafka sick, or is the world he saw sick? Psychologist Fromm said: "The most normal person is the most ill person, and the most ill person is the healthiest person." At first I watched Juliana wearing a green coat in the whole environment. It seemed out of place. I really understood Anton’s intentions when I saw Fromm’s words. Green represents life and vitality. Julie said, "I think my eyes are torn. What should I do? What should I look at? "?" She didn't know what to see, which meant that she saw things that she didn't want to see and didn't want to accept. The fear, pain, and rejection of the "desert" became a sign of her health. This is the embodiment of Anna Freud's "psychological defense mechanism". Julie is a normal person. Isn't the person who numbs, accepts, and adapts to the "desert" is "sick"?
The depressed Juliana fell in love with Cordola, and she needed relief, both physically and mentally. Although she said that she wanted to have sex several times, it didn't come true. Their snuggle was more spiritual. Cordola is also a patient (perhaps he is healthy). He often doesn't feel his existence, so he often moves. But "walking around, the result is still back to the original place. There was nothing like me and six years ago." respectively". So he said to Julie: "You don't know what to see with your eyes, I don't know how to live, our situation is the same." In the
misty morning, a big boat strayed in and broke the shackles of tranquility. When Julie saw the big ship, she showed strange fear, anxiety, and panic. She drove madly towards the harbor, almost fell into the sea, and then cried: "I just want to go home. It was a fog. I was wrong." There was no direction in the misty fog, and it was even hard to see clearly. Human face, where is home? Where are the relatives?
Julie seemed to have a strong yearning for the distant sea. He told a story to his sick son: Once upon a time there was a little girl on the island...discovered a remote beach...with transparent sea water, pink rocks... And sweet singing, who is singing? Everyone, everything... This is the most beautiful shot in the film, both true and illusion, in sharp contrast with the previous colorful images. Julie looked for Argentina on the map where Corrado was going, and said to him: "Who knows if there is a good place in the world, maybe this is it."
At the end of the film, Julie walked to the big ship in a daze, seeming to want to board. , But she dreamtly said to the sailor who invited her (and also to the audience): "I am not a single woman, but I always feel lonely. With my husband, I mean feeling lonely physically. If you pinch me, I won’t feel the pain. What did I say? By the way, I’ve always been in pain, but...I want to forget them, I have to think about what happened, that’s my life, it’s true, I’m sorry, forgive me..." In the end, she still didn't get on the ship. It may be the same when you get on the boat, just like Li Yaohui in "Happy Together" runs to the other side of Hong Kong, Argentina, and Afei in "Chongqing Forest" only finds out after flying to another California. It's the same everywhere.
Although it was titled "Red Desert", Anton did not use red as extensively as Zhang Yimou did. Instead, he deliberately dotted the symbolic image with a few strokes to break the tranquility and cause a strong visual and psychological impact. Such as huge warehouses, icy signal towers, railings in the harbour, and the bottom cabins of big ships. One of the most meaningful is a small room painted in red, in which a few boring people play sexual jokes and play sex games unscrupulously. Here, red is enthusiasm or unrestrainedness, and indulgence or depravity. In the end, Julie and Corrado removed the plank and used it as firewood for heating. There is another place when the two are cheating, a bright red bed lined out, cold and hard, as if to forcibly separate the two. The red here is pessimistic and fatalistic.
Husserl and Heidegger said that modernity means that the life world is forgotten, which is the result of modern scientific concepts. Kundera retorted that this assertion was only half right. If you focus solely on the persecution of people by modernity, then Anton will definitely say that you are only half right and that you are underestimating me. He said: "Julie must face the society she faces, saying that I condemned the barbaric industrial society for suppressing humanity and causing her schizophrenia. Like many people do, it is too easy. My The purpose is to interpret the poetry of this world. In this world, the ever-changing factories and chimneys are also beautiful. This is a rich world, full of vitality and patience. The first thing I describe for this neurotic woman is adjustment. People must adapt in this world. Some people can live, some people can’t. This is probably because they are too attached to the past.”
I closed my eyes and listened to the world’s frantic pulse. Is the world sick? Or is he inherently disabled? Or is it just that I am sick...
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