"When we were young, we ran away from our parents, and then step by step, we came back to them, and in this moment, we grew up." —Bergman.
Autumn Sonata is a family emotional film directed by Ingmar Bergman and starring Ingrid Bergman and Liv Ullmann, released in Sweden on October 8, 1978, more than 20 years ago. However, despite the passage of time and social changes, the charm of this film and the practical significance reflected in the film have not been diminished in the slightest.
In this film, the director Bergman's usual style is followed, and only four main characters appear throughout the process. Two of the female protagonists, Ingrid Bergman and Liv Ullmann, play mother and daughter in the film, and both of them contribute extremely superb acting skills in this film. In a way, the two are also very suitable for playing mother and daughter, their sensitive, nervous, excited looks and tearful eyes are almost homogeneous, heart-wrenching.
The story of the film depicts Charlotte (Ingrid Bergman) widowed at her daughter's house for a few days at the invitation of her eldest daughter, Eva (Liv Ullman). Charlotte was a prominent pianist in an orchestra, and Eva was the wife of a priest who worked in a rural community, and the two had not seen each other for seven years before this meeting.
The affectionate embrace and intimate language of the mother and daughter after meeting seem to present a normal mother-daughter relationship, but if you taste carefully, you can find that there is always a sense of hard alienation between them. It turns out that the daughter Eva has always been angry with her mother Sherlock's indifference to herself since childhood. In the process of growing up, she has never received the care and pampering from her mother's sincerity, so her personality has been in a state of deformed development that has been squeezed: on the one hand, she is trying to please her mother, eager to get her mother's attention, on the other hand, she has a grudge against her mother's indifference, and this tangled inner conflict makes Eva miserable.
In the film, in addition to Charlotte and Eva, there are two minor characters, one is Eva's husband, a priest who loves his wife deeply, and the other is Charlotte's young daughter and Eva's sister, the severely disabled Helena (Lena Nieman). Helena, whose pronunciation was unclear and stupid, was originally thrown into a nursing home by her mother, but was later taken to the house by her sister Eva and lived with her.
In this film, director Bergman uses a large number of long shots to the end and a large drama-style inner monologue, so that the film shows an extremely strong sense of theater, coupled with the superb acting skills of the actors and impeccable facial expressions, making the whole movie look very shocking and directly to the heart.
Next, I will analyze this classic film from three aspects: deconstructing the three-layer character relationship in the film, analyzing the psychological connotation of the film characters, and splitting the artistic characteristics and realistic metaphors of the film.
<h1 class= "pgc-h-arrow-right" >1. Deconstruct the three-tier character relationship in the film: the mother-daughter relationship in reality, the reincarnation relationship of life, and the relationship between the conscious and subconscious</h1>
The character structure of the film is very simple, on the surface, it is about the "love and hate" between a mother and daughter, but in the depth of the character portrayal, there is also a deeper understanding of the director's emotional expression.
<h1 class = "pgc-h-arrow-right" > (1) [Reality]: The mother-daughter relationship that loves and kills each other</h1>
At the beginning of the film, the image of a daughter Eva who is eager to meet her mother is portrayed. After learning the news of her stepfather's death, Eva eagerly wrote to her mother, begging her to come and live here for a few days, in which she assured her mother that her priest's apartment was very spacious, fully equipped, and "there was a grand piano", in which she wrote: "We will take good care of you, and everything depends on you."
Charlotte, a noble and elegant mother, appeared, radiant and radiant, and compared to her, her daughter Eva was rather dull.
At the beginning of the mother-daughter meeting, the two people seemed to be very warm, and there was no gap that they had not seen in seven years. The old mother said that she would live here for a while, and the daughter also ran before and after happily. But then the style changes, the camera is focused on the mother, and in the long shot, she begins a minute-long "self-talk", all about herself - what happened when she took care of her husband's last journey in the hospital, how hard she worked, how depressed she was, what Eva's stepfather said to her at the end of her life..... In the long shot, it is a one-man show of a graceful old lady, and the daughter is squeezed out of the camera, and she does not appear in the camera again until the mother finishes her performance-style speech. This time, her eyes had begun to wander, her smile had become reluctant, and her face had darkened.
It's a very quick introduction—it appears to make the viewer seem to perceive something wrong: the mother seems to be too egotistical, she doesn't say what she should say to her daughter who hasn't seen her in seven years, and behind the daughter's flattery and courtesy, there seems to be a hidden alienation and rebellion.
