Liliana Cavani_Midnight Gatekeeper_1974
6.2
There is more than one way to interpret the film, but Oscar Wilde's "Salome" may be able to slightly demarcate it from the Nazi exploitation films of the 1970s that were blindly tortured by consumption. The paradox between aesthetic proposition and ethical practice exists and cannot be reconciled. The moment when the pure desire of lust is expressed by the lover, it already carries the original sin; when the beloved accepts love, he is also using love, and the distorted feelings are hereby established. The subject will be transformed into objects and landscapes of lust itself, as cold as ivory and as white as snow.
Returning to the image itself, its exquisite presentation of the reunion atmosphere and character psychology are still exciting in the early stage, but director Liliana Cavani probably has no plans to explore any complex ideas of these two characters. On the contrary, even if the plot of the power reversal that stepped on the glass slag is limited to the spectacle broadcast, the logic is even more inexplicable. Max and Lucia are almost completely flat before and after their reunion. No matter what direction they make, they are only used as a machine for performing their own desires and a shell for showing physical intercourse. They are also endangered alive.
Michel Foucault talked about THAAD to Gérard du Pont, and his words were full of contempt for the historical choice of "Midnight Gatekeeper". First, the physical scenes that only provide audio-visual impact are a cold medium, and the movies he recognizes are hot media with literary expression; secondly, it interprets bestiality as a sadism controlled by desire, which is a reference to more mature historical theories. A certain distortion of Sino-Fascism. The top-down organizational evil is transformed into a personal instinct drive, which is obviously also anti-humane.
In addition, the Nazis organized by eroticism in this illusion are not true Thadism, and are far from the collective sadism of Sodom. The sadistic behavior in Thad’s literary expression is always accompanied by discipline and norms. The establishment of social structure. Simply put, these atrocities are controlled by the mind, not the lower body. In Foucault's own words, it is a social landscape in which time is strictly allocated, space is divided in an orderly manner, full of obedience and surveillance.
This erotic work with the label of historical negation is located on the opposite side of Thad. Its retelling of World War II is of course extremely novel in terms of perspective and conclusion, but as a mass media, it is similar to those about the comparison of Churchill Hitler's style. Foucault’s point of view is that these materials that subtly change the contemporary view of history will gradually replace people’s original historical memory to a certain extent. They express a dangerous tendency that the so-called people’s struggle does not exist.
Alambadio mentioned in "On the Movies" that when the bourgeoisie monopolizes art, it will try to dispel the audience's impression of the "public". These reasons are also due to the similarities between the film and the Nazi exploitation films of the 1970s, and it even makes it close to a fanfare pornography. We still have to return to Foucault. In his anti-Oedipus preface, he said that the ultimate enemy is not only historical fascism, but we must be wary of daily fascism. There is a sentence in Hemingway's "For Whom the Bell Tolls" that can be the answer, and it is also used as the conclusion here-"You have no right to forget anything. You have no right to close your eyes and forget about anything in between. Later, to dilute or tamper with".
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