Before, I answered a question about loneliness in Zhihu, which resonated with many people. I think that loneliness may be divided into two types, one is physical loneliness, such as living in isolation, far from society; the other is spiritual loneliness, in the crowd, but can not fit into the group. The latter often face a great communication crisis, which brings many troubles to life.
The niche art film I want to recommend to you today, which won the Golden Bear Award for Best Picture at the 67th Berlin International Film Festival, tells the love story of two lonely people - "Flesh and Spirit".
If you like slow-paced literary films, I believe you will also like it.
The heroine of "Flesh and Spirit" - Maria
Maria is introverted, closed, rigid, withdrawn, has a good memory, has a certain degree of obsessive-compulsive disorder, and even follows her own rules when to push the door and which shoe to take off before going to bed. Such a stereotypical person is naturally the most suitable for being a quality inspector, she can see at a glance which cow has a few millimeters of fat, and strictly follow the rules to mark the grade.
Maria is meticulous at work, but her life is dull and closed, and she doesn't even have a mobile phone. Therefore, such a girl naturally does not have a boyfriend.
Andrei, the financial director of the slaughterhouse, has a disability in his right arm, is usually taciturn, and lives alone. He discovers Maria's misfit and wants to talk to her, but neither is good at verbal expression and doesn't communicate smoothly.
Soon, the slaughterhouse was stolen from the aphrodisiac, and the police were fruitless and had to resort to psychological analysis. During a psychological survey of the workers in the factory, Andre told the psychiatrist that he dreamed that he was a male deer and accompanied a doe swimming by the stream; Maria had the same dream. Except that she was a doe in her dream.
The psychiatrist thought they had deliberately played a prank on her and pulled the two to confront each other. And this brought Maria and Andre closer together. They were amazed at the same dreams they had with each other.
Lonely souls are always attracted to each other. Since then, they will write down their dreams and verify them with each other, and the two seem to be in love.
But lonely souls are also the most difficult to blend. Unlike self-made and amorous directors, Iltico Inyeti, a master creator, understands the barriers between people. She understands that every temptation and interaction between people is like an adventure — information asymmetry can lead to misunderstandings. And for sensitive and closed people, every word and subtle tone can turn a chat into a psychic disaster.
Although, Maria and Andrei share a common soul. When Andre went to take her hand, she avoided it cautiously. We can certainly use some concepts of pathology to understand Maria's behavior (such as social impairment). But how to let the people in the story untie themselves in a story requires the creator to use his mind.
In order to solve the fear of intimate contact, Maria watched adult movies, listened to love songs, went to the park to watch couples make love, and she even bought a plush toy to sleep with her, all of which did not seem to solve her inner fears.
Finally, she cut open her own wrist artery..... Maria certainly wasn't looking for death. For her, breaking through the closed self to accept a person is no less mentally risky than giving life.
Two people with similar hearts, and this courage to break through their own predicament, finally naturally had a relationship.
But "Flesh and Spirit" is not exactly about the relationship between the soul and the body, it breaks through the limitations of hormonal film thinking, and uses delicate and grotesque techniques to show us the barriers of interaction between people and the gap between poetry and reality.
Iltico Injeti is a famous European surrealist filmmaker, whose lens language is concise and profound and delicate. At the beginning of the movie, the two deer in the ice and snow actually show us the situation of the male and female protagonists.
The deer has a gentle and sensitive personality, just like Maria and Andre, although they are all obedient people, but their solitary personality makes them always inaccessible to the real crowd. The quiet and vast snow forest is a reflection of their inner loneliness and coldness.
Two deer foraging in the snow and ice, accompanying each other, the most intimate relationship is nothing more than the tip of the nose touching the tip of the nose. When Andre breaks through himself and explains something to the misunderstood Maria, the snow and ice of the dream that night melt and the greenery is high. Although, in reality, Maria and Andre did not even dare to hold hands. And when Maria avoids Andre's hand, the dream of the night returns to the vast snowy field, and the male deer and the female deer look at each other across the lake and dare not come closer.
The metaphor of the snow forest and the deer is the beauty of art and the self-perception of a few people. This subtle plot prompts me to be vigilant: there are people in life who can't understand them with clichéd experiences. Their understanding of intimate relationships is both highly spiritual and niche, as well as strong self-conflict. If they don't get enough trust and self-affirmation in an intimate relationship, they can't feel the pleasure of the relationship.
At the end of the story, Maria and Andre wake up after a warm night, the sun hitting their smiling faces.
They dined together, and the picture was warm and splendid.
At this point, the camera returns to the snowy forest, where there are no deer, and the ice and snow world gradually turns white until it disappears.
Whether Maria and Andre will be happy in the future, we don't know. But people's hearts are always eager to hug the group for warmth. If you meet someone with a common soul, you may wish to sleep together.