Eva told her mother the news that her sister Helena lived with her. Hearing this news, her mother's face suddenly changed, annoyed and a little overwhelmed. In the next mother-daughter dialogue, the director revealed some mysteries through the seemingly casual dialogue between the mother and daughter: the mother implicitly reproached Eva for letting her little daughter appear here to add to her blockage, while Eva lightly told her mother that she had received her sister here as early as two years ago and wrote to her mother about it. In the face of her mother's denial, Eva seemed to inadvertently say: "Or, (that letter) you didn't bother to read it."
Eva's words exposed the complex mother-daughter relationship between the two - although they were a real mother-daughter relationship, it was obvious that something was going on in between.
In the subsequent plot, the delicate relationship between mother and daughter is revealed. Until one night, the mother woke up from a nightmare and met her drunken daughter, who, stimulated by alcohol, told her mother about her grievances and resentments for many years, and the mother, who had always been strong, became vulnerable and powerless under her daughter's calm and irrefutable "attack", like a weak little girl, she even cried and begged her daughter to comfort herself. This is a dialogue that spreads from late at night to day, the mother and daughter both have large monologues, the characters are emotionally progressive, the colors are full and vivid, and the oil painting memories are mixed in the middle, which is the climax of the whole movie.
This conversation reveals to us the truth of the matter: in reality, they are indeed a mother and daughter, but hidden under reality is the dislocation of the roles of mother and daughter and the cycle of fate.
<h1 class = "pgc-h-arrow-right" > (2) [hint]: the cycle of life</h1>
At the climax of the movie, the daughter complained about the emotional indifference and psychological trauma she had suffered from childhood to adulthood, and completely knocked down her mother, who had been emotionally isolated and lived in narcissism, and she was sad like a little girl, once again lying on the ground on the grounds of her "back pain".
She said pitifully to her daughter, "I basically don't remember anything when I was a child, I don't remember my parents touching me, whether they touched me or punished, they never touched me, and I know nothing about love." Love, touch, intimacy, warmth..... I can only express my feelings in music, and when I am awake at night, I wonder if I have ever lived. I wonder if this is true of anyone else? Or are some people more gifted with living than others? Or have some people never lived? They just live in this world. "
This monologue of the mother sounds very familiar, and at the beginning of the film, Eva's pastor husband also has a long confession, in which he mentions his wife and says: "There is a sentence in Eva's first novel that I like, she said: One must learn how to live, I practice every day, the biggest obstacle is that I don't know who I am, I grope in the dark, if someone can love me as I really am, I can understand myself, but the possibility of this is very small." In this regard, the husband's confession is: "I want to tell her that even if it is only once, someone loves her wholeheartedly, but I can't say that she is convinced." "
It is clearly visible: the mother and daughter generations are both "love incompetent". Neither of them has ever experienced the taste of being nourished by love since childhood, and they have grown up without the ability to love (him) people, although their external manifestations look completely different - the mother has been asking for love and satisfying her own shortcomings all her life, while the daughter has avoided love all her life, saying that she "has never loved anyone", but the spiritual core is the same.
This is the reincarnation of the fate of the original family.
The practical significance of this film lies in this, and many people see their own shadows in this intricate, loving and killing mother-daughter relationship. "The misfortune of the daughter is the victory of the mother", Bergman used hysterical quarrels and excellent indoor drama scheduling to throw out this seemingly bizarre proposition, but it is precisely this ethical paradox that is common in life, but because of the so-called family bond, many people avoid this problem. But in the movie, it is shown in blood.
The person who loves the impotent himself is also the victim of the impotence of love. Their inner wounds will not be automatically healed after giving birth to children, but they will raise their children with trauma, and reincarnate the tragic family fate for generations, until an awakened person rewrites his fate through learning and healing, and the chain of reincarnation can be broken.
This is the meaning of the original family.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" >(3) [Metaphor]: Conscious and subconscious</h1>
Eva and Helena are sherlock's two daughters, and in reality, the two are in a parallel relationship, but from a metaphorical point of view, we can also understand Helena as Eva's subconscious.
When a person's heart is full of love-hate entanglements, that is, psychoanalytic "inner conflict", it is the ultimate manifestation of aphasia - like Helena, unable to speak, can only express feelings for the world in chaotic language.
Corresponding to aphasia is language with disguises. Language tends to be the most untrustworthy compared to the subconscious. Just like Sherlock to her two daughters, always affectionate, calling them "dear babes" and hanging "I love you" on her lips, but everyone can see her estrangement, avoidance and disgust for her daughters. Eva was the same mouthful. As she vented and persecuted her mother through alcohol, Helena next door was struggling in agony, rolling from the bed to the ground and struggling to crawl toward her mother. The mother lay on the floor and cried to Eva that she needed love and help, Eva did not say a word, while Helena struggled on the floor to crawl and call out, painfully calling out to her mother: "Mom, come here", the two shots constantly switched, forming a superimposed effect.
