3.5/5 This article was first published in Prow
——'Community of Mourning the Dead' and Reconciliation
"Mourning Death" is a common motif in many movies, and it also frequently appears in Shie Hirokazu's works-"Non-stop" is the eldest son Junhei who was expected to save the life of children in the water. ; "The Diary of the Sea Street" is the common father of the four sisters; "Deeper than the Sea" is the father of Shinoda Ryota who is frustrated in the middle of life with the dream of a writer...different from other movies that often mourn death. As a dramatic plot point arrangement (for example, in "Manchester by the Sea", the film used nearly half of the space to show the male protagonist Li's decadent life and depressed character state after suffering pain, and then showed the true original appearance of the death event. audience).
It was Hirokazu Ee that habitually took these deaths as a default detail and threw it to the audience shortly after the beginning of the story. However, as the plot progresses and more relevant information is revealed, we, as audiences, often find the original ones again. The death event or the role of the deceased is not just a corner of the family depicted in the film, but Hirokazu Edema writes the main character's outlook on life/family by presenting their different degrees of radiation to the main family members, and then expresses the theme.
Looking at the work of Hirokazu Kee, although the theme and attitude of "Non-stop" are different from the film in the final expression, the relationship between the main characters in the focus is actually similar. In terms of functionality, it can even be said that Sarah For the mother and daughter Fabienne and Lumir, it is like the eldest son Junpei to the father Yokoyama Kyohei and the second son.
Obviously, Lumir has been complaining about her mother’s focus on her acting career and ignoring herself in life from childhood. When Sarah took care of herself as part of her mother’s responsibilities, the audience could It is clear that Lumir has an emotional tendency towards Sarah, and it is not difficult to understand that Sarah’s passing has actually exacerbated the original estrangement between mother and daughter, making such an emotional tendency no longer easy to reverse; similarly, "Walking" Chunping in "As the eldest son most likely to inherit his father’s career, he has undoubtedly received a lot more emotional devotion from his father than his younger brother, but from the film now his father has a lot of mean attitude towards his career and his mother has nothing to do with his career. In the occasional complaints about him, it is not difficult for the audience to see that this former preference has not been transferred to many people after Chunping's death. On the contrary, it has become a gap in the hearts of father and son that can no longer be filled. Unable to reach a reconciliation, each continued on the road of life with unwillingness to compromise and unspeakable resentment. ( "Non-stop"-even if there is no reconciliation, life will continue to move forward )
Returning to "The Truth", Sarah is a dead character in the film. The audience can clearly understand from the fictional writing of her in the first half of the film and the details of the dialogue between her mother Fabienne and her daughter Lumir. Different emotions and different attitudes towards her death, and these two completely different emotional attitudes/fetters-as the origin of the film's narration of the mother-daughter relationship-reflect the mother and daughter's many different memories of the past, or about ' Different interpretations of the truth.
When I thought that the film was going in the same direction as "Non-stop", the role of Manon appeared. She was a bit like the stepson Jun in "Non-stop". The appearance of Jun was found by many father Yokoyama Kyohira. A few dead shadows, and relived the vision of “someone in the family can inherit his own doctor’s career”, so even if the film ultimately points to the complexity and helplessness of life, the existence of Chun has more or less diluted it. Bitter taste.
In this film, it may be said that the expression of the theme is not the same, or it may be said that Hirokazu Kee has taken a step forward in the attitude of "relaxing" this family conflict, portraying a positive reconciliation-from Manon and Sarah The identities of the actors and voices are similar. The mother and daughter project their feelings for Sarah onto Manon. In the end, the recognition of her from the mother and daughter led to a positive dialogue between the mother and daughter—— The mother let go of her arrogance, and her daughter was no longer obsessed with what she thought was the'truth' memory. The two faced their true feelings and reached a reconciliation.
——What is truth, memory, or emotion
When Fabienne used Lumir as an excuse to bring her long-time assistant and old friend back to her, she lied that the letter was written by herself, and that it was Hirokazu Kee who added a touch of blue to this close-up lens with foreground obscuration. It is an important moment without lines in the film, and it is easily reminiscent of Kijeslovsky's "Blue".
Different from "Blue", which focuses on thinking about'freedom and imprisonment', it is Hirokazu Kee who seems to be discussing with the audience'what interprets the truth'-she wants to apologize but can't let go of her arrogance; but she lied about the letter. It was written by myself, afraid that the assistant would know the "truth" and question the sincerity of wanting him to come back to work.
It was Hirokazu Kee who showed Fabienne's heart at the beginning of the film. Faced with the reporter's interview, he did not consider who her acting talents should be, nor did he think that someone could inherit her performance characteristics; he was arguing with Lumir about the memoirs: 'I'm an actor, I don't tell the truth, the truth is meaningless'. It can be seen that the aura as an actor hinders her emotional expression in daily life, especially the mother-daughter relationship between her and Lumir.
But what bothered Lumir was her memory, the basis of what she thought was the'truth'. She remembers that she prefers Sarah's performance, but forgets the clip that she used to imitate her mother's performance at the end of the day when she was a child;
She didn't remember hearing the sounds of subways around the door, and her mother reminded her that when the leaves were about to fall in autumn, she could hear them in the middle of the night;
She remembered that Sarah was the one who came to see her and comforted her when she participated in "The Wizard of Oz" in her middle school, but she didn't know that her mother Fabienne was also sitting in the audience watching her, and the role of Wansen Witch was also played for her. ..
Obviously, whether it is from inner arrogance or the selective substitution of memory, there is actually one thing in common between mothers and daughters, that is, they have misunderstandings about each other's emotions, but it is difficult to understand each other's expressions. ——Lumir will show her jealousy and dissatisfaction as an emotional tendency towards Sarah; Fabienne will also be jealous of Sarah'stole' her daughter and compete with her in acting career.
With the help of Maono’s replacement of Sarah’s identity and the in-play "Mother's Memories", Hirokazu completed the transformation of mother and daughter. In the process, mother Fabienne gradually learned to let go of her stardom because she wanted to play the daughter of rookie actor Maono. Arrogance, in a sense, can also be understood as letting go of jealousy towards Sarah.
Because of Sarah's "resurrection" on Maono, Lumir gradually discovered and corrected some of the false memories that he had substituted subjectively. So in the end, there was a frank and positive dialogue between the mother and daughter, which eliminated the long-standing misunderstanding.
As for what is the truth, it was Hirokazu Kee reminding the audience more than once in the film: "You cannot believe memory, even if it is used for acting." From my understanding, memory is the past tense, and emotion is the present. Sometimes, what you hear with your own ears and what you see with your own eyes may not be the truth, but whether you can capture the true feelings of the other person, or whether you are sincerely expressing your true feelings.
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