Preamble
In 2014, the Brugman brothers and sisters abandoned the previous lighthearted and humorous comedy style, imitated the 14-act structure of the crucifixion of Jesus, and put a contemporary "Saint" who was martyred by Catholicism on the screen. The protagonist Maria lives in Germany, where democratic consciousness is highly developed, but she and her family adhere to the fundamental principles of Catholicism. In the gap between secular rules and doctrines, where to go, the people in the play are as confused and confused as the audience. Facing the fact that Maria sacrificed herself on a hunger strike in exchange for the miracle of her autistic brother's recovery, the director showed the embarrassing reality with objective and calm camera language, not sarcasm or praise, just compassion. The film won the Silver Bear Award at the Berlin Film Festival that year for its rigorous script structure and poetic smooth narrative style.
"Mother's love is full of grace"
Like most problem girls in reality, Maria has a family with frequent illnesses. The mother is usually the initiator of the tragedy, and the father is generally absent. Maria's younger brother suffers from autism, and her hunger strike and sacrifice, from a scientific point of view, is anorexia. Although there is no evidence that children with autism come from "refrigerator families," Maria's religious ideology is largely derived from the environment in which she grew up. The mother shown in the film is always in a state of anxiety, completely incapable of listening to any objections, and often roars and jumps out of rage after appearing in less than two or three sentences. Mother is actually more secular than Maria, caring about other people's eyes and clothes. In her opinion, she has a "happy family that should be able to have a harmonious dinner", and from time to time needs to send family photos full of smiles to relatives and friends, these are the capitals that she proves her existence in the secular life. Her strict religious rules are more like finding excuses and relief for a messy life. Under the blessing of religion, her authoritarian hegemony has also been clothed with a sacred cloak. To express the will of God is inviolable and unquestionable. In this way, her relationship with her children has also been sacrificed to the altar of religion, but perhaps more out of selfish instinct. When Maria confessed that she had lied, her mother was furious. She didn't understand the changes brought about by confession and the teaching behind her confession. She just reprimanded her daughter with rigid rules and unchangeable rules. The focus of her anger was on being challenged to authority. . And the daughter's cry is not because of the mother's scolding, but more from not being understood. She considers herself closer to God's will than her mother, and even better able to care for her sick brother than her mother.
However, sin is there. Because maternal love is endowed by God, full of grace, unquestionable, sacred and inviolable. So the girl felt ashamed, for fear that because of her wrongdoing, she would no longer be able to gain her mother's love. Maternal love here is equated with belief, which is conditional. First of all, you have to obey unconditionally, and secondly, whether you can get it depends on how good or bad you are. Maria is like a lost lamb, afraid of being abandoned by the shepherds, full of lonely world-weariness.
sacrifice or suicide
Religion can give people a sacred aura, and they can be famous in words and deeds. "You are the one chosen by God!" This kind of contempt chain of superiority endowed by religion does not only appear between believers and non-believers, but also within the scope of widespread Western society and large religions. Such inequality Still there, the old-fashioned Catholic Fraternities despised Luther's reformed Protestantism, and Maria and her mother despised punk, jazz, and felicity. Maria has a world-weary mood beyond her age and experience, and this attitude of longing for death and canonization even surpasses the spirit of religion. She talked about her ideas to the priest many times, but she never received affirmation and encouragement. She was transformed into a more secular way: entering a convent and becoming a nun to serve the Lord. And these, in her view, are all vulgar and external, and don't care. Maria does not possess all the universal values, cannot integrate into the rules of secular life, and even question the church in the real society. She only focuses on the metaphysical level—the other side of the world, and the redemption of the self—the way to enter the other side of the world. In her eyes, people in the secular life are alive but dead. She is a person who is truly alive in the teachings, but she doubts the meaning of life and yearns for death all the time. The yearning for the other side of the world not only stems from Maria's understanding of religious spirit, but also stems from her rejection of real life. In real life, whether at home, school, or church, she is the object of neglect and even exclusion. The world could not understand, and the family and the church misinterpreted her passion for religion. All people must live on the ground, and even priests and mothers cannot keep their feet off the ground. The film shows two scenes of Maria praying with the boarders at home, once on an outing and once in the ward. The prayers of the boarders are interrupted by the interference of others, and only Maria has been indulging in it, and she has forgotten her prayers. So Maria, who yearned for feathering and flying, was destined to become a heretic, the other end of the secular world, and the top of the religious end. She does not belong to this world, and only God, who is completely at the top of the other end, can really see her, watch her, and fully understand and accept her. So she desperately longed for that direction and threw herself into that embrace.
The yearning for the other side of the world needs a sacred reason, otherwise, suicide is a big sin! In this sense, Maria is just looking for a reason called religion for herself to get rid of secular life. Maria's hunger strike appears in hidden lines, even in forced form, in most of the film's first paragraphs. Wanting to get dessert after the religious school class, and dinner at home, the priest used the name of offering sacrifices, and was terminated by the mother's anger. Everyone just noticed that she was getting weaker and paler, and that the hunger strike gradually became her conscious and active behavior. On the one hand, as a mortal, you have no right to choose your own life and death, only God can decide. On the other hand, the film gives a clear definition of how to define whether one's actions are out of sacrifice to God or suicide to avoid responsibility. When you look at the beautiful scenery, you have God in your heart, and you want to dedicate it to Him; list the things you love, and then give them up to free up more space in your heart to dedicate to the Lord. This is sacrifice. The sacrifice must firstly be a conscious, conscious act, and secondly it must be good. But Maria wanted to dedicate herself completely to the Lord by going to death. In the eyes of the priest, this was an act of evading the responsibility God entrusted to the secular human beings, which was like suicide and a big sin. So Maria's refuge was desperate. She had little left, and she could only give herself completely to obtain God's redemption. However, she did not have a clear understanding of whether this act was merit or evil, and her judgment was based on whether there was a miracle.
