In 2002, a film co-produced by Paramount Pictures and Miramax and based on Michael Cunningham's principe-winning novel of the same name, Moments, was released.
Using unique film language and artistic expression methods, the film tells the story of three women of three different eras, which happened in the day of their respective lives, explores the various complicated and confusing life choices faced by women in their lives, and lets us see the hard work made by women to pursue the value of their own lives.
This movie is a song of life born as a woman,
<h1>1</h1>
The first woman in the film is Virginia M. Woolf, an epoch-making British female writer, began writing her famous novel "Mrs. Dalloway" one day in June 1923.
The second woman was Laura Brown, a housewife who had almost suffocated in the June 1951 Sun in Los Angeles, feeling helpless and desperate from the banality of her family life.
The third woman is Clarissa Wolfgan, a female editor living in the modern metropolis of New York in 2001, busy preparing an evening for an old friend, an old lover, a talented writer Richard who is dying of AIDS.
What is the connection between these three seemingly independent, unrelated stories, and what message does the film try to convey to the audience? The first thing to know about the writer Virginia and her work "Mrs. Dalloway" is because this is the internal thread that runs through the film.
Virginia Woolf was one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century, and her innovative stream-of-consciousness novels have become classics in the history of human literature.
She has been plagued by many disasters and illnesses in her life, witnessing the death of relatives one after another since she was a child, born weak, she can not withstand one major mental blow after another, from the age of 13 she has been tormented by neuropathy, several times in her life, and is always accompanied by headaches, high fever, hallucinations, insomnia and other physical symptoms, as well as intermittent mania and depression.
Before drowning herself in the Us River at the age of 59, she attempted suicide four times. This may also explain why Virginia in the film seems to be grotesque and well-behaved.
She has struggled with death and illness all her life, so death has often become the subject of discussion in her works, but in her works we can see more of her calm thinking about the righteousness of life.
With her unparalleled genius, she explores the depths of the human heart, she believes that the truth of the human heart is the only truth, and she tries to depict the subtle and rapid flow of human consciousness, so as to discover the true meaning of life.
The work tells the story of a 52-year-old British upper-class woman, Mrs. Dalloway, who lived throughout the day. She was preparing for the kind of sophisticated, luxurious yet dreary evening that is common in London's social season.
In Virginia's pen, she was just an ordinary lady, who didn't care about art, didn't care about the world, and the only thought in her mind was whether her party would go smoothly and smoothly.
But at the same time, Virginia also reveals in detail her deep inner world. She pursues perfection like an artist, but holding a party is her only way to achieve it, she loves beautiful things, she fears death, she is always wondering if she has missed something important in her life, but she doesn't know what it is.
Virginia's quest for the meaning of life through "Mrs. Dalloway" and the filmmakers' ingenious storytelling of women of three different eras with the help of this masterpiece sparked the viewer's reflection on the fate of women throughout the twentieth century.
At the same time, Virginia's spiritual temperament sets the melancholy and sad style of the whole film, and her questioning and exploration of the healing meaning of life gives the film a touching and profound spiritual power.
<h1>2</h1>
The twentieth century is full of storms, behind the powerful figures of men, women seem to be living silently, women's pain, women's pursuits, women's everything is deprived, but women's struggle has never stopped.
The narrow scope of women's lives allows them to face their spiritual realm more realistically and directly to their own hearts.
The movie "All the Time" is the perfect interpretation of this struggle. Wandering on the edge of madness, Virginia sees writing as a life, and she sits on a street bench nervously muttering to herself, wandering away from the party with her sister and her children, and has been thinking bitterly about the fate of her heroine. This wholehearted devotion was bound to cause her mental over-tension and fatigue and aggravate her condition.
Because of her physical condition, doctors forbade her to write and asked her to live in a quiet town; yet she did not want her life to be wasted in vain in this mediocre and suffocating town, which she considered a vibrant place to inspire her creations.
But she also knew that returning to London might become more crazy again, and she said to her husband who came after her station, "Only I know what I need." I would rather die than live in mediocrity. ”
That's Virginia's choice, the value of life is in creation, and its importance goes beyond life itself.
<h1>3</h1>
Laura in the '50s lost herself in the mediocre and trivial life of the family. Surrounded by an inexplicable sense of despair, one day in June, she decided to give herself relief. She made her husband's birthday egg hanging, settled her son, and went to a hotel room with Virginia's "Mrs. Dalloway" and the deadly pill.
Just as Virginia finally decides that her heroine shouldn't die, Laura suddenly wakes up and finds herself unable to give up completely. She came back to life, but she still couldn't shake off the shroud of sadness and depression.
At the end of the film, through the mouth of the elderly Laura, we learn that she eventually escaped from the family, abandoning the family, her husband and children.
Laura's story makes us wonder, how can a woman find her true self, Laura chose to give up her family, but then she can be free?
She gave up her mother's duties, can the son forgive her? Can she forgive herself?
Virginia and Laura's quest for the meaning of life develops to the extreme by Clarissa. She seems to be playing a modern version of Mrs. Dalloway. Go to the florist to buy flowers and prepare for the party with all your heart.
In the process, she suddenly finds herself confronted with a series of questions about time, freedom, love, and getting rid of the past that she never thought about.
She has been taking care of her old lover Richard, who has been suffering from AIDS for many years, and she has always believed that it is her responsibility to take care of him, but she never realizes that she hopes that her efforts can bring happiness to the person being cared for, but it is actually a need to meet her own inner needs, a feeling of need to experience her own value from the existence of others.
