There is too much focus on mental illness in our time. In terms of dropping the book bag, Han Bingzhe summed up the last century as the century of "immunity", and this century is the century of "mental illness". Further, he believes that the former represents a kind of denial and rejection, and perhaps a fear of the enemy metaphorically referred to as the virus, while the latter represents a kind of affirmation, which is pathologically manifested as excessive obstruction. This assertion is reflected in the art of film and television. On the positive side, it is the entertainment food that keeps accumulating such obstructions. On the negative side, it is a focus on mental illness, not only including how the abnormality of mentally ill patients (or "madmen") is related to social representation. Normal interactions are also traced to the origins of all kinds of madness (not just pathological origins, but more of how society shapes this derailment). But beyond the madness of manufacture and the madness of reflection, there seems to be one proposition that has been lacking attention. In other words, Haneke's film created a new topic for us about madness: How exactly do we get to madness? Note that this topic is not the origin of madness, but rather a description of the process. This film shows us how a perverse person walks step by step to her final moments of indulgence.
This judgment is based on a dialogue in the film. Erika recounts Adorno's description of Schumann's Fantasia in C major to Walter in a private recital. He said it was Schumann's intellectual control and rejection of total insanity, his "final blow" in the face of madness. Erika cites the passage as a reflection of her own situation. She is like Schumann in her old age, she is also using her own reason to fight against the desire for carnal indulgence. And the film is a rich development of this journey.
If we look at the film from such a linear perspective, then we have to focus on that goal, which is also the end. Our question is, where is that final moment of indulgence? And did Erika refuse or join her in her ultimate madness? It is difficult to give a definitive answer to this question, and even whether this question should be asked is a matter of opinion. And I don't have an answer myself, because that's precisely the best part of this movie.
The first alternate moment is Walter's violence against Erika, and the second alternate moment is when Erika inserts a knife into her body at the end of the film. Yet both moments have their own entanglements. This is because Erika's madness is not consistent, but divided into spiritual and physical. Spiritually, it's her deformed love, whether for her mother or Walter; on the physical level, it's her masochistic tendencies, or her perverted desire for physical pain. On both counts, Erika goes into physical madness at the first moment, and she finally suffers the violence she's dreamed of from Walter. But she didn't go crazy psychologically, because she didn't enjoy the violence, she didn't get the pleasure of masochism in the physical pain. But in the second moment (the reading of the ending here is very personal), Erika finally suppressed the psychological madness. The chance she devised through immoral means was rejected by her, and she completely lost her desire for Walter. And her way of saying goodbye to psychological madness is to hurt her own body with a knife. From the first moment, a rough and unpleasant experience of masochism constituted "exposure therapy" and seemed to be a cure for her physical ailment. But she is still in the shadow of a deeper trauma from her family, which has led to her desire to eventually perform on stage. From the second moment, Erika also accepted the "exposure therapy" on the spiritual level, and she witnessed the disgust of her old love for herself. But physical pleasure caught up with her again like a nightmare. This entanglement constitutes the film's most memorable openness to me.
So, while I don't have an answer, I don't agree with the rough categorization of this film as a disease narrative about a mental illness that ultimately distorts the personality. Haneke gives us an all-round perspective of the deviant with his usual realism and frigidity shots. In this perspective, it seems that madness and indulgence are no longer the final proposition, and the eternal contradiction between the spirit and the body emerges. Perhaps in other words, from Erika's situation, if masochism is regarded as her mental illness, the reason why this illness is understood as a disease that needs to be rejected in her first perspective is precisely because of her physical body. constitutes the limitation of her natural desires. If the body can be hurt at will, then the pleasure of masochism does not turn into a disease. The cause of madness and abnormality is precisely the restriction of the body on the spirit. In turn, Erika's constant physical pain comes directly from her perverted desires. If her mind had not been inspired in the original scene, her body would not have been damaged by the constant wounding and healing. And the bad result of madness and abnormality is the damage of spiritual motivation to the body. If we understand the film from such a perspective, then Haneke's peak "Love" filmed ten years later also has an additional perspective. The grandfather's murder of his lover is also a tear between the spirit of pure love and the heavy body.
On this issue, Haneke's fidelity to reality is also on display. Compare Li Cangdong's "Poems". I once commented that Li Cangdong's work embodies a "spiritual victory method of pure heart", because his intellectual aesthetic of "poetry" replaces the rules and compensations in the world, and brutally distorts the consequences of a tragedy with judgment. Therefore, in this sense, Li Changdong is not a director who depicts reality. He does not only focus on "how reality is", but tries to provide a way out for reality. Not so with Haneke. He is perhaps the most loyal believer in the proposition of "reality". In this film, tragedy is presented only as a tragedy. If anything is responsible for the tragedy in his images, it can only be "reality".
Finally I want to talk about actors and acting. I didn't know how to evaluate performances in the past, but recently I've noticed some subtle differences. Huppert's performance in this film is undoubtedly perfect. But where is her perfection? My answer is "sense of atmosphere". I don't know if this is an appropriate word, and I don't know what its original meaning should be. But my understanding of atmosphere is a diffusion of emotions. The reason why this diffusion can be called "good" in the context of film, I think, comes from the dramatic nature of film. We all know that drama should have conflict. And if an actor can spread the front of the conflict from a point-like specific performance to a plane, or even a three-dimensional emotional "space", then when the dramatic conflict comes, it is not only the past plot that is opposed, but a new one. The whole environment and atmosphere. In this film, Huppert creates a sense of "tension" (a word from a neighbor who commented on Madame Jessica's performance in Dune). That's why she cast Walter in her bedroom with that childish and longing look of a little girl so touching.
I've watched five of Haneke's films in a row in recent months: White Ribbon, Love, Hidden Camera, Piano Teacher, and Ukiyo-e Paris. I seem to see two different Hanekes: one is a unique portrayal of social issues, Haneke presents a unique style of social observation in the White Ribbon-Hidden Camera-Paris Ukiyo-e; the other is the private Emotional grim reveal. And in my own immature evaluation criteria, Haneke is one of the few directors who simultaneously expresses the "poetic" and "richness" of the film. "Abundance" is the rejection of ideological narrative and absolute fidelity to reality; while "poeticity" is an experiential transmission close to practical philosophy. My understanding of it undoubtedly refers to Aristotelian philosophy: just like the dynamic balance of public and private in dialectics in practical philosophy, "poeticity" in art unifies the publicity of the image and the privateness of the viewing experience. Sex (I also refer to the terminology of the New Wave film review). Haneke on the first side may be lacking in the dimension of "poeticity", but the two films "Piano Teacher" and "Love" both reflect the essence of an art. Although it tells about the encounter of two "others", the director uses his lens to really pull us viewers into the life of the movie characters; it is not a principled preaching (or a kind of coercion) , not in a kind of kitsch indulgence (a rhetorical modification of reality, compulsion and rhetoric can also be compared to Plato and sophists before Aristotle), but a real sympathy for human beings Use of emotional power. Maybe this is the true meaning of film as the art of dream-making. We can also go to poetry and madness in "dream".
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