The film "One One"
Yang Dechang said: " The invention of the film has tripled our life because we have gained at least twice as many different life experiences in it. "
I like this sentence very much and have always used it as an introduction to the public account.
I have always believed that every film has its own meaning, and existence is reasonable.
Behind the birth of each film, there must be countless days and nights of hard work by the entire team, and it must also have its unique ideological connotation. I am also trying my best to let myself get involved in various types of films, and try to understand a thing or two.
In the two-hour dream-making time, the film helps us recreate history, imagine the future, and stare at various things happening around the world, whether real or fictional, the light and shadow are all emotions that the director wants to express through the lens with thought.
And this time, I experienced a special two-hour journey. When you are suddenly paralyzed at the peak of your career, and only your left eye can move, how will you re-examine your life?
01
The 1943 edition of The Count of Monte Cristo
In chapter 58 of Alexandre Dumas' famous novel "The Count of Monte Cristo", it is recorded that the father of the villain Prosecutor Villefort, Noirdiere, is paralyzed and unable to move like a zombie, leaving only two senses of sight and hearing. Keep him in touch with the outside world.
"In his poor body, which seemed only worthy of the grave, only these two organs gave him a little vigor, like two lone fires remaining in a dead ashes."
The movie "Seasons"
This terrifying disease is different from a vegetative state, and is medically known as Locked-In Syndrome .
The former is a special human state similar to the living state of plants. Except for retaining some instinctive nerve reflexes and the ability to metabolize substances and energy, the cognitive ability has been completely lost and there is no active activity.
The latter is mainly seen in vascular lesions of the brainstem, mostly caused by bilateral occlusion of the pontine branches of the basilar artery, resulting in bilateral infarction at the base of the pons. The patient's cerebral hemisphere and brainstem tegmental reticular activation system is not damaged, so his consciousness remains awake , the comprehension of language is barrier-free. Because of its functional preservation of the oculomotor nerve and the trochlear nerve, it can use the eyeball up and down to establish a connection with the surrounding environment.
I don't understand the technical terms. In short, the patient is completely normal, but he is paralyzed and unable to move. He can only rely on the movement of his eyes to keep in touch with the outside world.
Because of the relationship between the above novels, it is also called "Monte Cristo Syndrome".
02
The diving bell is a non-powered diving device. The diver's helmet is connected to the outside world through a conduit, which provides oxygen to the diver and prolongs the diver's time to work underwater. Early submersibles were wooden containers with closed tops and open bottoms, similar in shape to bells, hence the name diving bells.
Jean-Dominique Bobby used to be a journalist. In 1991, he was the editor of ELLE, a well-known fashion magazine in Paris. His career was prosperous, and he had both children and children. However, this seemingly happy and glamorous life suddenly collapsed because of an accident.
On December 8, 1995, Bobby suffered a stroke and woke up 20 days later, but he could no longer move his body freely, speak, or even breathe on his own. Only his left eye could move. That's right, he suffered from atresia syndrome. disease.
Since then, the left eye has become his only tool to communicate with the world. With the help of a speech therapist, Bobby has learned to communicate using the alphabet.
The therapist sorted the letters by frequency of use, read the letters from beginning to end, Bobby blinked to determine the use of the letters, and so on, until a sentence was formed.
In addition to the left eye, Bobby has two things that are not paralyzed, namely imagination and memory.
Maybe flesh and blood will be sealed under the body, but imagination and memory can get rid of the shackles of the body and run freely between heaven and earth.
In the imagination, Bobby can walk on the beach of Martinique, can visit the woman he loves, can bow his head in front of Ramses II, the king of kings.
Under such difficult conditions, Bobby accomplished a marvelous thing. He traveled in the world of imagination, swam in the ocean of memory, and wrote a book in the blink of an eye - "The Diving Bell" with butterflies .
Recording his thoughts and thoughts after being paralyzed by apoplexy, the content does not fall into a sad mood because of his illness, but expresses his optimism and open-mindedness through various humorous languages.
The immobile body bound him like a diving bell, and the mind was free to fly like a butterfly, and life was reborn in imagination and memory.
The book sold 150,000 copies in its first week of release.
03
I was fortunate enough to read this book in high school, but between the lines, I can only construct a Bobby's world through my own imagination, and I can't touch and actually perceive it through vision.
The emergence of movies can express literary works figuratively .
In 2007, director Julian Schnabel, through the description of books and Bobby's relatives and friends, made this experience figuratively into the film "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly" of the same name.
That's what the movie is about. Show other people's lives in front of the audience in detail, and experience a life different from your own in two hours .
The film spends about half of its time showing the world as Bobby sees it.
From Bobby's point of view, the audience can appreciate this immovable world through Bobby's left eye, listening to his inner monologue, even if the outside world does not know it. It is also possible to observe his situation from an outside perspective, in places where Bobby's eyes can't reach.
Compared with the positivity in the novel, through the movie, we can see Bobby's existence as an individual "human" after being paralyzed.
He gets depressed, and after learning to communicate, his first words to the therapist are "I want to die," like everyone's first thought when they have a very big setback and misfortune.
He would feel powerless, his wife came to visit him with their children, and his son helped him wipe the drool from the corner of his mouth, but he couldn't open his arms to hug his son tightly.
He, like most men, had a young and beautiful female doctor come in, first glance at his face and second at his chest.
The film also uses different angles to illustrate the image of the "diving bell", which symbolizes bondage.
The plane that came to visit Bobby's friend Pierre Rose was hijacked and held hostage for four years and four months in a cellar in Beirut. That dark and small cellar was his diving bell.
Bobby's 92-year-old father can no longer take care of himself, and can't even go down the fourth floor freely. After learning that Bobby was paralyzed, in the phone call to Bobby, he said that he had written a will. After all, one was trapped in the apartment and the other was trapped in the body. unknown.
The apartment and the body, are their respective diving bells.
04
However, everything has two sides. Movies can express literary works figuratively, which means that certain things will be presented in the director's understanding, thus reducing the audience's imagination space.
After all, literature is abstract, a thousand readers have a thousand Hamlets, and a biographical film is just an exposition of the character's life by the director as one of the Hamlets, and the perspective will inevitably have some limitations and personalities .
In the film, once Bobby had a dream. In the dream, he broke free from the shackles of the diving bell and saw a group of medical staff surrounded by an operating table. On the operating table is a grave.
Perhaps when he is truly free from the shackles of the diving bell, death awaits him.
Rather than the film ending in subtitles of Bobby's imagination and biography, I prefer the ending in the original book, which is a paragraph.
"In the universe, is there a key that will unlock my diving bell? Is there a subway with no end? Which strong currency can buy back my freedom? It should be found elsewhere. I go, go look."
Bobby used his eyes to write "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly" in two years, and it was officially released on March 7, 1997. Two days after the release, Bobby died of pneumonia.
The butterfly finally flew out of the diving bell.
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