In my opinion, The Taste of Plum Chicken is not a big production that shocks the world, but it is an interesting movie worth watching. Especially after being baptized by too many Hollywood blockbusters, watching literary and artistic films will feel even more special.
The logic of Hollywood is to create heroes, to heroize, dramatize and inspire the lives of mortals, to highlight the growth and value of people, and to promote the corresponding universal values. It is an ideal filter for real life. This film is more like an irony of life in the style of modernism, but it is more able to expose the choices and trade-offs in ordinary life than heroism.
What is life? Art creation vs material life
There are many theories about the origin of art, but one of the important theories is that of sexual selection: art, like the tail feathers of a peacock, has no practical use, but helps males to win females in their mate selection. As far as peacocks are concerned, the brilliant and beautiful tail feathers represent that the male peacock has a good source of nutrition and health, and is an excellent guarantee for the continuation of genes.
Art is the same for males. Creative ability means that males have good cognitive function, which means a genetic advantage. This theory could explain why art creators are mostly male and concentrated in youth, and why women have a preference for being more sensitive to creative abilities. This is how Ali, the protagonist of the film, won the favor of his lover and wife—art turned into a mate advantage.
But after that, the role of art in his life changed: Ali was a very pure artist who devoted almost all his energy to music, and the excessive investment in art made Ali pay the price in all aspects.
First of all, financially, Ali lost his teaching position at the Conservatory of Music, which was one of the fuses that led to the deterioration of his marital status. Judging from the tone of his wife, it is likely that Ali is not obsessed with the way of doing things in real life.
Secondly, mentally, Ali also has some flaws. First of all, he seemed to lack empathy. For example, he couldn't understand his daughter's love for puppet shows, but chose to show her "a pile of rags", which objectively destroyed the child's beautiful expectations. In getting along with his wife, it is also difficult to understand the latter's anxiety about housework, children's education and economic income, resulting in Ali's lack of responsibility for real life. In the end, his obsession with the violin borders on pathological. It is very likely that Ali's strict requirements for the violin could not pass the double-blind test. Compared with the loss of the utensils, it should be the symbolism of the violin and the torture of the long-term uninteresting life, making the loss of the violin the last thing he walked on. straw.
Why is art responsible for all this? Because people's time and mental strength are limited, there are only a mere 100,000 hours of disposable time in one's life. Investing in a certain place is often accompanied by giving up other possibilities: using other people's coffee time for reading and writing, but It is also possible to lose the training opportunities to exercise social skills and the possibility of enhancing friendship. Ali is immersed in the music world day after day, and for this reason, he gradually loses the skills and bonds to interact with reality.
So from the point of view of this film, art and life may not absolutely coexist, but it seems difficult to coexist with real life when a pure artist. Art is not material productive labor after all, and cannot bring stable and reliable income to the vast majority of practitioners, but it requires an endless investment of time than productive labor. For ordinary people, art may be a moment of romance in daily leisure and mate selection, but for pure artists, it is a horizon that cannot be reached by giving up everything. Ali, on the other hand, may just be an ordinary member of the journey.
What is happiness? Love mate choice vs utilitarian mate choice
Facing marriage, Ali's lover Yilan and his wife Frankie made completely different choices.
Yilan chose family support and material security. She obeyed her father's wish and married a high-ranking person of the right match. For this reason, she gave up her love with Ali;
But Frankie has been waiting for her dream lover until she was 30 years old, and gave up potential competitors who have more advantages in the material level for love.
As a result, their marriages were not complete: even though they were full of children and grandchildren, Yilan could never forget Ali, while Frankie had been living in a bad marriage, with strong dissatisfaction with her living conditions and constant disputes with her husband. On the whole, it seems that Frankie is more unfortunate, her material quality of life is worse, and she has not been able to get Ali's love spiritually - her love is more one-sided wishful thinking.
Was Frankie's mistake in choosing a mate for not being able to choose who she loved? Personally, I don't think that's the point: love is not an absolute necessity for marriage, and conflating the two can lead to tragedy.
Love is a relatively short-lived spiritual contract and sexual attraction, while marriage is a long-term realistic task including economics, offspring reproduction, parental support, and social community. Love requires consensual and consensual love, which is more like a highly exclusive friendship. Marriage requires the partner to have the ability, willingness and sense of responsibility to cooperate with him for a long time, as well as tolerance for each other's differences in long-term relationship, more like looking for Company partner.
