There are two kinds of tragedies, fate tragedy and conflict tragedy.
The tragedy of fate lies in the insignificance and impermanence of human beings. From the unchangeable in the beginning to the unchangeable in the end, it is destined.
Conflict tragedies are usually manifested in the opposition of two ideas:
"The victory of evil over justice is not a tragedy. A tragedy is the killing of two poor people."
Hegel mentioned in his tragedy theory that tragic conflict is a confrontation between two one-sided ethical entities. In his view, the tragic nature of this conflict is that each team has its own reasons, and all they do is destroy each other.
After reading this passage, the first thing that came to my mind was "The Godfather 2". Turning back to my short comment, I saw that I wrote:
All the characters, one more point is boring, one less point is not realistic enough. Everything seems to be pushed by the big hand of fate, and everyone is like a gear in a pendulum, spinning painfully and helplessly.
I like the Godfather trilogy very much, but never dared to write film reviews for him. Because the sorrow of watching this movie never comes from anywhere, it is penetrating and knocking down. It wasn't until I read this sentence in this part of the film review that I suddenly understood where many of the intuitive judgment criteria for film evaluation came from, such as the aversion to the absolute "black and white" gangsters.
Many people like this movie because it embodies a kind of classic and gentleman chauvinism, in which calm violence is far more dangerous and charming than blatant. At first glance I was also attracted by this. But when I look at it again, I lament the complete rationality of the entire story line and the inescapable tragedy of the ending. Each character is making the most correct judgment for his current situation, and doing his best to make the most appropriate decision in order to achieve the goal. But in the end they all failed, the Corleone family fell, and it fell completely. Like the Buendia family described by Marquez, generation after generation, struggling like tiny ants, they are destined to be alone and destined to die.
I know that some audiences are afraid of tragedy; there are many similar questions on Baidu: "Is the ending of xxx movies sad or happy?" "Is xxx drama abuse?" It is undoubtedly a person's itchy desire for the outcome of a story.
The ending has always been important to us, and only then came the classification of "comedy" and "tragedy" in the dictionary that divides all works into a single ending.
The whole process of witnessing the decline of heroic characters is a kind of torture for the audience who has entered a strong sense of substitution. So I used to hate tragedy too.
But tragedies like "The Godfather" and "The Pianist on the Sea" attracted me like a bottomless whirlpool.
Why do people like tragedy?
Is it because the two emotions of "sadness" and "despair" are inherently attractive to humans?
Or, everyone actually lives in their own tragedy, and the movie just provides a kind of empathy in the subconscious?
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