Analysis of a Dream: Deconstruction of "Falling In" from a Psychological Perspective

Pattie 2021-12-13 08:01:12

"Falling" is a fantasy film with a strange idea. The film tells the story of the film stunt actor Roy was seriously injured while shooting a stunt shot, paralyzed and unconscious in the lower part of the body. Extremely desperate and desperate, he just wanted to die. In the Catholic Hospital, he met Alexandra, a 5-year-old girl who was hospitalized because of a broken arm, and the two gradually became friends of very different ages. Roy tells stories to the little girl every day, but in his heart he wants to use the little girl to help him complete his suicide plan.

Roy’s virtual story alternates with real scenes. This “picture-in-picture” plot design attempts to use a metaphor and corresponding method to reveal a person’s true inner struggle to the audience. These "two worlds" are full of many corresponding symbols. The contradictions and entanglements in Roy's heart in the real world are projected into the conflicts of specific characters in the virtual story, just like the subconscious dancing on a stage in a dream. So if you understand the meaning of these images, you can understand Roy's mental journey to a certain extent.



1. Instinctual conjecture In the

virtual story, his enemy is the governor. In the real world, his enemy is the love rival who robbed his girlfriend. The image of both of them is a certain movie star, which is a strong suggestion. In the virtual story, the governor robbed his woman and killed his brother. The woman symbolizes the betrayal in love in reality, and the death of the brother implies the loss of career caused by injury in reality.

In the virtual story, Roy led a five-person bandit group and went through untold hardships to the Governor's castle. The strong motivation for revenge can be understood as a kind of death instinct-a powerful driving force for destruction and killing.

I prefer to understand it as the instinct of life-by killing the governor to complete the inner self-salvation, because the governor is also a symbol of Roy's demons (back table). To understand the motivation of revenge as death instinct is to understand it from the level of appearance, while the life instinct is Roy's self-saving motive in subconsciousness. On the surface, he killed the governor for revenge, but in fact the governor is also his heart knot. , Only by facing and unraveling can you get a new life, which will be mentioned later.

What I want to express here is, from this perspective, it seems that life instinct is better than death instinct? In other words, when a person loses his mind to destroy something, he actually accomplishes his inner self-saving by destroying it (symbolizing the heart knot)? A different, less understood way of healing. However, when people are angry, they love to throw things, destroy them, or even abuse themselves, and then they feel comfortable. This seems to be a circumstantial evidence. This is not a ritual, but the death instinct is released through the complete destruction of something (in popular words, the emotion is vented), and the life instinct gains a huge living space. So, after the stormy madness, I calmed down, my anger disappeared, my stomach was hungry (a strange phenomenon is that after venting, people will feel calm hunger), vitality is restored with eating-life instinct finally Win. To understand it this way, it seems that the life instinct is wise and forbearing, and will always win the final victory, while the death instinct is direct and strong, but in the end it is always satisfied with the life instinct. Although this is not easy to understand, I still want to say that life instinct is related to femininity, and death instinct is related to masculinity. Just as everyone is born with both male and female temperaments, the life and death instincts are also hidden in the depths of the soul at the same time.



2. A sense of powerlessness swallows you.

Roy leads a robber team. The Governor has an elite guard. The contradictions in the virtual story are simple and clear. This contradiction has multiple meanings on both sides. It not only symbolizes Roy's anger at his doom and rivals in the real world, but also symbolizes Roy's own conflict: the conflict of life and death instinct, defeating the governor is life, giving up self-help is death—— Suicide in reality.

The robber team and the elite guards were purely supporting roles, so they were arranged to die together, leaving Roy and the Governor face to face. At this moment, there was an unexpected scene: Roy, a warrior with a strong motivation for revenge, lost resistance weakly in the pool, and let the Governor cause him to death. Only the weak one responded to the cry of the little girl on the shore: "I can't get up...", reminiscent of the story of the elephant being tied up with a rope, and this belief in "I can't get up" is also completely tied. After Roy's power and desire to survive, his powerlessness left him with the only choice: tie his hands and wait for death.

This climax segment in the virtual story also symbolizes Roy’s mood in reality: in the trough of life, he has given up resistance, and he hopes that morphine will keep him awake, just like letting the governor end his life in a dream. .

The governor at this moment has turned into a symbol of Roy’s feelings of incompetence, failure, and tragedy, and all his negative evaluations of him. He bravely raised the dying Roy howling: "God, there is only water here. Waist deep" "Sad! Look at this addict!". Unconcealable disappointment, deep disappointment in Roy's cowardice and powerlessness, and subconsciously Roy's disappointment in himself.

