The protagonists of the story are all on this poster, a total of 10 people. This drama fictionalizes a luxury resort hotel located on the island of Hawaii. The name of the hotel is called White Lotus. Of course, those who can afford this hotel are rich people. The story tells the murders of three groups of wealthy American families while on vacation.
In the first scene, someone died in the White Lotus Hotel. With the combination of interaction and suspense, the audience can guess who died from the first minute. Someone on the Internet said at the beginning that the new wife of the male protagonist died. This is because he didn't watch the drama seriously. Who said that? This is obviously a set by the screenwriter! A man doesn't have a wife by his side, and you misunderstand that it was his wife who died. In fact, he didn't explain who the dead person was, and it was unknown whether it was a man or a woman. Rewind the timeline to a week ago and start telling the story.
Let's get to know the protagonists first, the first male protagonist, the manager of the hotel, who serves the guests all day long. He is the link character in the play, connecting people from all walks of life, and also plays the most important role in promoting the plot. The guests are all distinguished suite VIPs. In the first group of wealthy families, the hostess is an executive and serves as the CFO of a well-known company. They brought a son and a daughter on vacation. Interestingly, the daughter also brought a girlfriend, and the family paid for the expenses of the girlfriend. The second group, newlywed families, these two are here for their honeymoon. Do the beautiful protagonists know each other? The terrifying little three JADE in "Deadly Woman 1", our Chinese netizens call her Husky.
The third distinguished guest was a rich single woman, and it was strange enough to come to Hawaii alone for vacation.
Next, I will tell you that rich people are anxious. SURPRISE! You think you are the only one who is anxious, do you know that the richer people are, the more anxious they are. The newlywed family is the setting of Cinderella marrying into a wealthy family. The husband is a rich second-generation, Ma Bao, a waste. The casting director has a good vision, no offense, but the actor's face is really scumbag, and the actor hates that kind of thing. The show is coming. But when I watched his interview later, I completely restrained this scumbag feeling. He is a good man, which shows that he performed well. The couple's vacation expenses were all paid for by the family. After checking in, he suddenly found out that the manager gave the wrong room, not the one his mother (booked), and then he kept going about the cost and Responsibility, sister! Do rich men you meet do this kind of thing? Remember to message me.
As for the rich woman, she actually carried her mother's ashes with her. The purpose of this trip was to bury her mother in the sea with dignity. The anxiety of the rich woman is loneliness. She is extremely lacking in love and insecurity. All the men she has experienced before can't stand her hysteria. All kinds of spiritual treatment, but after passing, has been nervous. The makeup of this rich woman must show a bit of excessive hyaluronic acid puffiness. Her lips and the feeling that she can't open her eyes, she must be super rich and not worried about money, but outside our community jumping to the square Wu's aunt and mother are mentally healthier than her.
The rich family is even more bizarre. The elder sister is always bullying the younger brother, the father is always worried about Dandan, and the mother is a workaholic, always in a kind of anxiety about "disorder".
I have talked about several suspense dramas on HBO in recent years, right? This time, I was not disappointed at all, it was a very melodious drama. There are only 6 episodes in total, and each episode is 1 hour long, which is actually a full-length movie.
There are three main points of this play.
First, is the title.
This title selects a simple flat animation, which is a retro hand-drawn style, depicting tropical animals and plants with simple lines. The most intuitive feeling of this style of illustration is a bit like... reading the Encyclopedia Britannica. Why choose this style? Detailed analysis will be given later. Let's talk about the one-to-one correspondence between "animals and plants" and "characters in the film".
Murray Bartlett plays the hotel manager, corresponding to tropical plants, who represents a field, an environment in which a story takes place.
Connie Britton plays a wealthy executive woman whom the creators likened to a honey-sucking bird, which is somewhat ferocious and aggressive. In the play, her relationship with her husband is that women are strong and men are weak. Her husband is a soft egg in this family, and their sexual relationship is not harmonious at the beginning.
Jennifer Coolidge plays the rich woman who is naughty, referring to her as a squirrel monkey wearing a hibiscus flower. After checking the introduction of this kind of monkey in Baidu Encyclopedia, there is actually a sentence about this kind of monkey: It is easy to tame and also to tame. Feeling lonely easily. The rich woman is really like this. She doesn't want to be too lonely. In the play, she has an affair. In Hawaii, a large area of hibiscus is planted. Putting the hibiscus flower above the left ear means "I hope to have a lover" in the local culture.
