What we hate the most is what we love the most, because we are too hard and too focused, so the pain often comes to the only thing we love the most.
The entanglement between the members of the Chinese family, I only think that it is the most entangled and the most intense, but from this French film, I can see that every family in the world is actually the same, but the expression that is hidden behind it is different due to different regional expressions. What remains unchanged is that in the world under God's eyes, in the independent space reduced to a family unit, our relationship has never changed at all, where we bear all the seemingly illusory happiness and staged again and again painful injuries.
Perhaps like this poster, there is no traditional picture of the brilliant red of Christmas, but a shadow of the first sunlight that spins out of the tears of cold purple in your eyes. I had thought that my life, which might sometimes be out of control, came from my family, my parents and my sisters, and that before they had embarked on their own journey to the outside world, we were already irrevocably standing in the cold of our home.
The entire film begins almost in a cool blue hue, with snow on the eaves, raindrops falling on the ground reflecting the blue sky, the blue sky receding behind Paul, Henry sitting in front of a blue curtain talking, and the keyhole-like shots that seem to want to temporarily conceal the picture. Music from the flute to the piano, then the cello, the drums and then the strings, as the unfolding family, and the love and contention that has been hidden deep behind death, our own family.
Bell and Julio's first son, Joseph, was replaced by blood cancer at the age of four and needed a bone marrow transplant, so Henry was born but did not meet, so Joseph left at the age of 6, and then Isabelle became the eldest, and then the youngest son Ivan was born, and it was not known whether he could save Joseph because it was too late. The film opens in a cemetery, where Bell speaks about his son and the wisdom of life, and then we see a black-and-white photograph of a baby holding an iron bath, a face that feels a little ghostly, and in the three-story house, although Joseph has left early, although he has not become a memory figuration for everyone, it has become an indelible loss that no one can avoid.
Isabelle suddenly lost something and became the eldest in the family, so she began to surround and protect her territory; Henry seemed to have been suspicious of his cynicism all his life because of his genetic incompatibility; Ivan seemed to have fled, but unfortunately he could only live an active life with weakness that he thought he could help others.
It's like a battle for love, and each child begins to carefully maintain his or her appearance in the eyes of their parents because of the departure of another child. And to this end, I can start to reject my brothers and sisters, just to get more attention from my parents and that smile. If not, then hatred and resentment and self-doubt have a soil to grow.
The first competition of your life, to your brothers and sisters, to the first love of your life, to the family you love the most, to the attention you want in your first effort, to the place of your birth.
This seems a little ridiculous, isn't it, but isn't that what our lives are, of course, for children who do not have siblings in the family, perhaps such a scene is unimaginable, maybe it is better to say that there is a fight than a person cold, who will know which? Without such a problem, there would be such a problem.
The plot of the story turns around after Juro also has cancer, the family finally reunites after 5 years of events at Christmas, Isabel banishes Henry, Juro does not love Henry, Paul suffers from mental illness because of his mother, Simon abandons Sylvia because Ivan, and Henry shows up at home with his lover. It turns out that what we thought was broken, in fact, it is always there, and breaking free is only a kind of self-deception comfort, we can never get rid of the blood flowing in our body, where there is all the genes that shape me and become me, whether it is love or not. If you don't love, you also want to love. We take our own defects, but find another piece of the building block in the family.
Film star cluster, let you really see the clear and transparent and sprinkled, the actor's balanced performance and space, so that everything is very coordinated and very comfortable, although in the process of watching, by those blue tones under the winter scenery, deeply feel some cold, but like so cold, cold not to tremble but not unbearable, looking at the same winter outside the window, suddenly think, the existence of the four seasons is essential, although always repeatedly swirling, but each is indispensable, in this general winter, Your mind is not at its clearest.
Krishnamurti said: If every time the feeling of hatred arises, you let it pass, you will find that your mind becomes very sensitive, but not sentimental, so that you will understand what love is.
Love is born and hated. It is as if Isabelle finally held a warm coffee cup on the balcony and found love in her own words.
2009-12-12