Manchi
"Morpheus Screening Room"
= Issue 1: Rome, Rome =
This is not just a movie about the city, the city of beauty is just a translation.
LA GRANDE BELEEZA, THE GREAT BEAUTY.
The name has nothing to do with Rome, only beauty.
Rome, the eternal city, the city that lives in the memories and the beauty of the past, is just a suitable background to help us and the hero Jeep to complete a spiritual journey and complete a beautiful exploration with regression.
And there are too many entangled images and metaphors in it, and it is also permeated with various primitive life experiences. We will continue to drift, get lost, hesitant, ponder, and be confused by the various appearances of the world, but in the end, as long as we keep our roots, we will eventually pull away from the mess, and after closing our eyes, we will find The first beauty in the heart.
Moreover, from the very beginning of the film, the director told us.
"Travel is very rewarding, it is thought-provoking, the rest is just disappointment and boredom, our travel is entirely imaginary, that is its power. Our travels from birth to death, people and animals, cities and things, are all imaginative , it's a novel, it's just a fictitious tale. Littre can never be wrong, and everyone imagines that it's on the other side of life if they just close their eyes." -Louis
Ferdinand •Selina's "Wandering in the Darkness"
Yes, this is a trip completely out of imagination, as long as you close your eyes, it is on the other side of life.
However, before we could close our eyes, we were interrupted by the sound of a cannon, and then we were involuntarily involved in the whirlpool of life. Like Jeep 40 years ago, after the huge success of the first novel, he came to Rome at the age of 26, and soon fell into a maelstrom of elegant luxury before he realized it.
Then he lived like this until he was 65 years old. At the 65th birthday party, we saw Jeep lighting a cigarette, slowly pulling away from the carnival crowd, out of the flashy emptiness, and facing the camera.
"What is your real favorite in your life?"
"Women" "Smell in an old man's house"
Jeeps are destined to be sensitive, destined to be writers, destined to be Jeep Gambardella.
It is because of his sensitivity that we will have this imaginative journey, starting from the emptiness and returning to the heart.
He said that he didn't just want to live a luxurious life, to be the king of high society, and to succeed, not only to party, but also to have the right to beat others. Indeed, he did. When interviewing the (pseudo) performance artist Gypsy Girl, he mercilessly pierces her pretended to be mysterious "resonance" with sharp questions, and successfully beats her; Decent Facts expose the hypocrisy and pretentiousness of the self-proclaimed Stefan, and succeeds in defeating her; at a supper with Saints Mary and Cardinals, his hesitant questions keep him talking about cooking The seemingly absurd cardinal was embarrassed and managed to defeat him.
Yes, he has the right to beat others, so what? After the relatives and friends left, he still held the hand of Stefan who had sneered at the ball on the grass, danced with each other, and was fortunate to be able to do some good things together; when the bishop was about to drive away, He still wanted to ask the bishop to answer the confusion about his spirituality and beliefs, and to drive away the demons in his heart. After the bishop did some "exorcism", he watched the car leave with a sense of loss. After having a life of luxury and the right to beat others, he is still looking for something else that truly matters.
As a writer, Jeep's sensitivity allows him to sometimes see this muddled life more clearly than others. He saw the meaninglessness of his life.
"Look at these people, this savage life, this is my life, it's nothing"
He also saw Rome plummet.
A group of elites in the upper class, intoxicated by alcohol and music, riding a train that can't go anywhere at a party, consuming the wealth of the past, and declining in the carnival; the background is the Colosseum of ancient Rome, dilapidated monuments It narrates the glory of Rome in the past, and also reflects the excess and vigorous energy consumed by the fallen aristocrats of old Rome in the Colosseum, just like today's upstarts, how ironic.
However, he is also always confused, anxious, and confused.
Throughout the film, he was constantly asked why he stopped writing books.
At different stages, he gave different answers. And this question, as an emotional thread started by the protagonist Jeep in the movie, also leads him to the whole process of comprehending beauty.
The first time was a conversation with the stripper Ramona.
She talks about her first time, and then asks what he asked not to write anymore. He said:
"I always go out at night, Rome is a waste of time and distraction, and writing requires focus and quiet, and I write by inspiration." Of course, this is only a superficial reason, it can be said that he Lazy, but the deeper reason is that he wants to write too much or hasn't found what he wants to write.
Then he talks about his own first time, about his first love Eliza, on that little island, their shy, shoving first kiss, and after the first kiss, Eliza took a step back, and then Say. Here Jeep repeats "then say" several times, but fails to continue. Even so, here Jeep has embarked on this journey of rediscovering the good.
The starting point of this journey was a conversation when I first met Ramona in a strip club: "It's nice to have a family", "But I don't want to stop because of beauty." Jeep was silent for a long time, feeling old. From here, Jeep began to think about the beauty it had been looking for. It was also from getting to know Ramona that he talked to his friends about plans to start writing books again.
At the party, Ramona watched as the little girl with a high artistic talent was forced to cry and paint in front of the gallery owner. She felt very sad, pulled up her jeep and left, while the others were still watching silently. Although Ramona is a stripper, she still has a childlike kindness, forbearance, and unstoppable pursuit of beauty, like a clear stream, injected into this numb high society where Jeep has been staying for too long.