Alexandra Daddario, an Italian-Czechoslovakian mixed-race beauty, uses hibiscus to refer to her. She is the vase of a rich man in the play, and she is always anxious about it. The flower language of hibiscus is: fresh love, in line with her newly married state.
The hibiscus flower also corresponds to the actor's name of the youngest son of the rich family. Here is another flower language corresponding to it: the beauty of being considerate and the beauty of eternal freshness. Almost every character in this play has an "awakening" line. Some characters awaken to be redeemed, and some characters awaken to destruction. The "awakening" of the youngest son is very obvious. From a young representative who only knows how to play games and jerking off all day (really like our sons and daughters!), suddenly one day, he encountered the call of the "God of Nature".
Jake Lacy plays Ma Baonan, corresponding to the chameleon. The characteristics of the chameleon personality are simply summarized as those realists who are articulate and value fame and fortune, like to be the focus of others' attention, and have strong vanity. Ma Baonan's behavior in the film is quite annoying, his mother is even more exaggerated, and his son's honeymoon has to fly over to intervene. The two of them will stab "Cinderella" from a poor family from time to time in their words. Implying that she was lucky enough to marry into their family. The journey can easily destroy couples who don't know each other well. From the middle of the play, this new daughter-in-law has been unhappy, and by the fifth episode, she has been able to determine I chose the wrong husband.
Brittany O'Grady plays the best friend of a wealthy daughter, an actor who may be of Indian or some indigenous origin, as if there were lines that suggested she was of South American Mexican origin. This role corresponds to the jaguar, which is now common south of Mexico. This role must be played by a person of mixed indigenous blood, because although she was educated by white civilization in a North American institution of higher learning, she has her blood affiliation in her bones, and the conflict between culture and blood is the source of this character's anxiety. In the play, the two girls are both in their sophomore year, and their best friend's thesis has already been opened, focusing on the direction of "colonialism". In the show, she falls in love with a native Hawaiian man at first sight, and she resents that their homeland has been taken over by white people and turned into a vacation spot. She proposed to let indigenous men steal the safes of wealthy families, but the final result hit her deeply. How could childish and idealized violent revolutions shake the frozen white civilization?
Natasha Rothwell plays the kind spa manager who also annotates her with beautiful hibiscus flowers. She can sing Hindu spiritual songs. To a certain extent, she is the rich woman's releaser. The director once told us in the language of the camera that she is the one who can really help the rich woman find peace and tranquility. But this group of relationships ultimately failed, and her relationship with the rich woman ultimately couldn't escape the ugliest and most unbearable side of capitalism. Almost all the characters with "spiritual" characteristics in the play end in despair. This is a pessimistic work that deeply lashes out and criticizes the ugliest relationship of capitalism.
Sydney Sweeney plays the daughter of a rich family, a very mean and difficult girl, corresponding to the snake. Needless to say, the symbolism of snakes in Western culture is a symbol of sin that lured Eve into stealing the forbidden fruit. But here you also need to understand another layer of its symbolic meaning, in Freud's psychoanalysis, the snake is the male sex organ. This teenage girl, who is also in gender dysphoria, has just learned during the trip that her father is GAY and died of AIDS, which makes him fall into gender loss. And the daughter of this family is extremely clinging to this best friend, and she doesn't let others have an affair with the natives. The play strongly suggests that she has a lesbian tendency. In terms of sexual psychology, she is probably a little T who has not come out of the closet!
This one is papaya, which corresponds to the father of a rich girl! Papaya has always been a symbol of women in film and television works. The play hints at his gender dysphoria and loss, his weakness in his relationship with his wife, and shocks to learn about his father's sexuality. It is him who arouses the original desire of the hotel manager, a true GAY, and opens Pandora's box. (The daughter also has a line saying that the manager hooked up with the father).
If one or two animation elements correspond to the appearance of the characters, it may be a coincidence, but this corresponds to every character, and the actor's name fades out on its symbol in a timely manner. 's design.
The second half of the title is also very informative. To put it simply, the second half is the list of creators, and the picture mainly hints that this beautiful world, it is because of the evil people that disasters have been born, and our world has become getting worse. In fact, this kind of drama that strongly criticizes capitalism should be imported as a patriotic educational film.
