"The Labyrinth of Desire" film review-the psychoanalytic point of view
comes from the plot introduction of Dou's "The Labyrinth of Desire" •
Barbara Daly Bellanke (played by Julianne Moore) Beautiful and moving, her husband Brooklyn (played by Stephen Dylan) is an explorer. Although her husband is wealthy and makes Barbara's life prosperous, her life is not as happy as she imagined. Because of her husband's adventures, she often cannot get her husband's company, which makes her feel very watery. Her son Tony (played by Eddie Redmayne) became everything to her and often kept her son from doing things.
Barbara knew that Tony was gay and tried to make love between him and his Spanish girlfriend, but Tony did not stay with the girl in the end. Brooklyn eloped with his son's girlfriend, which made Barbara very sad. Tony was also very reluctant to leave his father, and he also witnessed the pain of his mother since his father left. After that, they made their home everywhere, and Barbara, who had been ill, had committed suicide.
Barbara has not given up on turning her son back into heterosexuality for many years. She actually wants to have a relationship with her son in order to let him try the taste of sex. Finally, Tony couldn’t stand his mother anymore and stabbed Barbara with a sharp knife...
I didn’t like this introduction very much, because if this movie is just a introduction, it seems that it can’t express some of the things that the story wants to convey. . The movie itself is not designed to be a very clear story, more like a scene by scene. But what the movie wants to express is that Tony's psychotic things are very broken, and it takes more than two times to understand some of the movie.
When I watched the movie for the first time, I don’t know why the protagonist had to say something. For example, he always mentioned a dead dog from when he was a child until he killed his mother. If we start to analyze it before, you may not understand why this is the case. Tony has always been very normal. Why did he suddenly kill his mother and suffer from mental illness? We can infer the cause from the result by flashback. In this way, you can understand the story better and more clearly.
The ending of the story is that Tony killed her during a dispute with her mother. But it is not over yet, as mentioned later, he was sent to a psychiatric hospital. Later lived in the United States with Nini, but stabbed Nini with a knife in an argument. He was sent to an island, and when he was 35 years old in 1981, he put a plastic bag on his head and committed suicide. This is the complete ending of the story.
Why is Tony a mentally ill person? If you don’t watch the last 15 minutes of the story, it’s hard to conclude that he is so. You won't know why he killed his mother first and then committed suicide. In fact, what makes the story the most understandable is the conversation between Tony and his mother in these ten minutes, and the words Tony wrote to his father. Many people say that I don’t even understand what Tony is talking about. He is talking nonsense. How can I understand the movie? In fact, it is right for the average audience to not understand, because this is what the mentally ill said. How can you understand it?
Tony's last words were not logical at all, and they weren't what happened in the real world. For example, he thought that Barbara wrote something and put it in a bag, which didn't happen in reality. Then he said "There is no peace here, I can't control myself". At this time Tony was living completely in his own fantasy, and he had completely lost himself. He cannot perceive the distinction between which are fantasy and which are reality. The self-regulatory function was completely lost, and it was swallowed by the latent meaning. When he was talking to his mother, when his mother did not understand, he aroused his strong anger. The powerful death drive pushed him to kill and eliminate the object that caused him to anger. This is the complete loss of the self and the superego. I follow the principle of happiness and require immediate satisfaction of needs, which is to eliminate the object that causes anger, that is, mother. When she killed her mother, it was as if nothing had happened. Without the condemnation of the moral superego, it became a very normal thing.
Tony expressed his broken thoughts and emotions in his heart when he wrote to his father at the end. But from these words, we can see the core conflict in Tony's heart. For example, the words "I don't know who I am for a long time", which shows his loss of consciousness. And there is a sentence like "I do hope we can be together again", which expresses the unfulfilled wishes and unsatisfied needs in Tony's subconscious mind. There is also "I no longer need to live in the shadows created by myself", which shows that in Tony's subconscious, he attributed his father's leaving home, leaving his mother and himself to his own reasons. This is also reflected in the previous episodes. For example, when Tony was 13 years old, he asked his mother "Does Dad hate me?" and he wrote to his father in a mentally ill state, which in itself shows his desire for his father.
The mention of a Gart dog several times in the movie is also a good example of Tony's longing for his father. Mentioned this dog for the first time: Tony said that my Garter dog is dead and he is old. Mom said that a dog has a life span, and he will die too. Tony said "I know, somewhere." Second time: Tony said in a letter to his father, do you remember the dog named Giotto? It has gone, but it is still in our hearts. I don't know why you are afraid of me. At this time, it is very obvious to compare the father to this dog. He also revealed that he thought it was his own reason that his father left his mother and himself. The third time at the funeral: He said, there is one more thing for you to understand, that is, Giotto's dog pen is gone, and I won't be looking for it anymore. The fourth time appeared in the last conversation with mom: Mom asked Tony why he cares about hairstyle; Tony said that everyone cares about things, including you, Sheng and even our dog. I like that dog very much, but he is dead. Our dog is dead, but we are still alive, but we continue to move. Then let her mother find the dog. Here it is obvious that the dog is the father. In addition, Tony himself likes his father and longs for his father to be with them. And think that his father's departure is his own reason. In a conversation with Carlos's wife, Tony said that his father thought he was useless and he also thought he was not a member of the Brooks family.
