"If I could speak the tongues of all men, and the words of angels, but not love, I would be a ringing gong and a ringing cymbal.
If I have the power of a prophet, and understand all mysteries, all knowledge, and have perfect faith that I can move mountains, but have no love, I am nothing.
If I give all I have to give to the poor, and sacrifice myself to be burned, but have no love, I still get nothing.
Love is patient, love is kind, love does not envy, love does not boast, is not arrogant, does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not consider wrongs, does not rejoice in iniquity, only love the truth
Bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
Love is never ending. The power of prophecy will eventually cease to exist, the power of speaking in tongues will cease, and knowledge will eventually cease to exist.
What we know now is limited, and what the prophets have spoken is limited; and when the perfect comes, the limited will be gone.
When I was a child, I spoke like a child, thought like a child, and thought like a child; when I became a man, I discarded childishness.
We now seem to be looking in a mirror, blurry,
Face to face by then. What I know now is limited, and then I will know it all, as the Lord knows me.
Today there are three things that always exist: faith, hope, and love, the greatest of which is love. "
—1 Corinthians chapter 13
After the pace of life has slowed down, in the morning when the weather is good, I will run along the road to the seminary on the top of Zhan Zhan, sitting on a bench and watching the wind blowing the maple trees in the yard, not far away, the golden dome of the chapel. Glittering in the sun, the most common red brick building has very low eaves, and the pillars fall on the ground without any decoration or are connected to the beams. When I took my father there, he exclaimed, "It's so simple, as simple as a rural high school in memory." Simple and full of aura should be the best adjective, I will stare at the time walking on the clock tower and silently Pray for a while, and let go of your burdened heart.
A few weeks ago, when I was praying silently on Zhan Wangshan again, the image of the "mirror" that lingered in my mind, the blurred image of myself and others in my mind, became more and more after thinking of leaving home after going around in all these years. Getting more silent is also because at a certain stage of life, I discovered the impossibility of verbal communication between people. It would be better to have a hug or a subtle care and concern. These changes have not been seen in a long time. As far as my father was concerned, it was unacceptable. He blamed me for being taciturn. I was misunderstood. I couldn't argue. The movie I've seen, "Still in the Mirror".
Bergman is a director I admired a lot. I thought he was deep enough, bold enough, cold enough, crazy enough to dissect beliefs, marriages, and family relationships piece by piece. At the same time, the director and the audience themselves are also placed on the dissection table. Bergman's, like me, is emotionally handicapped, and in response to the pain of that handicap urges us to question, write, and create.
In addition to being in the short arms of his lovers, Bergman may never have experienced the true meaning of tenderness and love. He grew up in a conservative Lutheran family when he was young. Bergman's father was particularly strict on it, and his mother did not give it to him. With enough attention and care, in his heart, he has always been such a little boy who lacks love, and he himself admitted in an interview in his later years, "I only walked out of adolescence when I was 58 years old."
Five marriages, four broken, Bergman also cannot give enough lasting tenderness, love and responsibility, some are only short-lived passion and attraction, for the trouble and anxiety caused by the relationship with people, what he did, namely is to escape. In his later years, he said to his children, "I'm sorry, I'm not a good father." The reply he received was, "No, you're not a father, you're just a director." His predicament turned into images and dreams, and here is where he escaped.
"Still in the Mirror" is such a story. It is Bergman looking into the mirror, and the self and others are blurred; , but there is no love and no warmth, therefore, nothing, nothing. "
The first act of the story is a peaceful reunion, the four members of the family frolic by the sea, father David, daughter Karin, Karin's husband Martin, and brother Minas, and it is like the intimacy and peace in the Garden of Eden, It will fall apart step by step in the follow-up to the film. After the swimming, the four people divided into two groups. Father and Martin cast a net. Karin and brother Minas went to fetch milk, which also implied the relationship between the characters and the future direction of the event. Martin told his father. Expressed concern for Karen's mental state, while his younger brother secretly expressed to Karin that his father cared more about creation than his family, he said, "He always lives in his own world."
