In the transparent window that was exposed to people because of the dark night, different roles were placed one panel after another. Aren’t we all actors? A tired-looking middle-aged man in a suit left the window boredly, and a woman in a suit who appeared to be on a business trip was opening the curtains. If you have enough patience and less serious voyeurism, you can watch the one-act play performed by many guests in this hotel building. Yes, in a one-act play, everyone seems to be locked in a small grid, traveling on business, lodging, meeting, and separating from each other, staying only with their own loneliness. Even at this moment, you are having sex with another person in such a violent and sexy position at the window.
Brandon is one of them, maybe, he saw himself in such absurd and ordinary French windows.
In this huge and prosperous city, in this city that is regarded as the top of the world, the flow of people in the past is not even like Brandon, who will stop and think for a couple of men and women in the window, feeling a terrible sadness. "Shame" is such a story filled with calm despair and indifference.
In the movie, Brandon is a person with a "morbidity" who cannot hold on to sex (in fact, I can't use the term "sex addiction" to call it, social psychology can unify all unexplained behaviors as "something Certain addiction", and in different cases, there are different distinctions and backgrounds for sexual addiction, which will be discussed in detail below). On the surface, he is no different from any white-collar worker living in Manhattan. He is well-dressed, has an elegant manner, has a stable job, and has a small apartment of his own. The only difference is that his work breaks and leisure time are spent in any form that can solve crazy sexual needs. He constantly masturbates, bathes, and goes to the toilet, constantly recruiting prostitutes, one-night stands, and hooking up with a good family. Women constantly watch all kinds of pornographic videos, movies, and books. He is a person with real emotional insomnia, and sexual venting is the only sleeping pill he has.
Time is such a difficult thing to conquer for mortals. We are looking for a variety of ways to fight against the tremendous pressure that time exerts on us, such as religion, such as philosophy, but a brief indulge in something can also achieve a similar hallucinogenic effect, which is easier for us , Such as creation, such as drug use, such as constant sex. As a time-conscious and suffering soul, if you forget time, you can forget yourself, and if you forget yourself, you can forget the pain.
Brandon and his sister Hess can be seen as two sides of a traumatic problem. One infinite demanding, one infinite demanding. Hessi kept on holding her boyfriend not to leave her during the phone call, she could do everything for that man, and she could abandon all self-esteem in exchange for courtship. Why is Brandon always so angry when he sees his sister? That's because, like a mirror, her sister sinks into the blind need for love, just as he sinks into the sight of sex helplessly. Hess is just a mirror image of him. When she sees her, she reveals her ugly face without dignity, shame, and selflessness sinking into sexual intercourse. A person without a soul is afraid of nothing more than seeing in the mirror that he has no soul.
"Try doing something. Action count, not words." (Can you change it? Really change, not say!)
"I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I fucked up. I'm not perfect. I made mistakes, but I'm trying." is guilty of a lot of wrong, but I'm trying a.)
"s some people fucked up at the All Time." (some people are doomed to a lifetime messed up.)
before the movie is about to end, has been more than a conversation between brother and sister, cloth Langdon tortured his fragile sister with indifference and hopelessness. No matter how her sister showed her weak desire to be forgiven, Brandon would use the most desperate tone to condemn her to death, not because he was cold, but because they were almost one. embarrassment). I don’t want to answer her neurotic and addictive phone calls, lest I remember that I’m also addicted; I don’t want to see him casually messing around with a married woman, lest I remember that I mess with others every day, married women, homosexuals , Or a prostitute; I don't want to see her thirsting for the love of another person so selfless, even if it is her brother, so as not to remember that she has also lost herself. As long as he cannot forgive his sister, he will never forgive himself.
By the way, I think it’s a very interesting disagreement. When I first watched this film, because of the misleading introduction, I, like many viewers, think that it is actually because Brandon has an inability to accept it on a conscious level. The truth is that he loves his sister. In order to escape the immense shame and guilt caused by the immorality of "falling in love with his sister", he used a series of pains as opposed to the pain of "lighter than unrelated love". Pain, at least having sex with a prostitute, at least having a one-night stand outside, at least having a 3P, at least having a gangbang with a gay-compared to falling in love with his sister, in any case, it will make him easier in his own moral system Accept some. Therefore, unceasingly making love has become a way of self-punishment for him, using painful sex to make his anxious soul more soothed, which has the nature of atonement, albeit in a very guilty way.