In the era of streaming media, movies are weak and weak, but dramas are very, very strong. It’s almost as strong as a new culture movement. It’s a pity that those special effects are still active on the big screen of the socialist 600, and the output is still mainstream in the United States. Value, American dream, heroic dream, Superman save the earth! Why does the earth want you to wear underwear to save you? !
The main creator of this play, MIKE WHITE, was born in 70 years and is at an excellent creative age in life. This work reflects that he has a very deep background in Western philosophy. He is obviously a Schopenhauer-Nietzsche-Freud-Lacan. The ideological successor all the way.
Why did the author choose the "encyclopedia illustration style" for the title art? Because the mini-series we see is an encyclopedia of interpersonal relationships in late capitalist society. The White Lotus Hotel can be understood as a miniature of the United States. The United States was founded precisely because the white civilization ruthlessly invaded the homes of Indian natives. Going back to the beginning, there is no legitimacy. The island of Hawaii is also a luxury resort built by white people who robbed the native land for the rich to enjoy.
The hypocrisy of burning capital, the beauty of consuming nature.
The contradictions presented in the play are highly condensed of the contradictions in American society. The key to the "encyclopedia-style" painting method is to accurately and concisely outline the biological characteristics of objects with a few strokes. This title is the author's aesthetic interpretation of his work. He is telling the audience that this is not a vulgar eight-point family ethics drama. In just 6 episodes, he wants to use the most accurate drama to reveal the most essential relationship. This ambition is quite possible.
The second point of view, the key to analyzing the play is actually the books held by the characters.
The books in the play are footnotes to the characters. It is the first time that two young girls are reading a book, and the daughter of a rich family is holding Nietzsche. Talk about Nietzsche in the simplest human terms. Nietzsche is a great rebel, a villain, anti-Socrates, anti-Descartes, anti-Kant, anti-Renaissance! Nietzsche felt that it was wrong from the beginning of the Renaissance! A power of human beings in the name of "rationality", which is above nature, conquers and changes nature recklessly, and new science and technology are increasingly contributing to this power. The play hides the collision of two western philosophical views, the spirit of the sun god and the spirit of the god of wine. A simple explanation is the struggle between "rationality" and "will to life (which can be understood as: vitality, sensibility). Human beings continue to write civilization with rationality, and it has developed into the mainstream Western culture today. In the play, the author brought out the woman Hillary Clinton, the elite of white civilization represented by her, who still dominates the direction of this country. The author Be critical of this.
The second book held by the daughter of a rich family is "Sex Mask". The author is a female professor at the Philadelphia University of the Arts. Once again, she is explaining "Sun God" and "Bacchus", which is the inheritance of Nietzsche's thought.
The daughter's best friend read Freud at first, and has an inheritance relationship with Nietzsche, so the two girls were still in the same camp at that time, and they were mean and bitchy to everyone around them. In the middle of the play, the best friend is holding "The Wretched of the Earth" (unfortunate people on the earth), this book is about the psychological damage left by the long-term colonial rule on the colonized people. The ideological positions of the two girls parted ways until the end of the play.
Don't look at the rebellious appearance of the rich daughter's character. The real rebel in their family is her little brother who has been scorned and obedient. She is completely the heir to the line of "the spirit of the sun" (rationality), and the heir to the mainstream white culture. When she was a girl, she might be rebellious because of her age, and criticized Hillary at the dinner table. Whenever something happened, she immediately stood firm in her own culture. On this side of the attribute, this is the fatal tragedy of this character. This position does not need lines, and the language of the camera is explained.
At this point of the analysis, do any of the friends who watch the show think that this kind of prop book is taken casually?
The rich second generation held a book in his hand, and the title of the book "blink" literally translates to "blink". The preface of the book clearly states: The primary task of this book is to instill in you a plain fact, that the judgment made by a person (understandably a rich second-generation) quickly can be compared to racking your brains and thinking carefully. comparable decisions. (It means that the rich second generation chooses a woman, and how to choose is to think with the lower body).
The newlywed daughter-in-law also holds a book in her hand, which is also a footnote to her role. It is "My Gifted Girlfriend". Even if you haven't read the original book, someone should have watched the TV series of the same name (also from HBO). The book describes two girls who were born in the slums of Naples. One of the girls from a poor family married across classes. Having a son from a wealthy family, his married life is also extremely miserable. It means her situation.
