As Kieslowski's representative work, The Two Lives of Flowers was born in the middle of two series, namely "Ten Commandments" and "Three Colors" ("Blue, White, Red, and Blue", "Blue, White, Red, and White", "Blue, White, Red, and White"). On the connection point of "Blue, White, Red and Red"), it is interesting that Piesievich, the screenwriter who has collaborated with the director on many films, did not expect that "Two Lives" could be so strongly welcomed in China.
The core of "Two Lives of Flowers" is extremely tense, it seems to accept the interpretation of any viewpoints and theories at all times, and does not exclude any possibility of being re-created. At the same time, the film's staring and singing of the two girls is highly suitable for the staring relationship between the audience and the mirrored images on the screen and being stared at. Maybe we can use this to give a little guessing imagination to this film, a postmodern mystery story, the imagination of a pair of girls who look like two drops of water living in two different cities.
At the beginning of the film, Poland's Veronica ("Bovey" for short) is singing, and the camera gives a close-up shot of Bovey, so we now know from this shot that this is a story about girls and singing . In the next paragraph, Bovey, who was running in the rainstorm, passed by the truck carrying the bronze statue of the leader. The truck and the bronze statue simultaneously indicated the dual coordinates of Bovey's geography and time, that is, socialism in a cold war period. The country, and in the following paragraph of a square demonstration, also locked the time of the film in a more definite stage, an era of drastic changes in Eastern Europe. The passage after the demonstration in the square is a narrative of Bovey's fragile physical response to singing. The juncture of the two passages makes the tower of society crumbling, the tumult of the city streets, the socialist ideology, and the body of Povey, who, unsurprisingly, collapses in a parallel fragile relationship. on the stage. After a subjective shot from the perspective of the dead, the camera turns to France. Veronica (Favi for short) of France is having sex with a man in bed but feels a little lonely. She also has musical talent, but quit the stage of music to teach a group of children. In the movie, Favy always feels the absence of the other side. If Bovey is complete, in the traditional narrative sense, the characters are musically gifted - given the opportunity to show - and die for music, then Favey is on the contrary. What the film does in the second half of the film is exactly what Bovey did. The exploration and subversion of the action of doing, it is the climax of the anti-narrative, or when we follow Favi in the perception and exploration, it is precisely a break from the traditional narrative expectations. When the traditional narrative is broken, what is also broken is the pleasure of watching movies in the traditional sense.
Slavojzizek sees Veronica's secondary choice as a new version of the sublime reversal of tradition found in literature such as Dickens' Great Expectations. At birth, Pip is designated a "man with great prospects", which everyone thinks predicts his great success; yet we only begin at the end of the novel when he abandons the false glitz of London and returns to his childhood community Knowing that he did fulfill the prophecy that marked his life - that only after finding the strength to leave the empty hustle and bustle of London high society could he become a man with a truly "big future". Here we encounter a Hegelian reflex; as the hero is put to the test, not only does his character change, but the ethical standards by which we measure his character change accordingly.
If there is one consistent behavior in the film, it is the staring at each other. Kieslowski presents different gaze movements in the film, as Christian Metz discusses in the film Second Semiotics, the film succeeds in creating a state of confusion between self and other, real and fiction, fully A kind of psychological identification mechanism is evoked. The eyes are the organs of our desires, and we watch movies to experience the sense of "identification, peeping, fetishism" brought about by the mechanism of the theater. At the same time, the ambiguous environment formed by the cinema means that we can escape from the symbolic order we are in and return to the ideal kingdom of the mirror stage. The constant watching and staring action in the film is also a time and again confirmation of the establishment of subjectivity in the two Veronicas staring at each other. The two Veronicas stared at the demonstration square, stared at the photos, and felt the existence of each other at all times, but it is worth noting that the staring eyes are eternal one-way, it seems that Chie does it intentionally and does not want to form. Looking at the two lines of sight and breaking the ambiguous relationship between them is just like in the law of film creation, staring at the camera means breaking the perfect fantasy world that is closed and self-sufficient. And the two Veronica also mourned and cried for the people in the mirror image, just like the embodied body reactions formed by the audience when watching the movie.
