When the death knell of life is sounded, do you silently endure the poisonous arrow of fate's tyranny, or choose to end the endless suffering of this world?
If death can put an end to the suffering of the soul and the suffering of the body, is it a choice to live or to perish?
Anthony Hopkins' films are more delicate and philosophical, such as "Hannibal" and "Silence of the Lambs."
His film "The Detective", which was released in China last year, still maintains this style. It looks like a detective film at first glance, but with the deepening of the plot and the continuous stretching of the film's perspective, I gradually realized that it was A philosophical film dressed in a suspenseful guise.
The confrontation between the two best actors, Anthony Hopkins and Colin Farrell, deduces a choice between life and death. When fate becomes known, when the death knell of life is about to sound, it is the continuation and struggle of choice pain. , or choose to leave quietly and decently.
The English name of the film is "SOLACE", and the subtitles appear at the beginning of the film: SOLACE, consolation, noun, to be comforted in grief, pain or sadness. Verb, to give calm, comfort, relieve.
A series of bizarre and unmotivated serial killings, with the same methods, matching features, no bloodstains, and the police could not find any clues except for the note left by the murderer.
The FBI special operations team agent Joe and his female partner Katherine are helpless, and Joe can only invite his old friend John to return to the arena, and John is a psychic with the ability to perceive the future.
In the process of tracing the clues, the case gradually became clear, and John found that the common feature of the victims was that they were all terminally ill and would soon face death.
Victim A is a cancer patient who has experienced a painful period of chemotherapy and has a high chance of recurrence.
Victim B was in the early stages of ALS and faced a slow and painful death.
Victim C is a long-term depression patient, also a carrier of AIDS, with self-mutilation and suicidal tendencies.
Only the victim D, a child, looked healthy and had no medical history. John proposed an autopsy, but the boy's mother reacted strongly and firmly opposed it.
John said to her: "My daughter suffers from leukemia. For two years, I could only watch her suffer in the hospital. Various tests and treatments were ineffective. In the end, she left. Medicine has its limitations, but it can help We can figure out why your child was killed, and we can even help us catch the murderer."
Nearly 80 years old Anthony Hopkins can bring a deep-hearted psychic to life with just a pair of eyes and a wrinkled face. .
During the autopsy, John received an envelope, and after reading it, he said to the coroner, "Examine the cerebellar lobes." It turned out that the boy had a tumor in his brain.
Then John said to Joe, "It's a letter from the killer. He already knew that the victim was terminally ill. Serial killers have the same ability to predict the future as themselves. I'm quitting."
Catherine found John and asked him to quit reason.
"He has the same ability as me, and is much stronger than me, he knows everything." John said to Catherine.
"You met an opponent, so you're going to quit?" Catherine questioned John.
"I'm not his opponent at all, he is so much stronger than me, I can't stop him, and more importantly, does he need to be stopped? Those who were killed, even if they were not killed, would die soon, he killed them Not out of anger but mercy. It's euthanasia. The killer relieves the victim's pain."
"This is murder," Kathleen said firmly.
Just as John was about to leave the case, Joe popped up with a new lead, only to fall into the trap of a killer who used a psychopath to kill Joe.
In the last moments of his life, Joe said to John: "I don't want to die, I know I have cancer, and I have made a lot of arrangements and mental preparations, but I still want a few more months, and I still have a lot of things to do. , I want to teach my son to drive." But Joe's life was over.
The killer took the initiative to find John, and the film used the dialogue between John and the killer to throw a philosophical question.
First came the killer's confession: "I killed those people just to relieve their pain. I could see their future, full of pain and suffering. I was helping them get relief and comforting their survivors.
John's answer was : "If at first my opinion of you was contradictory, but not now. You have no right to take a minute or a second of my friend Joe's life.
You don't know the hearts of dying people who struggle with fear and pain just to seize the silver lining, life is so precious that even the last one is full of pain and becomes beautiful. "
A debate that has risen to the philosophical level, about life, about the future.
The pros and cons seem to be evenly matched, and each argument has its own reason.
There is no problem with John's point of view, the killers are not victims, and they have no right to end their lives.
Just like Joe, in the last stage of his life, he will face the attack of the disease together with his wife and son. Although it is painful, he can still teach his son to drive, and take his wife's hand to walk in the park. In the most difficult times, he still has his wife. With my son, this is the last spark of Joe's life, and no one has the right to extinguish him. But
the killer said it was a "rescue", like Joe, if he hadn't been killed. In the final stage, what awaits him is endless The pain and suffering of the dying person is beyond what life can bear.
More importantly, after his death, what is left to his wife and son is the bill for treatment. Instead of killing him in advance After the federal pension given by the state. With this money, Joe's family can live without food, and finally his son was admitted to Stanford University. After the
conversation changed, the
killer pointed to a young man and said to John: "Sit in front of me. This young man, suffering from neurofibromatosis, will have a child with his girlfriend if he does not die early, and the child will inherit this terminal illness. "
What's the best way to take the young man's life now and "save" his girlfriend and future children in advance, or let his life develop on its own until his life is destroyed, leaving behind a widow and a terminally ill man. Boy.
John's tone was a little helpless: "No one can play the role of God. "
At the end of the film, John and the killer staged the ultimate showdown in the subway car. John shot the killer in the heart and left the same scar on the forehead from the gunshot wound as the killer.
When John hugged his wife at the end of the film, he recalled that he personally ended his daughter's life because he couldn't see the pain and suffering of his daughter in terminal cancer.
Is John the same as the killer?
The same and different, John ended his daughter's life is also the daughter's own wishes, because the daughter could not bear the torture of the pain, so John and his daughter jointly chose euthanasia.
The killer, on the other hand, is playing the role of God, controlling the lives of others by his own will.
The killer may have chosen the most cost-effective solution, but he did not take into account the emotional needs. Any life, flowing with blood, is not a cold machine, and cannot be stopped by simply pressing a button at will.
The same is the original intention and the result, in order to relieve the pain of the victim. The difference is that John respected his daughter's wishes. The killer follows his own heart.
Positive and negative, good and evil, is this a murder or a redemption? Is it a kind of "compassion" for human beings or "ignorance" for emotions?
This is also the question that the film wants the audience to think about. Maybe the answer is not a simple and clear right and wrong.
Everything has its two sides, and each person's position is different, and the answer is also different. The film uses the fate of the characters to deduce multi-level thinking step by step, in order to trigger the audience to think from multiple angles.
The attitude of the film gradually becomes clear at the end of the moment when John ends his daughter's life. Sometimes it is better to die in peace than to suffer in pain.
Just like the subtitles given at the beginning of the film, it should be a kind of consolation to give comfort and relief in times of sadness, pain or sadness.
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