who am I

Bernice 2022-03-16 09:01:08

The proverb on the ancient Greek temple of Delphi reminds us to "know thyself".
When Socrates, he already proposed to know yourself. But what is this self like? Knowing ourselves, how do we face it?

Sonoko's films always ask a question in a very extreme situation, and then give us an answer. In Kiko's Dining Table, he asks the question: Who am I?

Who is Noriko? Who is Photon? Who is Kumiko? Who is Yuka?
When that locker was opened, we knew that our memory turned out to be just so false and so fragile. When a stranger wants you to be his family, you find your memory is so ordinary, so disgusting.

When the gap between who we want to be and who we really are is desperate, what do we choose?

who am I? As far as human identity is concerned, my identity lies in my reason, or in our memory. These problems are all indifferent, and the real problem is the meaning itself. I am not really anything but just a meaning. I am what I mean to others and what I mean to myself. In different eyes, I have a different meaning, and I am also a different me. I have no identity at all.

I am meaning.
Heidegger said that a person's death is the meaning of a person's existence. That's it, Noriko, Kumiko finally gave up on herself, gave up "I" and became meaning. The confused Yuka could only continue to search.

I want to be a person, a person different from who I am now. If there is such a chance, you can become another person to live and then die. It's beautiful, it's really meaningful.
Noriko and Kumiko, for them, did not choose to become Tetsuzo's family because they were tired. It is the power of this warm love that comes back home that eventually becomes the glue.

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Extended Reading
  • Major 2022-03-24 09:03:39

    Holy crap, it opened my eyes again! People can make up the past, cut off the family relationship history that they did not choose, completely de-subjectify, hollow themselves out, and nomadic like a wild cat. Once this happens, they will accept all symbolic commissions indiscriminately. This radical image is the postmodern body ethics of "people are dead"!

  • Malvina 2022-03-23 09:03:20

    If you don't have a mature theoretical system, don't make nonsense, okay? In the end, the silly hat family who will only sit down and eat hot pot!

Noriko's Dinner Table quotes

  • Noriko Shimabara: Dad looked at me. His eyes were moist. I felt bad. I was his daughter. He was a lonely, stubborn man.

  • Noriko Shimabara: I was born to breathe... But I wasn't breathing just because I was born.