However, the film "Peacock Town" adopted a completely different shooting concept from the above films, and went the opposite way. In the first ten minutes of the film, the protagonist's split personality was explained, with straightforward lens language and a strong literary tone. , meticulously portrays a tragic image of a mother who has suffered from the perverted love of her mother. This straight-to-the-point approach to this film is tantamount to a breath of fresh air for people like me, who are tired of thinking and visually tired after being tested by the IQ of the finely divided blockbuster. His unique breath attracts me without vigilance Take it easy.
Because the protagonist John has lived in the perverted love of his mother for a long time, although he is an adult, he has not yet grown up psychologically or even physically. The man who had always been arrogant was gone, the inertia of life came to an abrupt end, and his fragile and cowardly personality made him compromise with reality. So, "I met Emma after my mother died." That is to say, after his mother died, he split into two personalities, one is his original self, and the other is Emma, who is responsible for his diet and daily life. Obviously, Emma has a projection of her mother's character, and her considerate care for John shows the deep side of her mother's love; her tough tone and self-assertive behavior towards John reveal her mother's violent and perverted autocratic face. For John, this tyranny happens to be the umbrella of his weak and opinionated personality, and he hopes that under Emma's "care", the regular and warm days can go on day by day.
However, Emma was not under John's control. The scheming "woman" was like the soul of his mother, which was obviously beyond John's expectation. The law of life was broken, and Emma's strength left John at a loss. People whose social skills are still stuck in childhood, the result of struggle and struggle is only death. Usually abused people escape pain in two ways, one is to fall in love with the abuser, and the other is to become the abuser. The protagonist of this film, like the male protagonist of "Psychopath", chose the latter.
In the film, John schizophrenia is divided into two personalities. At first, they acted independently. The memory and thinking of both sides are independent and non-interfering with each other. However, relying on subconscious understanding and perception, he can predict the purpose of each other's behavior. Later, the split character gradually occupies a strong position. The weak character gradually fades away, and the weak character has caused some trouble to the strong character, so the weak character is bound to be removed. In the film, when Emma used John's baritone to make a phone call, and when John teased his boss with Emma's social methods, it showed that Emma's strong character was already dominant, or that the two characters had merged into one. He decided to kill the beginning of another character.
The protagonist of this film, John, is played by Irish actor Srian Murphy. With his thin body and delicate facial features, coupled with his vivid performance, he interprets the perverted image of a boy who is also a girl. He is to this film what Guy Pearce is to Memento, and Christian Bale is to The Mechanic, and his performance alone propels the whole film. Ellen Page, who became popular because of "Juno", also had a good performance in the film, but under the aura of Sean Murphy, it seemed a little tepid.
Some details in the story aroused my interest in finding out. The mayor's wife was very secretive about her son's death, and the plot of her neatly arranging her shoes reminded me of John's mother. Is the mayor's wife also a sadomasochistic pervert? mother? Was the son's 14-year-old death a result of adolescence's rebellious behavior against his mother's despotic love? At the end of the film, Emma took pictures of the little boy and opened the box marked with John's toys, which also reminded me of whether John's mother, like Emma, was the product of a perverted split, and John and the one who was almost adopted Like a little boy, it's just a toy for her to find her own joy in life.
The overall feeling of the film is rich in literature and art, but not in horror. The director's handling of the ending is a little too hasty and rude. As a despair and gloomy theme of schizophrenia, I personally think it is better to carry out despair and gloom to the end, and the shocking effect of the film is also better. The more intense it is, the deeper the impact on the audience will be.
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