Mysterious Wall - "Squid and Whale"

Griffin 2022-04-21 09:02:41

The film also has a translation title, called "Squid and the Whale". It is said that there is a giant squid in the sea. Only its size can compete with whales. Compared with squid, it is somewhat petty. But squid and squid are similar in shape, with open tentacles and a center, like a flower. According to some theories, flowers represent women, and they are female external genitalia, so they generally refer to women. As for the whale, there is no need to say much about its shape and its jets when it is ventilated. I don't know if the title has this meaning, but in fact this film is indeed a story about a man and a woman.
Men and women have not only love, but also the end of love, or the story of marriage. When marriage comes to an end, there is no story between men and women?
There are many movies about marriage coming to an end in the United States. The more familiar ones are "Mr. and Mrs. Kramer" and "American Beauty". Basically, it reflects a mid-life crisis. The two protagonists in this film are also middle-aged and also have a mid-life crisis. But the filming is very subtle.
In a family tennis match, there are not too many words, but everyone can see two problems. The first is that there is a contradiction between the father and the mother, and it is completely irreconcilable. The second problem is the camp of the two sons. , the eldest son belongs to the father, and the younger son follows the mother. So, the story begins in this very uncoordinated tennis match.
This is a family of high intellectuals. The father is a teacher and has written books before, and his influence is also good. The mother was obviously a student of the father. Nice reputation. In this case, the father felt the setback in his career, but it was the mother who felt the failure more, because she could no longer see the high-spirited appearance of her father when he was young, so the cracks were created.
The mother begins to have an affair, but the father is powerless, which proves that the father has completely lost his charm. This can be shown from the fact that the mother's cheating objects are often young and energetic people, so the eldest son's understanding is obviously wrong, the mother will never betray because of the father's inaction, she just needs a person full of vitality. Life needs passion, and my mother is still passionate because of her successes, while my father has no passion at all because of her failures.
Parents' divorce has a huge impact on children, so the eldest son has prejudice against women based on what he has seen and heard. This is reflected in his attitude towards his girlfriend. Does the woman only think about that? He was not sure, but at the same time he thought it was a kind of filth, but on the other hand, when he was in adolescence, women, especially sexy and beautiful women, were a kind of temptation. He couldn't bear it anymore, so he took a fancy to Father's schoolgirl.
The younger son is more dependent on his mother, which is a breastfeeding dependence, so he is far away from his father, which is a growth process that lacks males, so when he sees his coach with his mother, he feels One side is trying to accept this coach as a father role, and the other side is rejecting, and this method of rejection is quite extreme in the film, he masturbates, he gropes everything about his mother, which is quite a bit of Psycho. The shadow of the shopkeeper in .
Yes, the mother's passion has had different effects on the two children. The eldest son is afraid of women because of his mother, but he is obsessed with attractive women. The younger son has nowhere to vent his Oedipus complex because of his mother's betrayal The bad habit of smearing semen everywhere.
On the contrary, the father was a self-righteous, self-reliant guy. His influence on the two children was again different. The eldest son has always taken his father as an example, so he is proud to imitate his father everywhere, and at the same time inherits his father's downfall. When a Pinker song is regarded as an original by him, he gains a sense of accomplishment. In the process, he solved a kind of depression for his father very well. As a man's sense of achievement, he is more afraid of women's harm, so in the process, he betrayed his girlfriend, but was affected by his father's students.
The youngest son's attachment to his mother causes him to become emotionally estranged from his father, and at the same time, he tries to be present as a protector by his mother's side. As a result, the foul language of the male representative was often revealed in his mouth inadvertently. The lack of fatherly love makes him more masculine, which is the other extreme, which is similar to his release of semen.
Under such parental care, both children have entered the wall of life. And as a parent, why not?
Looking at his son's girlfriend, the father seemed to be awakened by his original charm, so he got together with his students again, while the mother continued her life of pursuing passion. Such a situation means that the two middle-aged men and women have found their way in their respective lives. Looking back at it this way, does the original marriage mean that the wall is lost?
But the father's actions inadvertently hurt the eldest son. The eldest son came together with his father as a sexy woman, and he failed. At the same time, he also really found that he had actually been living in the shadow of his father, because his father read He claimed to have read the books he had read, and he succeeded because of his father's lack of success by trying to fake it as hard as he could. At this time, he thought of his mother.
So, the eldest son began to ask his mother how to treat his girlfriend, which means that the eldest son began to value himself, and it also means that the eldest son abandoned the shadow of his father's arrogance. In the same way, the father also found his irreparable failure after the students left. He was no longer the high-spirited young teacher he used to be, so he surrendered to his mother.
According to the conventional interpretation, the mother should accept the father, but it is very cruel and very practical that the mother does not. All the foreshadowing in the front destined the mother to not accept the father, because although the father abandoned his pride and admitted his failure, such a father is actually more despised by the mother, and the last thing he should lose is the mother. It is the word passion that is eager to get.
The woman finally defeated the man. Therefore, when the father hoped to keep the eldest son on the hospital bed, he failed completely. The eldest son had overcome the fear in his heart through the beautiful memory of his mother, and he was freed from the shadow of his father because of his awakening.
The film doesn't actually end, the father fails, the eldest son grows, the mother still seeks a life of passion, and the younger son finds it wrong to try to replace his father. The director doesn't seem to care about everyone's survival or the true direction of everyone when he tells the story, and he has no intention of giving a happy ending. In the chaos, everyone is facing the wall of their own. Also facing the opposite sex wall.
At the end of the film, the eldest son stands in front of the squid specimen, which is a compromise between men and women, especially when every woman in the film seems to be more passionate than men, the meaning of this compromise is even more obvious Far-reaching, maybe men and women are the same, only the existence of passion can grow and cooperate. The director has gone beyond the story of men and women while affirming the passion.

2006-10-19 in Tongzhou
Han Xi

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Extended Reading

The Squid and the Whale quotes

  • [first lines]

    Frank Berkman: Mom and me versus you and Dad.

  • Bernard Berkman: Joan, let me ask you something. All that work I did at the end of our marriage, making dinners, cleaning up, being more attentive. It never was going to make a difference, was it? You were leaving no matter what...

    Joan Berkman: You never made a dinner.

    Bernard Berkman: I made burgers that time you had pneumonia.