The opening section of the film explains the background of the whole story: Because of his father's insistence on his beliefs, the family was banished from the colony. When the sentence was pronounced, the camera stayed on the profile of his daughter Thomasin, with a trace of fear passing across her face. Leaving the colony, the family settled in a wasteland, and the forest where the witch was located was nearby.
The understanding of this background will ultimately determine the understanding of the entire movie. Father William, as a Puritan who believed in God and did not violate his conscience, can be said to be a model of faith. He chose to let the whole family leave the colonial community together and face the wilderness alone, and faith is the only foundation and support of this family.
The development of the following story is completely beyond the control of this family: whether it is the disappearance and tragic death of the youngest son Samuel, the lost and madness of the youngest son Caleb, or the twins Mercy and Jonas being bewitched by the devil, the whole family meets in an endless stream of devil's There is no way to fight back any damage. From the fundamental point of view of the incident, the promotion of the story is entirely the one-way abuse of the devil, and people are completely victims. There is no substantial conflict between people and the devil. Personal choices and responses, whether it is to avoid confrontation or pray, It didn't produce any actual effect from beginning to end. All subsequent occurrences originated from the original situation where the whole family was exiled. The storyline involved the witch in the forest and was supernatural. After the conflict of dialogue, all events happened naturally.
So on the surface, faith did not protect this family at all, and a series of incidents seemed to have been mocking the uselessness of believing in God. And with the development of the plot, the gaps and imperfections within the whole family are exposed a little bit: the incompetence and hypocrisy of the father, the meanness and intolerance of the mother, the naivety of the youngest son, and the madness of the two twins. Everything seems to prove that the fate of this family's destruction is self-inflicted.
However, if understood in this way, this movie will directly flow into a third-rate anti-religious horror film that "the devil is invincible, faith is useless", and has no depth at all. Otherwise, I will reorganize this seemingly religious standpoint with a non-religious attitude. Then, after excluding the strange power and chaos, the only reasonable conclusion is that there is no devil without faith. Faith itself is purely enough to eat and have nothing to do to pray to the Buddha. , And the essence of everything is actually luck. Except for a surprise, this movie means nothing.
This film is far from simple. The film is quite subtle in its handling of the role of faith, but it does end there. There is only one manifestation of God in the whole movie: his son Caleb returned to his light when he was dying, broke away from the possession of the witch in the prayers of his family, recovered his sanity, and died in the ecstasy of feeling God. Before and after this, prayer did not alleviate the suffering of the family in the slightest. Belief, if you talk about its effects, only shines at this point for such a moment. This flash of light has absolutely no effect on the progress of the story, but through Caleb's ascension, a basic theological fact is revealed: the
covenant between God and man is the salvation of the soul, not the reward of the world.
The covenant between the devil and man is the satisfaction of desire and the betrayal of the soul.
In other words, faith should be "useless". If faith in God is "useful," in exchange for a fruitful harvest of children and grandchildren, then why should people stand in the wasteland, work hard, and work hard? People glorify God by their actions, and God's judgment will never be revealed to people; but it is not people who believe in God, and God therefore rewards people with blessings in the world. If it is the latter, faith is nothing more than a currency of exchange. What is the difference between God and the Devil? Isn't the opposition between God and the devil just two masters of success to grab the market?
Therefore, in this world, God's salvation is always far away, and disasters are always near. In the movie, the devil gradually penetrated into every corner of the family, accompanied by increased damage. Everyone in the film believes in God, but suffers this catastrophe. Even if the absence of God is theologically reasonable, the occurrence of this emotional tragedy still requires a religious explanation.
One thing that needs to be clarified here is that Sin and Evil are not the same concept. Original sin is not so much human evil as human weakness. People have original sin, so they are fragile. If they are allowed to be tempted by evil, they will eventually fall into the magical way.
From an objective point of view, there does not seem to be anything special about the family's mistakes. Born to be guilty of original sin, its imperfection just proves its truth. The sincerity of faith and the weakness of human nature are different aspects of human beings, and they are not inherently contradictory. It is a baffling thing that a family of extremely perfect angels gather together to open up wasteland. Therefore, if all the disasters are attributed to the raging demons of the family’s own demons, and the disasters are due to their own evil explosions, then considering that there is not much in this world except for the saints possessed by the Holy Light and the professional exorcism witch hunters. Individuals can retreat under the same circumstances, and this kind of imputation does not make sense even from a religious perspective. A more direct explanation is that the devil's cunning and insidiousness did participate in it, taking advantage of human weaknesses to divide them, then mutilating them, and ultimately destroying them. The whole movie can be said to be a very delicate depiction of this process, which uses a lot of creepy antichrist symbols, and the mirror is very beautiful.
Therefore, acknowledging the existence of the devil is the first step in figuring out the meaning of the tragedy. Even if the Puritans are responsible for the final result, they are really helpless in deceiving and attacking the devil; it is the loneliness of their situation that determines their powerless confrontation in front of the devil, and the fragility of their nature determines the devil's ultimate Victory, but it was not that their weak beliefs caused the devil to be a devil. The devil has always been here, just as God has always been there, and its existence has nothing to do with faith.
Looking back on the whole story, his father William’s painful confession in the night gave the starting point of the tragedy: his original sin, Pride, led to the situation of the whole family today. He believed that he held the gospel of God and arrogantly chose the whole family to exile and let the family members. Break away from the safe human society, and finally have to face the devil alone.
Pride, Greed, Lust, Envy, Gluttony, Wrath, Sloth, and Pride are at the top of the seven deadly sins and are the source of all sins. Lucifer, who was originally an archangel, arrogantly chose to confront God and become the fallen angel Satan. The core of Satan is not to destroy mankind, but to be arrogant to God, to invert the entire value structure of God, and to replace the sacred law with the desire of the human body to become the highest value. This is also the final outcome of Thomasin's desire to become a new witch after liberation.
The ending of "The Witch" has been doomed from the beginning of the movie. If "justification by faith" is brought to the extreme and cuts the connection with society, its essence will actually fall into anti-God. The core of Christianity has never been fanaticism in God, but obeying God's gospel and practicing love for others. The threat of the devil is always by your side. It is the love between people from God. It protects oneself and others from the temptation and encroachment of the devil, so that people with original sins can support each other and take care of each other until they leave this world. , Give the soul to God. However, the "love" between people is completely absent in the story: the arrogant father and the ashes of the colonial ground have jointly condemned the family to death in the name of faith from the beginning, and they are a witch's. The birth paved the way for no turning back.
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