[The seventh-level floating map of revenge and tolerance]
text/empty language
The Seven Psychopaths, or The Seven Psychopaths, isn't exactly a movie story about psychopaths, it's a story about the choices of "revenge and tolerance". It does not repeat such clichés as "revenge is vain" or "to preach tolerance and love." This film presents a tower of enlightenment built of revenge and tolerance, a seven-level pagoda between falsehood and wrong.
The main clue characters of the film are Marty, the writer who tried to write "Seven Psychopaths", and Billy, the unscrupulous who helped him find the material to write. Another character, the old man Hans, plays an important role in expressing the main thrust of the entire film's story. The film deepens the choice between revenge and tolerance through the role of the old Hans.
[Seven perverted personalities in the movie]
The seven perverted personalities in the film are not the seven characters in the promotional poster. Each of the psychopaths is clearly identified in the movie, listed below in order.
1) Personality Psycho No. 1: A serial killer code-named "Block Jack". [0315] [4843]
This serial killer only killed mid-level and senior leaders of Italian-American gangs or other gang members. His name comes from the fact that after killing a person, he always leaves a square Jack. This practice of throwing down the "square J" is like a colonist marking a site or a tourist taking a photo to commemorate it, to make a self-mark to show their influence or ability. "Diamond Jack" thinks that killing gang members is just, he is a just punisher and an avenger. The character was told by Billy to writer Marty, thus becoming Psycho #1.
2) No. 2 pervert: a Christian who has been tracking the murderer for more than ten years. [1419]
Psychopath #2 is a Protestant "Shaker" or Quaker. This Quaker woman was killed. The killer, who said he could not stand the torture of his conscience, turned himself in a year later, and although he demanded the death penalty, it ended up being sentenced to life in prison. After learning of the verdict, although the opposing lawyers reacted violently, the Quaker behaved quite calmly. The murderer has been in prison for more than ten years, and has become a devout Christian. He repented and was released. The killer decided to live a devout, religiously comforted life for the rest of his life. However, the Quakers who are the victims seem to be tracking the former murderer and monitoring him all the time. This situation continued for eleven years, making the murderer unbearable. The killer desperately wanted to get rid of the stalker. One winter night, the former murderer remembered a passage written in a Catholic pamphlet: The only ones who are bound to go to hell are not murderers, nor rapists, but suicides. This passage comforted the former murderer because he knew that if he committed suicide and went to hell, the stalker would not be able to go to hell. So, the former murderer committed suicide by slashing his neck with a razor, and he felt that he could finally get rid of the stalker in this way. The killer committed suicide in hope. But what the one-time murderer saw was such a desperate final scene: the stalker also slit his neck with a razor. Even in hell, the stalker has to chase after him. How disturbing the former murderer is, this is an endless unease.
The story of this character is also told by Billy to writer Marty, and the prototype of this character is Hans, an old man who cheated money by kidnapping a dog with Billy. Hans's wife is being treated in hospital for cancer. Hans, who has no job, steals dogs and cheats money to collect treatment fees for his wife. This practice later resulted in the death of his wife. After Hans's wife died, Hans behaved as calmly as he did after he learned of his daughter's death. The difference is that when his daughter died, Hans thought he had to get revenge, but now he doesn't think so. His approach may have been influenced by Gandhi, who said: An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind [5656]. Literally translated as: "An eye for an eye, there will be only blind people in the world". Or to paraphrase: Vengeance blinds the world. The change in Hans' attitude reinforces the tension between revenge and tolerance.
3) Pervert No. 3: The gangster who lost his dog and frantically looked for it. [1655]
This pervert number three has more paranoid feelings for his dog than anyone else. He can kill to find his dog. He will be saddened by the loss of the dog, but not by the death of his companion. This preference for dogs over people is the main characteristic of this pervert.
The gangster's dog was stolen by Billy. In order to find his dog, the gangster eldest tracked down Billy and Hans' stronghold. But his men were killed here by pervert number one. The gangster brother traced to the hospital where Hans's wife was, and killed Hans's wife. After that, the gangster continued to track Hans and Billy, trying to find his dog. In this film, this story line and the writing of "Seven Psychopaths" are developed simultaneously.
4) Pervert No. 4: Vietnamese Buddhists who hate war. [2040]
Psycho 4 is the only fictional character in the film, or a character that's almost entirely on the show. When writer Marty wanted to write "Seven Perverted Personalities", he only thought of this character, and the other characters were drawn by Billy. Marty wanted to write the character as a non-violent Buddhist psychopath, supporting the theme of "love and peace." But Marty didn't know how to write it, and it seemed that his subjectivity was too poor for him to write such a contradictory character at all. The character goes to Marty's script, not Marty's script that pushes the character out. This only fictional character bears the main expression of the film. But it can't be said what the character is, because the character is dynamic, changing with the plot of the film.
