The tomato carnival opened the blood-red curtain for this film, tomatoes, red wine, strawberry flavor jelly, tail brake lights, red oil paintings, red skirts, lipstick... Red becomes one of the most important "props" in the film, suggesting that there is a huge tragedy behind the mother played by Tilda Swindon. At the same time, the two timelines of "Mother Now" and "Son Year" are triggered at the same time, cross-parallel, and at the same time, the director relies on the half-covered lens language of the pipa to convey the ideological connotation most of the time, there is not much dialogue, and the suspense is very good.
Happiness is always so similar, unhappiness is always different
Nowadays, more and more TV dramas have made the influence of the original family valued. This makes us always take it for granted that so-and-so criminals are snubbed and lack of love in their original families. The twisted personalities of those criminals are all about growing up without the right education. In other words, their parents have an unshirkable responsibility, and it is their parents who are at fault.
But is the family of origin the root cause of all the problems in the growth of children?
Obviously, the formation of antisocial personality is a complex process, with both innate and acquired factors. Antisocial personality is really only for human society. Antisocial personality is simply a "cold, unconceprising, fearless, self-centered" personality trait. But imagine if you look at it in a different environment, what if people with these qualities lived alone in the jungle? Will these characteristics become an advantage in adapting to the laws of nature?
Human society is not innate, it is gradually formed, the memory of the weak has been imprinted in our genes, since there are physiological "returning" babies, theoretically, psychological "returning", the emergence of children who do not accept social taming, this probability should also exist, but we can not predict whether they will be triggered or silent forever. This trigger is hidden in everyone's genes and triggers the child to deviate from the "normal" trajectory. And this trigger can be a variety of, it can be a lack of parental care, it can also be a bad information environment, and it can be an innate nature. Kevin in the movie is such a special child.
There's no denying that Kevin's mother, EVA, is indeed a less competent mother, but Kevin is also a somewhat special child. We always demand that every mother be great and do a perfect job in parenting. For thousands of years, there has been a prejudice in society – don't most mothers raise their children to be talented? Why can't you? Some small negligence or mistakes are always easy to be blamed by those around them (especially the elders or husbands). But no mother is perfect, and sometimes some impatience is acceptable, and sometimes some poor care is understandable. There is a communication barrier between EVA and Kevin, and Kevin's lack of adequate care is her fault. But beyond that, we can't ignore the days and nights she raised Kevin until she became an adult, enduring Kevin's difficult past hardships. She did not give up on her bad relationship with her son, but did her best to make up for it and improve it. Sincerely, she wasn't that bad. Even though Kevin had taken her all, she still visited him and gave him a hug as always.
Not all women can be perfect mothers. There is no other tutorial in the world that teaches parents "how to teach absolutely normal children" ("absolutely normal" means to conform to the "majority of society"—heterosexuality, no autism or other mental illness, no violent tendencies), and even with this tutorial, it is difficult to do it 100% in daily life. So before we pick at the faults of those parents, please affirm their efforts.
As the old saying goes, "Do not persuade others to be good without suffering." ”
Misplaced love
There is a saying in psychology that young children can establish a special mapping relationship with their parents, so that children can always feel the presence of their parents and feel their parents' views and attitudes towards themselves. This invisibly allows the parent to become another self (or a particularly important role) of the child. But when parents consistently ignore or avoid their child's emotional needs, the child becomes desperately hungry for love and attention. This, in turn, can result in the following processes:
Children's emotions can be badly hurt in the process of being ignored, and in order to get the love and attention that children deserve, they begin to hide their desires and try to get compensation from other sources. They began experimenting with tentative imitations, and soon they discovered that they could manipulate their parents and other people by acting in order to get the attention they wanted, especially the attention of the person they wanted. Gradually, they will evolve into an actor, wearing all kinds of disguises and masks. If, in the process, the parents never notice the child's behavior and correct it correctly, the child may become selfish, ruthless, and good at disguising himself. In the long run, although they are still called "children", their psychology has been distorted. They have completely lost sight of the personal boundaries of respecting others, seeing themselves above others, and their sense of self has become boundless.
Kevin in the film is extremely sensitive and intelligent, so he can detect Eva's complicated feelings for him, both love and annoy him, want to get rid of him but have to maintain the role of mother and take care of him and love him. Slowly, Kevin became both loving and hating her, wanting to get rid of her and longing for her, and these complex emotions were constantly knotted in Kevin's heart. Eventually, because of some opportunity, he gradually decided that his mother did not really love him, she was just pretending to be a competent mother, so he tried to tear off his mother's disguise, and he provoked her again and again, in a way that was similar to mental torture. Kevin's complex clearly has an element of sadomasochism, and the purpose of his extreme measures is to make Eva unable to escape his existence.
The most typical scene is when Eva plasters her treasured map all over the room and explains to Kevin, "Everyone needs a room with a personal imprint." Kevin then sprayed his own ink on the wall of the room. Kevin begins to show a strong desire for destruction formed by jealousy in any of Eva's spiritual sustenance. Eventually, when he found out that his parents were going to send him to the army, his first reaction was to "abandon", so he became furious and began a bloody revenge.
But in the end Kevin did not kill his mother EVA, why? Is it because of the love in the heart? Apparently not, because he thinks that a murderous mother will make her hypocrisy even more exposed, and he wants people to remind Eva all the time that she is his mother, so that she will always live as a murderer's mother. This is the extreme hatred that comes from his extreme love.
But during a prison visit two years later, Kevin was silent when EVA asked "why," believing in his reasons that he was trying to get revenge on his mother and make EVA's hypocrisy public. Now that so many people had died, even his family, he felt that his mother would hate him and spit on him completely! In this way, both herself and her were liberated, so that no one had to continue to pretend.
But Eva persevered, visiting him for two consecutive years, without cursing or condemning, still treating him as a son. At this time, he began to be confused, if killing all my family members can't make my mother hate me, then what reason do I have to suspect that she loves me?
So he had the ending line "Now I'm not sure why I did it." ”
Listening to Kevin's last words, accompanied by the ending song "One day I passed by the orphanage, stopped outside the courtyard walls, and watched how much fun the children had." There was a boy on the other side who was ignored, and I asked him why he didn't play, and he turned around and cried out. No one wants me, no one wants me, I am wild and wild, like a wild flower, without my father's affection, without my mother's kiss, I am an orphan, and no one wants me..." The slow chant.
I couldn't help but have mixed feelings, and I seemed to understand the loneliness of Kevin's mind. He is sensitive, always paying attention to the changes of his parents, he is smart, but he has not found the right way to communicate with his parents, no one can say, no one can understand the depression and bitterness in his heart, Kevin became the loneliest child trapped in the abyss, but he did not choose to hurt himself, but hurt others.