Another boy friend watched it before me, and came out of the theater and sent a message: After watching it, it was very depressing, so I suggest not to choose this one. I happen to like this movie, even though it's really a cliché love story. Now everyone applauds the same film unanimously, which is basically either kitsch or hypocrisy. On the contrary, everyone has different feelings after reading it, and it is more interesting to pay attention to different levels and recall different emotions.
The movie is named "Nocturnal Animals", which is the same name as the novel written by the male protagonist Tony. In Tony's fictional novel, it tells the story of his family of three traveling by car, being robbed of the car by a gangster he met at night, raped and murdered by his wife and daughter, and the male protagonist as the only survivor chased the murderer with the help of the police. Fortunately, the real world is not so cruel. After a short marriage, Tony and Susan have been separated for twenty years without concern.
In an interview, our director Tom Fu expressed the core of the film like this: This is a story about finding love, and reminding people not to let go of true love easily. Many people took a sigh of relief for Tony after reading it. Susan, who betrayed him at the beginning, was not only betrayed by her husband in the next marriage, but also was thrown into the agreed restaurant to drink suffocatingly because of her self-love that could "renew the frontier". But I think it's up to us to discuss whether this is a successful revenge, let's talk about love first.
Usually a good story, from the beginning to the end. Tony and Susan's love is like this, since they met after a long time, they decided to part ways. To put it simply, Susan is Tony's true love, but Tony is totally unworthy of Susan. In Susan's heart, the two were not the same at all.
Most obviously, the family backgrounds of the two are different in class, and Tony's father died young. What's more, Tony and Susan are also far behind in terms of education and emotional intelligence. Susan has graduated from Yale and a master's at Columbia, and Tony is still in the stage of getting ready to enroll. It can be found from the later quarrel that his interview was unsuccessful and he did not go to college.
As for character, Tony is sensitive and weak, while Susan is far superior to his opponents in all aspects such as smart, witty, kind and considerate. It's like the reunion of the two. Throughout the meal, Tony has been leading the conversation to unpleasant places, and Susan has been the one who has been helping out. First, the atmosphere didn't arrive, and she was embarrassedly confessed when she came up. Susan took advantage of the situation to break the triangular relationship between her brother, Tony and herself. It is enough to show that Susan was careful and observant back then, and Susan at this time is kind and decent.
When Tony blamed himself for being a bad friend because he had never contacted Susan's brother, Susan immediately comforted him: Actually, you are a very good person, because if a straight man knew that his buddy had a crush on him for many years, he would have long been in love with him. Fried. In this way, not only does Tony no longer feel discouraged, but he can also contact his old friends without any psychological burden; it is also a great comfort to his brother who received the phone call. Susan's two words can be said to kill two birds with one stone.
Some people say that Susan loves Tony's talent. This may seem logical, but it is not. Indeed, Susan really likes writing Tony. But most importantly, Tony didn't have the writing talent Susan expected. This point, the film has been euphemistically stated in several places.
First of all, Tony failed to be admitted to Columbia with the talent at that time; secondly, when Susan read Tony's works, she also felt that her skills and creativity were not good enough, so she persuaded him to read and try to expand the subject at the same time. On the other hand, Tony did not take the initiative to pursue his dream of writing, and resumed writing just to please Susan. At least Tony in that state cannot grow into a pure artist.
When the two were together, Susan, just like her evaluation of herself, had no inner strength as an artist, so she had to be a pragmatist. So when there is a problem in the relationship, she has been looking for a solution for both parties. And what was Tony's reaction? Not only did he not listen to persuasion, but he also looked like a victim: You worship gold and secular life, you don't understand me, my heart hurts so much, and it looks like Erkang's upper body. Such a confrontation cannot be an equal and good love relationship. Most of the time, Susan was playing the role of parent, powerless in the face of the unreasonable and out of control toddler Tony.
That's why, Susan's mother had advised Susan that she should marry an "equal" man, called "evenly matched" in the now fashionable term. In fact, the mother is very reasonable at this moment. She did not say who the son of the man was, which building the company opened, which famous school he graduated from... From the beginning to the end, the crux of her opposition to this marriage was just the defect of Tony's character. .
Why is Tony not Susan's true love? Simply list some evidence. All along, Susan kept saying that she wanted to be a different person from her mother. Throughout the film, Susan laughs in three places. One of them was when she angered her mother with words at the dinner table. Such Susan would rather break up with Tony at the cost of being laughed at by her mother. Second, Susan is a Christian, and when she found out she was pregnant with Tony's child, she didn't hesitate to abandon her faith and abort the child.
Another point, when Susan recalled Tony twenty years later, the first words that came to her lips: He was a writer. This description clearly exposed the estrangement between the two. Just imagine, when we mention the person we like to others, the description of love is usually that Ta is cute, optimistic, kind and responsible. Only when you introduce the so-called acquaintances will you explain, oh, Ta is the labor committee of the next class, and the social relations such as our partner in the last activity cooperation.
So, at least when the two separated, Susan didn't love at all. From the beginning to the end, this relationship can only be regarded as a torrent in Susan's love sea at most, and it is also mixed with elements that are used to anger her mother. Susan had a love for Tony, but it couldn't compare to Tony's love for herself.
Of course, Tony treats Susan as his only true love. It's a pity that as a man who has no money or talent, strong self-esteem and no self-motivation, it is difficult to make a difference other than complaining about the state and society to the TV and newspapers day after day. Susan was the most beautiful and only beautiful thing in his life, and all his toughness and wisdom were spent on that night to keep Susan.
When I watched it for the first time, I understood Tony's fictional story as his simulation of the ending of the two of them if they insisted on being together: one day, his cowardice will cause his beloved wife and even his daughter to be hurt. When I read it again, I overthrew my theory, which was actually a novel about how I was hurt by a woman I loved so much.
In the English title, "animal" is plural, so "a gang of nocturnal animals" should refer to the gangsters who appeared that night and caused great harm to their family. But this description is also the nickname Tony gave Susan because of insomnia every night when the two were together. In Tony's story, nocturnal animals are nocturnal, cruel and cold-blooded, and of course they don't end well. Such a setting is both Tony's description of Susan and a curse on Susan.
Is Nocturnal Animals a revenge success story? To be released, for someone as self-respecting as Susan, the harm is certain. But whether Tony can get pleasure from such a "break", we can't be sure. On the contrary, in addition to the factor of deliberate revenge, it is likely that it is also because of cowardice that they dare not show up. It took twenty years to let go of this broken love, and he really faced the old lover of his life, what kind of words could he muster up the courage to say? He has already set an ending for himself in the book, and said through the mouth of the fictional male protagonist: No one can escape from this injury.
I really liked the story, the two ended up changing neither of the other, revealing a positive hint that the uniqueness of the individual does not need to be repaired.
Some of us, like Tony, can't keep up with lust and spend all our waking hours flushing out pain. Most of us are probably like Susan. One day, the ideal love will be realized, and in the end, you will only find that the one you love the most is yourself, and from then on, you will fall into the emptiness and loneliness that you can't see.
A friend once said something soothing: We are all flawed people.
Love, like sleep, is often overrated. For Tony, he had nothing, and he had to hold it tightly when he encountered it; but from Susan's point of view, even if I am missing this part, I can still live a decent and orderly life. Loneliness is like insomnia, and there is no need to rush to fix it. Whether it's time or a void in your heart, you'll get used to it eventually, just like a disability and an exam.
If you are ignorant, lazy, selfish, weak, you are likely to have a messy life. But at the same time, you are also a survivor.
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