preface:
Time, place, encounter, death cannot bring me to my knees / My humblest desire is the least movement.
This is a quote from the 17th-century English poet Francis Qualse, and it is also a touching quote from this novel, which is the most reasonable way to describe this touching love.
A love that transcends time and space, a love that knows the end but cannot be stopped, a love that knows that you have left, but I will never give up waiting.
Released in 2009, the American fantasy blockbuster "Time Traveler's Wife", adapted from the first novel of American writer Audrine Finger, was nominated for Best Science Fiction At the 12th American Teen Choice Awards. The novel was included in the New York Times bestseller list shortly after its publication in 2005 and was named one of the 100 books indispensable in life by The Guardian in 2007. As a visual artist, the author perfectly integrates wonderful novel elements from a unique aesthetic perspective, and the image of the male protagonist Henry satisfies a woman's ultimate fantasy of love.
It's a love movie under the shell of science fiction. The male protagonist Henry suffers from time impaired disease, also known as chronic time dislocation, and he will unconsciously wander through different time and space. He will always meet Claire from childhood to adulthood at different ages. And when he thought it was the first time he met Claire, Claire told him, "I've known you for a long time." ”
It's a fatal love, and it's also a bizarre love. Even after witnessing the death of his mother and unable to change the past, even if he could not have a stable life because of the setbacks of time and space, he never missed the love between him and Claire. A love movie is full of faith and the philosophy of time and space.
From the painful and sad memories of the protagonist Henry in his youth, to the feeling of powerlessness that constantly travels through time and tries to change the past, to the encounter and love with his wife Claire in reality, to the helpless but resolute mentality in the face of death, the trajectory of this fate is constantly presented in a fantastic way, making Henry's personality connotation from the release of the ego and the suppression of the self to the normative process of the superego.
Freud's theory of personality held that personality is a whole, including the id, the ego, and the superego. The original self is the psychological premise and energy basis of my existence, and the self is the awakening of this consciousness, the beginning of the self-exploration of things. The superego, on the other hand, is a moral and ethical me, characterized by the pursuit of perfection, the psychological set in which my nature is satisfied and reality allows for a high degree of self-praise.
With the help of Henry and the unrestricted travel of time, the film makes this process of exploration of human nature more obvious.
(1) The release of the self
Henry's mother died when he was young, and his father became separated from him, and the two had almost no communication. Henry became an orphan in the practical sense of the word, groping for his own growth, without the constraints of immorality, all by his own will and pleasure. All he thinks about is his own safety and his own happiness.
Because there is no parental teaching, and time travel has to first consider the problem of survival in order to survive, Henry simply ignores the moral bottom line and the rules of society, which leads to the chaos of his life at the beginning. Henry's everything is premised on the ego, and his philosophy is only to survive.
But the idea of survival is only the minimum need, and only by releasing it from the consciousness of the self can we gain the freedom of personality and the evolution of self-knowledge.
In real life, there is also such a group of people, everything only uses money as the only purpose of survival, although it is enjoying the self-happiness itself, but it has not thought about the responsibility that they should bear. Such a life seems happy at first glance, but in fact it leaves only emptiness and dazedness.
(2) Struggling self
Henry has been facing the pain of his mother's death, and has always wanted to return to the scene of the accident and change the past but to no avail, so he has been seeking constant hope, and the hope is always shattered. Even in the face of his own death, he found that he was powerless to change, and the only thing he could do was to live and die. He has been trapped by time all his life and has been exploring himself. In the end he found that the power of reality was so great that he was powerless to change it except to adapt and accept, to conform to reality. So he slowly changed from a natural person to a real person.
In the process of society, people will slowly move from the original self to the process of self. At the beginning of life, the pursuit of self-happiness, hope to live as you want, eat when you want, drink when you want. But in real life, slowly you will encounter an immutable status quo, and the only thing to do is to constantly compromise with reality. In the process of compromise, some self-happiness will inevitably be sacrificed, so it will often become very contradictory, painful and entangled.
The reason why it is so painfully entangled is because people do not understand the deeper meaning, have been trapped in the dilemma of thinking, and have not gone out.
(3) The normative superego
If one wants to get out of a difficult situation, one must find an exit in one's own self, that is, to move towards the existence of the superego. The superego is the highest level of personality structure, a requirement of the moral structure.
Henry struggled with himself until he met Claire. Because of the power of love, he began to abandon his own dazed life status quo, began to explore the meaning of life, began to have warmth, and looked forward to building a better future with Claire. He opened his heart, released his former suspicions with his father, and fulfilled his filial piety for his father. When talking about the problem of the child, he is no longer self-centered and prefers to stop the tragedy of his wife's constant miscarriage through ligation surgery. When faced with the coming of death, he did not complain about life as in the past, but chose to accept the arrangement of fate and wait for death to come naturally.