For this reason, the person who can produce love may not be the best candidate for marriage, and the person who is suitable for marriage may not be able to breed a high concentration of hormones. The tragedy of Frankie lies in her wrong expectations for marriage: she hopes that Ali can share the tasks of housework, financial burden and children's education, but she has never examined these qualities of the other party in advance. Otherwise, she will definitely understand that this is not her ideal marriage partner, but only the lover of her dreams. But the tragedy is that it is very likely that Frankie didn't think about what she wanted before marriage: a husband who can share the burden of reality with her, or a pure artist who is dedicated to creating and sacrificing reality.
Therefore, when choosing a mate, women must really consider their own needs, because for most ordinary people, it is too unrealistic to find a Prince Charming who has everything. A man who is professional and dedicated to his work may lack the leisure to hold you in his hand, while a man who is good at taking care of others and willing to devote his time to housework may not have the advantage in career and income; similarly, strong, handsome, and strong hormones of men may be prone to cheating, while men with lower androgen levels are more loyal and more willing to invest in their children, but may be at a disadvantage in masculinity. In the case of not being able to have both, please be sure to consider what you really want, what is the icing on the cake and what you can sacrifice, get to know your partner well before marriage, and don't expect adults to make changes for yourself in the future: do it during courtship The things you can't do will be harder to do later in your life.
The tragedy of Yilan's marriage lies in the lack of love, but also in the loss of what she could have had. But if Yilan and Ali are combined, will life be happier than the current life? It may not be mentally, but the material conditions will definitely be worse. Therefore, it is also a reasonable strategy for some women to give higher priority to socioeconomic status than love: love is illusory, but economic and social status is real. Although the styles are very different, love and material conditions are the road to happiness, but it is precisely because in reality that it is often difficult to have both, so there will be regrets that are not beautiful.
Living Elsewhere: Slavery in the World vs the Road to Escape
Why did Ali commit suicide?
Before his suicide, he did not have symptoms of despair, mania, and extreme depression, but rather witty and comical. His performance was more like a childish escape, an extreme cry of "living elsewhere" than going to death.
Real life is too ruthless: his wife and children are disgusting, his younger brother cannot understand him, the love he once had is only a memory, and the only remaining music left him with the loss of the violin, and also took away the last emotion with his wife. coupling. Looks like it's time to die. The reason why it is called escape is because most of the above problems are not insoluble, but the protagonist does not want to waste time on them anymore.
But is Ali a generous martyr who died generously and gave the middle finger to life?
Neither. It is true that Ali is very determined to die, but until the last moment he was still a little afraid of death. The appearance of the god of death can make him panic and scream. Before being summoned by death, he hesitated to ask if there was any chance of turning back. But just as he rejected the plate of plum chicken, the material world bid him a decisive goodbye.
Ali escaped everything that bored him in real life, did he realize his dream somewhere else? The outcome is unknown, but unlikely from my atheist perspective. The world is gradually increasing entropy, and the structure of matter tends to be simplified in the process of energy transfer. It is unimaginable that the human body will enter a more complex heaven and hell after being decomposed. But one thing is certain, death still brings something to him, which is an affirmation of self-worth and an emphasis on intimacy, as predicted by fear management theory. In the last hazy consciousness, Ali reached out and stroked his wife's face, as if to forgive her. Maybe at the last moment, he had forgotten his vow of "never forgive you".
Why humans evolved the ability to commit suicide is unknown. Some models have found that suicide is positively correlated with IQ, which can explain the world-weariness of highly creative people. Others believe that suicide is more conducive to gene transmission—letting the already useless self leave and benefiting family and future generations. For Ali personally, it may just be an escape from the abominable life of reality: leaving here may not find happiness, but certainly no longer suffering. Although this truth is pessimistic, it may be the voice of many suicides.
But life, after all, goes on and on. It is not because there are no obstacles in life that cannot be overcome, but because people who have passed the obstacles have lost their lives and been excluded from the statistical objects. But in any case, the escapees will never become the mainstream, because their genetic information is easier to be eliminated, and only the people who cherish life are still spreading their genes with hard work, before the torrent of choices between art and reality, marriage and love. Row.
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