It rained and snowed one after another, and I turned out "The Companion" to revisit. The flashback structure, constantly wandering in multiple time and space dimensions, frequently interrupts the narrative flow, as if deliberately resisting rational intervention, smashing events into pieces, and showing them as an irreversible nightmare. Lies and truth are intertwined, father search and father murder, thirst and destruction, those who follow the crowd are submerged in the fog, they are gray with no discernible face, and blue with wounds. However, The Companion does not simply explore the traditional motif of the choice between conscience and security, loyalty and betrayal in the dark age, but focuses on the mental anxiety of individuals in the context of fascism, presenting a strange, complex and Another vague hero, Kohler Ridge: a fallen aristocrat, an intellectual who is well versed in classical culture, a murderer, a fascist, and a homosexual. Hesitant, fearful, and indifferent, both pretentious and arrogant, and constantly hiding themselves in the crowd, trying to become a "normal person", watching from the sidelines, not fanatical about belief and power, nor simply succumbing to fear, seemingly unable to stop thinking, but constantly Escape from yourself and the times. It seems that he does not believe in any doctrine but is bound by ancient Catholic morality, "desiring to prove his life ruined by original sin is correct". Whether it is marriage or political decisions, it has all become an imitation, imitating the desires of others, trying to become a "similar" in a false order, and finally "sinking" by betraying the teacher and watching the death of his lover. The killing scene in the birch forest is both calm and restrained, but also long and full of tension. It is a well-designed violent ritual that identifies an era of madness, thinking of the scene where a middle school student killed Lao Cao in "Lust and Caution". "Lust and Caution" is shrouded in a cold emptiness, everything is blurred and crumbling, but Li An is sympathetic after all, he questioned but did not turn the question into a sarcastic smile, the rain that fell on Wang Jiazhi's face, Mr. Yi Tears, a little extravagance in hopelessness. History is not simply deconstructed, but suspended. Small individuals struggle weakly in the tide of the times. Erotica or love is just an outlet. The entanglement of limbs is a silent cry, mixed with fear, doubt, temptation and comfort. . But in "The Congruent," Kohlerich's carnal lust for his wife, and his deeper infatuation with the professor's wife, are not part of the gloomy era and become part of his "congruent" mask.
However, at the end of the film, when the totalitarian regime collapsed, Koleridge also ushered in a world of unmasking, repenting himself by condemning others' sins. He also finally completed the identification of himself, walked out of the cave, and let his face emerge, although he still couldn't get rid of the torn state. In fact he was never a true contemporary. And trying to be "normal" in the age of madness is itself an anomaly. The image of Mussolini is always absent, the building that symbolizes the power network is depressed and empty, just like the "general" in "The Autumn of the Patriarch", the totalitarian itself is an existence suspended by power, a symbol or even a puppet. It is everywhere but never really seen, and power, as Foucault analyzes it, is pervasive, untraceable, and inextricable.
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