Coincidentally, I recently watched Haruki Murakami's "1Q84" and I was impressed by the famous saying of the heroine Aomame: powerlessness can swallow a person. Her good friend Otsuka-Huan, because of the powerlessness in his bones, allowed her husband to commit domestic violence, and finally hanged herself with her six-month-old fetus. Powerless to resist, "get it off" after death-powerlessness to swallow life. One of the reasons to appreciate the role of Qingdou is her tenacity and perseverance. Perhaps these two words originally meant the same thing.

And in your life, have you ever encountered powerlessness unexpectedly? Did you choose the way Otsuka ring/Roy gave up to face it, or the tenacity of the green beans?

Of course, Roy is not dead, otherwise it would not be a movie.

The hero who came to save him was the little girl's cry: "Get up! Show me your hand!" To be precise, it was the second half of the sentence that saved him: Show me your hand! So, some kind of strength supported him to stretch out his hand and hit the governor.

This is really a meaningful move.

Reaching out and standing up symbolize mobility. Yes, this is the exquisite and concise prescription for the treatment of "powerlessness": take action! The sense of powerlessness was wiped out in the action!

When life is enveloped by meaninglessness, powerlessness, and helplessness, the brain cannot find meaning from stories of failure and sadness and self-pity. Only actions can create meaning! The still scenery will only repeat the dull and gloomy picture, and only the flow can get the fresh stimulation!

It is not so much that love saved him such empty words, as it is his own hands that saved him. If Otsuka can stretch her hands to open the door of her house and open the door of the law firm, her new life may not have to wait for the indefinite afterlife. If a person in the depression center can reach out and open a window and see the sunlight spreading in the mountains, there may be different changes flowing.

Reach out and push the door open.



3. Regarding the title of the film,

usually the title contains meaningful hints.

The fall. When

filming, he fell from horseback-the beginning of his fall to the bottom of his life.

The fall of the little girl-a fall out of love in order to save Roy's life.

In addition, The fall also symbolizes that while Roy fell on horseback, he also fell to the bottom of despair in his heart, and the whole film is the process of climbing out of this bottom and standing up again. From this perspective, it can even be regarded as a 120-minute psychological healing. Those with a heart will surely discover the essence of healing and the mechanism of curative effect. And interested professionals may also have a lot of useful discoveries for psychotherapy.

In its essence, isn't life just a repeated journey of "falling-rising"? And in your story, what is it that always supports you not to keep falling every time you fall?





The ingenuity of this film lies in this virtual story, which is more like a dream of Roy, a dream with a complete plot and rigorous logic. The dream fully manifests the flow of Roy's subconscious mind, and completes the healing effect through the symbolic transformation at the climax, and Roy in reality gains a new life from this. Perhaps it was this kind of power that helped him recover and become an excellent actor again.

At the end of the film, the little girl found the beautiful butterfly in the orchard after returning to her manor. Amazingly, I also found a similar beautiful butterfly by the window just now, the same yellow, black and red, and the same charming pattern.

When I tried to leave a clear and beautiful photo, it flew away. Only a vague image is left:…………………………………………

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Extended Reading
  • Jayde 2022-03-28 09:01:03

    That's called a bells and whistles, but it carries too little content, hehe

  • Francisca 2022-04-24 07:01:07

    This is my favorite Tasim work. It is very common for reality and imagination to cross and progress, but there are too few works that can grasp the scale and timing of the fusion of reality and fantasy in the progress, but this is precisely the A textbook example, the fictional characters in Roy's stories are the projections of the people around him in his real life on his psychology and consciousness, and his own failure and cowardly fate affects every plot and every movement in the story. The addition of the little girl was really coincidental, and it made him subconsciously pulled back from the brink of suicide. The last segment of the group portrait of special effects actors was really full of emotion, and the girl's narration was inexplicably sad. The movie is the protagonist. The tool person, the heroine loves not you, being beaten and bumped every day, jumping off buildings and bridges, torturing herself, suffering and afflicting, in life, I am still a useless person who thinks of suicide every day, with a green grassland on her head, this kind of life, who is he? Mom can take it. And the pictures and soundtracks I just blew my mind. Every frame of the picture, the action design of each character, and the costumes are too delicate. It seems that this rumor of burning money like paper is really not a blow, it is too strong.

The Fall quotes

  • Blue Bandit: I will destroy him. And every Spanish thing.

    Alexandria: I thought he was Spanish.

    Roy Walker: [covering for himself] No... he was French...

  • Alexandria: You always stop at the same part, when it's very beautiful. Interesting.