1. Impossible love
Beautiful, proud and refined, she is bound by a lifeless family. Poor and dying white family, widowed mother with eccentric personality, irritable eldest brother, cowardly second brother, alienated and difficult life.
In contrast to him, his father was one of the Chinese chaebols in Saigon, with rich clothes and jade food, but because of his frailty and identity of the yellow race, her family looked down on him. It is impossible for him to marry her, and the family cannot tolerate such a poor wild child.
Their love can't tell whether it is sensual love or sympathetic spiritual love. Under the hot sun of Saigon, they kiss, but they bite each other like two trapped animals.
Yes, this is Duras' "The Lover". Let’s restore and analyze this tropical mania-like love by analyzing both the original book and the movie.
2. Elegy of the vicissitudes of life
The original "Lover" has a classic beginning: "I'm old. One day, in the hall of a public place, a man came to me, he introduced himself, and he said to me: 'I know you , I will always remember you. At that time, you were very young, everyone said you were beautiful, now, I am here to tell you, for me, I think you are more beautiful now than when you were young, when you were A young woman, and I love your devastated face now more than your face then. '"
How similar to Yeats' "When You Are Old".
What a legend, how did this seemingly impossible love last for decades?
In the movie, the Chinese young master played by Tony Leung asked, "Are you here for money and me?"
She said: "I don't know. But I like you now, with money."
Both have their own pride and inferiority.
She knew very well, "It was wealth that made him lose his power. He did nothing but indulge in love."
He won't give up money for her, and she won't give up his self-esteem white identity for him, which is their pride. He suffered for his weak body and spirit, and she was trapped in poverty and a poor family, unable to lift her head, which was their own prison.
The love between the two is not noble and seems rather shallow (based on money and looks), but you can't say it's not love.
It's just that this love is destined to be fruitless, destined to be full of compromise, helplessness and despair.
This is a love that runs towards death with all its strength.
3. Colonial complex
The description of Southeast Asia has a wonderful beauty in it.
Europeans always have unspeakable feelings for the former colony of Southeast Asia - this mysterious tropical exotic.
The discordant couple in "The Veil" is slowly approaching, the sudden passion and obsession in "Tropical Maniac", the mother and daughter with different personalities in "Indochina"...
What does Southeast Asia mean to Europeans? Perhaps it is: the afterimage of imperialism, the battlefield where exotic fantasies are galloping, and the land that is degraded and beautified at the same time.
And analyze a few common images in the book:
1. River: The heroine met the Chinese young master while crossing the river. The vast soup of the big river breeds everything and washes everything, but also means that nothing can be left. Similar to time.
2. The sun: The first time the two went to bed was on a hot day, extremely frenetic, but also dizzy and helpless. The days here are always long, and when the sun is dark, everything is unfamiliar.
The summer heat, like the fire, is bright, but it symbolizes turbulence and unsustainability.
3. Tropical plants: custard apple, rice, tamarind tree, cocoa tree... all have a kind of vigorous vitality.
The similarity between "The Lover" and "Tropical Maniac" and other colonial literature is that they both use extreme emotional descriptions, classifying Southeast Asia as a dry land that burns lust and human nature. The protagonist's desperate and passionate love is like the wanton bite of two wounded animals.
Did the land ignite the madness of man, or did the blood of man's twist and mutation flow into the land?
Fourth, the original narrative art
Duras diligently throws out new definitions and interpretations (about beauty, about love, about family, etc.), which are indeed different from the mundane and eye-catching, but blindly seeking eccentricity and disagreement is not very clever. Too much boring, repetitive and arrogant babble.
But stream-of-consciousness storytelling is still groundbreaking. Interrupting the narrative line and inserting other stories, thoughts at the time, and current moods, the story changes from a single line to a system of fluid circulation.
Change the person's name at will, sometimes it is an actor who enters the play, sometimes it is an audience hanging out, and sometimes it is a stand-in for the play. She is a witch in her own kingdom.
5. Comparative analysis of movies
The film has weakened the charm of the non-linear narrative of the stream of consciousness, and the fusion of time and space, the random change of personal names, and the jumping and extension of thinking are gone. But it deepened the rendering of the inner struggle of the two, and the opposition between family and identity became more distinct.
The original work is a multi-dimensional world : Saigon's past, current life, feelings from the past, stories of others, current feelings... Different levels are intertwined to form a changeable and turbulent world. Using vagueness as a technique is closer to the precise fact—human memory is the palace of the self, drawn from reality, and then adding bricks and mortar to blur the reality and make the feeling more precise.
The film generally follows a sequential narrative, with the narration of the elderly Duras inserted from time to time, and generally remains a one-dimensional world. Therefore, it is difficult for the film to express the essence of stream of consciousness, and it can only be viewed as a love film.
Because of this, the film pays more attention to the development of emotions and inner struggles.
There are two episodes that are original to the movie but not in the book.
A plot is when the heroine meets the young master for the second time, and the two have not yet established a relationship. She saw his car at the school gate, ran forward with her bag, and kissed affectionately against the window glass. Although the young master did not move and was just watching in the car, this scene was full of lust, and the audience could fully feel the shock and struggle in the young master's heart.
It's really a very high level of erotic movies, it doesn't matter how many clothes you take off, one action is enough to be so sultry.
Another scene is that the two were lying on the bed, and the young master forced the heroine to say that she was only for money from beginning to end. He hugged her and said in her ear over and over again, "You're just a whore." She smiled sweetly.
Yes, she is more mature and calm about the doomed parting. In order to make him feel better, she accepts all this with an indifferent smile.
At that time she loved him without knowing it.
The movie is more successful in explaining the emotions, and it also makes it easier for the public to understand the relationship.
Moreover, the film successfully visualized the exotic scenes of Southeast Asia: the turbulent Mekong River, the crowded Chinatown, the dim sunlight, the lush crops... Every frame of the picture is heart-stoppingly beautiful.
The girl's top hat and high-heeled shoes have become symbolic symbols (coincidentally, Sabina in "The Unbearable Lightness of Life" also wears a male top hat).
This hot and dry land may not have ignited so many passions, but it has certainly ignited the creative desire of countless writers.
In the end of summer when the long days are coming to an end, I recommend this novel and movie. After reading the book, I still feel that the sun in Saigon is burning me, and even the evening is like the breath of a giant beast.
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