Due to its autobiographical nature, Duolan’s debut work allows the audience to peek into the relationship between him and his mother. Perhaps it is also because of his own experience and experience that makes Duolan very fascinated to explore the relationship between mother and child. In Dolan's films, the relationship between the two is often different. There is always love and hate, indifferent and ardent entanglement between mother and child, and there is even a strong Oedipus plot. From the debut of "I Killed My Mother", the son's hatred for his mother and his passionate love merged with each other. Just like the title of the movie, the son even wants to kill the mother, but we always find from the movie the love for the mother contained in the movie's name, Oedipus' uncomfortable love. In "Tom's Farm Trip" last year, the relationship between mother and child was the same. Francis's candid statement about his mother to Tom is the best comment in Dolan's films when it comes to mother and child. Francis longed for his mother's death so that he could leave the farm and live his own life in the big city, but at the same time he obeyed his mother's words. Under Dolan's ambiguous, multiple meanings and even erotic shots, the sexual tension between mother and child always exists. In "Mummy", whether Steve kisses his mother through the back of his hand or kisses his mother in the dark afterwards, the sexual tension between them is always very strong in Dolan's lens.
In "Mummy", several details of the story reflect the inseparable fetters between mother and child. When someone commits violence to Steve, Diane will desperately retaliate against him. This is the mother’s most instinctive emotional response; Steve is the same. He feels that his first responsibility is to protect his mother after his father’s death. So he always hated whether it was his mother or others who treated him as a child. In the movie, the death of Steve's father triggered his violence, but here we can fully interpret it from another level, that is, the death of the father is the rise of the son. Perhaps what Steve’s violence symbolizes is to be the guardian of the mother as a son who replaces his father. The relationship between Diane and Steve belongs to each other's possession, and each other is their only one. In "Tom's Farm Trip", Francis is possessed by his mother, and he also possesses his mother. Since "I Kill My Mother", my father has always been absent, some because of divorce, and some have passed away. The father's absence caused the rise of the son, and the son replaced not only the father's previous position, but also his own position. That is to say, in this case, the son has a dual identity. For the mother, one is the husband and the other is the son. Therefore, the relationship between mother and child will change with the absence of the father and the rise of the son. This also allows us to understand why there is sexual tension and possession between mother and child in Dolan's lens.
The Oedipus plot is the most important part of the mother-child relationship in Dolan's movies. Starting from his debut novel "I Killed My Mother", the son and the mother quarreled, attacked and ignored each other. There was distance and estrangement, and it was difficult to get close; but on the other hand, mother and son are often intimate and understanding and caring. And be honest. They quarrel like the most annoying person, without mercy, but always get back together again and again, forgiving and reconciling as before. In his debut work, the son tells the teacher that his mother is dead. He imagines the mother lying in the coffin, the mother running in the forest in the wedding dress, and the son chasing after him. These plots exist in different forms in each of Dulan's movies about mother and son.
Movies after Dolan, such as "Fantasy Love" and "Lawrence on Both Sides," both explored impossible love. The two friends of the former were obsessed with a beautiful Greek sculpture-like man, and the relationship between the two parties was intensified; The other is that the boyfriend started to wear women's clothing, and the woman is still working hard to maintain this relationship. To a certain extent, the theme of mother and child also belongs to the "impossible love" that Dolan is interested in. In Dolan’s movies, there is an extraordinary love between mother and child, and these loves are out of balance due to the absence of the father and the duality of the son’s identity. Under such circumstances, an ambiguous state of love will be produced. Between mother and child, there is even sexual tension from time to time. We can feel the undercurrent between mother and child through Dolan's stylized lens, which makes people restless. Here, the love between mother and child is not only the love of the mother for the son, or the love of the son for the mother, but is mixed with more things, making it beyond our daily possibilities.
Dolan's exploration of these impossible loves is actually driving the relationship between people to a certain extreme. In such a state, love often has many unimaginable situations, and the people involved are also involved. Affected by it, there will be changes in life, and even spreading trauma. In the relationship between mother and son, Dolan quoted Maupassant in "I Kill My Mother": "We almost unknowingly love our parents, because this love is like a human being. Naturally, only at the last moment of separation can we see how deep the roots of this kind of feeling are.” And Dolan is always digging out the roots of “this kind of feeling”, as if looking at the most secret and deep roots. Where no one has set foot, what will this feeling look like?
2015 1. 17 night
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