This reminds me of the psychoanalysis case seminar I participated in. Someone shared a case of his experience in a hospital. It was about a woman who had sex with her father when she was a child (it seems to be a sexual assault). , I can’t remember clearly). After I got married, I couldn’t have sex with my husband at all. But later, I found many strangers outside to have sex. Later, I became a lady (not for economic reasons). ), I finally felt very painful and collapsed and then the hospital asked for help. In this case, there is actually such a pattern: it is reasonable and legal for her to have sex with her husband, but if she has been having sex with her husband reasonably and legally from now on, then she will definitely remember that in her early years , She once made such an unreasonable and illegal major mistake. This is a terrible "judgment" that will never be forgotten. How can a "normal" woman do such a bad thing? So how should our self-defense mechanism respond? ——Then be a "bad woman". If you are a morally corrupted woman, the morally corrupted thing that happened before is reasonable, and will not become a devastating, collapsing blow. In order to avoid a nervous breakdown, let yourself be a bad woman who "can do bad things". In real life, many sex workers engage in sex transactions, not all of which are economic reasons, but many of them are derived from the sexual trauma they encountered in their early years.
In the story of "Shame", Brandon's situation does seem to have a tendency to experience some kind of trauma and produce later uncontrollable behavior. In cases of sexual proliferation to disease, more than 70% of the cases are derived from the source of the early years. But director Steve McQueen doesn't focus on this, so this is not so much a movie about "sex" as it is a movie about "emptiness". Sexual addiction is only the outer shell, and a soul that has lost itself is the inner core. In fact, as long as it is a method or medium that can make us addicted, dependent, and unable to get rid of it, whether it is sex, food, games, or shopping, or pathologically asking for something, it can tell that people in this era have lost themselves. The sense of value, the painful anxiety of self-consciousness. I think the audience will definitely not be interested in the downfall of an alcohol-dependent person. To express it with vivid "sex", it is easier to spread and easier to preach. Although the sexual scenes in the movie do not make us feel happy, on the contrary, you can feel the extreme pain at the end of the picture-if you are or have been addicted to dependence on something.
"If an organism cannot realize its potential, it will become sick. If human beings cannot realize its potential as a person, then he will also become exhausted and sick to that extent. This is the essence of neurosis, that The unused potential of a person is hindered by the hostile conditions in the environment (past or current) and the conflicts he has internalized, and turns to the interior, which leads to illness. William Blake once said:'Vitality is eternal happiness. People who have desires but have no ability to act will inevitably breed maladies.” When Rollo May described the extremely prosperous modern people in the 20th century, he pointed out that it is the same as Krenkegaard, Nietzsche, and Kafka. In the prophecy, we are aware of the existence of emptiness at the same time that we are aware of our own existence, a melancholy that cannot be ascertained but is lingering.
In Brandon’s home, you can’t see a trace of tenderness, no decorations, empty room, a gray sofa, a white bed, a refrigerator, two thin iron bookshelves, and nothing else. Things, like his bleak heart. The place where Brandon works is also unable to identify what kind of industry people are engaged in. Everyone is like a busy worker ant, fulfilling the job role given to them by the times. The hotel that Brandon plans to love with his colleague Mary is no different from his home. The gray sheets, white walls, and no decorations look out of New York City that hasn't changed much in decades. In the background of the story described by Steve McQueen, New York has lost all the labels of gorgeousness and carnival, leaving only the air of indifference and alienation. It's always because something is missing, something is always wrong, because you feel the pain like an abyss, no matter how many times you use your temperament and love, you can't fill it up. When you collapse to the edge, you can only kneel by yourself. Weeping by the deserted dock in the heavy rain.
Do you say that the director has given us hope? Yes, I think that in the end, Hessi's suicide by cutting his wrist again was an accidental and fatal rescue. When death really takes away all your possibilities, maybe you will wake up from a nightmare. But this is more like the last bet of a desperate gambler who has exhausted all methods.
A part of Brandon's body really died. Through his mirror sister, he cut off his own meridians, wanted to see if "self" really existed, wanted to see if the punishment of self could end, wanted to see Is this a cruel dream, as long as you cut the knife deeper and longer, can you return to the world where everything is beautiful again like a nap? Brandon, who was lying in front of his sister's bed waiting for her to wake up, slowly brushed Hessi's scar-covered arm, like a journey of questioning to prove his own existence. There was a certain kind of healing, and they finally met.
View more about Shame reviews
