There is a Korean film called "Miss Dionysus", which won the Best Work Award at the 17th Asian International Film Festival in Rome, Italy. The protagonist of the film is a 65-year-old prostitute named Su Ying. In his early years, he worked as a comfort woman and gave birth to a boy for the American black man. But she abandoned him at the age of one, for which she later regretted it. In the film, Su Ying, who is old and yellow, lonely and bitter, has no way to make a living, and can only take the "Bao Jia Shi" drink as the code for the trading of elderly prostitutes, stand on the street to pick up customers, and return to the old business. In the process of engaging in the flesh and skin business, by chance, she came into contact with a Han-Filipino mixed-race boy, and her previous personal experience made her full of sympathy and compassion for this abandoned mixed-race boy, and the lonely and lonely Su Ying took the child to do unseemly business and chat to get by.
In the past, "Miss Dionysus", who was old, in order to live, took the children who came to her, and did to help some elderly prostitutes solve physical problems, which is just one of the contents described in the film. What shocks the audience's heart even more is that the film also shows in detail the process of the protagonist Su Ying helping three lonely and helpless old people to die. The plot of helping people commit suicide is the unique thing about the film "Miss Dionysus" that shakes the audience the most.
In the film, after visiting some old friends, Su Ying is strongly aware of the impermanence of life and the distress of old age. So after satisfying men's "Dionysian carnival" for a long time, she began to satisfy another desire of people: to help people die. In the film, Su Ying helps three lonely old people to carry out their deaths.
The first is her former friend "Change Song". When this man was young, he was very angry and talented. But now because of the stroke, I have to be paralyzed in bed, and I encounter my children's indifference. The third generation hated the smell of him and did not want to hug him. His feeling is that the child is no longer a child. Now "living is pain", and what is even more painful is that "even if you want to die, you can't do it yourself". Faced with this old friend who was in pain and could not die himself, Su Ying helped him buy poison and helped him feed it into his mouth. She satisfied his death as if she were satisfying someone else's physical desires.
The second old man was named Zhong Xiu. He had Alzheimer's disease. Memories and consciousness are deteriorating, and I am alone and bored. He genuinely wanted to die, to end his miserable life sooner. But he couldn't die himself. The widowed old man bitterly said to his friend Zaiyu, "Before long, I won't even know you, and you'll end me." Later, it was Su Ying who ended him, and Su Ying took him to the edge of the cliff and pushed him down hard.
The third old man is named Zaiyu. His living conditions are slightly better than the above two. No stroke, no Alzheimer's. But he was overwhelmed by all the misfortunes he had encountered, despairing of life and yearning for death. So he hoped that Su Ying could accompany him through the last journey of his life. So after they had dinner together in a high-end restaurant, they came to the hotel, and Jae-woo took out the sleeping pills he had prepared earlier, and in the company of Su Ying, they went to death.
In the end, Su Ying herself was unexpectedly arrested and put into prison, and because of the lack of family affection and a cruel life, she died in prison. How should this small person who helped people die know and evaluate? When she was young, she helped others to solve their physical needs, and in old age, she helped others who did not want to die, and realized her desire to die. The director once said that she was a "very good woman", but legally, no matter which country's existing laws, she can be said to be a murderer, and the other title of this film is "The Woman Who Killed".
If we put aside the various differences in the evaluation of Su Ying, that is, no matter how to evaluate Su Ying, the life reflected in the film is old and has to face a tragic ending of loneliness and desolation, this topic can always arouse the attention and thinking of countless people. Because thinking about life and death has always been a question of commonality. It is never limited by country and time limit. This is probably the value of the film, right?
What do you think? I'd love to hear your opinions.