Proust wrote in his book "Remembrance of The Age of Water": Life is just a series of isolated moments, relying on memories and fantasies, many meanings emerge, then disappear, disappear and then emerge.
Reminiscing about the years is often a nostalgia for the youth of the past, an emotion of the passage of time, and a manifestation of refusing death.
And reminiscing about the love of youth is the eternal theme of the film. And the aesthetic and special love of "crush" is vividly interpreted in the movie "Love Letter".
"Love Letters", directed by Shunji Iwai and starring Miho Nakayama and Takashi Kashiwara, was adapted from his novel of the same name and released in 1995.
The story of "Love Letter" begins with a misunderstanding with the same name and surname, which tells the story of Hiroko Watanabe, who misses her deceased fiancé Fujii Tree, and sends a letter to her old former residence. A love letter that was supposed to be sent to heaven was unexpectedly received. In fact, the person who replied was a girl of the same name as her fiancé Fujii tree in middle school (hereinafter referred to as "male tree" or "female tree"). In the correspondence between the two girls, an innocent love affair that has been buried for many years is gradually excavated.
Therefore, the whole story is composed of two clues, light and dark, the bright line is Watanabe Hiroko's nostalgia for her fiancé male tree, and the dark line is the female tree's memory of the male tree of her youth.
Twin Flowers: The same actor and two heroines
"Twin Flowers", which first appeared in Kieslowski's film "Two Flowers", has become a new narrative mode, reflecting the living conditions of women's divisions and then developing unique thinking about women's mental situation.
An actor plays two roles, and the two characters are originally two parallel lines in the play, but they intersect because of a boy.
Although Hiroko and Nüshu look similar, they complement each other's personalities.
Watanabe Hiroko is intellectually elegant, and she often appears in white, black and other dark solid colors, gentle with sadness, giving the audience a sense of dignity, purity and distance.
The female tree is lively and cheerful, she mostly appears in warm-colored plaid clothing, and in the film, the private family presents her life with only two points and one line of family and library, giving the audience a fresh but self-enclosed image.
The only time the two appear in the same scene at the same time in the film is when Watanabe Hiroko shouts "Miss Fujii" to the female tree, Hiroko realizes that she may only be a shadow of the female tree, and the male tree's love for herself is only because she looks like the female tree, at this time Hiroko is anxious and disapproval of her identity, realizing that she is only an "other", so the inner love is broken, full of sadness.
But in the last snow, she cried out in pain, and at this moment Hiroko's suppression of being the "other" was completely released, and I seemed to accept the death of the male tree, and also let go of the love for the male tree, so as to accept the love of autumn leaves.
Under such a narrative structure, both the female tree and Watanabe Hiroko are just a mirror image, whether it is Hiroko's broken love or the female tree's unresponsive love for the male tree, it is an incomplete feeling, and the relationship between the female tree and Hiroko is more like the shadow of the shadow, and all they can perceive is this passing emotion.
Absentee: The beautification and disappearance of the male protagonist
As the male protagonist of the love story, The appearance time of the male tree is very short, and his existence seems to be deliberately hidden. But it is undeniable that the role of Fujii Tree has an irreplaceable role in the film. Although the appearance time is short, as long as you have seen the movie, no one can forget the appearance of the teenager who reads in the window in the sun.
The film deliberately beautifies the number of men, but also beautifies the crush, the youth, and the memory.
However, the male tree is always associated with images such as "absence", "disappearance", and "parting", which also shows that crush, youth, and memory are easy to break and obscure.
Contradiction: Pure love and tragic beauty
The book "Chrysanthemum and Sword" explains that they were both fascinated by the cultivation of chrysanthemums and admired samurai honor and swords.
Shunji Iwai is also such a contradiction, always wandering between beauty and violence, pure love and cruelty, sadness and warmth, and poetically depicts his understanding of "beauty" in the film.
"Love Letter" is like a lyrical poem, with a subtle and beautiful, mournful and unscathed tone, lyrically writing a memoir with a very Japanese literary and artistic temperament.
At the beginning of the film, Hiroko lies in the snow, then gets up and beats the snow that falls on her body, and then walks towards the mountain village in the distance, the frozen earth brings the audience a sense of silence and seriousness, but it means that everything is withering.
When the female tree recalls the well tree, the male tree that looks down at the book under the flying curtains, such a beautiful man has passed away in the flowery years.
The film movement is heavily backlit and overexposed, casting a soft halo around the characters, which looks gentle and holy, very beautiful, but also creates an illusory sense of unreality.
In the film, it seems to be beautiful, hiding a series of symbols that convey the message of death, such as the memorial ceremony of the male tree, the death of the female tree's father, the dragonfly that froze to death in the ice and snow, the relocation of the old house, and the rescue of the female Fujii tree.
Moreover, the whole film focuses on pure white tones, showing the beauty and loss of youth, and also showing a certain material mourning culture, conveying a kind of indifferent sentimentality and reverence for nature.
"Love Letters" is full of contradictions, memories and reality, death and survival.
Male tree, female tree, Watanabe Hiroko they all lost some of the feelings in their lives, and they were touched by the feelings that had passed, and once the box of memory was opened, it was like Pandora's box emerging with all kinds of dusty beauty and pain.
Memories are always fragmented and vague, unattainable, and it can be said that this situation can be turned into a memory, but it was already confused at that time.