■Eternal Song The
movie is pulled away from the camera overlooking the clouds. A beam of light broke through the embarrassment, and then thunder broke out, and above the vast land, the mountains were silent, and the sea was vast. A mirror emits dazzling light, like the beginning of a gambling game. A thriller with a heavy dissection of the human body begins, and Faust, the medical professor, asks the soul as he disembowels the corpse: "What is the soul? Where is the soul... Only God knows, and There is an enemy (demon) of all mankind". Disgusting internal organs pour out, but the soul still finds nowhere.
The story unfolds in a misty and slightly decadent dim image. Hungry crowds, corrupt cities, and people are exiled in the material and spiritual deserts. This is a society where "goodness no longer exists, but evil remains", with "no money and no meaning of life." Amid the noise, filth and confusion, the lost Faust leaves home and embarks on a journey to find his soul.
"If the soul is empty, what good is it for me? I don't feel joy, I don't feel anger, sympathy", Faust's story, about the ultimate search for the soul. But where is the home of the soul? Is it Qu Yuan's quest, is Don Quixote's battle of windmills, is Sisyphus' cycle of beginning and end, is Narcissus's plunge, or is it the eternal mystery of the Sphinx? Adam's Paradise Lost, or Oedipus' Exile? Is it the beauty of Helen or Athena? Is it Satan, or the temptation of the devil Mephistopheles? Faust was hesitant and shaken in the face of the darkness like death: "The God who resides in my chest deeply shakes my soul, and above my strength he sits as king, and in my body he is king. Besides, he has no power."
"Everything that's fleeting is a stench." In reality, there are hungry and crowded people everywhere, people and animals coexist, the living and the dead rush for the road, and everything around is noisy, dirty, and crowded. De Momo thought: "You must leave, this is an eternal song." However, where is the homeland of the soul? Plato's Utopia, Lacan's Mirror City, or Nietzsche's Dead God? Is it Eliot's wasteland or Van Gogh's starry sky? Is it Tagore's homeless tide, or Heidegger's poetic perch?
What is the eternal song? What is the soul that Faust is looking for? In "21 Grams", the soul is the 21 grams lost by the body when a person dies; in "Frozen Soul", the soul is a cargo that can be stored at will; in "Lovely Bones", the soul is the reluctant warmth for life ; In "Constantine", the soul is the criterion for deciding whether to belong to heaven or hell. Faust went to the devil's pawnshop, only to find that the soul of a common man is less than a coin. "But your soul is different," the devil tempted Faust, come on my list.
■The pendulum of desire The
devil's pawnshop pawns everything, including clothing, furniture, conscience, morality, knowledge and soul. Faust wanted to sell a ring with a philosopher's gem that explained the laws of all things, but was told it was worthless because "life has no value, let alone death." Before leaving, the devil asked Faust to sign his book, but Faust couldn't even afford ink. He was so full of doubts about himself that he even attempted suicide: "Law, medicine, philosophy...sadly, even theology, which I have studied with great enthusiasm and determination. Standing here now, it is clear that I am stupid. , not smarter than before."
Fortunately, he still has desire. As long as there is desire, the devil has an opportunity. The devil drank the poisonous herbs Faust used to kill himself, interrupting his suicide plan and leading him to an ancient Roman-style public bath. It's like another bliss here, the bodies of playful laundresses glowing seductively in the water. While the crowd was busy making time for fun, no one cared about the rotten death that emanated from the devil, but the young body and pure heart of the washerwoman Margaret aroused Faustian desire.
The devil continues to arrange his own game. He took Faust to an underground bar full of Dionysian carnivals, provoked a conflict between him and another soldier, and conjured up gurgling red wine by magic. , killed the soldier - and he was Margaret's brother.
Faust pleads with the devil to give Margaret's mother monetary compensation and to fall in love with her at the funeral. The good times did not last long, and the truth was soon learned by the woman. In order to save her, Faust succumbed to the devil in his confusion. He used blood instead of ink and signed a contract to sell his soul: "I only need one night, that's all." Under the guidance of the devil, he traveled through the dark tunnel , wading through the water, came behind the woman, and hugged her from behind. At the moment when the two of them fell into the water, the huge ripples on the water surface caused a silent surprise, as if some kind of life and passion were regained. The two of them looked at each other silently in the water, like the beauty of holding their breaths.
But when he woke up and saw the comatose woman and her demon-killed mother, he felt empty and regretful, and he muttered to himself, "I'm leaving. I don't want to...I don't want to..." The devil smiled. He dragged Faust to the Valley of Death, where it was cold and damp, and the corpses conquered by desire huddled together to warm each other. Faust stumbled and walked in the valley of death, but he could not imagine how he was drawn here by the devil.
"It's a ladder to heaven, but it can also lead us in a completely different direction." In the ultimate search for the soul, Faust's split personalities pull each other, good and evil, light and dark, good and bad, right and wrong, right And desire, beauty and evil, hell and heaven, redemption and perdition... "Two souls reside in my heart. One must stubbornly guard the world and indulge in obscure erotic desires; the other must violently leave the world , to a lofty realm" ("Faust" original), everything is moving forward in the contradiction of antinomy, but helpless, can't have both, Faust can only be reduced in the end for the devil's slave.
Faust's spiritual predicament is also the dilemma of the modern West. As Fei Xiaotong said in Rural China, Faust represents a modern culture that regards conflict as the foundation of existence, and life is the overcoming of obstacles. Without obstacles, life has no meaning. The movie "Faust" is not just a story about the conflict between the soul and the flesh, but also the pendulum of desire that swings from side to side in Schopenhauer's writings.
■Promising in the beginning
However, different from the tragic ending of the original work, the director endowed the film with a more positive and optimistic spirit. He let Faust struggle to free himself from the devil's control after being addicted and depraved. In Death Valley, Faust was not weak and endured, he began to question and reflect: "What did you give me? Not even the money for my ring! Power, influence, these good things can only be earned by themselves! Natural and Spirit, people only need these." In the end, instead of succumbing to a paper contract with the devil, he lifted a stone and smashed it at the devil who was trying to control his soul, and ran wildly with laughter amid the devil's groans and the woman's calling. To the top of the snow-capped mountains, the open land of endless freedom: "There! Farther away!" The burst of life's desperate situation is also like the last sentence of the original author Goethe before his death: Open the shutters, let More sunshine coming in!
"Even if a good person is lost in pursuit, he will eventually realize that there is a right path." ("Faust" original book) Perhaps, the eternal action after being lost is the true meaning of Faust. Just like Faust, who was completely despairing of life at first, before he decided to commit suicide, he silently recited "In the beginning there was a word" of "New Testament John Chapter 1". What is "Beginning"? What is "Tao"? He wondered, could it be that "in the beginning" is me, and "Tao" refers to thought? But in the end, he realized that "in the beginning there was Tao" should actually be changed to "in the beginning, there was action", "in the beginning" refers to meaning, and meaning comes from action. As Foucault said in Madness and Civilization, "The soul is like a small boat, abandoned in the vast sea of desire, in the barren land of worry and ignorance, in the mirage of knowledge or in the world of irrationality. This little boat is entirely at the mercy of the mad sea, unless it can drop a solid anchor—faith, or raise its spiritual sail and let the breath of God blow it to port.” More like what Dante said in "The Divine Comedy, Inferno, No. 34": "Stand up, the distance is still long, and the road is difficult." The finishing touch of "Faust" is also the relationship between freedom and survival. Meaning: "Only those who strive for freedom and survival every day are worthy of enjoying freedom and survival." (Original Book of Faust)
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