This is the first time I try to interpret this stream of consciousness movie in my own way. Aside from the dark social background and the film's obscure political metaphors, it is really unique in terms of narrative and material selection. The film does not follow a strict spatial and temporal sequence, but according to the protagonist’s consciousness, interweaving reality and memory. The dead can also naturally appear in the plot. The warm memories of the past and the cold real life are intertwined and broken. The boundary of time and space gives the film a sense of desolation invisibly. The inner world of the protagonist Ana is pure and mature, kind and indifferent, seemingly contradictory, but gradually forms a hidden timeline as the plot develops.
"Death" is the most important theme of this film. But the different deaths that Ana witnessed have different metaphors.
"Ana, throw this in the trash can. It shouldn't be placed here, let alone need it."
"What's inside?"
"What are you worried about?"
"Is it poison?"
"Yes! Very terrible poison, a spoonful of powder like this can kill an elephant"
So Ana collected this pot of so-called poison, and the idea of the first murder came up.
The first person Ana wants to kill: father.
In the shot, Ana stood behind the door and witnessed his father's mistress running away in a panic, and the milk she prepared for her father. Of course, she added a few spoonfuls of "poison" before that. The mistress's hurried and inescapable eyes seemed to tell Ana that he was really dead. Ana has no fear of this pre-determined death. She naturally blindfolded her father, then washed the milk cup, then opened the refrigerator and looked at the cold chicken feet. This action appeared repeatedly in the film. The director used the usual way to show Ana's complicated inner world. Father's death is a kind of disgust, hatred, fear, torture, revenge...
Another scene that emphasizes the performance is the death of her mother. Ana used the most calm eyes to witness her mother who was tortured by convulsions. Her mother struggled to say a few words to the camera, about deception and sin, but in an invisible distance. It seems weak and desperate. The mother's actor also played Ana's self twenty years later, which also has a hidden metaphor. I thought that the meaning of the murder would be understood in twenty years, but he was still waiting for the next twenty years.
After her mother died, she returned to reality as Ana remembered. The film was interspersed with various good memories between Ana and her mother. She closed and opened her eyes many times to see her mother. Ana dreamed of her dead mother. Tell her the story of "Little Almond" gently, but when she woke up, she found herself alone again sadly. As Ana’s desire for death intensified, the number of times her mother appeared in the film gradually decreased. This also explained that there was a scene after the film where Ana was lying on a bed, looking at the camera, opening, closing, and opening her eyes vigorously. , Eyes closed...
The second person Ana wants to kill: grandmother.
This is expressed in a black humorous way, using a child’s innocence to interpret this layer of death. Ana pointed at the pictures on the wall in turn with her hand, as if she was taking her grandmother to reminisce about the past. When there was a photo, her grandmother's always smiling expression because of her physical defect suddenly flashed a little strange.
"Do you want to die?"
She took out the bottle of "poison".
"Use me to help you die?"
She penetrated her grandmother's eyes through loneliness, helplessness, and thirst for death. Ana wants to relieve her grandmother from death. Death here is a yearning for freedom. However, my grandmother shook her head and looked at the scenery outside the window, as if expressing that for a person whose memory is dead, it is meaningless to do so.
The third person Ana wants to kill: aunt.
The death of her mother turned Ana's hatred of her father towards her aunt. The aunt had also been the mistress of the father before his mother died. In Ana's eyes, she is a hypocritical and mean image. Ana and her three sisters acted like her in private, wearing lipstick and high heels, a proud and false posture, using their funny images to satirize this Malice hidden under the gorgeous appearance. A very impressive shot was that Ana took the gun left by her father and aimed it at her aunt, and even when she was thought by her aunt's Xinhuan that the gun was unloaded, she even pulled out a few bullets. At that time, my aunt showed a sort of collapse, showing her hatred that she could not continue to conceal. She slapped Ana. It was also in that shot. Ana seemed to be crying fragile, but there was an unspeakable horror in her eyes. Going back to the room, holding his head up, imitating aunt's serious tone, saying the same sentence: Could you turn off the music, please? Then Anna stopped. She turned to the camera, with a look of hatred, and imperceptible tears in her eyes. In a tone of disgust, hatred and eagerness: I hope she is dead, I hope she is dead, I hope she is dead. So that she could add poison to her aunt's milk with the most plain state of mind, and if nothing happened to mending clothes, she thought she would kill her father to end this woman's life. However, the third person to be killed refused to die.
Ana rinsed the milk glass indifferently, opened the refrigerator again, and looked at the mysterious plate of chicken feet.
What I want to intersperse here is that using the same person to play the mother and Ana herself twenty years later also implies that she can't escape the repeated path.
"Porque te vas" is a melody played repeatedly in the film. It is a cheerful and sad song. The first time it sounded was when Ana and her sister were dancing in the room. What is presented is a harmonious and innocent picture. They dance to the song, like resisting the fear of death and yearning for beauty and freedom. The second sound was after Ana was beaten by her aunt. Obviously, even the relaxed melody brought the atmosphere into a trough, using a contradictory way to express the despair of life. "Why are you leaving?" This is a melody that was not noticed at all at first, but it formed a lingering melody in my mind until the end of the film.
At the end of the film, Ana's sister tells a nightmare: a girl is kidnapped and cannot find her parents, but suddenly wakes up before the mob is about to rob her and want to kill her. It is worth noting that the film also quotes a story about "Little Almond" when interspersed with the memory of the mother. There is a similarity between the two stories, the last sentence is: she woke up suddenly. This also seems to imply that saving the darkness of society requires awakening the next generation.
Raising crows-also comes from a Spanish proverb: "The crows you raise will peck your own eyes when you grow up." Pure and flawless angelic children are raised as crows in a dark and cold environment.
After the film ended, I went back to sort out the plot. It turned out that maybe it was 20 years later that I realized that the bottle of poison was just using soda. The whole film constitutes a black joke, all conspiracies are just presets, and all darkness repeats itself. The sleepy nightmare will continue when you wake up.
This reminds me of a sentence: When all good things cross the boundary, they become a curse.
The protagonist Ana always stares at the camera with a complicated look, looking at the people alive and dead in this room in the most ordinary and indifferent posture.
This movie puts aside the constraints of time and space, and allows the people in the story to tell their own stories. Every viewer is an interpreter of the story, and every person has a different way of sorting out the plot, and the story he sees is also different.
Love is the sadness of parting.
Love is a conspiracy cracked by jokes.
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