Eros is a thesis of Western civilization, starting from Plato, going through the religious period (God's love) and the romantic period (Knightly love), and finally descending into the interior of man (Freud-Oedipus complex), To Lacan and Levinas, Han Bingzhe becomes a strange mixture of models and theories. For thousands of years, human beings have talked about love in various ways, leaving good stories and doubts that need to be re-understood. It is undeniable that modern people understand romance better than ancient people, but not necessarily more understanding of love.
The family is the cornerstone of Chinese civilization. It is like a big enclosure, which defines the rules and reconciles contradictions. Among them, there are repressions of people and adjustments to human nature. Taboo is the dark energy in the family, those unspeakable topics have been transformed into various Qimen Dunjia techniques, scattered in the words of family chat. Chinese people don't like to "discuss" words, and always leave some leeway and mystery, which is probably related to the structure of family ethics.
The basic philosophy of Ang Lee's "Eating and Drinking Men and Women" is vitalism: as long as there is a breath of life, erotic desire will happen like this. There are many elements in the film, and the four main lines are separately divided into films. It is a popular and mediocre work in Taiwan's small and fresh style. But he is like a chef, who can cook the most common ingredients into delicious delicacies. Therefore, this film does not focus on the plot, but on the corresponding relationship. The eldest girl's sexual repression and fantasy, religious complex, traditional thinking, the second girl's aggressive personality, her glamorous job, the failed relationship between men and women, the third girl's laissez-faire and unrestrained, the father's loss and rise, all correspond to the words of outsiders in the film - Harmony of Yin and Yang. Li An constructed a set of correspondences between male-female, dynamic-quiet, offense-defense, talkable-unspeakable, in order to give Chinese families 5,000 years of sexual repression (as expressed in The Wedding Banquet) and Eros seeks an exit and arranges a good destination.
If love is allowed to overflow, love can be irrelevant to responsibilities and objects, and we will face a highly fluid society - nothing can last for a long time, and different fantasies are constantly created to break the homogeneity of love, Porn becomes the ultimate destination of eroticism—an eternal cycle of motion.
So where should the destination of lust be? Look at the problem backwards, where erotic desire cannot go: the void, death, the vacuum of incomprehensible, instrumental reason. Life is a reverse journey, and bearing its burden and loss is almost inevitable. If love only seeks happiness, like bees gathering honey, it must not be able to resist the exhaustion of body and spirit, and cannot avoid loss and loneliness. Ang Lee is optimistic, he gives the family a new meaning: rebirth (end montage: baptism, birth). The reconciliation between people and their original family ultimately requires the extension of love and desire to overcome the old shackles with a new life. As Nietzsche said "all pleasures desire eternity", the direction of love should be lasting and ever new. Eros should take root (religion, art, philosophy, family, sentient beings), and let a momentary feeling slowly become a seed, thereby giving birth to something new.
The last words my father said at the dinner table left a gap for erotic desire: life does not start until all conditions are met. Similarly, love cannot be triggered when it is fully prepared, and erotic desire is never a "complete thing". Not a collection of three elements (passion, commitment, intimacy) summed up by modern people. If everything has been satisfied, there is no need for love. In Plato's Symposium, Socrates pointed out that love is an intermediate product of scarcity and abundance, a transcendent movement from the ditch to the bright moon. Because of this, love is courage, seeking eternal joy with a quick-witted body; love stories, which are incomplete but left for eternity - a perfect love story, that is called a fairy tale. In the end, my father said, I have tasted the taste. If I tell the truth, the film will be a fairy tale; if he refers to the "smell of home", it will be even better. Think about it, if the love between the sparks and flints is sweet and exciting, what is the taste of lasting love?
To borrow Mu Xin's words, "Love is actually a self-education"; home, delineates a harmonious boundary for the first and final love in life.
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