In my opinion, the most outstanding part of this film is the mastery of details and the proficient use of psychology. The two complement each other and build a more rigorous story together. Therefore, I would like to try to analyze from these two points, but the author is still young and has limited knowledge and qualifications. This article is my debut, and I hope to forgive any omissions. Please be merciful, ha ha.
I read the Chinese subtitled version, so I will use the transliterated name for the time being. The English name provided on the Internet is really troublesome. Perfectionists must forgive me.
In fact, the narrative of this movie is a bit like "Mulholland", but I personally feel that compared with this movie, this movie is still a little bit of money. (Personal opinion, for reference only) The story itself is very simple, but the screenwriter deliberately modularized the details of the story, and then reassembled it in a seemingly unruly framework, and then gave the audience the most critical fragments through the final plot of the film to complete it. The whole puzzle. From this point of view, I think Xiuwei's memories of the encounter between the two stepmothers at the end, and the phrase "Xiulian died long ago" from his father should be the key fragments. From these two fragments, I got two conclusions: First, my sister Xiulian should be an illusion. In other words, no one can see him except Xiuwei. But what if she is a ghost? This is complicated, I will explain it slowly later. Second, the plot related to Xiuwei's last recollection should be an illusion. Everyone understands this, so I won't explain it. In addition, the screenwriter left us two keys to the truth:
first, father. In the whole story, he is the only normal person who runs through the whole story, that is to say, his every move is the truth behind the illusion.
Second, I have to pay tribute to another great brain-consuming movie—Inception. He taught us a great truth. Anything that is obviously abnormal is likely to be a joke made by the brain.
Book The True Story
I think the film has three of the greatest mysteries: stepmother in the end is true or false; Xiu Wei's illness is how is it; in the end there are no ghosts. I will try to make my own analysis.
Let's take a look at the core of the story-Xiuwei. From my limited psychological knowledge, I feel that she is not just pure schizophrenia, but more like a schizophrenia plus schizophrenia. So why is she a separation of personality? The so-called split personality means that a person splits into several personalities at the same time and is not affected by each other. Xiuwei's situation is in line with these symptoms. I will prove them one by one later. At the same time, starting with this inference, I am about to unravel the first mystery that bothers me: whether the stepmother in the first half of the movie is real or fake. As for schizophrenia, the signs are too obvious to say more.
First of all, let’s talk about my thinking: Xiuwei’s illusion and stepmother’s true and false should be equivalent. In other words, as long as it can be proved that the stepmother is only an illusion, it also proves that she does not actually exist in the first half of the film. .
Inferring from this, if she is real, then she should be a normal person like her father, and she should not see her sister Xiulian. At the beginning of the film, there is a scene where the stepmother welcomes Xiuwei home, where she clearly said the pronoun of the two of you, it is obvious that she saw her sister Xiulian. In addition, the confrontation with Xiulian several times later can clearly prove that he did see his sister. But there are two doubts here: First, what if the little girl is not Xiuwei’s illusion but a ghost? Second, what if the stepmother itself is not normal?
