"Kiss of the Spider Woman" rewrote the usual screen image of revolutionaries. In the eyes of people in peaceful times, revolutionaries are angry and implement revolutionary ideology in every moment of life. As the saying goes, they love tearing B. It seems that the goal is unclear and therefore inexplicable.
But "Kiss of the Spider Woman" reconstructs the image of revolutionaries and the meaning of revolution. Molina can't understand the source of Valentine's anger at first, believing that his innocence and obsession with behavior are meaningless. But during the day and night, Molina fell in love with Valentine. He said that the best movies are love movies. This represents Molina's belief in life. He wants to find a life that truly belongs to him, his own happiness. Out of "love", he took the initiative to choose the road of revolution. In real life, he is actually very clumsy. He walked towards Lydia, also naive. But, as in a dream? As Marta said, you don't know if he was happy or painful when he died. We cannot and should not evaluate the price of this revolution, the "sacrifice", whether it should or should not be. The image of the revolutionary is soft.
Valentine's line is different. At the beginning, Valentine was angry, rude, upright, and righteous. Later, he talked about love with his cellmate, also Molina. Here, love is a tool for questioning the revolution. Valentine and his girlfriend Lydia are proletarian comrades. But in fact, he can only read Marta's name when he is sick. She is a typical bourgeois rich girl and class enemy, but ironically, she has rescued Valentine several times. The relationship delighted Valentine, but made him question the Revolution. He said he didn't want to die. Should the revolution take the form of binary opposition, violence and non-cooperation? The correctness and necessity of the revolution are drifting and being dispelled.
Generally speaking, revolutions arise out of anger at social injustice. But the film framed the revolution as a productive, positive force. The goal and meaning of the revolution should be love. This kind of love is broad, including the love of lovers, the love of relatives (refer to M's love for mother), and the love of friends. This is "the best stories are love stories". Human behavior should be directed toward love. But the film also retains doubts about the power of love. Valentine couldn't stand the whipping, and he made up a fantasy in his mind, letting love take him far away. The characters gain love and affirmation of their pursuit of love, but they fail to realize their own objectives. The relationship between revolution and love also refers to the relationship between male masculinity, power, and love in society. It is not analyzed one by one here.
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