The mental breakdown is endless and cannot be eradicated. Unless death strips it away.
This is also the scariest part of The Woman under the Influence, with countless details proving it, no one can help her, and her hysteria will continue.
In the process of watching, in many places, I was thinking, this can end here, let's have a happy ending soon, that's ok, even a bad ending. The director does not, he does not stop, and continues to show the different sides of each person, showing the multiple meanings of every detail, showing that life is a sticky and inexplicable thing. For example, blue-collar worker Nick and his co-workers are red-necked brothers who help each other at one time, and class enemies at other times who are unspoken, insulting their best friend as a "Mexican Indian" because of personal pressure and causing him to fall The cliff is completely broken. Another example is Nick's treatment of the heroine, sometimes tender and firm as iron, pulling her in the corner while kissing and encouraging her to "be yourself", and making twitchy screams with her (it's really touching here), and sometimes Uncontrollably beat and scolded her, causing her to fall heavily to the ground. Nick pulled away the three children who were protecting his mother and carried them upstairs to sleep, but the three children broke away from their strong father many times and ran downstairs to protect their mother. Three times over and over again, Nick looked at the baby holding his mother, and he smiled wearily.
How is the heroine crazy? No explanation. From the very beginning of the film, she was on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Of course, we can speculate on many reasons. Her husband is busy with work and has no time to get together, taking care of three children, desperately trying to be the perfect mother, and wanting to please everyone. Anxiety feel. It can also be seen from her parents' later performance that they care about their daughter, but they are also afraid of her. After she received shock therapy for six months, her parents were obviously a little ashamed. The heroine asked her father timidly " Will you stand up for me? No. Sit down. Will you stand up for me?" The father stood guiltily, pretending not to understand what his daughter really meant, "Are you on my side?"
The details are horrific.
The Woman Under the Influence There are subtle differences, what exactly is influence? Is it the cause of the heroine's madness?
I'm obsessed with the subject of madness. The Mad Woman in the Attic and Madness and Civilization are two of my favorite theoretical books, especially the latter. The "ship of fools" is a wonderful metaphor (Foucault is a genius), comparing the modern sequestration of madness to the medieval leper boats full of intolerant social germs. Madness is a destabilizing factor in the modern social system (what modern society needs is a "rational person", which happens to be the opposite of madness) and through the pathological stigma of mental illness, madness has become a factor that must be removed from normal social life.
The isolation and fear of madness is one of the reasons why mad people are mad. For example, the heroine didn't actually do anything to hurt others in the early days, she just showed too much enthusiasm, which was embarrassing. But under the censure and persecution of her husband and mother-in-law, as well as the threat of the doctor, she had a complete mental breakdown. She was most afraid of being separated from the children, and her mother-in-law was most worried that she would have a bad influence on the children.
At the end of the film, the heroine is calmed down by a slap in the face, and violence acts as a sedative in extreme cases. The children healed her wounds, and her husband put medicine on her. The two smiled at each other and cleaned up the mess.
Life is repetition. Most people don't actually grow. This is probably true.
View more about A Woman Under the Influence reviews
