The film Flesh and Spirit tells a surreal story. The protagonist Ender is a slaughterhouse owner, about 50, with a disabled arm. He has children, but lives alone, keeping himself and his home clean. His eyes are sunken, his eyes are calm and deep, his face is vicissitudes of life, he is solemn and taciturn, he looks a little old-fashioned and old-fashioned, but in fact he is not paranoid, he dares to hire young people, and he dares to apologize in person when he is wrong to blame young people. . The slaughterhouse managed by Ender is a fully automated modern slaughterhouse where animals are slaughtered and cut on a production line. The film uses a lot of close-up shots to be realistic about the slaughtering line. The cold machines, the blood of the cows, and the blank eyes of the cows, in the calm and bloody pictures, sting the heart. Where is the assembly line of cattle, this is clearly the assembly line of life for modern people.
There is no problem in living in such an assembly line and getting older. Life in the slaughterhouse is not static. There are various episodes. There are new young people flirting everywhere, the accountant's wife and colleagues are sleeping, and the mating powder from the slaughterhouse is stolen. Ender has a few pieces of good beef... There are vegetarians and meat, and they really have their own tastes.
Originally, Ender grew old so sadly and naturally. However, fate revealed a gap, and a light came.
Here comes the heroine Maria.
Maria is very white, really like a light, and besides, she is like a silent moving statue because she is autistic. Her job is a quarantine officer in the slaughterhouse. She only deals with beef, she is isolated from people, and only lives in her own inner world. Living in one's own world has a high price, and that is loneliness, complete loneliness with no room. Maria was so lonely that she didn't even need a mobile phone, and she didn't contact or interact with anyone. However, it is also beneficial to live in your own world. You can become an independent life individual, not included in the assembly line, and you are more likely to escape from this mortal world and enter the realm of the gods.
Maria entered the world of the gods in a dream.
Every night when she goes to sleep, she will dream that she will become a doe, pacing, searching, and fetching water by the quiet lake, and then she will meet a male deer. The buck is proud and graceful with its antlers on. He would come over, his eyes firm and gentle, and touch the tip of her nose. Between the forest, the lake, and the grass covered with a thin layer of snow, everything was so peaceful, and the world was full of sacredness.
She never knew that the stag in the dream was Ender in reality.
Ender had the same dream every night. He also didn't know that the doe was Mary. Before their bodies met, their minds had each other in a dream.
The director believes in love, and knows that love can be fatal if it is unattainable. After trying to accept Ender's body failed, Maria, who was autistic, cut her veins and committed suicide in despair, but her tacit understanding with Ender finally saved her. This pair of lovers with divine love spanned ages, disabilities, and the world, and their bodies finally fused together.
I remember that when Wang Anyi talked about Quasimodo in Hugo's writings, he used divine things to define him. Wang Anyi believes that the extremely ugly Quasimodo and the extremely beautiful Esmeralda are neither secular characters. They have spiritual inner qualities that transcend the world. Quasimodo's love for Esmeralda transcends everything. Yes, even life can be given. Wang Anyi believes that love only belongs to these gods, but they are lonely in the world. If they want to combine, it will be intolerable in reality.
Wang Anyi's understanding of love has been further verified in the film "Flesh and Spirit". Moreover, I found that in the world of literature and art, the so-called "gods" are actually "monsters" in the human world. Quasimodo is a very ugly monster in the eyes of the world, but God gave him the power of love. Both protagonists in Flesh and Spirit are flawed people. Ender is old and crippled, and there are a few close-ups in the film that directly face his swallowing neck, the folds of aging all over the screen. Maria is extremely beautiful, but she is autistic and obsessive-compulsive. She walks like a robot and her expression is always tense. In the eyes of everyone, she is an unreasonable "monster" who is laughed at and teased. As for this preference for "monsters", "The Shape of Water", which was shown not long ago, can be said to have played to the extreme, making a seemingly bizarre love happen between a dumb girl and a mermaid monster. If we say that there are still some hesitations and scruples in "Flesh and Spirit", only letting love happen in a dream, just letting deer replace people, relying on a kind of divine power beyond nature, relying on the will of heaven, and finally If the cultivation is successful, The Shape of Water will be even more courageous, pulling seemingly unmatched love and impossible different species out of dreams and accepting suffering and baptism in reality.
In fact, it is not appropriate to use the name "monster", this is just the vision of the mundane world. Another word, "anomalous" might be more appropriate. Ugly "abnormal numbers", disabled "abnormal numbers", alien "abnormal numbers"... The world of "abnormal numbers" is the light of the real world.
However, "Flesh and Spirit" does not believe that "anomalies" can carry out love to the end in reality, and do not believe that this light can last forever. At the end of the movie, Maria, who had never laughed before, finally smiled in front of Ender. Then she told Ender that last night she had no more dreams. That is to say, after the two deer in the realm of the gods have come from dream to reality, they are no longer deer. When Mary's body was settled, when her autism was cured, spiritual love disappeared.
The moment when love arrives is also the moment when love disappears.
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