01
When the development of modern society has changed the social structure of gregariousness, and more and more people have begun to choose to live alone, how should we face the formation of a "non-connected society" (a society that has no contact with anyone)?
The film A Quiet Life explores this issue.
The protagonist of the story, John, is an employee engaged in social services, and his job is very special. He needs to find relatives and friends for those who have died in loneliness, and organize a decent funeral. But for a serious and persistent male protagonist, this is not an easy task.
Almost all the people John served were people who were out of touch with the group society, and their interpersonal relationships were so scarce that no one knew of their passing for quite some time. As for their family relationships, they are either extremely simple, and they are the last member of the family, or extremely complicated, and their families are reluctant to associate with them.
In either case, they will bring enormous resistance to John's work, yet the nature of John's work does not allow him to spend so much time. Although the issue of death is quite heavy, and although John wants to handle the funeral of every deceased person perfectly, those who have passed away must finally be buried in peace within the stipulated time.
For John, there is not much news to watch in the world of the living, because there are so many dead to care for.
02
The "missing society" they live in is a blind spot for group care
To a certain extent, what this society needs John to do such a job is because the development of modern society has given individuals more choices in terms of lifestyle.
Whether it is materially or spiritually, more and more people have the opportunity and ability to plan their own life with an independent attitude. This also means that the living state of living alone is no longer just a passive result caused by life changes, but may also be an active choice of individuals with relevant conditions and demands.
Its positive is freedom, its negative is loneliness. When people are fascinated by the freedom of the former, do they think that they will fall into the trap preset by the latter?
"A Quiet Life" ostensibly focuses on John, who is engaged in the social service industry, but through the eyes of the male protagonist, we see a group of people who live alone, who may not have jobs, may not have children, or are out of a certain For some reason, they are disconnected from their hometowns and their families. In short, they have to live alone for some reason, and because of this, they will inevitably go through a process of gradually disconnecting from the individual, from the group, and even from the society.
When more and more people are faced with such a desperate situation of loneliness, and when they are unable to establish contact with anyone as an individual, this will create a scattered "unconnected society" under an overall social framework, and this It is destined to be a blind spot that cannot be reached by group care, because they live in a shady curtain that is actively or passively woven by themselves.
And the most cruel thing is that this kind of loneliness and pain is often silent until the end of their lives.
In the movie, John has a habit at work, he likes to collect those photos of the deceased, and in this way, he tries to piece together the life of the deceased. In the photos, most of them are smiling, and they are surrounded by their friends, lovers, relatives, this is the life they once had, but there must be some reason that they made a difference to their own life. Another option.
03
How are social ties cut off?
physical distance + psychological distance
For John, receiving a job notice means that there may be another person who "didn't belong to society" passed away alone, and he is like a ferryman, trying to clean up the memories that the deceased may have before his death. The best outcome he pursues is that every "client" who dies in loneliness can have a funeral that is not lonely, but most of them backfire.
At work, John once received a call from a deceased son. He thought the caller would come to take care of the funeral in person after learning of his father's death, but he got a response that he refused to come to deal with it.
Seeing this, at first, like the male protagonist, I couldn't understand why the man would refuse to attend his father's funeral, even though there was no provision for him to bear the funeral expenses. However, this incomprehension actually stems from a critique of moral supremacy, but when we discuss the problem only at the moral level, the question of how the "unconnected society" came into being is often overlooked. Even consciously shelved by us.
Among the deceased whom John handled, there were many living relatives, but they only had a biological blood relationship with these relatives, but did not establish a mutually supportive and interdependent social relationship. No external means can shake the existence of blood relationship, but for social relationship, the physical and psychological distance between each other is enough to determine the strength or even the existence of the relationship.
It was learned from the call that the man had not been in contact with his father in a long time, and he may not even know his father's place of residence.
