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Time is a timeless theme in sci-fi works, and the concept of time travel has inspired countless imaginations, and we are more familiar with It is a story like "Grandfather's Paradox", a love-hate relationship that twists and turns, and finally is set by the cruel shackles of time, everything becomes a cloud of smoke.
"Ring Messenger" has taken a different approach. Strictly speaking, it is not even a soft sci-fi, at best it is a pseudo sci-fi. I don't mean to be disrespectful. In fact, this film gave me a very good impression, but its excellence lies not in the so-called sci-fi meaning, but in the interpretation of human nature.
Many people say that this film is incomprehensible because it is deceived by its sci-fi coat. Don't think about the present and the future from the usual point of view, let alone think of "Inception", time is in this film It's just a prop, a means to force "young Joseph" and "middle-aged Joseph" to confront each other, or an external force that leads to the so-called "infinite cycle of life" in the film's slogan.
There is a puzzling point in the film, that is, many people are confused at this point - when the young Joseph lost his ring, he went home and tried to steal back the silver bars he had stored, but he accidentally fell downstairs during the fight. At that moment, everything suddenly returned to the scene where he was about to shoot middle-aged Joseph - the director cunningly used montage methods here, and there was no greeting and no warning. In fact, the plot of the story was very simple, and the voice-over prompts were also It's clear enough:
Originally, the life of the young Joseph should be to kill the middle-aged Joseph smoothly, then seal the ring, go to China, catch up with the girl he loves, and live a comfortable life. The rain caller sent someone to catch him and send him back to the past, and asked the young Joseph to kill him. Then the young Joseph sealed the ring and went to China...
However, out of selfishness in love, the middle-aged Joseph was the first to break this cycle and killed the young Joseph. The person who lived in himself knocked out the young Joseph, and he was determined to kill the Rain Caller in order to eliminate the influence of the Rain Caller 30 years later and save his life in 30 years. The young Joseph broke the cycle again and ended his life early by committing suicide. The purpose was also to eliminate the influence of the rain caller 30 years later.
That is to say, when the young Joseph accidentally fell downstairs, the picture was cut back to the beginning, just to flashback and tell the audience the reason for this abnormal situation. Thinking about this, even if the sci-fi coat is peeled off, the real excellence can be detected.
The middle-aged Joseph explained the situation to the young Joseph, telling him to kill the rain caller to save his future. The young Joseph was not moved at all, but instead said to him: That is your life, not mine.
What a familiar dialogue, in life, do we often do things we think are right to our children, and then angrily say to the disobedient children: I am doing it for your own good! The child may turn his head and shoot back: That's what you want to do, not me.
The reason why a classic becomes a classic is that it comes from life and is higher than life. It is a high-level generalization of the public's psychology. Because of deja vu and deep experience, the audience's attention is easily caught.
Then, with the same clear purpose (all to eliminate the vicious behavior of the rain caller 30 years later), why did the young Joseph oppose the middle-aged Joseph? In other words, why are our children so disobedient in life?
It starts with the socialization of people.
Babies are blank sheets of paper, ignorant, but from the day they are born, they have been observing society, understanding society, and finally integrating into society. As the child grows up day by day, the people and events around him constantly influence and change his view of the society, helping him revise the laws in his mind to adapt to the society. The sources of these influences can be roughly divided into social culture, family, school, peer groups, various media, etc. Joseph in the film has almost no influence from family and school. The Internet TV and newspapers should also be blank for him when he was young. The rest are only two categories: social culture and peer groups.
There is a superficial account in the film. Before being absorbed by the Ring Killer organization, Joseph was a precarious gangster, or a vagabond. The way of doing things (that is, social culture) that this social identity can access is rules and the law of the weak. In his world, the strong make the rules, the weak obey the rules, and the rules are indelible like a brand. When he became a ring killer, the manager's requirement for 100% implementation of the rules strengthened his spiritual belief, so much so that when the devastated Megan turned to him for help after losing the ring, even though he would be out of friendship and morality He hid, but when the manager talked to him and again pointed to the weakness of "rules" in his heart, he immediately compromised.
Some people may say that it is entirely because of his selfishness. The manager threatened to confiscate his silver bullion. He was reluctant to betray his friends, but please think carefully, personality will not change easily, if Joseph is a selfish and greedy bad guy. Guy, why did he take the risk to help Meghan in the first place, why did he finally unconditionally kill himself to try to end the tragedy, even at that time, middle-aged Joseph had already killed the entire killer organization, sent all the silver to him, let him go To live the life he wanted to live, for what?
Rules cannot be violated, and rules are above everything else. This is the principle of doing things that Joseph summed up since he was a child. This is the original driving force that guides his behavior deep in the subconscious, and it may be that Joseph himself thinks that Meghan is betrayed for silver bars, but apparently not.
There is a small detail that can also illustrate this point. When Joseph was brought into the organization and waited for the manager to summon, the neurotic silly character in the film (sorry forgot his name) once put a gun on his forehead, but he did not The move, neither anger nor resistance, is it too strong to be disdainful? Are you calm enough to ignore your own life? Of course not, his rule theory told him that in this organization, stupid characters can't kill him, even if the gun is pointed at him, it's just a cloud.
His obsession with the rules caused him to lose the link. Although he was on the run, he still worked hard to complete the mission given by the rules. Therefore, he has no sense of identification with middle-aged Joseph at all. He believes that middle-aged Joseph, who clearly violates the rules, cannot be his future self. So he said, "That's your life, not mine."
Erickson's identity theory can also illustrate this point, he believes that people must be integrated in seven aspects in adolescence in order for the personality to develop healthily. Obviously, the personality of the young Joseph is sound rather than abnormal, and the contrary evidence is that all seven aspects of him have developed healthily, one of which is "ideological belief", which is values in popular terms. If middle-aged Joseph gets his approval, it is equivalent to shaking his values. This kind of spiritual subversion is more difficult to accept than physical threats. So when middle-aged Joseph tried to convince him to control him, he subconsciously turned against control and even tended to attack.
When the pressure of this threat and control increased step by step, the struggle of the young Joseph reached the extreme, and he committed suicide. On the surface, he twisted the Raincaller's young mind in order to prevent middle-aged Joseph from shooting the Raincaller's mother, or what he called "to end this never-ending cycle" (to the effect), but a professional hitman is not. It is very likely that there is such a noble altruistic behavior, if he does, every time he kills a person, the guilt is enough to drive him crazy. Therefore, he finally made such a noble act that made people cry Spiritual beliefs, while suicide, was a quick and effective way to thwart him, because he was too far away from middle-aged Joseph to kill him in time.
The control and anti-control of the young Joseph and the middle-aged Joseph ended in such a tragic way.
And life is far from over. When our children are disobedient, should we think about whether our words and actions touch the children's values or spiritual beliefs, when we cannot resonate with the children's spiritual world, resist, Attacking is a normal behavior.
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