Every tragedy has a beautiful beginning.
Lu Xun said: Tragedy is the destruction of the valuable things in life for others to see .
Manchester by the Sea does just that. The death of the male protagonist's benevolent eldest brother caused a brief burst of sadness for the male protagonist.
But the difference between grief and tragedy is that grief is short-lived tears, and tragedy is the insensitivity of prolonged confinement. When a sad past becomes the whole of a person's life, then this is the real beginning of tragedy.
"Manchester by the Sea" begins with a sadistic stage in a seaside city of Manchester in the United States, but it uses the same slow-toned mirror movement as Europe's indifference, coupled with the gloomy arrangement of strings and pianos, to tear apart the tragedy of a person for us. trauma.
In the first half of the film, staring at the male protagonist's walking corpse-like status quo, it penetrates the tragic years of his inadvertent use of fire, which led to the separation of flesh and blood, and the shattering of the marriage.
When the tragedy happened, the male protagonist thought about making a self-destruction at the police station. Although he was stopped, the male protagonist did not choose to end himself again, but chose to close all the doors and windows in his heart, locking himself in sadness like masochism. in the deep sea.
In his dictionary, he formatted the so-called happiness, future, and life management, and developed a symbiotic relationship with the God of Sorrow.
There are no more than two kinds of tragedies, the tragic fruit thrown by others, or the tragic seeds planted by himself. Obviously, the male protagonist admits the latter.
The male protagonist chooses to live in a small space in the semi-basement, so he does not want to face the sun and the normal life on the ground.
Occasionally he was breathless in the deep sea of sadness, but occasionally he would surface and take a few deep breaths, which is what the film shows. The male protagonist turns his sadness into violent venting, and fights with others for no reason.
And he did this so that others could beat him to the bone, punish himself in this way, and then sink himself into the dark night. Pain is food for the skin, and closure and numbness are self-atonement.
Da Cong particularly likes the clipping method of the film to show the past part of the male protagonist, such as the male protagonist's memories, and also vividly tell the audience that in the male protagonist's heart, he can think of the source of the sadness from time to time.
The character of the male protagonist's great joy and great sorrow, which is transmitted through editing, allows the audience to see the arc of the male protagonist's inner turning point, how from a slightly ruffian typical of the American working middle class to a negative energy blackened "zombie" .
What "Manchester by the Sea" sees is not sympathy, and the tears we shed are not tears of sympathy, but mutual encouragement, and sadness has nowhere to hit.
In the second half of the film, the nephew invaded his life, and the ex-wife tried to melt the scars of their past, becoming two faint beacons of the male protagonist's later mental journey, which is also the story to be told in the second half of the film.
The relationship between uncles and nephews, the generation gap between ages, the responsibility of guardianship, and the tug-of-war between ideas, at every level, are making the male protagonist regain his confidence in being a father, even if the male protagonist never planned on this confidence. picked up.
And the unexpected dialogue between the ex-wife and the male protagonist became the breaking point of the whole film. Instead of saying that the male protagonist did not forgive his ex-wife, it is better to say that the male protagonist just did not forgive himself. The occurrence of this tragedy is not one in two, but one in two. Since then, the two will only go further and further on the two paths of grief.
The male protagonist knows this ending, and so does his ex-wife. The ex-wife wants to pull the male protagonist out of the tragic death vortex, but doesn't know how to place and bury the seeds of tragedy they once buried together.
And the male protagonist knows that if you can't find a grave to bury your grief, it means that you and I can't get out of this vortex of sadness. If you can't let it go, you can only embrace it.
But what is gratifying is that at least the male protagonist, after passing these things in the second half of the film, the anesthetic that numbs himself is slowly being diluted by others, but the inner tragedy core has never been cooled.
It is easy to perceive sadness and precipitate sadness. How to face sadness and even stand up again to face the future is more difficult than sadness itself. This is exactly the topic discussed in the second half of the film.
At the end of the film, the male protagonist, whether the seeds of tragedy have settled in the ground, of course, if you look at it emotionally, of course, but rationally, perhaps the sadness caused by the tragedy of the male protagonist does not need to be rescued, not redeemed, not to be spent, and more No cure is required.
Because the tragedy has always been there, although it can be seen that the male protagonist's future life has not stopped, it can be regarded as difficult to stop.
This is where Manchester by the Sea handles the ending brilliantly. The film tries to tell people that deep sadness doesn't come with a good medicine, but try not to try to close your eyes and go on a sunny day. See those old scars.
In the words of Lu Xun earlier in the article: Tragedy is the destruction of the valuable things in life for others to see. In fact, there is the second half of the sentence: comedy is to tear up the worthless for people to see.
Tragedy and comedy are like mirrors facing each other. If you can get out of tragedy, it is comedy, but if you indulge in comedy, it is tragedy. The male protagonist in the film, Da Cong felt that he was standing between sorrow and joy, waiting quietly, waiting for him to grow old.
Pay attention to the public account of "Da Cong Watching Movies", do not pursue the running volume, but only grind the fine products.
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