I miss myself

Dayne 2021-12-01 08:01:26

"My mother is over 80 years old, and she often can't take care of many things by herself. I think that when a person is old, the most painful thing is to live without dignity."
———— Xu Anhua

has told others many times, the one I remember most is Xu Anhua The one sentence I have said is this one, I can't forget it.

In terms of shooting techniques and style, this is not a good movie. But there will still be tears in several places. I think this is the power of the story itself. It is the result of an individual who is in the most helpless state in his life and puts another person in the same position.

Literary works are more extreme than reality. It pushes the context of the story to an even worse situation: "If a linguistics professor suffers from Aztheimer's disease in the season when his career and family are at his best, he will lose what he is most proud of. What will happen if you lose your ability to take care of yourself and lose your dignity?"

Choose euthanasia or suicide? When the dignity has not been completely lost, make a complete break?

The movie slapped you with a big slap: At this time, you have lost even the ability to commit suicide.

This is a very personal story, you can reflect on yourself at any time, because this situation may happen to everyone.

When you forget you, are you still you?

The movie leaves a warm tail. Alice, who has completely lost her memory and self-care ability, can recognize "love" after listening to the story her daughter has read to her. This is a detail that contradicts the facts.

Also facing "Aztheimer's disease", Haneke gave an opposite treatment in "Love", where the old man personally ended his wife's life.

This is where this story is relatively clichéd and particularly helpless. When she is no longer her, who is this love given to?

I especially like a sentence in the original book: I miss myself.

A lifetime, a lifetime, meaningful, is still the word "I".

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Extended Reading

Still Alice quotes

  • Lydia Howland: You can't use your situation to just get me to do everything you want me to do.

    Dr. Alice Howland: Why can't I?

    Lydia Howland: Because that's not fair.

    Dr. Alice Howland: I don't have to be fair. I'm your mother.

  • [last lines]

    Lydia Howland: [reading to her mother, but mostly from memory] "Night flight to San Francisco chase the moon across America. God, it's been years since I was on a plane. When we hit 35,000 feet, we'll have reached the tropopause, the great elt of calm air. As close to the ozone as I'll get, I - I dreamed we were there. The plane leapt the tropopause, the safe air, and attained the outer rim, the ozone, which was ragged and torn, patches of it threadbare as old cheesecloth, and that was... frightening."

    Lydia Howland: "But I saw something only I could see because of my astonishing ability to see such things. Souls were rising, from the earth far below, souls of the dead, of people who's perished from famine, from war, from the plague... And they floated up, like skydivers in reverse, limbs all akimbo, wheeling, spinning. And the souls of these departed joined hands, clasped ankles and formed a web, a great net of souls. And the souls were three-atom oxygen molecules of the stuff of ozone and the outer rim absorbed them, and was repaired. Because nothing is lost forever. In this world, there a kind of painful progress. A longing for what we've left behind, and dreaming ahead. At least I think that's so."

    Lydia Howland: [moving over alongside her mother] Hey. Did you like that. What I jest read, did you like it?

    Dr. Alice Howland: [barely grunting]

    Lydia Howland: And what... What was it about?

    Dr. Alice Howland: Love. Yeah, love.

    Lydia Howland: Yeah, it was about love.