ridiculous others

Myrna 2022-09-14 21:31:22

Every detail in life is absurd: you come out of the supermarket, an acquaintance you haven’t seen in years suddenly stops you to talk to you, and before leaving, he insists on letting you rent a movie for free; your friend’s adopted brother has been there since he was a child. Drama queen potential, made her laptop case into imitation marble; your aunt believed she bought a wand that could cure cancer; your father didn't accept your sexuality after so many years, even if he made a special trip to New York to see you You don’t even go upstairs when you arrive at the door of your house; the most ridiculous thing is that your mother, who is still shining brightly at family gatherings, is the only light in your gloomy life, how could she have cancer and die soon?

This is the absurd world in the eyes of David, the protagonist of The Other People. This playwright in his late thirties has neither a job nor a lover. He looks ordinary, wears rustic clothes, and has a mild personality with coldness. Facing the small town where he came from and his family other than his mother, he looks like "we don't know each other well". In his dejection, there was a faint hint of sharpness and intelligence and a thorough and tactful understanding of the world: the ordinary life that everyone was so accustomed to bored only showed the absurd side in his eyes, and although every little part of his life was unbearable, David still Hide those sharp taunts in a smile. It can be seen that he draws a clear line between "himself" and "others" represented by the inhabitants of his hometown, and his mother, Joann, was the link between the two (David once said to his father). , I don't know if my mother will come back after her death), and it is her impending absence that forces David to reconnect with "the other", thus allowing David to observe the above bits and pieces of the absurd. In contrast to the rambunctious irrationality of the town, David's own life—playing improv absurdity in a New York comedy troupe—has become what he sees as "normal."

However, this is always a question of perspective. In a point-and-click conversation, a friend tells David that, to other people, you are someone else. From this moment on, the audience starts to jump out of David's perspective and observe the absurdity of David as "the other": he bites his nails, whines hysterically when he can't find a vent in the supermarket after being drunk, and most importantly The thing is, his world is only divided into "me" and "he", and he thinks that "he" is hostile to "me" (it can be seen from how he dealt with the yellow books he stole before going to college). It turned out that David's indifference to "others" was out of his own protection, and in the final analysis, it was the result of his inability to deal with the relationship between himself and the outside world. In David's eyes, other people's lives are absurd, or because he only sees other lives from his own perspective, and he can't bring these fragments into his own eyes back to other people's own life orbits, and use other people's logic to understand other people's worlds. For him, the world is not a living whole, but oddly-shaped fragments that float before him one by one. In this way, I hide in the world of self, but what comes is that the familiar world gradually collapses, and the fragile "I" is once again thrown in front of the absurd "other".

This cognitive problem would have been difficult to resolve, but the film's director and screenwriter Chris Kelly made an open-ended ending for this story based on his own experience: accepting the world and accepting people like yourself (Family, especially sister) to start. This can be understood as reconciliation with oneself is the first step to reconciliation with the world. After all, oneself is everything outside the vast world, and the world only exists in one's own eyes.

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Extended Reading

Other People quotes

  • David: I never realised your dad's name is actually Rod Stewart.

    Gabe: Yeah, it's been... it's been very hard for him.

  • [to Paul, after questioning his decision to have his anus waxed]

    David: Hey. I'm sorry I was an asshole about your butthole.