Regarding marriage, Yates's "Revolutionary Road" talks about grief. Marriage is like a rotting fruit corpse in a delicate gift box. All the beauty presented is the result of Frank's efforts to whitewash. He is like an unscrupulous businessman who dresses himself up when he is in love. A perfect "trial product". After marriage, the "trial items" are used up, and the "authentic products" appear, and their shortcomings are exposed. The word "ideal" became an additive to his image of being tall, motivated, and reliable in front of his wife, Aibo. It was useless, but essential, a dying beacon in family life. For Frank, life is nothing more than "food, clothing, housing, and transportation." For Aibo, life is a myriad of possibilities. It's the Eiffel Tower in Paris, the apple pie in the morning, and the scenery on a long journey, not the office dust. The unchanging grid. Frank thinks Aibo is absurd, he doesn't know, he is just cheating, using his poor acting skills to support Aibo's fantasy, Aibo feels that Frank is no longer as humorous and high-spirited as when he was in love, she has already seen through Frank's negativity, She did not say that she responded to Frank's deception with hypocrisy.
The road to a broken marriage is not built in a day. Frank lays cement today and Aibo adds bricks tomorrow. "What you call 'love' is actually an illusion of self-deception. You cowardly curl up in this illusion. In fact, you are as clear as I am, and there is nothing between us except mutual contempt and distrust, and the ugliest , find satisfaction from the other party's weaknesses." Frank used Aibo's bulging stomach during the day to delay Aibo's moving proposal, and he used high-sounding reasons to cover up his contentment with the status quo and his perfunctory affairs. In this level of intimacy, women have become victims of men's careers. The subtext of Frank's emotional conflict with Aibo is "comfortable houses, decent life, etc., all of which are earned by myself, why? Let me listen to you!? Why should I give up all this!?" When the two sides cannot keep pace with each other, the other party must make a compromise, so "sacrifice" becomes a derivative of their marriage relationship. There is a finishing touch at the end of "Revolutionary Road". After Aibo's death, Frank left the Revolutionary Road, the next door neighbor chattered endlessly, the old man who needed a hearing aid to hear his wife's speech turned off his hearing aid, communicated It is useless, marriage has been polished and chiseled countless times, and the key to reaching the end is neither material wealth nor mutual support, but endless tolerance.
When forbearance becomes the past tense, the marriage has come to an end, and "Marriage Story" tells the quarrel before the end. The movie begins with the narration of the hero and heroine. The warm and delicate monologue is like a silver-haired old man sitting in a creaking armchair and looking back on the past, but the beauty is fleeting. The two sides are sitting in front of a divorce lawyer. The other party wrote the last letter. Nicole didn't want to read it. Charlie still wanted to dominate even when the marriage was annihilated. He hoped that Nicole would read it, but unfortunately he couldn't, and Nicole left the law firm in a huff.
Charlie is the new darling of the New York theater industry, Nicole is an actor who has become famous in youth comedy, Nicole's rising acting career is stopped by the love between the two, she chooses to follow him and become a member of the theater troupe he established . In addition to their close relationship, they are also the relationship between the boss and the employee, the director and the actor. In the past, I watched "Jia Xiang", and there was a sentence in it, "Of course a director wants to speak out, but film is, in the final analysis, a dictatorial art." It is also appropriate to change "movie" to "drama". Chralie is the director in the theater. Will unconsciously substitute myself as a dictator at work, and this thinking will extend to the family.
In intimacy, men dominate most of the time, and Charlie, as a creator, as a director, has a stronger sense of power than the average person. Regarding the question of how long the couple lived in Los Angeles each year, Nicole's lawyer said in one sentence, "So when you want, it's a negotiation. When Nicole wants it, it's a discussion." Charlie treats her lover as "I can give it to you ." Autonomy, give you room to negotiate, but these are mirages, I just respect your role in the family relationship, in the end you still have to listen to me."
The fierce quarrel between the two sides in the house is the most exciting part of the film, a textbook-level drama. The two sides know each other's weaknesses. They are like skilled surgeons. Their words are like sharp scalpels, precise positioning and quick incision, so that the bad things that rot in the bottom of their hearts are exposed to the air again. Even in the miserable, who lost more because of the marriage, the man is not willing to be at a disadvantage, from the plain communication to the hysterical roar, killing eight hundred and self-destructing one thousand. The man complained that he lost the chance to be ambiguous with many women after marriage, and even he had a high-sounding reason for cheating, "You didn't have sex with me last year." The woman complained that she was controlled by him after marriage, and her acting career was limited by In his theater, the quarrel between the two sides has always revolved around one point, "limitation".
The husband and wife live in harmony and respect each other's opinions. In their eyes, they have become "fetters", and fetters stifle freedom. "Bondage" is a sufficient and unnecessary condition to cause marital tragedy, and family factors are also one of them. Charlie was born of humble great artist, he was eager to this high cost of land in New York City there is a world of their own, everyday communication is limited to co-workers and lovers, Nicole was born in Los Angeles performing family, graceful, passionate, a The pursuit of small but refined, the pursuit of vastness , love is like lubricant, bringing together two people who have diametrically opposed life concepts. When the lubricant gradually dried up over the years, the two were tied to the same rope. Running in different directions, the rope finally couldn't bear the two people's strong pulling and broke apart.
There is a detail in the film that makes Nicole's character very plump. After Nicole hangs up Charlie's phone at the pool party, he meets a strange man, and then the two enter the car, and their desires are rubbing hot in the cramped space. , when the strange man was about to "pull his fists", Nicole said, "Let's do it like this, fuck with our fingers. I'm going to change my whole damn life." Nicole wants revenge for Charlie's cheating, but more psychological revenge , rather than physical revenge, the "finger" is more of a tool to console a wounded heart. Nicole probably understands that Charlie has been holding her to a different and higher standard, and that Chalie's cheating partner may have made up for her imperfection in some way. Nicole cheated once in a similar fashion, and came to his understanding by establishing psychological balance.
The action of Nicole giving Charlie a "haircut" appears in the beginning and the second half of the film. The neck is the most vulnerable part of the human body. Giving sharp scissors to another person to cut his own hair is no different from a dog lying on the floor and will rarely see The soft belly of the hair is exposed to the owner, which is not only a symbol of love, but also a symbol of loyalty. Outside the courtroom, Nicole's lawyer left the "MARRIAGE OF BARBER" case on the bench, and Nicole looked down at it. Maybe marriage is like a haircut, showing each other's weakest parts to each other without any scruples, presenting one's life to each other, and treating each other as the most trustworthy support, living like scissors cutting messy hair, those Bad deeds are left out of a long life. If the hair has not been taken care of for a long time, it is sloppy, and it is disliked by others. Life is also like this. If the management is not good, it will turn into a pool of stagnant water. People are like floating leaves falling on the river. Standing still, life loses its taste.
The moment Charlie walked into the barber shop also meant that he put it down. He came to Nicole's house and saw the late letter, choked up, and Nicole looked at his back and shed tears. They have loved, hated, betrayed, and reconciled, all of which have merged into the river of time without a trace.
Perhaps after many years, Nicole will squat down and tie Charlie's shoelaces again.
View more about Marriage Story reviews
