"The Secret Life of Words" is a very popular Spanish film. This is a film I have watched every year in recent years. It is not a masterpiece, and it has hardly won any international film festival awards. To be honest, the aesthetic value of movies is not outstanding, but I have a soft spot for it. It is my top 10 movie viewing. Because it is in addition to a series of desperate factors such as blood, dirt, death, hatred, shame, etc., it allows me to understand what "understanding" is, as Zhang Ailing once said: "Because of understanding, so be compassionate."
Below, I cut through several important symbols of this film to interpret it.
Soap
The sweet almond-flavored soap is the connection between the heroine Hannah and her hellish experience. In 1991, when the Croatian War of Independence broke out, Yugoslavia attacked Dubrovnik. Hannah and her best friend who were still studying in the city’s nursing school returned home. They saw their relatives and friends displaced and lost contact. So they drove out in the car to search. An accident happened. They were caught by the soldiers of their country and went to the hotel. They continued to experience prolonged sexual violence, slaughter, wounds and salt, etc.... Such non-human encounters made Hannah the best Friends and many other women died in extremely cruel and painful circumstances, including Hannah's daughter who became pregnant during this long period of time. Hannah was forced by her fellow soldiers to pull the trigger of the pistol and killed her daughter by herself.
As a survivor, Hannah lives in pain, despair and shame, like a walking dead. She works day after day on the assembly line of a factory. She eats the same food every day—rice, apples and chicken. She hardly talks to anyone. She has a lot of almond-scented soaps every time she takes a bath. She uses a new one and throws it away. After four years have passed, she has not applied for a vacation on any day, nor has she disclosed anything in her life to anyone in the factory. The workers cannot accept that their colleagues are silent and "cold-blooded" like a machine, and complain about this to the union. , So Hannah was ordered to take at least one month off with pay.
Owning a lot of soap and using a brand new one every time, it was Hannah who tried to wash the blood stains in her memories over and over again, but this was destined to be futile. She can only drift outside of life. The trauma in the depths of her soul has made all her body and skin pains indifferent, and she has no emotion to face any human affairs. Perhaps this piece of almond-scented soap will make her feel a little safe, and will let Hanna know that she is still lingering with endless shame and pain. So we saw that Hannah would call her psychiatrist, and then hang up without saying a word, just to let the other person know that she would be alive; she would pick up a cross stitch and embroider it on it. Flower, and then throw it away at will, regardless of whether it is completed or not; therefore, when she is forced to take a vacation and go anywhere, she will take the initiative to apply to that utopia to be a temporary nurse by chance. She needs to do something to fill the endless time and the empty ruins at the end of time.
The soap is Hannah (Hannah is the name of the heroine’s best friend, Hannah is dead, she hopes to live in place of Hannah, and no one knows her real name) and there are thousands of people there. The salvation and the glimmer of subconscious hope that people who were treated by non-human beings in the war, who died or survived in hell longed for, but how can there be any piece of soap in this world that can wash away blood, death, hatred, shame and Desperate?
"The Love Letter of a Portuguese Nun"
A novel completely subverted the fate of the two families, leaving the two men at the center of the whirlpool dead and wounded. Joseph fell in love with his best friend’s wife. He gave her the "Love Letter from a Portuguese Nun". She missed him every day and read the book over and over again, presupposing herself as a novel In the role, this love has crossed the boundary of morality. Joseph confessed everything to his best friend between regret and pain. He and Joseph worked together on an offshore oil rig. He couldn't bear all this. In an unexpected fire, he rushed into the raging fire and chose to commit suicide. Joseph In order to save him, he fell into the flames but was helpless, but Joseph finally survived. As a result, Joseph, who was also a survivor, was burned exhausted by the flames. He woke up in the hospital bed with shame and temporary blindness.
"The Love Letter of a Portuguese Nun", the symbol in the film is the combination of true love and evil fate, a trial that crosses trust and betrayal of life and death hatred and guilt. Joseph said: "There are certain things that we must never do, such as: Never... Give a certain book as a gift to a lonely opposite sex. Never fall in love with your best friend’s wife. The key is this. Such things can never be told to that friend."
Immediately after healed from the injury, Joseph found the woman, and they sat down and talked about everything in the past, now and in the future, and put it all together. She returned him "The Love Letter of a Portuguese Sister", and they came out of this relationship, but how should the thousands of scars separated in the middle be healed?