No one heard Helena's cry, but wasn't Helena's cry the true expression of Eva's true subconscious as a daughter?
In the depths of a child's heart, no matter how much trauma he has suffered, he has a natural loyalty to his mother, and an unchangeable desire for maternal love - this is the nature of the child. No amount of hate can change.
At the end of the movie, the "irresponsible" mother once again fled into the wilderness, for the mother as always to escape, Eva although depressed, but the appearance of calm, but Helena at the same time can not breathe, on the verge of death, she frantically in the vague language, shouted out the voice, is still "mother".
This is the role of a child, the deepest cry and desire for maternal love.
Helena and Eva, like the subconscious and the conscious, take care of each other and contrast with each other.
<h1 class = "pgc-h-arrow-right" >2. Psychological portrayal of the protagonist of the movie: a realistic version of "the bondage of motherhood"</h1>
When I watched this movie, as a psychologist, I immediately thought of a popular psychology book" called "The Bondage of Motherhood".
In contrast to the general books dealing with the family of origin, this is a book dedicated to describing the relationship between a "narcissistic mother and her daughter." For girls, the person who has the greatest influence on them is the mother, and it is not an exaggeration to say that some of the characteristics of the mother will cause the daughter to face special difficulties throughout her life.
There is no doubt that Sherlock, the "love impotent patient", is a typical narcissistic mother.
In the book "The Bondage of Motherly Love", the author McBride proposed the "nine qualities" of narcissistic mothers, calling the ten mother-daughter interaction relationships related to maternal narcissism "ten stingers", and in addition, she also summarized the "six faces" of narcissistic mothers. Throughout the book, almost all the relevant content can be found in Sherlock and Eva.
Narcissistic mothers focus only on themselves and are almost insensitive to others, including their own children. This is vividly displayed in Sherlock.
At Eva's house, Sherlock changed into beautiful clothes and wanted to go out shopping, when Eva was quietly feeling the child's breath in the room of her son who died prematurely, Eva told her mother a lot about the memories of her son who died early and the confusion about the emotions of the world, but only in exchange for Sherlock's impatience, she hurriedly interrupted her daughter's confession, saying: "When it is not dark, let's go out for a walk" And ended the conversation hastily.
You can imagine how desperate and hurt such a mother will bring to her daughter.
Narcissistic moms focus on fantasies about success, power, talent, beauty, and love.
Sherlock is always radiant, even if her lover has just died, she went downstairs to eat at her daughter's house, dressed in red robes, her hair meticulously combed, and dressed in full costume. At work, she is a hard-working and excellent pianist, and as for love, she never shows weakness, no matter when it comes, there is no shortage of suitors around. She is immersed in all kinds of things that satisfy her "sense of superiority", but she is blind to her daughter's inner world.
The relationship between a narcissistic mother and daughter is often less like a mother and daughter than a peer. The mother-daughter relationship is often a unbridled exploitation of demand and profit.
On a realistic level, Sherlock is Eva's mother, but the naïve Sherlock has never thought of taking on the responsibility of "mother". After Eva poured out to her decades of repressed resentment and resentment, Sherlock lay helplessly on the ground, recounting her loveless childhood. "I've never grown up, my face and body are old, but deep down I feel like I've never been born," she said. She confessed her innermost feelings to her daughter, saying, "I've always been afraid of you — I think it's because I want you to take care of me and hold me in the crook of my arm to comfort me." "
This is a typical inversion of the mother-daughter relationship - the mother because of her lack of love, resulting in a serious narcissistic personality disorder, she not only can not "mother and just", but like a child to wantonly ask for the love of another real child, which will cause serious harm to the daughter's psychology, the daughter in the process of growing up can not feel the mother's love, but also "tiptoe" to do things beyond their own ability. Because of this, Eva was transformed into a decaying wood at a young age—because her energy was exhausted by her mother.
When Sherlock finished saying these words, Eva looked tired and whispered, "I'm just a child", Sherlock took a sharp sip of his cigarette and asked, "Does this matter?" Yes, in Sherlock's eyes, it does not matter what the truth is, there is only one thing that matters: whether her own need for love and for love can be satisfied.
