"All the Time": Happiness is the possibility that life is full of

Author: Ye Zi

The film "Moments and Moments" is adapted from the novel of the same name by contemporary writer Michael Cunningham, showing the struggle and acceptance of fate by three women with the British writer Virginia Woolf as the core image, in their respective life circumstances.

The three women in the film belong to different eras. The first is Woolf in the 1920s, when she was conceiving the stream-of-consciousness novel Mrs. Dalloway and was trapped in her own unstable mental state. The second is Mrs. Brown, a housewife in California in the 50s, who has a happy home, which seems satisfactory on the surface, but her heart is depressed and painful. The third woman, who lives in New York in 2001, is the editor of the publishing house, and because her name is Clarissa, the protagonist of the novel "Mrs. Dalloway", she is called "Mrs. Dalloway" by her close friend richard, who is seriously ill. Thus, a subtle connection across time and space connects the lives of the three women. On the same day, they are all laying flowers for their homes, preparing food, receiving visitors, and facing death while bearing the brunt of their respective hearts. Trivial and ordinary daily life, fierce and heavy inner world, is always in the same time and space, and always endures the fate of falling apart.

Escape from the everyday: Only we understand the darkness we face

At the beginning of the film, Woolf fills his pockets with stones and sinks himself into the Osse River near his home. This is not Ophelia after being "abandoned" by Hamlet, whose soul is confused, empty, or insane and heartbreaking; on the contrary, Woolf's suicide is a rational choice, and she is "walking gently into that good night.". After two major mental breakdowns, Woolf calmly believed that neither she nor her family should and did not have to accept her mental breakdown more times, so she wrote a suicide note and resolutely left life.

Brown is a virtuous housewife with a husband who loves her. Mrs. Brown's life seems to be in sharp contrast to Woolf's, but this is only superficial. Pregnant, Mrs. Brown is trapped in what is called a perfect family life and feels miserable. After taking care of her young son to someone else, she went to the hotel to open a room and wanted to end her life. Why is it so hard to survive? There is no bad husband in her story, no poor life, at best a bit of a rule-abiding. But is such a life bad? It can only be said that no one has done anything wrong, but the pain is clear.

At the "Mrs. Dalloway" home in New York, the elderly Mrs. Brown comes to attend the funeral of her son Richard. Two women, Mrs. Brown and Clarissa, one who had suicidal thoughts in her youth, and another who by chance were close friends with the former's son. Faced with a common loved one, Mrs. Brown recounts her past when she left her husband and son alone after giving birth to her daughter. With a note, a ticket, she left her "happy" life and became a librarian in another place. This may be inconceivable, even difficult to forgive, but it is the best choice for this person who is bound by life to the brink of suffocation. There is no betrayal, no cruelty, and no madness. Mrs. Brown, like the novelist Woolf, left their original lives and even their reasons for leaving their lives precisely because they did not give up the silver lining of their own lives in the face of the black hole of life.

At the end of the film, Mrs. Brown Sr. uses her story to comfort "Mrs. Dalloway", who is immersed in shock and grief. She said: "If you can regret it, life is much easier." But when you don't have a choice, what's the point of regret? For Mrs. Brown, she has faced the black hole of her own life, but "chose life in the face of death."

Happiness Possible: Show humanity by choosing a lifestyle

"Mrs. Dalloway said she was going to buy flowers herself." The beginning of the novel seems to be ordinary with a brisk everyday life. But the truth of life is not. The fictional heroine enjoys the banquet she runs, and is she really enjoying life? The congresswoman created by Woolf used the details and thoughts of her own life in a day in the history of literature to attract people to watch the lives of others repeatedly and look back at their own lives for nearly a hundred years.

Although Woolf's ideas of marriage, love, and women's rights were pioneers and niches at the time and even now, her deepest sense of human nature was universal. In the film, when her husband asks her to stay in the countryside out of protection and love, the two have a heated argument on the platform. In Woolf's view, even a seriously ill, weak person has the right to choose his own life, because this is the way to show humanity.

In the film, Woolf says, "My life has been stolen. "If she is given a choice between dying and staying in such a life, she chooses to die. Because "there is no tranquility in escaping from life". As Duras wrote: "No matter which side I stand on, no matter what century of world history I am in, the women I see are dancing on the ropes of death in a situation that is too much to bear by the limitations." ”

And the "Mrs. Dalloway" who lives in the 21st century lives somewhere between Woolf and Mrs. Brown: she lives her own way, but often witnesses black holes from others. In a way, she's smooth sailing, like the real Mrs. Dalloway in the novel. She was very persistent, such as clinging to the life of her best friend Richard: he had to live, even if it was just for her. Therefore, in the fate of others, she always brushed past the black hole of her own life. Witnessing the death of her friend, Clarissa felt even more deeply that the balance of life was so fragile. An independent lifestyle, a pluralistic concept of love, is realized here in Clarissa. She didn't have to be like Virginia Woolf, no matter how talented she was, to force herself into a marriage that didn't belong to her; she didn't have to follow Mrs. Brown's path, which was an "either-or" life.

For Clarissa Dalloway of New York, life's orbit is still littered with black holes. But there was always a morning in her life, and for her the whole world was full of possibilities. The moment when one feels that life is full of possibilities is a moment of happiness.

(The author is an associate editor of Guangxi Normal University Press, Doctor of Philosophy)

Source: Guangming Network - Literary And Art Review Channel