Alfred Adler said: "Every man's behavior depends on his interpretation of life, and every interpretation is in some sense a misunderstanding."
Facing school bullying, secret exclusion from girlfriends, and various external pressures, Maria, as a young adult girl, has already formed a weak and inactive character structure, because her sense of security depends on others. Why do you selectively forget your best friend's malicious jokes? For fear of losing your only partner; why do you turn to yourself in the mirror after every setback? For fear of losing the life-saving straw that I just caught. This kind of mentality made her have to bear all kinds of pain and consequences by herself. In psychoanalytic terms, it is an anxiety-based inhibition that not only does not alleviate the real anxiety, but gradually accumulates and eventually erupts.
Outburst, that is, swapping with Alan's mirror image, or the stimulation of the second personality, or the possession of the deformed child's ghost. Contrary to Maria, Ellen believes that security depends on sadism, on violence and acquisition. If you encounter denial from the outside world, you should not be afraid of your head and tail, but should fight tooth for tooth and blood for blood. If someone bullies you, break his leg and kill the other person; if you want something, go for it directly, no matter the cost. This morbid reaction can be understood as a symbol of excessive self-expansion based on conflict-response, not as neurotic, but not far off.
The director deliberately presents two diametrically opposed but equally unbalanced character structures one after another, obviously not only to discuss the issue of bioethics, but more to arouse the audience's thinking, each individual is isolated from other individuals. (i.e. human limitations and isolation), how to choose the interpretation of life.
The "social self" theory proposed by Charles Cooley believes that people's behavior mainly depends on the cognition of self, and this self-awareness is formed through social interaction with others, and others' evaluation and attitude towards oneself. Etc. is a mirror that reflects the self, through which the individual forms a self-knowledge. In other words, we recognize that we are inseparable from the shocks of the external world, and our response to shocks depends on our knowledge of ourselves: if we believe that our security comes from others, we cannot do without others; if we believe that the source For sadism and acquisition, it is doomed to be associated with repressive tendencies and expansionist tendencies.
In fact, as Adler said, there is no absolutely correct way of interpreting life, but there are always ways to approach and deviate from it. Unfortunately, both times Maria in the film chose to deviate from the correct way.
There are many scenes in the film where Maria and Alan, the outsider and the person in the mirror are closely attached to each other. This may be another metaphor: everyone's interpretation of life is not eternal, and Even at a particular moment, this person's interpretation of life has two diametrically opposed tendencies at the same time, and it is the interaction and balance of these two tendencies that prevent him from going astray. And once one side has the upper hand, the extreme day or night will come as scheduled.
View more about Look Away reviews
