(Text/Water without fragrance)
After many years, re-watching the classic love film "The Dream of the Covered Bridge", I was more moved than the first time.
"It's so difficult to tell my children about my affair, especially if you only complain that I didn't raise you better."
These are the words of a deceased mother's letter to her children, and the embarrassment, loneliness and exhaustion in that voice make me cry.
Being a middle-aged mother, saddled with the burden of marriage and life, breathless, still complained by men who don't understand you and unsatisfied children, is almost the daily routine and dilemma of each of us. No wonder some netizens said that when she watched "The Dream of the Covered Bridge", after the end of the film, she found a woman crying in the bathroom.
Why is such a movie about extramarital love so moving?
I think that's probably because it's more humane than cold morality.
"The Dream of the Covered Bridge" tells such a story:
Francesca, a middle-aged woman living in a small American town, lives a bland and busy housewife life. Because her husband and children are out for activities, she has a few days of purity, and she is dreaming of doing something she likes: sitting in the courtyard drinking a cup of iced tea, reading a book, listening to her favorite music...
At this time, a pickup truck from afar stopped in front of her house. A man came down and asked her for directions. It turned out that he was a photographer for National Geographic magazine and had come here to take pictures of a bridge.
She amused him with her clumsy way of directions, and she herself was embarrassed—she couldn't even get out because she didn't go out very often, so she decided to show him the way.
On the way, as soon as the two of them chatted, the distance was immediately shortened. Her girlish mischievousness and simplicity met his knowledgeable and free-spiritedness, and the two immediately collided with a spark. In the car, she heard that he traveled for many years, so she asked curiously: "Do you get off the bus in one place so often and stay with strangers?" ”
On the bridge, he picked a bouquet of wildflowers and gave it to him, and she blurted out, "Poisonous." He immediately threw away the flowers. She laughed. He said:
"Have you always been so playful?" "No, I don't know why I did that."
Because they were so pleasant to get along, after he had surveyed the terrain, she invited him to come to the house for dinner, and he gladly went there.
Cooking together, eating, chatting, walking under the moon... At this time, he recited Yeats's poetry, and it turned out that he also liked Yeats's poetry... The unexpected feeling of knowing the voice made her unconsciously open her heart and tell her own sorrow:
Although she has a faithful and reliable husband, a pair of lovely children, but this is not the life she wanted as a teenager, she gave up her dreams for the sake of children and home, plunged into the housework, ate to take care of the tastes of her husband and children, did not have time to study, no one listened to her ideas...
"When a woman gets married, it means that the beginning and the end of life are also the end."
Isn't this the plight of every middle-aged woman whose youth has passed away, whose dreams are gone, and whose lives are numb?
He reassured her: "It's good to have a dream, and even if it can't be realized, we should be glad we had it." ”
The good thing about this movie is that it not only tells the story, but also pays more attention to our inner and emotional appeals.
What makes this film very unique is that it looks at extramarital affairs from the perspective of human nature, not morality.
Whether we like to admit it or not, meeting love in marriage is entirely possible. But our moral ideas always seem to be more hypocritical and cowardly than we are. Morally, we always abide by the rules and precepts, and everything we meet in marriage, whether it is true love or false love, is beaten to death with a stick. At the same time, there is no love, and there are many extramarital loves that are simply thrill-seeking like mosquitoes and flies--our Daodezi temple, the body is in the Qinglou.
Yu Xiuhua said: Chastity is to sleep only with the people you love. Then, the story of the occurrence of "The Dream of the Covered Bridge" is a kind of chastity.
Francesca's husband Richard was born with a lack of romantic feelings, and he has always resisted and suppressed the poetic and romantic feelings of the heroine, and he has avoided or even rejected intimate relationships. This attitude left Francesca's inner mood and lust nowhere to go—the red wine she bought was never opened, and her perfume was shelved because her husband did not like it.
However, Robert's romantic nature catered to her demands. The longing and passion that weighed down in their hearts finally allowed them to cross the barriers of love.
"All the feelings, all the searches and the thoughts, the feelings of a lifetime, the searches and the thoughts of the whole life are coming to the present moment."
In Robert's fierceness and tenderness, Francesca's body rejoiced, like a glacier, melting into a river of spring water. At this moment, she was a pure woman. Robert felt from Francesca a warmth that he had never experienced in his life, and this woman was like the wind that sucked the sun in the field, blowing away his cold loneliness and loneliness, leaving in his heart the breath of summer that had never dissipated. They all experienced:
Such an exact love is only once in a lifetime.
There is no moral judgment here, only acknowledgment of facts – this is the second reason why this movie is so moving.
However, it is humane to meet true love in marriage. However, the responsibility of the family is more important than love.
After four dreamlike days for two people, the time came to face the choice. Choosing love or family, Francesca, after very rational thinking, decided with great pain: choose family and responsibility.
"Although the magic of love is irresistible, if you give up your responsibility because of love, then the magic of love will disappear, and love will be overshadowed." 」
It can only be said that Francesca's choice was wise.
Márquez said in Love in the Time of Cholera: "The most important thing in marriage is not happiness, but stability." ”
If Francesca abandons her husband and children for love, not only will she destroy her own family, but when she is with Robert with the pain of family tearing, she may not be able to achieve happiness. Moreover, Robert's marriage, which is home from all over the world, cannot be kept together, and it is difficult to say that it can be maintained.
Li Bihua commented on love in "Rouge Buckle":
"It is probably only a pair of liang zhu among ten million people that can transform butterflies." Others are only moths, cockroaches, mosquitoes, flies, and scarab beetles. It is not a butterfly, and there is no imaginary beauty. ”
If Francesca ended her last marriage and entered her second marriage, she could not rule out the trivial life to start again, and she was saddled with the guilt of betraying the previous marriage, and when the romance became a chicken feather again, how should she treat herself?
Therefore, giving up is actually a kind of fulfillment. It is not the right thing to let love stay poetically in the most beautiful moments.
Although after that, they thought about it for half a lifetime.
In four days, he gave me a lifetime, gave me the whole universe, and synthesized my scattered parts into a whole. I never stopped thinking about him. Not for a moment. Even though he wasn't in my consciousness, I still felt like he was somewhere, he was everywhere.
"The silver apple of the moon, the golden apple of the sun." The love they have not fulfilled, but they have, like the verses they have recited, is eternal. The thoughts and memories of the second half of life, even if it is hard, are not a kind of comfort in a lonely life.
I think this should be the best ending of love.
(Image from the Internet)