When a desperate man decides to die, what is he thinking?
When an ordinary Italian worker Corinne calmly walked into the corridor of the presidential suite and prepared to kill the high-powered old man Meyer, he must know that this road is both a road of revenge and a road to revenge. A way of salvation, killing that man is also liberating himself that has been suffering for decades.
The story unfolds so fascinatingly, we can't help asking, why can Corinne kill an old man who looks so gentleman so peacefully? Then I chose to surrender myself like a relief. There must be a very bizarre and twisted story in it. This question made us the audience see it all at once, and can't wait to solve this mystery.
However, the director was not so anxious and began to turn the camera around and focus on a new lawyer Casper who counterattacked from the bottom. I saw some comments saying that I wasted so much time focusing on what the lawyer’s life was doing. I don’t think so, because the director’s purpose in making this film is not only to reflect on history and to liquidate history, but also to dig out the sway between good and evil in human nature. People are not black and white animals. The good thoughts and evil thoughts in our hearts always coexist with each other, entangled with each other, and fight with each other to dominate our hearts. Just as the first shot at a lawyer was that he was fighting freely in sweat, which symbolized the anxiety of good and evil in his heart. Facing the law, justice and favoritism made him dilemma.
Casper-is it a defender of justice or an accomplice of evil?
The director used the first 1 hour to portray the deep emotional bond between the lawyer and the entire Meyer family.
For Casper, Meyer is to educate him to grow up, bring joy to his childhood lacking paternal love, and help him to counterattack from the bottom of the society to the elite-like grandfather-like existence. At the same time, Casper also lived with Meyer's grandson and granddaughter in the big family, witnessing each other's youth growth. The more the director emphasized the emotional fetters between Casper and the entire Meyer family, the more he highlighted the confusion of Casper’s identity and belonging. He is a member of the Meyer family, but at the same time a fledgling lawyer who stands for justice. On this side, it was the side of favoritism, looking at him who was embarrassed at both ends of Libra, constantly accepting human torture and trial of good and evil.
When the lawyer Casper looked at Meyer’s autopsy and recalled that he drove his childhood and taught himself literacy, the director used the camera to cross-edit, so that the ugly and decaying corpse was intertwined with the memories of the carefree childhood. Together, let the brilliance of childhood and the darkness of death be presented to the audience together, and the theme of good and evil intertwined with each other once again points out.
With the deepening of the investigation of the case, Casper and his father traced back the process of sorting out relevant case materials and reached a reconciliation between his and his biological father’s lack of growth companionship. After he grew up, he and his father reached a consensus in the pursuit of justice. .
The last shot in the film was that after the case was over, he came to Corinne’s hometown and received a child’s football when he returned to a calm street cafe and took a nap. This shot means that he received it from Corinne. He did not have time to say the word of gratitude during his lifetime, and thanked him for his historical reckoning and justice for Corinne and his father. He and his father were finally reunited in heaven and were finally able to rest in peace.
The two characters, Meyer and Corinne, are even more vivid examples of the constant reversal of good and evil.
The murderer and the loving grandfather, the first-degree murderer and the hero of revenge, the righteous lawyer and the accomplice of crime, these seemingly opposite character identities are constantly swaying in the same person. This is the highlight of the character in this film. Where.
Corinne-is it a murderous criminal or a vengeful hero who regards death as home?
Corinne's actor, Franco Nero, has a subtle and introverted acting, as if the tough guy Collint Eastwood possessed him. From surrendering himself without saying a word, to seeing his old hometown compatriots burst into tears At the end, the liquidation and questioning of history progressed in sequence.
Corinne’s plays are all in his heart, his eyes are firm, his angry appearance, desperate and sad inside, even though he is a murderer, he has the heroic spirit of seeing death as his home. When he recalled the massacre of civilians in 1944, the involuntary body shaking and trembling also indicated that this was his "heart demon" all the time, and it was a wound he could not heal. He tried to resolve this wound by resorting to the law, but he ended up without a problem, so he embarked on a path of no return, a path of destruction that decided to let the murderer pay for his life and his own life would die together.
When Corinne finally said his inner cry-why is the law on the murderer's side! He said that he had no home, no children, and only the little justice in his heart. His aggrieved tears moved our audience. Another detail is when he heard the lawyer's questioning-Meyer should be found guilty! He smiled for the first time, his brows stretched for the first time, and he looked in the direction of his father in the distant heaven, showing relief in his eyes. The precise depiction of these small details allows us to see the emotional transformation of the characters.
Meyer-is it the kind grandfather or the murderer?
The statute of limitations for the manslaughter suit is 20 years, because of this clause, he was found not guilty. But lawyers believe that the formulation of this legal clause is itself a scandal.
Why did Meyer be so good to the unrelated child of the lawyer Casper? Because when he was young, as a Nazi officer, he brutally killed the poor, killed the father of an innocent poor child, ruined the child’s family, and ruined his life. After he was old, he began to reflect on the sins he had committed. Children at the bottom with no blood relationship are so good. Educating him, giving him a car, and cultivating him to grow up is actually an inner atonement for the big mistakes he committed when he was young.
In the end, Meyer died under the gun of his child Corinne, and Meyer’s death was cross-edited with the death of Corinne’s father at that time. The special Walter P38 pistol made by the Germans during World War II that Meyer has been hiding in the bookcase at home is also to prove that no matter how successful he is now, the role of war criminals cannot be changed. It is his sin and shame for a lifetime.
The value of this film is that it reflects on history and liquidates history, while at the same time it is able to dig into the most complicated aspect of human nature without any standpoint. The sudden termination of the case at the end of the film is also for the audience to judge who is right. Who is wrong with the open space. The hidden emotions of the human nature in the film contradict each other, oppose each other, and the delicate expression of mutual anxiety is the best proof that good and evil are always opposed and interdependent.
In addition to the film, after the Frankfurt trial, the German public continued to reflect on history, and public opinion forced the government to begin accountability and liquidation of Nazi criminals. In 1979, the German Bundestag revised the law to stipulate that "special methods of killing" cannot be traced back. Limitation, which includes serial killings, satisfying specific sexual habits, and killings based on race. As a result, Germany began to hold accountability for Nazi criminals indefinitely.
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