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After May 1st, the warm comedy "Half Understanding" was quietly launched on Netflix and quickly became popular on the Internet. Because of its Chinese translation, it caused a lot of trouble.
Maybe when the audience first sees the translation of "Campus Lovers", they will naturally regard it as a romantic comedy, but it is not actually a movie about love, even compared with most LGBT-themed movies. , it's not that "pure".
The "Big Nose Lover", which the film pays homage to, also tells a story about hiding in the shadow of others and putting love into writing, which is probably why it was translated as "Campus Lover".
Although "Love with a Big Nose" seems to affirm the Platonic form of love, it is worth pondering that the heroine begins with the appearance of the sweetheart and then falls into the talent, claiming that even if the other party becomes extremely ugly, she still loves him, but Before her sweetheart dies, the heroine turns a blind eye to the talented but strange-looking author of the love letter.
So, does she fall in love with someone first and then ignore other shortcomings, or will she fall in love with no hesitation as long as she can write touching love words no matter who the other person is?
Obviously, "Big Nose Lover", like most romance films, only provides the answer to the story, and uses a fixed formula to let the audience see the standard of love.
In fact, the direction of these love stories after the curtain ends is impossible to study, just as we cannot imagine what Jack and Rose in "Titanic" will look like if they are rescued, it is also difficult to define "Marriage Story". The disappearance of love.
Happily, in this semi-autobiographical film, Wu Siwei doesn't give her story a definitive ending, but instead asks the question: When we're after love, what are we after?
In order to pursue the goddess Astor, Paul asked Elichu, who wrote the thesis, to write a love letter on his behalf. During the exchange of letters, Astor gradually developed a favorable impression of Paul. When the two went on a date, Paul disguised himself as a fictional self on the Internet in order to maintain the character of "soul confidant" - what Astor likes.
This kind of catering to the person you like is essentially a process of losing yourself. But neither Paul nor Ali Chu thought that the qualitative change that made Paul upgrade from a friend to a lover was precisely his bold but brave confession (which is also a brave stroke in the painting), rather than walking on thin ice and acting like others liked.
The characters in the film have since turned from a Platonic blend to an exploration of existentialism. Sartre's existentialism believes that people are different from things, that people exist first, and then they have the meaning they are given. He affirmed the self-worth of man and put forward the statement that "others are hell".
When Paul was asked why he liked Astor, the answer he gave was her beauty, intelligence, and friendliness, which were accepted by the world.
And Ali Chu believes that love should happen at the moment when she meets her eyes, the way she reads a book, the way she can't help laughing loudly, when it is not perfect for a moment, and the five kinds of thoughts that burst out of her mind above sound.
The former only likes a person because of the way the outside world judges, but when we fall in love with a person, we love the essence of his existence .
The director used stop-motion animation to describe Plato's definition of the other half in "The Symposium", and magnified the existence value of the spirit in the form of letters and online chats: the two people who have never had real contact in pure text. During the communication, appreciation and admiration grow spontaneously .
The highest form of the secular spirit is love, which is precisely the attitude of the authors of the French New Wave towards love: when people pursue love, they are actually pursuing the existence of the spirit.
Therefore, the reason why we can see the essence of the other person is not because of love itself, but because we see the self projected on the other person - the hidden and repressed self .
The director subverts Plato's definition of "the other half" with this affirmation of self-worth .
And this also echoes the title of "heart and half understanding": we can neither fully recognize others, nor unconsciously fall into the imagination of others.
For example, Paul is distressed that he can't read Astor's favorite book, while Astor has self-doubt because he turns a date into a book club; for example, Ali Chu gave up going to Grinnell College for his father to stay in the town However, his father's persistence in the town was nothing but a comforting smile from 13-year-old Ali Chu, which made him mistakenly think that Ali Chu was living happily in the town.
The sympathy between Astor and Elichu is more like a mirror-image relationship: they discover their potential ideal image in each other .
Astor dresses up as others like it and wears the same scarf as her friends. She is very similar to everyone, and eventually becomes "four dissimilars", so in her heart, she hopes that Alichu will be like that lonely freedom.
And Ali Chu, who comes from an Asian immigrant family, knows clearly that in that small town, any outrageous behavior may lead to ridicule and exclusion, so she never thought about integrating into society. But the "closed" she chose was another degree of escape from herself - Astor envied that Ali Chu did not need to believe in God, but Ali Chu felt lonely because of it.