About "Tolerance"
In gym class, Maria refuses to run because she thinks the accompanying music is a devilish rhythm. The teacher stopped the music and let him rejoin the team for exercise, which caused dissatisfaction among other students. Why can't everyone hear music because Maria doesn't like it alone! But is it possible to be intolerant of Maria? The teacher reiterated the concept of tolerance to everyone... The small words between these two words not only contain the essence of the Western democratic spirit - all people are created equal, enjoy the same rights, and are sacred and inviolable. Yes, Maria cannot be deprived of rights because of her personal preferences; in the same way, how should Maria's rights be protected? There is a deeper religious meaning here: God, as a shepherd, lost a sheep, and in order to find the lost lamb, he abandoned the whole flock... In God's eyes, there is no big, small, or few. point. Here, the worldly masses are the whole flock, and Maria is the helpless lamb.
If you think of this movie as a youth drama, and look at the external causes of the tragedy, her irritable and harsh mother is secretly like the initiator, but what needs special attention is that the description of her father is not considered a Absent, and others such as teachers, doctors, etc. have enough writing. In a country with democratization and highly developed welfare, the society's tolerance for disadvantaged groups and dissidents has reached a very high level, and the care of the overall atmosphere can greatly reduce the occurrence of social tragedies. Yet despite this, personal tragedies are not uncommon. Maria's tragedy cannot be easily attributed to a lack of love, incomprehension, or the absence of some important person growing up, or even the religion itself for which she was dedicated. Tragedy can happen even if the subject is stolen from another genre of art: Fauvist painting, rock music, sculpture, or just love. Gifted with talent, withdrawn in temperament, living under the pressure of the family, relatives and friends do not understand, she is tired of worldly life, she is bent on death, seeks liberation, and dedicates herself to it. It can be said that Maria's behavior is like a group syndrome in real life, which will be staged in different clothes every day. The film uses religious themes to reveal the essence of reality. However, whether it is Maria, the film or real life, it is impossible to become "Rodin's Lover", "White Wedding", or "Skate Park". Today, when the Western democratic consciousness is highly developed, religion, especially the Catholic conservatives who abide by the fundamental principles, has become a thing that is more marginalized than any art category, even DP. In a rapidly developing society, all people believe in religion, "God bless" has become a mantra, and God has retreated to a distant existence, the limit of its existence is that it cannot affect people's daily life. People no longer believe blindly and do not need foolishness. The foundations of religions such as eternal life, observance of the commandments, repentance, and redemption are increasingly shaken in the new era. The decline of religion is precisely because of the weakening of the believers' belief, so that Satan can run rampant and the demons in people's hearts come out. In other words, Maria's incomprehension and tolerance are more like the inferiority of human beings. "If you are not my race, your heart will be different." This kind of thinking has a long history and deep roots in the secular society; If you use a religious interpretation, it is the "Tower of Babel".
In the tug-of-war between secular and religious, life and death, Maria also cast a warm gaze on secular values. She envied the mature and charming beauty of the students at home, and yearned for contact with teenagers of the opposite sex, but she could not She got rid of the inherent religious shadow on her body, and the secular society was unwilling to give her a tolerant acceptance, so she had to completely rely on one side. The battle between religion and the secular is shown calmly and softly in the film, but it can be seen everywhere. For example, Maria's prayers are constantly interfered by others; She was in the intensive care unit to receive the sacrament, but the last piece of food that the priest sent to her mouth killed her. At this time, her younger brother spoke up. The paradox between religious spiritual miracles and modern empirical science was pushed to the extreme.
Just like the pain of bereavement and the joy of canonization, there is only one choice. Sadness belongs only to those who are still alive in the secular world. Maria's spiritual world has been fulfilled. Whether it is suicide or sacrifice, the director has given a miracle at the end of the play. This segment is controversial and its intent is vague. The author does not think it is a kind of irony, and it is more reasonable to say that it is reflective. The director is also trying to explore the embarrassing situation between religion and the secular. Under the calm and calm language of the camera, it is better to understand it as compassion rather than irony. And the Brugman brothers and sisters watching from outside the camera must have understood: Whether it is a complete surrender to secular science or religious spirit, it is no different from the people they describe in the play.
Eye of God
The film consists of fourteen acts, with the passage of Jesus' crucifixion as the title, and the characters are always placed in the frame with a fixed-camera long shot, which makes it have a kind of beauty like a classical oil painting. There is no soundtrack in the whole film, only a black screen and a white screen are used to switch themes, form scenes, and spread out in a stage-like structure and poetry. The audience listens to sermons, participates in various religious ceremonies, confirmation, confession, sacrament, and teaching together with the characters in the play. The film only uses one overhead shot at the end of the play, and the rest are all from the same perspective. There is no omniscient and omnipotent place inside and outside the camera. What we do not understand is the confusion of the protagonist, and no one can provide the answer. The death came so unexpectedly, the methodical rescue soon failed, and it was terribly calm. If you can find comfort and relief for life and death in religious belief, I don’t know if it’s sustenance or comfort, and even sadness is unnecessary. The world is changing so fast that the young maiden's new grave will soon become an orphan, and the sad boy offers his brief stop; but God only casts a glance over the top of the nine heavens, and everyone tries his best to go where he is. Looking up, but its perspective is missing, only looking down at the earth at the end of the play, telling us that he has always been there. The Man on the Threshold｜The original manuscript was published in "Midnight" December 10th, 14s. in Beijing
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