The existence of a narcissistic mother basically ruins a daughter's life, and even if she spends her life in the future to heal her inner wounds, she cannot be completely intact. As Kebride, author of "The Bondage of Motherhood," puts it, a daughter raised by a severely narcissistic mother can have four situations.
First, I always feel that I am not cute.
Second, I always feel that I am not doing well enough
Third, often empty, do not know what to do
Fourth, never be confident
If a woman has particularly strong feelings in these four areas, it is likely that she also has a Sherlock mother.
<h1 class= "pgc-h-arrow-right" >3. The artistic temperament and realistic metaphor of the film</h1>
The name of the Autumn Sonata shows that it is a film related to music, and the sonata (sonata) is also a metaphor for the relationship between the characters in the film.
Sonata means solo, that is, monologue in music. In the film, in addition to the climax of the emotional explosion of the mother and daughter duo, the most remarkable thing is the clip of the duo playing Chopin's recital.
Eva played Chopin's Prelude Ii in A minor for her mother, her mother was dressed in red robes, dazzling, and her daughter Eva seemed hesitant and cowardly, and the moment seemed to pass in time, returning to the years when she was supervised by her mother to practice as a child. Eva is an emotionally delicate writer, but her Chopin Concerto becomes a reservoir of warmth, but even so, the mother is in tears, and she should be moved by the warmth of her daughter (not Chopin) - the warmth flowing in the music triggers her deep memories of the past. But after the daughter finished playing, the mother sat down again in front of the piano and re-played the Chopin with the grace of a real artist.
In the same piece, the daughter plays out with a pulse of emotion, while under the piano player's mother, it is numb, cold, hesitant, and solemn. Mother played the connotation of Chopin's concerto with precision in the style of an artist, and apart from that, there was no trace of extra emotion.
When the mother is playing, the film screen appears a long close-up, one is the mother who is slightly closed and immersed in Chopin's solo, exquisite and gorgeous, and the other is the sensitive, nervous, confused, and helpless daughter sitting next to the mother, a close-up shot of pushing to the end, with awkward and depressing piano music, outlining the insurmountable gap between mother and daughter.
It seems like a metaphor, and what happened afterwards confirmed it – in this mother-daughter reunion, which was 7 years apart, they failed to compose a harmonious concerto together, but each staged their own sonata. Solo and solo, because the hearts can not communicate, the result is a more lonely, more desperate solo, between them, never overlapped into a tacit understanding of the intersection.
Affection is the most primitive and instinctive emotion, so director Bergman will choose it rather than love to interpret love.
Love can be a weakness, because love is soft and makes people's hearts soft, and only in this way can love appear precious in a world that advocates hardness. At the same time, love is also heavy, it requires people to pay too much, which is why love is rare in a society where dwarfs must fight.
But most importantly: love needs to be responded to, and love that does not respond is the greatest harm to the human heart— as Freud mentioned in the Story of Sexology:
A 3-year-old boy shouted in a dark room: Auntie, talk to me! I'm afraid, it's too dark here. The aunt responded: What is the use of doing that? You can't see me again. The boy replied: It doesn't matter, someone speaks and brings light.
A place where there is no response is a hopeless situation, and reciprocal love can bring hearts together, which is the only way to tear down Sartre's so-called "wall." Otherwise, there is only a lonely solo. Therefore, the loveless pain played by the autumn sonata, the barrier of the soul, plays out the eternal desire of man for love.
At the end of the movie, the mother leaves again. The mother and daughter ultimately failed to reach a settlement, and according to the director's own account, the original script ended with mother and daughter understanding each other, but the daughter's "idea of giving her mother a new life was abandoned because it was too difficult, and the characters seemed to have a tendency to find their own way." At the end of the film, the complex mother-daughter relationship is frozen on the missing semicircle, and director Bergman aborts the sonata at this missing juncture. I am thankful for this ending— a consummation that is not deliberately elevated seems to be more in line with reality.
Among all the relationships, the parent-child relationship is the most complex kind of relationship, in such a relationship, do not easily say "forgive", because many times you yourself are full of holes. But self-redemption is an eternal path, and no matter what the circumstances of the original family, everyone always has the right to choose their own destiny.
I am "Tang Candy with Dreams", Scorpio woman, sensual and rational coexist, disgusted with pseudo-fake, poisonous chicken soup, keen on deep analysis, focusing on personal growth. Enjoy facing the real "pain" and "pleasure". Love psychology, hope to use the small power of the individual as a fire, ignite the fire of psychology. Welcome to interact, welcome to like, welcome to tip, welcome to pay attention....