Love crosses the distance of time and space, connecting the past and the future. Henry was in a sense reborn. Although he still contains uncertainty in the passage of time, because of the eternity of love, he has moved him to the category of superego. In this moment, his heart is at peace, it is calm.
The meaning of the film is to explore Freud's journey on personality structure through such a process.
When we don't have a family, we often only think about personal problems, whether our own desires have been realized, and what kind of hardships we have in life. But once we have our own family, we will pay more attention to the meaning of love and family, career is not our only pursuit, and let the family get peace and tranquility, is where our value and meaning lie.
First, time is a point of stillness.
In the development of the storyline, the author metaphorically refers to time as a static point or surface, and life and time at this time do not necessarily correspond to the fate of the characters, staying in different time and space.
His wife Claire, as a part of the abandonment and waiting, is always unable to accompany Henry's departure, and can only experience a long wait in a different time and space from her beloved.
As the protagonist of the master, Henry wants to have a hard-won beautiful love, but he often disappears in the relationship with his wife and comes to another uncontrollable time and space.
Love is in our hearts, but we cannot be together. Through this exaggerated expression, the film expresses the difficulty of love. The symbolic meaning behind the film is that we should cherish everything we have, because every moment of life is actually static, and every moment was now. In this moment, we must grasp the time of encounter with the other party and cherish everything in front of us.
Second, from the perspective of life experience, time is fluid.
Time is in motion from the past to the possession of the future, whether it is Claire, who has a normal time operation system, or Henry, who suffers from chronic time dislocation, they are walking along a long axis of time that they have fixed themselves. Although Henry is shuttling, time is also moving.
The trajectory of the two people's lives in the story is precisely because of the movement of time, both synchronous and dislocated, forward and backward, rubbing shoulders with each other and often colliding. This is such a kind of encounterable and non-negotiable, so that their lives are aware of the hard-won nature of love in this uncertainty that can be both envisioned and realistic.
Life is a line of motion, always so wonderful. We have to believe in everything we have to say about meeting a person at this moment, and we have to believe that at some point in our lives we may meet him again. Therefore, there can be no lack of hope for the future in life. Only by working harder and harder can it be possible to show the most perfect self when encountering someone unexpectedly.
This is the meaning of our continuous efforts, as long as we keep moving forward, life will always inadvertently bring you expectations.
(1) Unique film design, fragmented travel stitched together time
The film's time and space travel, fragmented collection, seems to make people feel that treating time and space is like a game mentality. But this design reflects the real mentality of people in real life, and the film gives life more freedom and possibilities in this way.
The male protagonist, Henry, can travel freely through the past or wear or come to the future, while the young self and the still young mother engage in dialogue. But he still had trouble controlling his own destiny. Even though he traveled to the past countless times, he even had love, but he still did not enjoy a long and peaceful happy life, whether he was bathing and eating, or even getting married, reflecting the absurdity of Henry's life.
The design of the film is somewhat fatalistic, but more to warn us that you have to grasp your every moment of your time. If you treat life with a game mentality, then your life will also be fed back to you. Only when you grasp every time node of your own, cherish the present, and strive to live in the present, can you have a better future.
(2) Love is a game with time travel
"Determinism foreshadows that the operation of all things in the world is determined by various preconditions, and that the simple will of the individual can be reversed."
Henry, like the ideal personality in Western values, needs to take on all the things that the self does in order to attain integrity and freedom of personality. Henry's time and space are uncertain, but his will is certain. No matter where he traveled, his love for Claire never faded. Claire's longing for Henry is also eternal, so their love finally triumphs over time and space and wins the competition.
This is also the ultimate foreshadowing of the film, that love is eternal, that it can transcend everything.
The meaning of the film is to revolve around love, which is a love full of waiting, a love full of surprises, a love that makes people feel deeply moved. Through such a narrative, the film expresses the exploration of the true meaning of love.
Love lurks in the depths of our hearts. The revelation for people in real life is that the time of long-distance love and waiting cannot really erase your love, the only thing that changes is people's intentions in time. And truly great love is never indifferent.
True love is an eternal existence across time, and only under the action of love can we find the true meaning of life in ordinary life, and we can also find the meaning of life from the subtle details of life.
"Time Traveler's Wife" seems to show the meaning between time and love, life and travel in a fantastic way, but it is more full of the belief in life and the philosophy of time and space. In the attraction and persistence of love in the film, it also expresses to the audience that the love that is waiting for each other and gradually growing old in waiting is the most beautiful love. It is an extraordinary love that requires unparalleled courage and unwavering resilience. Life needs to always be firm with love, and warm waiting will always run through their lives.