I love family ethics dramas and I love Doran, so this movie is so much to my liking. See how he unfolds this drama on screen: three big family scenes (greeting the hero, square dancing in the kitchen, dinner) are interspersed with the hero and four family members one by one. And these episodes take place entirely within the context of the same day. pure theatrical form.
The last scene is also the climax of the whole film. After dinner, the brother suddenly urged the male protagonist to leave quickly, but the mother and sister blocked it angrily. If you notice the male protagonist's eyes looking at his sister-in-law, as well as the latter's terrified eyes and slight head movements, it is not difficult to understand their silent dialogue:
Male lead: Did you tell them?
Sister-in-law: I didn't say anything.
Of course it wasn't what my sister-in-law said. Because from the moment he announced his return home, everyone knew that he must have gone to the Three Treasures Hall without incident. However, he didn't mention it until dusk, and everyone could realize the seriousness of the problem. Although it is not as "specific" as my sister-in-law knows, it is enough to be psychologically prepared. So you can see that when the brother hurriedly wanted to take away the male lead, the two women would block it so hysterically.
And the sudden attack of my brother at this time is also for the same reason. He understood that something big had happened, but after dinner, he saw that his brother didn't plan to say it, so he was completely bored with him and wanted to drive him away directly. We looked back at the rival scene where the two brothers were driving. The older brother also "suddenly" had a seizure and scolded the younger brother. If you look into the reason why he is angry, it is not as simple as a bad temper, he has his own logic. He drove out with the male protagonist this time because he felt that he could listen to the "secrets" that the male protagonist couldn't tell in front of everyone (actually, other people thought so and tried the same way), but the male protagonist went all the way. All I told him were boring road trivia, and he finally couldn't help it. Of course, with his straight male cancer character, the wording is too rough. But the meaning is clear: We all care about what's wrong with you, why don't you trust your family?
The image of my brother throughout the film is like a poor grumpy clown, but think about the reason why he has become like this, it probably has something to do with him being the only man left in the family. This straight man with cancer and the women in the family are very disdainful of each other's way of life, and over time he can only vent his dissatisfaction in a cynical way. Probably because of this, he doesn't have any hostility to the gay brother of the male protagonist, but has been trying to communicate with him in a man's way. It can be seen from the mv that the relationship between the two brothers was very good when they were young, but with the difference in life experience and the long time away from home, there was an obvious rift between them. When the male protagonist tried to convey his emotions in some literary and artistic way, he was greeted only by his brother's impatient interruption and rebuke.
Back at the moment of dinner, my brother's behavior is not difficult to understand. The reason why he drove away the male protagonist was the same as the reason why his mother and sister wanted the male protagonist to stay. It was just the difference in character that determined their different behaviors.
Although the male protagonist has been away from home for many years, he is not a dispensable existence in this family. Every family member is silently paying attention to him in his own way, missing him and waiting for him. With determination, he wanted to announce his "death" to his family because he believed he had the right to decide his own destiny. But when he came home, he saw that his life was not only his own (and his partner), but in the place he had forgotten and neglected, at the end of his inner world, his life was always held by those who loved him and his love shared by people.
So, he couldn't speak.
If you've seen the director's other works, including his debut, Motherslaughter, you'll see that this is a constant theme in Dolan's films: unreasonable love bound by blood. If this were an oriental film, that kinship would usually manifest itself as a spontaneous sense of morality and responsibility, but in Dolan's world it seems so panicked, even reluctant.
Do you need to love your family just because you are related by blood? This question, which in our eyes cannot be called a problem, turns out to be surprisingly interesting in the context of Dolan's films (as the protagonists in his films are usually set as gay, which is a source of alienation and antagonism among family members) important prerequisite).
In "Mother Killing", Dolan showed great disdain and boredom to his mother from the very beginning, and then after all kinds of conflicts, at the end of the film, you found that he was still born because of blood ties. All kinds of emotions and "helpless" into the arms of the mother. It's almost an expression of instinct over free will.
In this film, the same thing happens to the male protagonist. But the subtlety of this film is that it doesn't bother to explore the male protagonist's mental journey, nor does it bother to portray any other protagonist, there is no protagonist in this family, everyone is a part of it, "Family "This concept is the protagonist.
So you can see that in this film, everyone is speaking in their own "language". The male protagonist's smile, the brother's impatience, the sister-in-law's silence, the mother's nonsensical behavior, and the sister's rebelliousness, these words come together to form a pot of porridge, which makes people confused at first glance.
But this is "home".
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