In the four important warm-up scenes of Astor and Elichu, the director's spatial handling of this mirror image is also very clever .
In the first scene, the two were picking up books in the corridor. Astor and Ali Chu faced each other for the first time. At this time, they were on both sides of the picture frame. In the second scene, the two were outside the bathroom, looking through the mirror. They looked at each other; the third scene was the most impressive place for many audiences, they floated on the water and showed each other's mirror reflections; and the fourth place was the end of the film, the two stood on both sides of the road, separated by Split double yellow lines, this balance was not broken until Ali Chu turned around and kissed Astor.
Although there is a mirror-like attraction, Astor does not understand the lonely and free Elichu in her eyes due to the unknowability of the other, but it is an illusion that Elichu deliberately hides herself.
At the art festival, Alichu played the piano with her back to her classmates, as if she could avoid the eyes of others, but under this kind of avoidance, her ego also hid, and it was not until Paul's guitar that she put it on. Her true self is summoned.
When she found out that her real self won the applause, Ali Chu smiled in front of everyone for the first time. And when Ali Chu began to try to participate in the lively class reunion, it just heralded that she had opened up her long-closed self, which also formed an intertext with the first half of Ali Chu's understanding of "Nowhere to Run" : the door to the dungeon opened. Afterwards, Ali Chu chose to come out.
Whether it is Astor's "becoming someone else" or Ali Chu's "hiding oneself", they are essentially living in the views of others.
Sartre questions the existence of God just as the protagonists question the creed. The director sets the identity of the protagonist as a high school student, which just fulfills the rationality of existential thinking.
Adolescence is the most confusing time for self-identity and external cognition, and from the perspective of adults, thinking about existentialism is like a pagan in the church, and it is different. As in the church where Astor and Ali Chu texted each other, the background voice advertised: "We believe in God, but Satan sowed the seeds of doubt, and the seeds grew sin, but our town is happiness , save the intrusion of sin to destroy the good life God has prepared for us."
Interestingly, the director transformed the questioning of the protagonists into a conflict with the inherent world, and this conflict is based on the contrast of spaces - families, schools, churches, small towns and other closed places full of creeds and authority. , imprisoned the protagonists' ego.
The places where they find the value of existence are private/open spaces : hot springs that no one knows about, virtual worlds in the dead of night, highways that are always cycling or running, cars with departure meaning, next to trains, and Unfamiliar university.
Different from the usual youth films, the overall mood of "Half Understanding" is restrained, and the only outlet is the brave stroke on the painting . When the questioning produces a rebellion against authority, the accumulation of forbearance becomes the climax of the film - Ali Chu subverts the definition of love in the "Bible" in the church:
"Love is not long-suffering, kindness and former humility; love is messy and complicated, terrible and selfish; love is bold enough; love is not about finding your perfect half, love is about trying and approaching and failing; love is I am willing to destroy my good paintings in exchange for the opportunity to have great works."
And the bravest stroke is the self bound by external cognition . In the climax of the film, the three protagonists break through the confinement, which is a declaration of war against authority and speculation on existentialism.
When Ali Chu stopped expressing herself in other people's words, Astor refused to propose to go to the art school, Paul summoned up the courage to propose the recipe for Tucker's sausage to his mother, and the protagonists all completed their self-transformation.
Love is a spiritual paradise that breaks the barriers of reality. It is the process of drawing the stroke that belongs to oneself. This stroke also erases prejudice from family, gender, race, religion, culture, etc. In great paintings, love makes us Discovering that accepting others is not that difficult.
This film, like love itself, is complex and ambiguous .
Wu Siwei has been hailed as Ang Lee's successor, especially in the way she deals with Chinese-American emotional values and Eastern and Western cultures. If "Face" is the female version of "Wedding Banquet", then "Half Understanding" is "Diet Men and Women" .
In addition to the superficial intertext (Chen Chong's mother image) with the previous work "Face", "Half Understanding" is more like a continuation of "Face".
The protagonists in "Face" have been living under the scrutiny of others. In order to take care of "Face", the protagonists live hard and unhappy lives. Although in the happy ending, the protagonists get a brief respite by tearing their faces, but it is more like the director's venting of an unfulfilled wish.
In "Half Understanding", although Wu Siwei chose an open ending and turned to the search for the essence of love, we are delighted to see the protagonists' pursuit of self and affirmation of existence . It is also through "Half Understanding" that we have also witnessed the transformation and growth of director Wu Siwei.
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