Before dinner, Martin hurt his hand, and his father didn't care, just changed the subject and said, "Don't make a fuss, what a wonderful thing to enjoy dinner in the moonlight." At dinner, when the father mentioned that he would be leaving soon, the children looked disappointed. Minas accused his father of not keeping his promise to stay at home and demanded an apology. Everyone became more and more silent. When opening the gift, my father took a pipe for an excuse and ran back to the room to cry loudly for his incomprehension. At the same time, the children outside found that the father's gifts were either of different sizes or had already been given. The joyous reunion is being eroded little by little.
When my father returned to the dinner table, the world on the screen was already two different worlds, a world that seemed to be harmonious on the surface. Similar to giving gifts, when the children devote themselves to performing Minas's play for their father, the father shows a tireless expression while holding a pipe. He may think that the children's performances are clumsy and naive, and they are incomparable. Still thinking about the children's previous accusations, or maybe, in my heart, I will compare the exhaustion of Vince, who can't produce works, with the prolific youth of my son, and I feel jealous. When there is no love and only judgment between giving and complimenting each other, the gaps behind this night are constantly superimposing, leaving a kind of hypocritical void that no amount of words can bridge.
Daughter Karin turned out her father's diary curiously, which gave her a fatal blow to her sensitive and fragile spirit. In the diary, she wrote, or judged, "Her disease has no cure, and the improvement is only temporary" between the lines Revealing his true selfish intention to go home, using his daughter's illness to write, recording her "how to collapse step by step." Frustrated Karin was very sad. Here, the desire for Karin's body outweighs the concern for her heartache, because Karin's long-term fragile mental condition does not allow for the love of fish and water between the couple, which makes Martin anxious. The plot is here, between father and son, father and daughter, daughter and husband, high walls have been erected.
Here in the story, the four of them are divided into the same two groups as before. Karin and his younger brother are at home, while Martin goes to sea with his father David. On the boat, Martin asked David about the diary and learned the truth. He accused him of being "ruthless beyond the bottom line of morality." Despite his constant creation, "there is one thing he doesn't understand at all, and that is, life itself." He is a "coward, coward, best at escaping and finding Excuse" is bent on being a great writer. And David explained that he had attempted suicide when he was in Switzerland, and in the breath after his life was on the line, what he wanted to understand the most but could not touch "is love, for Karin, for Minas, for Da Wei, one day he'll figure it out."
Bergman is here, the real question is to reflect on the writer, but also on himself. He is David, Martin, and Karin. In self-criticism and cross-examination, he asked a question that he did not know very well. The question is, what is life, what is love?
Karin wakes up from another seizure, alone with her father David in the stranded cabin, and Bergman once again reflects on his father David's monologue, in order to create his escape from his previously seriously ill wife, even before her. He secretly rejoiced after his death, and deliberately left for Switzerland after his daughter became ill. He said, "We use circles to protect ourselves and exclude things that don't meet the rules of our game. Every time the circle is broken by reality, the game will appear Ridiculous and pointless, then we just redraw the circle."
Maybe this is the greatness of Bergman as an artist. At that time, maybe it was aimed at the artist, but now, he hits the core of the society where individualism is rampant with one sentence. Enclose, exclude reality from others. And behind this seeming ego is a kind of incompleteness, a kind of immaturity, a kind of fear of breaking balance, a kind of fear of devotion, all of which have contributed to a kind of closed seemingly safe hiding place, but this closed It's like some kind of short-lived drug-like relief that will eventually drive a person into a corner, suffocating in a temperatureless, uninspired, silent wasteland. On the contrary, a person who is sufficiently mature and complete in human nature should be open, accommodating, flexible and rich.
At the end of the story, Karin has a complete breakdown, saying that she is not waiting for God, but a terrible and cruel spider. But the father came to his senses in the final dialogue with Minas, and he may also be the so-called god or spider in Karin's mouth, he said:
"The world has love, all kinds, the highest, the lowest, the most absurd, the most sublime,
longing and refusal of love,
Is it love that proves the existence of God, or that love itself is God,
Since then, emptiness has turned into wealth, and despair has turned into hope. "
postscript
Back to the courtyard of Prospect Mountain, those mornings of silent prayer, thank you for the love that pushed me to this place, those who gave me tenderness, let the broken me slowly learn how to treat people with such an attitude. The connection that is unclear and unclear makes the ordinary become lovely, the ordinary becomes great, and silence becomes listening, and without it, no matter how gorgeous it is, it is simple, no matter how noble, it is boring, and no words are empty.
The vast universe is like a mirror, if there is no love?
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