On August 26, I watched Knee of Carat again on the screen of the cinema. The restored film has a peaceful and excellent aesthetic. I feel that I can finally understand this film at a certain age, and I am in a good mood.
Rohmer's usual ending is reversed. I have been unintentionally blocking it when I watched this movie before. Before that, I had been deeply immersed in the hero's personal thoughts and feelings, and had always followed the hero's wise, sensitive, passionate and self-respecting. In the feeling of "the emotion of the work". But the ending is actually a reversal, where the boy comes to Claire and tells her what he was like that afternoon, who he met, etc.
If it is assumed that the boy is lying, it is just an excuse, because from the perspective of the male protagonist, this young boy has always been an unreliable image. If you always agree with the idea of the male protagonist, then in the end, you will feel that the boy is just explaining sophistry and is meaningless.
But what is the boy telling the truth? In fact, there is no need to lie, explain and round up this part. It is already the end of the film, and what the boy said is indeed the truth. In other words, he was not a scumbag who played with Claire's feelings, cheated and abandoned him. He is just a sincere and ignorant boy in love. Then, the male protagonist actually wronged and slandered him, and through this injustice and slander, he achieved his purpose and desire to touch Claire's knee for comfort.
Therefore, Claire's knee is actually the protagonist's representative image of the girl's sexual desire. No matter how wise, sensitive, affectionate and knowledgeable, sexuality is always the same, because sexuality concerns, approaches, smears, and succeeds. Similar to this image is a detail in the film where the writer and diplomat share a painting, in which Don Quixote and Sancho ride a wooden horse blindfolded, thinking the brazier is the sun. Here they talk about a certain kind of self-deception of heroism, braziers and wooden horses that feel blindfolded, as if they were actually riding a horse into the sun. From an outsider it seems silly, as does the insinuation that the audience drives into the movie from the outside, Claire's knee is the brazier, and sexuality is like the sun, after all, sexuality.
Even so, the second level of meaning is inferred. That is, the clue of "the emotion of the work". The emotional journey of the diplomat in the entire film is related to the writer. He will tell the writer for the writer's writing, and we viewers will continue to understand his emotions like a live broadcast. behavior, his mental journey. Well, that is to say, before this emotion has a writer's and audience's attention before it goes any further, then Claire's knee as an extension of sexuality is very clever. It seems to be sexual desire, and it seems to be just the knee itself. Lust has a certain pre-examination, and a seemingly immoral thing is placed in a state full of moral self-discipline and dialectical sense. Similarly, for Laura, he is also loyal to his feelings, even like a couple Holding hands and kissing in the same way, this is more intimate and out of bounds than touching knees, but sincere mutual attraction and rational separation judgment are magnanimous and beautiful. And Claire's knee is very subtle here, it's both genital and sexual. Then the right or wrong of touching the knee, the thoughts and feelings put into it in order to touch the knee are very sexual. Therefore, this reference has skillfully achieved a certain delicate balance in the dimensions of sexuality, morality, work consciousness, dignity, knowledge, and emotion.
That said, in retrospect, even though sex was a possibly false desire, he did slander Claire's boyfriend because of it. But in the end it just soothes Claire's knee, he's obsessed with a referring entity that goes beyond sexuality, so the mistake is nothing more than if Claire's boyfriend drives his yacht 20 meters off the river bank to harass tourists , the line 20 meters away from the river bank may have passed a little or not. Each has their own views on right and wrong, and it may be dangerous but it has not produced worse results. It is not an unforgivable mistake. And, thinking about this, and going back to the brazier and the sun metaphor, I am reminded of a Picasso quote: Some artists paint the sun as yellow dots, while others paint the yellow dots as the sun. The brazier is not the sun, and the knees are not the genitals, but in the end, the diplomat finally painted the yellow dots as the sun. Isn't this sensual and polite, and even has a superb creativity, although it is addictive In the ego, from the perspective of the viewer outside the painting, Claire's knee, which is at once secretive sexuality and openly chaste, both wrong and beautiful, is one of the most Rohmer-esque images. concept.
Rohmer is good at laying out business for a long time, and then in an understatement moment, people feel and reflect on the truth of good and bad, right and wrong, and love.
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