It also fell on every piece of dirt in the lonely churchyard on the hillside where Michael Fury was buried. It fell one after another, accumulating thickly on crooked crosses and tombstones, on the spires of the small tomb doors, and among the barren thorns. Slowly his soul fell asleep as he listened to the snowflakes falling slightly across the universe, falling slightly, as they would at last, on all the living and the dead. --James Joyce, "The Dead"
The seemingly plain story, like the thread of philosophy, calmly opens every hidden heart.
A teacher-student-loving husband and wife who loves writing is a stable middle-class life. The arrival of the Nobel Prize is like snowflakes falling on their lives, and the peace is full of color. The title of the film is "The Good Wife", it seems that I see more of a good husband.
Discordant sex and the main extension of the phone, Joe and Joan are shadows of intimacy and sentimentality
The content of the opening is rich enough to explain all the important clues of the movie.
Joan's indifference to Qiao's sexual requests, and her laugh at Qiao's active flirting (which also hints at the reason why Qiao had many extramarital affairs after marriage), the two people's intimacy is straightforward.
When receiving the call from Stockholm, Joe couldn't wait to get his wife Joan to get the extension and enjoy the exciting Nobel Prize news together. Answering the phone here, Qiao is at the bedside in the bedroom, while Joan's background is a desk that suddenly changes to a bright picture. (I also discovered this ingenious detail because of sudden visual discomfort.)
After confirming the news of the award, two elderly people in pajamas jumped on the bed happily. Such a celebration full of childlike love echoes the joy when the book was first published when the latter two were young.
It's just that Joan suddenly stopped the joyful state of the two, and Jo said apologetically "I just being silly", and still accepted Joan's shower's suggestion.
Joe affirmed Joan's talent and is the soul teacher of her writing
Qiao and Qiong have a teacher-student relationship. Qiao is a professor at a first-class private women's college, not a selfish and untalented teacher as many film critics say.
When Joan presents Jo with her Thirty Years, Jo affirms her writing, "full of wisdom, but detached," while guiding her to the truth of her need to go deeper, deeper into life.
"A real writer, he does not write and publish, a writer must write because he must breathe. A writer writes because if he writes, his soul will starve to death." Joan's expression is the fiery longing about the writer's writing life expressed by Qiao when she was teaching. Obviously, Qiao opened up her view of writing that she always thought was transcendent.
This is why Joan chose an invisible writer in the back, and it was more of a life strategy when she found it difficult to recognize her dream in that era.
Joe leads Joan into a deeper life and helps Joan open up the horizons of being a writer
When Jo and Joan were discussing her novel Thirty Years, I understood Joan writing with her imaginary Greek mother, who guided her patiently, a mother who is at the same time someone's lover, someone's child, and longing , fear and desire for privacy. Joan's expression was part rebellion, part lit.
Joe also invited her to take care of his newborn daughter on Saturday, supposedly to let her know that a real mother has to deal with diapers, a messy room, and a bunch of chores, which are obviously not aloof.
Female author Elaine and male publishing agent's words shatter Joan's dream of being a writer
Joe introduces the writer Elaine to Joan, and here Jo is clearly giving the love of the talented students and the support of the writer's ideals.
Elaine's words shattered Joan's dream of being a writer for the first time.
As a senior, Elaine revealed that women will not get any attention in the writing circle that is monopolized and dominated by men. "Your book will only appear on the alumni's bookcase." The cruel reality was learned from the mouth of the same excellent senior, which gave Joan a big shock.
Back in reality, after the private meeting between Joan and Nathaniel at the bar, and the night of the argument with Jo, another paragraph of Joan's intern in the editorial department/male publishing agents' attitude towards her work was implanted.
This is very important. After Joan and Joe quarreled in Stockholm, Joan woke up alone in the middle of the night watching "the walnut" and recalled such a scene, whether the voice-over was "If the publishing agent affirmed the work he wrote at that time, now What will it be like? (Is it myself who receives the award?)”.
Through Elaine's words and conversations with male publishers, Joan began to understand that her chances of getting her work published and read on her own were almost zero.
Joan needs Jo to be the "walnut shell" that fulfills her writer's life
After Joe finished writing "the walnut", he looked forward to Joan's objective evaluation with an expression like a fledgling boy, and would drink coffee and smoke a lot of cigarettes nervously.
At this time, Joan had a conversation with Elaine, and after learning the evaluation of her work in the gossip of the male publishing circle, she decisively decided to terminate her dream of being a writer.
Of course, this termination is not the termination of complete abandonment, but she needs to choose a shell that can continue her writer's life outside of herself. As a professor of an Ivy League school, Joe has enough literary accomplishment, and no one is more suitable than him.
So she judged Jo's work, the characters were wooden, the dialogue was stupid, and even if it was written about their affair, it didn't make Joan show her lover's heart. Joe became angry and asked Joan for the first time, "If I am a mediocrity, why do you fall in love with me"?
Seeing Joe's anger, Joan's words are easy to think of as a promise to Joe's love, but based on the above two plots, it is obviously the heroine's despair and venting. However, she also loves and must write, so she can only castrate Qiao's talent spiritually with love, and it is the safest shortcut to let him accept his ghostwriting with peace of mind.
Joan is obviously not a literary girl who gave up her talent and writing for love. On the contrary, the male protagonist Joe is indeed an enthusiastic boy who accepts Joan's writing intervention because he falls in love with Joan and her talent.