The photography, music, and color grading of the whole film are quite elegant. The music always makes the viewer feel uncomfortable and difficult to calm down. This is its design point. This kind of theme music, which is mixed with African drums, collected the sounds of insects and birds in nature, and combined with some indigenous tribal elements, combined with the strange color palette, is always depressing and disturbing. This kind of aesthetic temperament makes the play show an alternative and individual high-level beauty.
The understanding of the play title "White Lotus" must not be understood in terms of the female image of "White Lotus" created by our idol drama, but the image of "Lotus" should be placed in a broader international context. The Buddha and the lotus are inextricably linked, and the Bodhisattva sits on the lotus. The lotus comes out of the mud, symbolizing that people are born in pain and affliction. Only the enlightened person (that is, the Buddha) can be liberated from the afflictions of birth and death (the world). As the saying goes, there is a world hidden in the lotus. The name of the White Lotus hotel is actually ironic. That scene in episode 6 (the spa manager refusing to save Cinderella) is supposed to be the most desperate scene in the whole show, see the art in the room? Those sofa cushions, the director is really afraid that the audience will be blind and won't be able to see his intentions. Feel the oppressive use of this scene. This scene is the stroke of despair in the whole film.
This hotel is completely mundane. Why do hotel staff such as general managers and SPA managers accumulate so much negative energy? It is because this luxury hotel is a representative venue for extreme consumerism. The author absolutely denies and criticizes this poisonous weed (luxury service industry). , I feel that this is not pure land, but hell. I also said in the interpretation video of "Deadly Woman 2" (you can go to the homepage to flip it), this is a conventional technique, using the ultimate beauty to express ugliness. In this play, the "refined spirit" is used as a metaphor for "the filth of the world". This "Xanadu" with the image of "unearthly" is actually an ugly small society. It is worth mentioning that this drama was filmed at the Four Seasons Hotel in Maui, Hawaii, which is a big advertisement! However, if you are an executive of a hotel and see this kind of case presented, you kill and steal in your hotel, and compare the hotel to a dirty world, would you dare to accept it? Taking this case is the pattern.
The last point to watch is to return to the deep thematic level of the play.
This play is a reinterpretation and praise of the spirit of Nietzsche's Dionysus. Nietzsche praises the most primitive instinctive impulse of man, and praises that man can lift all restraints and return to the mother body of primitive nature.
In the play, the author designed three ways to release the soul for his characters. For the general manager, it is "wine", for the rich woman, it is religion, and for the son of the rich family, it is nature. The general manager's "release" is the most extreme kind. It mixes alcohol, drugs and sex to release his original impulse. In the last episode, he leads the waltz. He is happy, but at the same time, he is going to ruin. . The rich woman had a chance to be saved, but in the end she betrayed her promise to the spa manager. She realized that she had been controlling others as a capitalist for a long time, but it deeply hurt her relationship with the redeemer. Here is a group of A chain reaction, her attitude directly led to the SPA manager's sense of despair, she would never be sincere to the guests, she showed a professional smirk when welcoming the next group of guests, and her despair had a chain effect on the urgent need to be treated. The final tragedy of saving Cinderella directly led to the failure of her resistance, and finally had to be her rich man's doll at the airport. Isn't that determined to be her doll?
The author only left the son of a wealthy family. This is an artistic image and a blessed character. Without him, the show would be too desperate. This is a little bit of beauty left by the author to the audience. The son, who was expelled by his family and had nowhere to sleep, was the only one in the entire island who enjoyed the gift of nature, and that night, God seemed to wink at him. The sea took away all his electronic products, but gave him the most precious gift. Nature released this boy with wisdom roots with its own magnificence.
In the last episode, this group of boating out of the resort and heading for the volcano, I saw tears streaming down my face, although I am just a hypocritical movie commentator in the floating world. Of all the nutrients, I'd die without my daily coffee. But my soul has always been called to the world. This is also the reason why I keep looking forward to good literary works. Because we are mortals, not the six groups of Hui-neng, our spiritual tools are not empty, we cultivate for a lifetime, and the highest is a divine show. Therefore, in this lifetime, we all need to keep digging out this dirty soul, wiping it diligently from time to time, so as not to cause dust.
The play ends in a set of contrasting pictures of this side and the other side, this side: flashy, hypocritical, dirty. The other shore: holy, pure, noble.
Such a work, I would say, it is the best drama of the year, at least the second half of 2021.
(Author: Miss Chen, columnist, original draft, please do not reprint)
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