The Buddhist psychopath started to be presented as an avenger of war. Originally a member of the Viet Cong, he frantically killed invading American soldiers in the Vietnam War. After the war, he returned to his hometown to live a peaceful life with his family, but he found that his family had been killed in the war. So he went to America to get revenge and kill the American soldiers who massacred his family. He used a prostitute and tied dynamite to the prostitute to kill some American soldiers who were in a meeting to discuss the gains and losses of the Vietnam War. Such a plot is Marty's intention. Marty describes the Viet Cong Buddhist as a simple avenger. Although Marty claims that the character is Buddhist, the character shows little Buddhist character. Although this image may be perverted, it is not moving. Like many Hollywood action movies, it shows an animalistic desire.
The old man Hans devised another storyline for this Buddhist figure, an appropriate one, one that conveys the nature of the Buddhist. [013630] This Vietnamese Buddhist was sweating profusely and restless in a hotel in Phoenix. A prostitute in red came out of the bathroom and asked him, "Would you like to have sex directly, or have an intellectual conversation first?" The Vietnamese Buddhist didn't understand English, so he didn't know what the prostitute in red was talking about. So they just make love. But at this time, the Vietnamese Buddhist heard another man's voice: "Stop, it is useless to do this." He sat up, sniffed the air, and said, "Gasoline." Then, the Vietnamese Buddhist gave The red-clothed prostitute tied up explosives, held gasoline, and dragged her to the meeting place where the American soldiers were having a meeting. After arriving at the venue, the Buddhist pushed the woman in red and poured gasoline on the ground. He picked up a match. And the woman in red said in standard Vietnamese, "Stop, it's useless to do this." The Buddhist closed his eyes, then he opened them again to find that he wasn't in Phoenix at all, but was sitting Saigon street in 1963. The revenge experience just now was just a dream. He was wearing a monk's robe, sitting on the ground, doused with gasoline all over himself, and holding a match in his right hand. There was a woman in red in the crowd, looking at him with a sad expression. He seemed to finally drive anger and hatred out of his heart. As he was about to strike a match, a monk beside him finally pleaded with him: "Stop, it's no use doing this." The first monk to set himself on fire in protest of the war whispered, "Maybe it will work." Then he Light the match, light yourself. This story of a Buddhist perverted personality ultimately presents the thought that instead of choosing darkness, one chooses light, self-sacrifice.
5) Psycho 5 and Psycho 6: The serial killer combo, Maggie and Zach. [37:55]
Psycho #5, Zach, was recruited by Billy's advertisement in the newspaper. Zach tells the story to writer Martin about him and Maggie, who Martin designed as a psychopath number six.
A serial killer, as the name suggests, is a killer who specializes in killing serial killers. When Zach and Maggie killed the serial killer, the methods they used were not much more normal than those of a perverted killer: slowly sawing the living, slowly burning the living... In comparison, Maggie More cruel than Zach.
6] Pervert No. 7: Billy. [48:34][48:43]
When Billy was Psycho #1, he was a killer who specialized in gang members; when Billy was Psycho #7, he was a freak, he was a violent man. He thinks the nonviolent rhetoric is wrong. When Hans quoted Gandhi in favor of tolerance, Billy said Gandhi was wrong and people just didn't have the courage to point it out. Billy's envisioned "Seven Psychopaths" story would end with a shootout in a cemetery in which all the psychopaths died. What remains is a chaotic and beautiful world, an empty illusion of peace, and people's hopes for peace.
【The Tower of Awareness of Revenge and Tolerance】
7] The film is an essay on revenge and tolerance. It doesn't neatly limit roles to a single option. The seven perverts can be roughly divided into two categories: one category includes 1, 3, 5, 6, and 7; the other includes 2 and 4. The first type of characters or "psychopaths" take a more direct attitude of vengeance, they are in hatred, and they take evil deeds to deal with them. Tolerance is an unnecessary option for this attitude, which lacks tension. This category of characters is basically more of a clown, especially the three, five and seven. The second type of characters shows the tension between revenge and tolerance, the conflict and transformation between revenge and tolerance.