In "The English Patient", Catherine is willing to follow Imashu to fly high, and before flying to the sky, she used death to commemorate this heroic love. In "One One", Jian Nanjun and his first love A Rui reunited after a 30-year absence. After spending a few days reminiscing about their teenage years together, he still chose to return to his family because "I thought, if I live again, Maybe there will be something different. The result... is still the same, no difference. It’s just that suddenly I feel that if I live again, it really doesn’t seem necessary.” In "The Bridge of Madison County," Francesca took her and Robert Kincaid’s secret life always misses the man who only met in a few days and the bridge that connects them to their true love, so after she died, she told her children the secret and asked them to scatter their ashes. Go down the bridge and be with Jin Kai...I can’t judge whether the above-mentioned movie characters and Joseph and his best friend and his wife are right or wrong. Perhaps love itself is innocent, but love often causes too much sorrow, intentionally or unintentionally. Therefore, we debated again and again: "Do you want to divorce if you meet the love of this life after marriage?" There will never be a so-called correct answer to this debate. I only naively hope that everyone who loves and is loved will be treated as tenderly as possible by the world. treat.
Drilling platform-a utopia that heals heartbreak
The drilling platform is the most important factor in this movie, and it is the key to opening Pandora's box. Far away from the mainland, the oil rig in the depths of the ocean is like an isolated island. When its mission is about to end, it will be shut down. Those who stay on it are a group of people who want to stay away from society. Either they love to be alone or because they don’t. Recognized by the world, perhaps only because they are a complete loser among the vast crowd. So, like a group of wandering gypsies, they gave their fate to this heartbreaking utopia, and together with the only animal: the goose named "Lisa", they carried it under the impact of thousands of waves. Living his own secret life. But how many secrets does a person have to hide in order to spend his life cleverly?
The moon is shining in Kyushu, and some are happy and some are sad. How many couples stay together, and how many are floating outside? When the world is only left with this bedside lamp, you have already left in the morning; when you are on the other side of the mountain and ridge, I have no end on my lonely road.
The old captain lives on the sea all year round. He likes to be alone and doesn’t like dry places; the skilled chef cooks food of different cuisines in this utopia every day, and he plays the music of the country of the cuisine every day; gay couples are caught by everyone on the rig. Be kind, they work and live sweetly, accompany each other for life; an oceanographer who is worried about marine environmental protection is hired to study wave impact data in the middle of this sea area. He has no way to do anything for the pollution of the ocean and the destruction of the ecology. I can only worry about being with the mussels I love every day; there are Joseph and others who also take their own secrets on this lone island to watch the bright moon rise and fall on the sea, cut off the earth that they have walked, and leave home. Miles. Hannah also came here by helicopter with her secret, like an angel descending here, where she rediscovered what life as a person should be like, she can feel her tenderness and loveliness before the age of 20. The taste of food, the feeling of getting along with others, tears and smiles... She brings a good memory to everyone on the boat (including herself).
It was also on this drilling platform that Joseph and Hannah told each other the deepest secrets in their inner black hole, tearing their bloody scars to touch each other. Joseph couldn't see what Hannah looked like because of his temporary blindness, but he used his words and deeds to give Hanna great comfort in this short time. He made Hannah smile and shed tears for the first time in many years. He made her trust the man in front of her and began to tell her information. He also reminded her of the most unbearable past and decided to tell all the secrets. The story says After that, they should just leave it alone. Hannah took care of Joseph so that he could be transferred to the shore to continue treatment and eventually healed. She patiently listened to Joseph's endless nagging, as tender as a 15-year-old boy. Most importantly, in this heartbreaking utopia, they understand each other. "In a person's life, it is not rare to encounter love and sex. What is rare is to encounter understanding." There is no empathy in the world, and Lu You in the Song Dynasty told the world: "It's not difficult to know what happened." But two people who have also experienced life and death are trying to understand each other, which allows them to find the courage to go on with each other in the days to come.
swim
The story ends here. Joseph and Hannah need something in the future to support them to face the future life together. The symbol of swimming has become their courage to cross mountains and rivers to embrace each other.
Drowning is the shadow of Joseph’s childhood. He was thrown into the sea by his father when he was young. At that time, there were only two of them on the boat, but his father could not swim. Joseph saw the most terrifying deep in his heart on the boundary of death. Sea monster. He told this story to Hannah. After decades, he was still struggling in the ocean of childhood. For him, swimming is probably inaccessible in this life. But after Joseph recovered from injury, he decided to go to Hannah. When they met again, Joseph's determination and courage convinced Hannah that she should go with Joseph, just now, because...
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