The same protagonist, the same past, the same beginning but a very different ending, when the question mark began to appear in my mind along with the subtitles that slowly rose after the movie ended, I found that I could only attribute the reason For: mentality determines destiny.
The protagonist, Melinda, is a very sensitive woman who had just experienced a failed marriage and an aborted extramarital affair when she appeared. She nervously interrupts a dinner party that's important to others, but shows a completely different mindset in the two stories when she tells why she's so nervous. In the tragic story, she tried her best to suppress her inner anxiety and grief, pretending to be calm and telling her friends Lola and his wife about her past. In the comedy stories, Melinda talks eloquently in the face of her unbearable past, and her calm and calm attitude makes people feel strongly about her frank and natural personality. This small detail shortly after the beginning of the film actually laid a deep foreshadowing for Melinda's different fate in the future.
Let's take a look at these two different stories in the movie. In fact, I think comedy stories lack the necessary details to look thin but lighthearted; tragic stories, though unpleasant, are full of details and rich in substance. The old saying goes, "You can't have both." I didn't expect Udy Allen to have both in one movie, regardless of each other.
The Herbies, the hosts of the dinner in the comedy story, later arranged a "blind date" for Melinda. They plan to introduce a single dentist to Melinda in order to help her out of trouble. Never thought that a blind date would fail, but Herbie fell in love with Melinda instead. After Herbie finds out she's in love with the beautiful Melinda, she worries about what she can do to stay with her without hurting her wife. When he was racking his brains and didn't know what to do, he unexpectedly found that his director's wife was having an affair with her producer at home. After the adultery was broken, his wife filed for divorce and said he had fallen in love with the producer. Herbie was overjoyed and immediately agreed to divorce his wife and immediately asked Melinda to have a candlelight dinner together, intending to show her heart at the restaurant. Unexpectedly, Meilinda already had an affair and fell in love with another person...
Herbie, who had nothing at all, was in a predicament like the original Meilinda. At this time, Melinda and her new boyfriend extended a helping hand to Herbie, and this time it was their turn to introduce her girlfriend to a "blind date". When Herbie came home with the woman that Meilinda introduced to him, Meilinda was so nervous that she hid outside the door and eavesdropped on what was going on at Herbie's house... At this time, everything became clear, and Meilinda actually loved it too. On Herbie. Herbie opened the door, and the two shared their heartfelt feelings with each other at Herbie's house, and the story ended successfully...
Unconsciously, I retell this story to everyone, but what I really want to express is Chen Tong's "Sketch Questions" There is a saying in the book: "The wonder of life is sometimes revealed unknowingly in such an upside-down relationship..." In fact, the "humor" of life is also revealed in this way, so this story is very interesting .
Next, let's talk about the details of the tragic story. In the tragic story, Melinda falls in love at first sight with the musician Alex Musang. But "love at first sight" is inherently unreliable. What's more, Melinda's friend Lola was also present at this time. Lola is a music teacher who has given concerts and has a deep knowledge of classical music. At the beginning of the film, Xiao Li said that Lola would cry to the melody of the music while listening to the concert. Later, Alex and Melinda met Lola while listening to his favorite concert. This concert happened to be the total The one who can make Lola cry. When Melinda was in a relationship with Alex, she was always worried about gain and loss. She even nervously told Alex about her murder and jail time. Alex tried every way to excuse her, but Melenda gave some details and even herself. The mentality of murder and imprisonment is also clearly described. One time, when Melinda went out and returned to Lola's house, she found that Lola's husband Xiao Li was secretly hiding a woman at home... There are many such details, and I think these are the foreshadowing of the tragic ending. With the support of these details, at the end of the tragic story, everyone's life turned into a mess, but it all seemed so reasonable. Therefore, the breath and background of "tragedy" are inadvertently revealed in these details.
Woody Allen clearly wants to use storytelling to explore the nature of life in the film, but I have no intention of exploring what that nature is. I've always thought thinking about the "Ultimate Question" is tedious, but after watching this movie I couldn't help loving the way Woody Allen told the story. I love the "fish and bear's paw" approach, I love the open ending...in other words, I love Woody Allen.
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