This also means that in terms of physical distance, he and his father will no longer have a common living space from a certain day, and when necessary, they will no longer be by each other's side. How do you maintain your relationship with someone who is always absent when you need them? When we openly accuse the person who did not attend his father's funeral for being heartless, have we considered how much the person involved has been emotionally hurt in the face of this family love? And this kind of complex emotions that outsiders cannot empathize with directly determines the psychological distance between him and his father.
This is true of family affection, and the same is true of other types of affection.
To a certain extent, people who are "unconnected to society" are people who are alienated or even isolated from others in terms of physical and psychological distance, and their lives are therefore trapped in a quiet environment, and death is nothing but a The continuation of this silence.
John was powerless to break the silence most of the time, until in the end, he succeeded twice.
04
What can break the silence of life?
a hot and burning heart
Due to low work efficiency, John was laid off by his agency, but in order to have a good start to his work, he decided to personally complete the aftermath of a deceased person he was working on. After his investigation, the deceased still had a daughter alive. In order to allow her to attend his father's funeral, he tried his best and finally found an opportunity to interview her. And this last time, he got one of the few satisfactions in his career.
The deceased was not a competent father, absent so much of his daughter's life that the latter became emotionally estranged from her father. The stubborn and irritable father ultimately chose not to live with his wife and daughter. But this is just an outline of the story, and we need more details to fill our imaginations.
We can deduce the trajectory of the deceased's falling into the "missing society" through the living state of the deceased, but it is difficult for us to understand his mental journey in the whole process of falling into it. But the male protagonist, John, was a careful person, and he sensed the pain of the deceased after he was separated from his family during his lifetime.
As a father, it is not only his daughter and wife who cannot forgive his faults, but himself. Character flaws not only keep him from handling his own life, but it also ruins the life of his family. And this may be the reason why he left his family and lived alone, but it's not enough to prove that he doesn't love his daughter, it's just that due to the physical and psychological distance, their love for each other cannot resonate in a certain space.
At this point, John finally knew that those who were "unconnected to society" would have a hot and burning heart even in silence, but when this heart could not get any response, the pain was deeper than ordinary people, and their loneliness was deeper than ordinary people. Even more.
When John handed over the photos that the deceased had treasured to his daughter, the latter also felt his father's pain, and because of this, she also had a heart that was as hot and hot as her father's.
Although the physical distance cannot be bridged, the psychological distance is infinitely narrowed at this time. At this point, the social relationship that was broken during the deceased's lifetime was re-established, and what he rescued was not himself, but her daughter. The latter's life will no longer be silent and lonely at the level of fatherly love.
And also no longer silent, there is the male protagonist who completed this last task.
In the movie, John is actually on the fringes of the "unconnected society". His interpersonal relationships are extremely simple. He has no family and not many friends. The nature of his work also determines that he does not have many opportunities to make new friends. , so he has long been accustomed to living an unchanging and quiet life. But in the end, his life was shaken, because he had love, this inexplicable throbbing made him at a loss, but also gave him a kind of impulse and excitement that he had never had before.
I think many viewers can't forgive the ending of this movie, why the male lead died in an accidental car accident, obviously they will have a sweet love soon.
Although this story is not complete, when I saw the male protagonist with that kind of satisfied smile on his face in the pool of blood, I seemed to feel that his life was complete at this time, but it was a pity that his scorching hot And when the hot heart broke the silence of his life, he had to cool down quickly.
But when this dramatic cruelty conveys a kind of pain to you and me who are watching the movie, I prefer to regard this arrangement as a gift from the director to us. It turned out that our hearts are equally hot, equally hot.
When the proportion of the elderly living alone continues to rise, and when the single society becomes a trend, we cannot but pay attention to the existence and expansion of the "missing society", which reminds us that more and more people will face the desperate situation of loneliness.
And how to mend the social relationship on the edge of fracture and how to rebuild the social relationship that has been fractured have become new issues that modern society will face.
Fortunately, the film "A Quiet Life" provides an answer for reference.
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