The director is very good at filming. Everything is just right.
When Joan saw that Jo was angry, embarrassed, ashamed, and hesitant because of her criticism, Joan said here that Jo was her life, and this life was not her personal life, but the life she had to become a writer.
At this time, Joe's relationship with Joan was not completely determined, because falling in love with a female student would remove him from the Ivy League. Joan showed her powerful insight again, and made a timely proposal to fix the novel for Jo, stabilizing Jo's emotions. (FIX is a neat word that appears many times in the movie.)
Joan's beautiful and sane observation in a two-person world, where life is part of her finished writing
"I'm just an observer", Joe and Joan were on the plane to Sweden. Because of Nathaniel's intrusion, Joan's unintentional words can express the inner character of the characters.
Joan's calmness and rationality are the inner protective colors, making Joan look like a vulgar old man, especially when Joan uses his own humor to adjust the atmosphere, Joan is always reprimanded by Joan, "you're so rude", Joan doesn't do anything in front of Joan Get the respect and love from your wife that a real man needs.
She is watching Joe all the time, in public clothes, words and deeds and all the details. For example, when Joe is talking with other Nobel Prize winners, Joan is opposite, and the observation and monitoring prompts Joe to pay attention to no food on the corners of his mouth and mustache. This scene is a bit ridiculous to me.
At other times, Joan is also a calm observer. Joan describes the work "The Teacher's Wife", "not your wife, just a character study", and other times when they get along, Joan's eyes do not leave Jo, just daily monitoring, Just like her scrutiny of her own words.
In Joan's view, Joe is the presenter of Joan's works, and he should be rational, restrained, elegant and perfect like hers.
Joan's observation is a scrutiny of the subject in order to keep Joe equally detached, fully in line with Joan's ideal form.
A memory of Joan as a mother, David broke into his parents who were discussing writing, Joe hugged David and left, David cried to his mother, Joan ignored the child's violent crying, and focused entirely on writing.
Some mothers are also writers. For a woman like Joan, she can only be said to be a writer and a mother at the same time.
Motherhood is one of the things Joan needs to write deeply about her life.
At the awards ceremony, Joan confessed that she was KINGMAKER
Throughout the award ceremony, before the speech, Qiao took the stage to accept the award. Joan's iconic lips showed a forbearance and thoughtful expression, and Qiao's acceptance of the award was even more depressing, and his hands and expression could be seen to be extremely disturbed.
Joe's speech was sincere, he paused several times, and he confessed to the world in his own way.
Joan's expression changed every time Jo's paused, when Jo said that the honor should go to her wife, she was looking forward to Jo's next sentence, when Jo continued the traditional morality of thanking her wife, instead of admitting to the world, after so many years When all the works were written by his wife, Joan was direct and angry, completely disappointed, and ashamed of Jo.
Before that, when the king of Sweden asked about Joan's occupation, Joan said that he was a kingmaker. This is Joan from student to wife, with real ambition and desire.
Climbing feud, broken balance of longtime writing partner
Joe told Joan several times in Stockholm that they were not bad people, that there was nothing shameful, terrible or immoral.
Joan is here, as Nathaniel said, tired, and she has no patience because she is tired, because the end of the grand prize has come, and Joe has chosen a person to stand at the top of the glory, she is just as a great, The decoration of the thoughtful Nobel laureate's wife, she can no longer accept to continue to be invisible.
Joe, because of love, obeyed the way of Joan's choice, and spent half his life with Joan, he was no longer so keen on writing (even did not know the name of the protagonist of his novel at all), which stemmed from what he believed to be the tacit family division of labor with Joan that has been ongoing, namely , Joe is in charge of everything at home, and Joan writes in her own name.
Joe's love, as he said, went deeper into life (taking care of everything about June and the family), but Joe's love began with Joe's opening of her soul and her dedication to her writer's dream. At this time, she needs to repair and affirm her long-standing love of the true writer identity, or to confront the disapproval of the once male discourse circle.
Joe and Joan finally blame each other in a less-than-dignified way, revealing, complaining, and breaking the balance of half-century-old writing partners.
Viewers here may wish to imagine, is Joe really untalented? Wouldn't it have been different if Joe didn't love Joan so much at the time and wouldn't accept her comments and revisions to her work?
"His soul fell asleep slowly as he listened to the snowflakes falling slightly across the universe"
After the quarrel, Joe suffered a heart attack. He lay on the bed and asked Joan twice, "Do you love me?"
Joan kept her composure, calm.
Joe is lying on the bed in the executive suite, God's view of the body, making his fat body look bad
The director shot a detail here too delicately, Joan's face slowly blurred on the screen, and snowflakes floated outside the window.
Remember James Joyce's "The Dead" that Joe recited alone at the beginning?
"His soul fell asleep slowly, as he listened to the snowflakes falling slightly across the universe, falling slightly, as they did at the end, on all the living and the dead."
The poetic and beautiful details may also be the director's kindness to the character of Joe.
Love is enduring patience and kindness
At the end, the flight attendant who is still serving on the way out. This setting is very interesting. When Joe and Joan went to Sweden together, Joan became jealous of Jo's service because of the flight attendant. Returning alone, the flight attendant's perspective on her and Jo made Joan aware of her sensitive and critical habits, which made her miss out on real kindness, or Jo's love for so long.
Love is enduring patience and kindness.
Marriage is mutual gold, two people create beautiful works together.
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