Just wanted to write a short review, was told there were too many words. The film feels like going from a Freudian world to a Lacanian point of view, and two things are clear. First, the root of desire is that it cannot be realized. The essence of Lacan's irony of chivalrous love is that it can never be realized. The knights write lyric poems for the lady who is far away, because she is far away. The old man Matthew is rich in everything, his desires are simple and direct, he thinks he can get it easily, but he often misses it. And this, instead of extinguishing it, fuels desire. Second, the ambiguity of truth and perception. The film's point of view is Matthew's, but obviously his description is not credible. Whereas the average film recaller describes objective facts, Matthew's plausibility and disbelief are palpable, which is special. An older gentleman rudely poured a basin of water on a young lady. How to believe his words? People who eat melon just want to eat melon, and the basis for judging him is just: I know your cousin, he is a decent person, so you should be too. Compared to Matthew's simplicity and directness, the heroine's image is so complex that it takes two actors (plus a third voice) to achieve its complexity. She loves Matthew, she hates this old man? She treats money like dung, she is with him for money? She will never betray her love, she is good at and willing to play with others? Actually it is possible. He humiliates her slut and gets doused when she humiliates him with a bucket of water. Neither the flesh of the handy maid in his fantasy, or the downright liar, could glue all the fragments of reality together. Can people understand the world? Did man come to the world when he was ready? No, people are suddenly thrown into a world that is fragmented and difficult to piece together.
Of course there are distinct classes. Matthew has been giving money to the heroine, to her mother, to the housekeeper, to the woman holding the pig, and to the conductor to make him fetch a bucket of water. He is really the master of the money. Money is one with him. The heroine is poor, but she has the confidence to say: I'm not like you, I don't need a lot of money to live.
There are many other metaphors, such as patching with embroidery on a broken scarf with blood, the explosion that always occurs. Everyone has their own understanding. In my opinion, this tinkering works, in Cioran's words, sculpting pain. At the same time, it is also ineffective, and everything is destroyed in the blasting.
I don't know what surrealism is, but the fullness of the characters in this film seems to me to surpass that of many people in reality: they neither show diversity nor see pieces that cannot be integrated.
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