Movies are a science, and you must first master addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. So please listen to the question - how many sets of emotional relationships can two men and two women have? Yes, it's complicated. There are four most common: one, male A and female A are together; two, male A and female B are together; three, male B and female B are together; four, male B and female A are together. If we add the basics, Lala, and threesomes, elementary school mathematics is simply not enough for us.
"Anna's Lust", the work of Swedish film master Bergman in 1969, although it does not exhaust all the combinations in the relationship between the four, but the complexity is enough to make people dizzy. And this movie actually involves five main characters: the glamorous widow Anna, the literary otaku Andrea, the successful man Eris, Eris' frivolous wife Eva, these four are entities, in addition to them, there are A character who only appeared in conversation, Anna's deceased husband, an unfortunate man whose name was also Andrea.
The story goes like this: Anna's family and Eva's family are good friends. Anna's husband, Andrea, once had an affair with Eva. Anna has been brooding about it. After Anna's husband died in a car accident, the otaku Andrea Ya walked into the life of Anna and Eva's family, because they both live on an island, and maybe this island doesn't often see men, so otaku Andrea not only fell in love with Anna, but also fell in love with Eva There was a secret relationship. As for the successful man, Ellis not only didn't mind her wife's affairs, but also seemed to be very happy.
What can two people do together? In addition to the things you all know, you can also… chat. And chat is nothing more than diss. So we see scenes like this: nerd Andrea and Anna diss Eva together, nerd Andrea and Eva diss Anna together, nerd Andrea and Ellis diss Eva and Anna together. Of course, these scenes are not intended to fill the length of the movie, they provide a different perspective, allowing us to compare the character's self-evaluation with others' evaluation of TA, so as to form a more comprehensive cognition and understanding of the character.
The usual movie, usually starts with the characterization, after the character has an edge, he starts to act, bringing us into the world of the story. In Bergman's film, it is the opposite. It is the encounter between the characters first. With the occurrence and development of their relationship, the truth of the character's character gradually emerges. The narrative of the entire film is actually a process in which a character's image changes from thin to full, from obscure and one-sided to clear and complete.
Each of the four living people is different.
Anna believes in "honesty", and in her value hierarchy, truth and candor are placed first. This does not mean that saying that a person is honest is her highest evaluation of that person. Rather, honesty is her minimum requirement for the world, and if this person is not honest, she will despise him. By extension, if the world still has lies and illusions, she thinks it's a very bad world. In this regard, she is a slave to her beliefs, because of which she lives with dissatisfaction every day.
At the same time, she considers herself a candid person, and her marriage is a very candid one. In her explanation to herself, her husband's infidelity was just a very small accident, and the love between her and her husband was always pure and the same before and after the infidelity. However, in the eyes of the otaku Andrea, Anna's evaluation of her marriage is actually a self-deception. It was a deception that her husband had cheated on her, but Anna still refused to admit his dishonesty. She was in pain, not because her husband and son died in a car accident, as she explained to herself, but mainly because her husband had lied to her.
Otaku Andrea, just like most of the otakus in the world, has a "retractive" personality. He took refuge on the island, cut off all his previous relationships, did not work, had no income, and could hardly be guaranteed food and clothing. And he did it because he wanted to be free. Work and relationships are ties, and if he can get rid of those ties, he will be free. But this is also self-deception. Fortunately, as a sensitive literary otaku, Andrea recognized his self-deception.
Retreat to a corner, in fact, only brought a feeling of freedom, and did not really bring freedom to Andrea. Instead, it leaves Andrea at the mercy of others, as he puts it himself: "humiliated" everywhere. Ellis's suggestion that Andrea come to work for him first, a proposal that, while probably well-intentioned, hurts Andrea's self-esteem. To a person who cannot stand on his own, any kind of good deed is hurt. "Parasite", Anna commented on Andrea after a quarrel, and this may also be Andrea's Achilles' heel, the self-knowledge that troubled him the most. He yearned for freedom, and in the end he paid the price of complete loss of freedom.
Eva also has her own pain. She bases her existence on being likeable (the so-called "pleasant" personality). Therefore, she does not hide her secrets from anyone, and she pleases people by revealing her emotions and showing kindness. However, instead of gaining her respect, it lowered her status in the eyes of others. She became a "person without a story", a frivolous woman with no inner core, empty appearance, and no charm. In fact, she is a very self-centered person. This self-centeredness is manifested in her desire to be someone everyone loves. Because of this, she committed suicide several times, because the results she got were so different from her expectations.
In the whole film, the only person who doesn't feel pain is Ellis. He is a complete nihilist. What Eva wants to be liked, the freedom that the otaku Andrea yearns for, and the honesty that Anna values, are of little value to Ellis. Not only that, the whole world, from his perspective, has nothing of value at all. Therefore, Eva's derailment is completely innocuous to him. He's arrogant, and the way he sees things is completely sarcastic.
According to Hollywood's popular drama rules, before starting to write a script, you must prepare a character biography, which will describe the various personality characteristics, growth process and emotional relationship of the main characters of the story, which will serve as the basis for the development of the entire script. Watching "Anna's Lust" is not like watching a regular drama, but rather like watching a movie based on the biography of the characters. This is Bergman, this is the freedom that the masters have long had. A story with ups and downs is not necessary, as long as there is something to say, the film can be made any way.
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