On the other hand, the film gives us an omniscient perspective that is one level above the two female protagonists, making us not parallel to Favy in the second paragraph, setting up another male character "The Puppeteer", and Viewers share an omniscient view. And this male character becomes a dominant character in the second half. He manipulated puppets, made puppets, and gave Favy the life clues that Bovey was looking for, and all he did was to create a puppet script about two women. The intervention of the male point of view has broken the original balance of mutual exploration between the two women, and instead has become a kind of ubiquitous Other, which even seems to exist more like a "big Other" in the Lacanian sense, omniscient. , see everything. If we look at narrative as a symbol of power. Then the whole Favi's story becomes, a woman pursues her complex emotional movements to explore things and perceive the world, but she eventually finds that she can perceive, but it is always the object of writing, the material to be decomposed.
So, combining the above three kinds of analysis, we get such a story, which is a story about watching, a story about learning to mourn and learn to cry while watching, and at the same time it is a story that is destined to be sad, because whether it is watching or being watched , the two women in the film are always the creative material of the male puppeteer, and they are destined to be controlled only by those with greater power. At the same time, applying Žižek's view of analyzing the film with a great future, this is another one we tacitly agree with. A film of sadness but usurped views on the fate of the characters in the film. In the traditional sense, the expectation of the protagonist to sing loudly is broken. We are subtly defined by the film a new concept standard to appreciate a story about seeing and looking.
We position Kieslowski as an identity, and he seems to be more entangled in the identity anxiety between socialism and capitalism on the extension of the cold war, making his films always political , but his films never express their political mind directly, but a reflection in the water. The viewing through mirrors, glass balls, and reflections in Two Life Flowers is also a solution to the incomparable confrontation between Eastern and Western Europe in the cold war era, reflecting the dissidents and the demons of the past as self-images. Just like the ancient Greek myth, Narcissus was fascinated by the reflection in the water, and Gu Ying turned into a daffodils hanging by the lake in self-pity. Yet even the ancient Greeks knew that the story of Narcissus would not be complete without the story of Ecolus. Eclus, in love with Narcissus, was cursed to repeat only what she could hear. And the completeness of Narcissus' story also points to a kind of cinematic completion: "It is the sound mirror that completes the sight glass." Before the advent of the sound film, the vocal cords (radio) had the ability to create words that forced the audience to go home for long periods of time. Listening, but jealous of the audience's infidelity, the movie queen punishes her poor vocal cords, robs her of her creativity, and forces her to repeat the sounds made by people on her vocal cords. When Ecolus met Narcissus, he was swayed by his youthful beauty, but Narcissus was fascinated by the reflection in the water, and he had no mind to meet Ecolus. She was supposed to woo him, but she couldn't speak without talking to her first, the world of Narcissus was limited to two imaginary worlds, that is, unobtainable lovers, Narcissus finally died of melancholy .
And if it is said that the formation of subjectivity in the mirror stage in Lacanian sense is based on the visual image, then the decisive effect of the shadow of sound on the fate of the two heroines in the film is exactly the effect of the shadow of light on the monotonous shadow of light. make up. So we see such a phenomenon in the movie, the voice speaks, she speaks her own words, and Ecolus's vocal cords are healed in "Two Flowers". Bovey sang aloud, the wandering voice pierced Bovey's heart, so the voice of Ecolus came to Favi, while Favi was obsessed with the reflection in the water (Bovey) like Narcissus, and at the same time Weeping because she felt the reflection in the water disappear, and she noticed Ecolus who could speak. Favi chose to leave her destiny to sing, just like Narcissus who got up from the water rejected Aclus's courtship, and instead curled up on the calm lake to wait for the next reflection.
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