Now we first analyze the relationship between Tony and his father. In the film, Brooks is not at home all year round due to work reasons, and his relationship with Barbara is not so good, often quarreling, even in front of little Tony, who is only about 4 months old. Based on this few plots, you can imagine what Barbara and Brooks are like in the family. In the pre-Oedipus period, this unstable environment-the human environment, first brought to children the idea of "I am not cute". Parents quarreled because they thought that they were not cute. Let the child develop a sense of weakness and incompetence. And this unstable environment will affect the formation of healthy self-functions. During the symbiosis period, children cannot distinguish themselves from others, thinking that I am the other person, and the other person is me, especially the mother. In this state of integration, the current good and bad times will block the formation of children's self-psychological functions. The ego cannot integrate the two object representations of "good mother" and "bad mother" well, nor can it neutralize the good self representation and the bad self representation. At the same time, the attack drive will emerge and behave at a high level. This unsound personality structure is called the basis of Tony's mental illness when he grows up.
In the film, the father does not go home for a long time. From the perspective of Freud’s Oedipus plot theory, without the father’s participation, the child cannot leave the mother fortunately, walk into the father, and use the father as a "transit station". society. So as to provide a good foundation for future social life. And in the Oedipus period, the male image without the father as a role model will also affect the formation of the child's gender identity and gender role. Sure enough, when the child was 13 years old, there were problems in interpersonal communication and he became gay when he grew up. We will analyze the specific mechanism by which Tony became gay later. But the lack of his father is the foreshadowing, or the basis, for these problems.
Tony, 22, wrote to his father, hoping that he would return to his mother because she was not happy at all. It's not so much that mom needs a father, it's better to say that this is what Tony's heart is calling for. At the funeral, he said here that my father did not hurt me, but you. In fact, this is exactly what Tony needs in his heart. He went on to say that he hoped that one day Dad would come back and wake up one day, but he never did. Then he said, "There is one more thing for you to understand, that is, Giotto's dog pen is gone, and I won't be looking for it anymore." He expressed his disappointment with his father.
In short, Tony has always had a strong desire for his father's love in his heart, but has never been satisfied.
Now we discuss the relationship between Tony and his mother. The narration in the beginning of the film described his mother like this: A few weeks ago I started to get bored with her. She was cold and silent. There are also several times in the film, it turns out that his mother has no confidence in Tony and forced him to do something. I always think of Tony as a child in the mother's heart or want to think of Tony as a child in her heart. For example, she painted his Tony holding a baby, which appeared many times in the film. After Barbara was unsuccessful, Tony was narrating when she was in the shower, which shows that her mother did not regard him as a grown-up person. Mom has control over Tony. And this mother is very special, she has a mental illness, this has a great influence on Tony, especially when Tony is still very young.
Now let’s look at the elements surrounding Tony’s sex in the film. First of all, Tony is gay, not only that, but he has an incestuous relationship with his mother, and again, he once had sex with Barbara and Sam, the three of them. Homosexuality will be discussed later. Let's talk about Tony and Barbara and Sam's 3P. In fact, Tony and Sam had a relationship before that. It is not so much that he is dominant in the sexual component, but it is better to understand this relationship as a desire for the closeness of his father. At this time, we are looking at the three-part relationship with Barbara. For Tony, it is more of a strong desire for the relationship between father, mother, and son, which is expressed in this way.
Let’s talk about Tony’s homosexuality. In the formation of children's 4-6 gender roles, the father is missing, and there is no way to identify with the father. At this time, it is the mother who stays with Tony, and he turns to identify with the mother and identify with the characteristics of the mother. Due to the absence of his father, Tony’s desire to establish a relationship with a man’s libido's bet is transferred to someone who has the same traits as his father, which leads Tony’s desire to establish a relationship with a man.
As far as Barbara and Tony’s mother-child incest relationship is concerned, as far as Barbara is concerned, her husband is often away from home. She has strong sexual desires, and these desires will be suppressed if they cannot be satisfied in time. As the man who stayed with her for the longest time in the family-Tony, Barbara bet on it. Of course, some people say that the occurrence of incest is that Barbara wants Tony to experience sex, and then change his sexual orientation. But this reason alone is not enough to constitute the motivation for incest, that is to say, the motivation is not strong enough. And when two people have a relationship, and afterwards, neither of them feels the condemnation of the moral superego, which shows that the establishment of the moral superego of the two is imperfect. Tony may be because Barbara appears to be a "slut", so sexual morality is very weak.
Sex is indeed a good entry point to understand a person’s personality structure in many cases. Some people say that children are the bearers and victims of family mental illness. This story is a good example.
(The above are just personal opinions, please correct me, thank you)
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