8] The choice of these two characters, the old man Hans and the Vietnamese Buddhist, embodies the conflict and transformation between revenge and tolerance. These two roles are related, and the transformation embodied by the latter role is given by the former role. They embody the conflict and transformation between revenge and tolerance in two religious backgrounds: the former is Christianity; the latter is Buddhism. What the old Hans did after his daughter died was quite bizarre, which was to track down the killer, endlessly, and even into hell. These practices look like Nemesis. It is said that the goddess of nemesis originated from blood relatives revenge. The three personalities of the goddess of nemesis are: revenge to the murderer, suspicion, endless. The killer who killed Hans' daughter finally committed suicide. According to Christianity, if the old man Hans killed the killer who killed his daughter, the killer would not necessarily go to hell. Those who commit suicide are bound to go to hell. Therefore, according to the Christian logic mentioned in the film, what the old man Hans did was indeed a very cruel revenge.
But, after many years, old Hans seems to have become more forgiving. When his cancer-stricken wife doubted their nearly lifelong Christian faith and whether heaven and hell existed, he said that God loves us, though he found the humor of God's love for the world incomprehensible. The Christian view of world salvation is based on its belief in heaven and hell. If heaven and hell do not exist, how can the world be saved in a world full of evil and hatred? If there is no heaven and hell, then any reason for tolerance becomes unconvincing. Then all that remains is a world of despair. After the murder of the old man Hans's wife, his belief in heaven and hell should have weakened, and his heart should have been more hopeless, although he cites nonviolent rhetoric of tolerance. However, tolerance is delusional. In this world of the living, there is nothing that can comfort him, whether heaven or hell exists or not is irrelevant, because only death can set him free.
9) The idea of old Hans, through his adaptation of the Vietnamese Buddhist story, is expressed in a non-Christian way. Hans's setting of the prostitute in red is a mockery of the world. The prostitute in red reads books by linguists and even studied Vietnamese at Yale University. But this Vietnamese Buddhist in Phoenix took revenge on the American soldiers who invaded Vietnam, but it was a falsehood. This is a dream, and this blend of dream and reality reflects a certain quality of Buddhism. Revenge is false . No amount of revenge can stop the evil from happening. This Vietnamese Buddhist was actually just sitting on the streets of Saigon in the pre-Vietnam War period, his clothes soaked in gasoline, ready to set himself on fire in protest of the war. Although bystanders persuaded, "This is useless, this will not stop the war." However, "what's the difference between useful and useless?" I think the Vietnamese Buddhist who was about to set himself on fire should say this, which is more in line with the spirit of Buddhism. There really is no difference, because behind him, there will eventually be a world of despair. This Vietnamese Buddhist sacrificed himself. The firmest reason for self-sacrifice is to contribute to a free world.
10] Whether it is Christianity or Buddhism, the world of the living provides comfort to the world of the living, or heaven, or the Pure Land of Ultimate Bliss. But this consolation is often manifested as falsehood. Tolerance is false, and revenge is false: this is a false world, trapping people in it. The so-called "psychopath" or "psychopath" in this film is nothing but the personality or human spirit suppressed by this delusional world.
11] Revenge and tolerance are a pair of contradictions, reflected in this romantic irony world. The ancients already presented a world of irony in their mythological attitudes. It is said that when the goddess of nemesis was sacrificed in ancient Greece, it was not called by the name of "anger", but by the name of "kindness". It's not just name taboos. People want hatred or anger to transform, transforming the forces of evil into forces of good. The ancients sometimes regarded dead powerful killers as protectors. They seem to understand that they live by strength or will to power, not good or evil. Good can overcome evil only because the former is more powerful. Correspondingly, tolerance is chosen simply because tolerance is superior to revenge. If tolerance is superior to revenge, tolerance can only be a higher form of revenge. A French writer once said, "The noblest revenge is tolerance." People tend to take the phrase superficially, viewing tolerance as an alternative to revenge. But fundamentally, not all so-called tolerance is higher than revenge. False tolerance is only cowardice, but true tolerance contains a strong self-esteem. True tolerance does not exclude revenge, on the contrary, true tolerance is more powerful revenge, tolerance is the extreme of revenge, tolerance is the desperate form of revenge.
12] This tower of awareness of revenge and tolerance is based on the original survival experience, in which revenge and tolerance are the same. Vengeance and tolerance form a genetic double helix, compiling a lasting experience of survival. One cannot expect to choose between revenge and tolerance, so as to permanently overcome the contradiction between revenge and tolerance. Vengeance and tolerance are just a pair of expressions of the will to power, and revenge and tolerance will recur again and again in survival stories, forever.
View more about Seven Psychopaths reviews
