(1) This is a cool-toned movie. The camera cuts from the dark interview room to Manhattan in the twilight and then to the rain-soaked windows in the room. What follows is a plethora of long shots of the empty seaside. Under the hazy sky is the decadent white sand beach, and the low piano sounded. A sad elegy, and thus played the first note. He is a professor of literature and history at Columbia University. Insights into aesthetics, literature, photography, history, music. He is often quoted and talked about in TV talk shows. Although he is old, he is elegant, wise and erudite, and is an idealist who pursues perfection. Time has endowed him with a mature and refined charm, but the loneliness originating from his heart cannot be eradicated. So he kept wandering from one embrace to another, fighting the irreversible aging life. She is his student. With a prominent family and a mysterious experience, he has an angelic face and a devil-like figure. Sexy charm and innocence and simplicity appear on her at the same time, making her irresistible from the inside out. She walked into his class, sat in the first row, and listened to his calm and generous voice navigating the works of Roland Barthes and the wonderful explanation of realistic criticism. He raised his head to glimpse her inadvertently, struck by her youthful and outstanding temperament. He took her to his apartment. In that spacious and rich big house, he showed her the dark red developing room, showed her the richly colored Maha by Goya, and analyzed the aesthetic elements in "The Palace Lady" for her. Obviously, he was tempting her with his knowledge. And she saw the lonely profile of his face when he played the piano. At that moment, she was really conquered by him. (2) A woman's love for a man often begins with worship. Many girls have fantasies and even experiences of teacher-student love: a music teacher with a romantic temperament in elementary school, a handsome and tall sports coach in middle school, and a humorous English lecturer in college. Each of him is her spiritual mentor. In front of her innocent and pure pupils, he opened up for her worlds that she had never experienced and seen, and led her into them to experience unprecedented fullness and abundance. Occupation deified these men. Being a gentleman is charm, and being unruly is also style. Power makes men shine. The power of a male teacher is to control the knowledge and spiritual world. This powerful driving force is projected in the fantasies of simple girls, magnified into their adoration and admiration, and finally constitutes the whole reason why she falls in love with him. In the movie, the idolized love made her love so simple and decisive. She was willing to play his lover, his lover, the savior of his soul. She forgot her age, her worldly ideas, her moral precepts, and she loved him with all her heart and soul, from body to soul. Just to deliver a touch of warmth that can reach the heart to this man she admires. Love that begins with lust stimulates a man's most acute and unspeakable possessiveness. For him, she was initially an aesthetic symbol representing youth and flesh. Her beauty was in fact functional, a glaring aggression that pierced his heart naked and succinctly. He even felt that the clothes on her were just artificial obstacles, designed to provoke some eyes who wanted to rip it off. He needs to tear open her surface modesty for her, revealing the beauty she doesn't know she has. He longed to conquer her, to gain a sense of accomplishment, to occupy the most beautiful body in front of him that stings him, and to let time run backwards under his control. Men love women, and they love women even more. This mirror reflects the otherworldly self. But when he looked through this mirror, what he saw was no longer his own talent and wisdom, but the old and wretched nowhere to hide, the fear and inferiority of his inner illusion, and the brokenness of his perfect image. He could no longer convince himself to intervene in her future life. When she sent him that meaningful invitation, he finally lost his armor and fled. (3) He thought that this was just another painless escape. He knows love and women so well, and he has always known how to let go of what he cannot grasp, so as to retain his self-deceitful self-esteem. He constantly wanted to get, see through. And kept rejecting and leaving. Constantly comprehend, and constantly overthrow themselves. He was so sensitive and suspicious that he had been in love with himself all his life. He is like a conceited and cunning hunter, silently wrapping himself in a black coat, waiting for the prey to come automatically, lingering possession and then silently giving up. He has been intoxicated by such absurd reincarnations. But this time, he could no longer deceive himself. When she left his world in disappointment, he spent two years swimming in the tangle. He sat on the floor in the dark, listening to her message on the answering machine over and over again, watching her smile frozen in the fixer. When he stood lonely and stagnant in the crowd, he finally realized painfully that what he had been escaping from had nowhere to escape. Beauty and imperfection are always twins, not even two sides of the same coin. They can be completely coincident, intertwined, and merged into one. Many people are inconceivably fascinated by the beauty of imperfection. The tearful Hamlet, the broken arm of Venus, the love in the time of cholera... If there is no tragedy, no separation between yin and yang, no misunderstanding, betrayal and reunion, all beauty will not become beautiful, and all endings are not worth cherishing. So she reappeared. She has short hair, her eyes are melancholy, and she has breast cancer. On the sofa, she slowly undressed, posing as Maha in Goya's writings, asking him to freeze her final beauty with the camera. Tears welled up in his eyes after the camera. He embraced her with his old arms, his expression calm and quiet. Her most beautiful body was destroyed, and his most passionate years were long gone. All perfection shattered, smashed into a mutilated reality. Such a defect made him finally let go, and finally dared to accept their love with peace of mind. Yet Shattering never has the ability to alter reality, it just provides a new perspective. That was his ultimate experience of bringing her into the context of a work of art. The artwork is finally broken and auctions and resale will no longer take place. Conclusion brings peace, and regret is just another aesthetic.
View more about Elegy reviews