Afterwards, Jeep took Ramona to find the key manager to open the doors, and saw the beautiful buildings sealed in Rome, the beautiful memories of Rome's past. Here the metaphor of the key and the door is self-explanatory. Ramona is like a key to unlock the beautiful key sealed in Jeep's heart, guiding Jeep to knock on the door 40 years ago - behind the door is Jeep's memories of first love, green and innocent. And Jeep ambiguously revealed in a conversation that writing the first book was when he was in love, and it is not difficult to speculate that it was a good time with his first love.
The second time was at a party at his house after his best friend, the playwright Prodi, left Rome.
He sat by and chatted with the maid about why he stopped writing books.
"Flaubert wanted to write a book that said nothing, but he failed, can I do it?"
This answer is permeated with nihilistic thinking, it is impossible for one to skip all the pains of temporal life and jump directly into the Nothingness, and the same is true of a novel.
At this point in the movie, we will find that everything around Jeep is dying.
Its first loves, those younger than him -- Andre, haunted by philosophical questions and fears of death, Ramona with a charming body but terminally ill, and all the things in front of him -- the best The farewell of friend Prodi, the arrest of the neighbor, the evacuation of Andre's mother Yola from the circle.
He was pained by the demise of so many things around him that he absurdly begged his juggler friend to make him disappear like the giraffe, over the weight of death and straight to nothingness. But it's not possible, it's all just a trick. It seems that the end of everything is death, but at the same time we can see the coming of new life.
The remarks of the dwarf female editor-in-chief led the whole film to the next climax.
"You are miserable and don't understand"
"Little Jeep"
"Why call me little Jeep, no one has called me that in years"
"Because as a friend, you need to make your friend feel like a child every now and then"
The editor-in-chief said Jeep needed to be made to feel like a child.
Because children are always pure, kind, beautiful and uncontaminated. Here, the female editor-in-chief once again awakened the beauty sealed in Jeep's heart. Children, as pure and beautiful images, always appear repeatedly in the movies, from the playful children in the monastery at the beginning, to the little girl who asks the jeep "Who are you and who are you" in the temple, and then To the dialogue between the editor-in-chief and Jeep, "how do I make you feel like a little girl" "I feel this way every day, 60 years I have seen the world through this lens"
in the scene before this is always day and night Quick transitions, from the birdsong in the morning and the sun in the forest, to the music at night and the partying with alcohol; and the jeep is also torn between sobriety and numbness. But from here, he is about to reach the end of self-redemption and return.
The third time was between Jeep and Saint Mary.
Jeep woke up in the morning light and saw that the balcony was full of flamingos resting in the middle of their westward migration, and the nun Maria sat peacefully in the middle of the balcony.
"Why didn't you write a book again"
"I wanted to look for something better, but I didn't find it"
"Do you know why I only eat vegetable roots? Because the roots are very important"
Maria blew a breath, and the flamingos all fly away. Jeep stared blankly at this astonishing scene.
Nothing better was found, and that was the real reason he didn't write any more books.
And Maria's words played a further role in promoting Jeep's beautiful return to the inner seal, and Jeep thought deeply about the importance of roots. For him, the root is the pure and innocent beauty of the first love, the beauty that disappeared after he was involved in the vortex of luxury and decadence in the upper class, and the uncontaminated heart of a child in the early stage of life. Dawn heralds the coming of a new day, and also heralds the re-rise of the sun after the death represented by the dark night, heralding the new life.
In the last paragraph we see the sea that jeeps often see on the ceiling, the sea that symbolizes the beautiful night with the first love. The jeep sat on the yacht and sailed to the island where he spent the night with his first love. Here Jeep's inner voyage is transformed into a true voyage in the outer world, and the two are combined into one, and the film is about to reach its climax.
Meanwhile, the saint nun Mary struggled to climb the holy steps. The relationship between the two is revealed exceptionally profound in the montage.
Eliza stepped back and said, I have something to show you, so she showed off her young and beautiful body.
So far, Jeep has completed the return to the inner beauty and the search for its roots.
He has been looking for beauty outside, but beauty is actually the pure heart hidden in the depths of his soul.
The island switches back to the current jeep and begins to summarize, while the screen switches to the saint climbing the last step. So far Jeep's spiritual journey and self-salvation have been completed.
Usually the end of things is death, but first of all there is life
lurking in this and that, and there is no end to it.
In fact, it has already settled in the noise, silence is emotional
love and fear, beautiful light, wild and impermanent,
those hardships, misery, and painful human nature
are buried under the embarrassment of being born as a human being
. It's nothing but flashy smoke. I don't care about flashiness.
So, this is the beginning of the novel.
In the end, it's just a trick,
yes, just a trick.
In the final scene, Eliza turns her head and looks at Jeep.
The end, also the new beginning, begins in the end. Ultimately, it's just a trick.
Postscript: Jeep mentioned twice in the movie that Flaubert wanted to write a novel that said nothing, but failed. I wonder if the director also wanted to make a movie that said nothing. But in fact, the imagery in the whole film is so complex that there is so much that can be said. Whether it is Roman religion, culture, history, or human nature, life, and death, the discussions between the characters in the film and the metaphors in the pictures are enough to arouse our thinking, and if it is written, there must be no end. Many details in the film are worth pondering, such as the imagery of sea water. In the West, water symbolizes flowing vitality, as well as sensibility and desire. The surging sea surface and light blue swimming pool appear many times in the film, and each time seems to be a metaphor. Throughout the entire film structure, the director also echoed in many places. The film's soundtrack is simply beautiful, and every sound of the music pushes the film forward like an opera.
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