As Richard in the film says, "I live only to satisfy you," she replies: "That's what people do, they live for each other.
But Richard's rhetorical question "What about your own life"? It makes her suddenly realize that she never thought about what she was living for, and from her suddenly flustered look and demeanor, it is not difficult to guess the question: Have I ever lived for myself?
Virginia and Laura's quest thus continues into the modern Clarissa. The pursuit of the value of women's own lives is the most important theme to be expressed in this film, and it is the spiritual strength of this film.
But a good film is by no means a single piece of content, as in "All the Time", it simultaneously shows the audience all aspects of a kaleidoscope of women's lives.
<h1>4</h1>
The three stories cover almost all the relationships a woman can face in her lifetime, including husband and wife, lover, mother and son, mother and daughter, sister, friend, etc. Watching this movie, every woman can find something familiar with herself, as if the screen is playing out the story that once happened to her.
As far as the relationship between husband and wife is concerned, Virginia's relationship with her husband Leonard is not a conjugal relationship in the traditional sense, there is no physical love between them, but spiritually they love each other deeply, they respect each other, support each other, and share each other's lives, ideas and careers.
This is very strongly reflected in the movie. Leonard supports her writing, but at the same time wants to protect her, he cares about her body, allows her to eat normally, limits her writing time, and gives her a peaceful and spiritually good living space.
Virginia was grateful for all this, but she felt a sense of suffocation, and she longed to break free from all this bondage, and for the sake of her artistic life, she would rather risk falling into madness again, insisting on Islam.
Eventually Leonard understood her and he agreed to her choice. In the scene at the station in the film, Leonard shed tears, and there was love, tolerance, understanding, and maybe more of a fear of losing her.
But the back of the couple going side by side makes people feel warm, and we are full of confidence in them, believing that they will always walk side by side.
<h1>5</h1>
Laura and her husband in the fifties were a different story. Between them is a deep diaphragm. Dan is a World War II veteran, at his birthday dinner, he talks about his war experience, he wants to leave all the painful war memories behind, he wants to find a simple and happy life from his family life, on the surface he is optimistic and full of life.
But the shadow of war in his heart has been hovering, he doesn't know his wife, his efforts to pursue happiness always fail to achieve the results he wants, his wife is trapped in the loss of self, he knows nothing, he doesn't know anything.
We see that they are all trying very hard to bring happiness and happiness to each other but they have all failed. The film inspires people to ask, what is our own marriage like? Do we know our partner? What does marriage mean to a woman?
Clarissa and Richard are a very modern lover relationship, although there are no legal rights and obligations in marriage, but Clarissa has taken care of his life for many years because of an unforgettable emotional experience between them, and Richard even wrote a very successful novel based on this experience, Clarissa is more enthusiastic than Richard herself to celebrate the award of this novel.
However, their old friend, Mi, who broke away from the visit of Louise, who had started a new life in the past, had a big impact on Clarissa's belief that she had given so much for the past love that she even regarded Richard's life as her own achievement.
Richard also seems to regard satisfying Clarissa's sense of accomplishment as the purpose of living, but he finally realizes that his existence will only hinder Clarissa's carefree pursuit of her own life, and he has long been tired of his own qualityless life. The last words of Ulf's suicide note to her husband are "No one will be happier than the two of us".
This arrangement of the film may be to show people that if their lives become a burden on the people they love, although the other party is willing to bear this burden, but for their own sake, but also for the sake of the loved ones, death may be the best choice.
<h1>6</h1>
Clarissa's daughter Julia is the only woman in the film who is not repressed. She is happy, straightforward, full of youthful vitality, symbolizing the growth of a new generation of hopeful women.
She plays a very important role in the emotional life of her mother, she comforts her mother, understands her mother from a female perspective, and brings the affectionate support that her mother needs.
Looking at their daughters, as if seeing their own rebirth, this is probably the mentality of most mothers towards their daughters.
The sisterhood that Vanessa and Virginia represent should be empathetic to all the sisters in the world. Vanessa was also an artist, a famous painter of the time, and she chose a completely different path from Virginia, and she got married, she became a mother, and she still painted.
Virginia didn't understand how a woman could get married and have children while holding on to her career. Lonely and lonely, she was full of expectations for her sister's arrival, and even sent her servants to Lunjiao, but Vanessa's natural pleasure directly stimulated the lonely Virginia, and Vanessa was vaguely jealous that Virginia could freely and wholeheartedly pursue her favorite business, and she said to her sister, "You are really a lucky woman, you are free to do what you want to do, and write so many good books." ”
So we see a pair of sisters who care for each other because of their affection, and who secretly compare with each other as homologous individuals.
Eventually, Vanessa involuntarily tries to escape from Virginia's overly strong emotions, and the sisters are like the two sides of a coin, symbiotic, flesh and blood, but all efforts to get close to each other often bring the two sides farther apart.
One woman is like a mirror of another woman, and the two women reflect each other, reflecting the fear and uneasiness in their hearts. Laura's soothing and understanding calmed her down, and she began to laugh again.
The filmmakers have the genius to string together the stories of three different eras into a whole with a literary masterpiece as a clue, reflecting every aspect of women's lives in the twentieth century.
As director Steven Spielberg has done, In a sense, this film is an exploration of the lives of twentieth-century women and the heartbreaking life choices they face throughout their lives, which for Laura, Clarissa, and Virginia Woolf are really choices between death and meaningful life.
Yes, a woman's life should be as splendid as a summer flower, even if sometimes the price paid is death.