If we assume that the stepmother is real, but she also has schizophrenia, everything seems to make sense: He can see the little girl because of hallucinations, and the reason why he took revenge on the little girl is because he killed the mother and daughter Xiulian. A total explosion of guilt and grievance suffered in the role of stepmother. Even taking a step back, even if he is a normal person, can't he become a lunatic under the torment of Xiulian's ghost? (Halo, this hypothesis seems more weird) There is obvious evidence in the film to prove both hypotheses. First of all, medicine. When the family was eating, the father gave the medicine to his stepmother. After the guest left, the father gave the stepmother again in the room. During the period, my father didn't make it clear that if this was for Xiuwei, does this imply that the stepmother also had the same hallucinations as Xiuwei? What's more interesting is that the second stage obviously took place in the stepmother's room. It can be seen from the decoration of his room. I clearly remember that my father said to his stepmother before giving the pills: Go back to the room. If the person at this time is Xiuwei, why doesn't he go back to his room? Here is a digression: Stepmother, father, Xiuwei, and Xiulian are obviously different in detail: first is their bed. In the middle of the film, there is a close-up of the bedroom of three people. The father's logo is a single bed with guards, the stepmother's logo is a blue wallpaper, a red wardrobe and a red quilt, and their room is downstairs. Xiuwei's logo is a blue pillow and a blue quilt, Xiulian's is a green quilt and that cripple wardrobe, and their room is upstairs. Secondly, the father finally called and said that he could not cope with the situation alone, so he wanted to pick up someone to come back and help him. From the following plot, we can know that the person is the stepmother. But the question is, when did she leave? Or does it mean that there are only two living people in the house, father and Xiuwei? In fact, there is no obvious account of the stepmother's departure in the film. Of course, just the sentence "I'll pick you up" can't prove that the stepmother has been absent.
This is the first mystery I encountered. In fact, as long as it is solved, it indirectly proves that the stepmother is not just a fantasy, but the second personality shown by Xiuwei.
There are mainly six plots in the film that Xiuwei and her stepmother participate in: table standoff one, late night standoff, afternoon tea standoff, table standoff two, abuse of Xiulian, life and death struggle, one by one, I need to use the key to unlock them. Fragment 1: Xiuwei's memories. In fact, if you look closely, you will find that this memory has a chronological order. He pushed forward from the struggle between life and death to the beginning of the plot of Xiuwei's arrival at the house, which corresponds to the six major plots. Let me start with the simplest.
Episode 6: The struggle between life and death. This is obviously an illusion. There are too many evidences and most of them are obvious. Let me talk about the least obvious one. Everyone noticed that Xiuwei did not have any hands. In the whole fight, Xiuwei was not injured except for her head. The injured hand is actually the stepmother. If you look closely, you will find that the stepmother injured her right hand, while Xiuwei injured her right hand. The reasonable explanation is that Xiuwei is both the stepmother and himself, and they completely broke into two. Individuals confront each other, but in fact they are essentially one. So Xiuwei pierced herself. But there is a lens here that may be worn, that is, Xiuwei's stepmother's hand is also right, how could he use his right hand to pierce his right hand? Haha, this is a bit more real.
Episode two: confrontation in the middle of the night. It was Xiuwei who was waiting for her father while wearing lipstick on the bed; "We still had an official holiday on the same day." All this shows that the stepmother in the late-night confrontation may be a fake, because the confrontation took place in the stepmother's bedroom, and the place where she put on lipstick happened to be here, which means that Xiuwei got up wherever she slept. In addition, according to the following plot, the father finally left his stepmother and went back to his room to rest and was sleeping all the time. The plot in which Xiuwei helped him tuck the quilt can prove. In other words, only Xiuwei is awake at this time. At this time, Xiuwei completed three personality transformations. The first time it was the stepmother. He was first awakened by the sound of footsteps. I have a strange discovery here: Xiuwei has straight hair, while the stepmother has curly hair. The first stepmother to wake up has curly hair, but everyone does not realize it. Does he look too much like Xiuwei? Fortunately, there is evidence behind that this is the personality of the stepmother, that is his feet. Have you noticed that the stepmother's toenails are painted, but Xiuwei and Xiulian's are not. The second time it was sister Xiulian. In that weird quilt-lifting plot, if we assume that Xiulian is just an illusion, then the only person who can feel all this is Xiuwei. The last time it was Xiuwei herself. This is easy to understand and does not explain. As for official holidays, just ask how likely it is that people who can happen to be on the same day live in the same house again.
Plot 1: The table confronts one. Do you remember the memories of Xiuwei taking medicine? There are two points worth noting here. One is the painting on the wall. In the previous plot, Xiuwei sat opposite her stepmother, and there were no paintings on the wall behind her, but there were paintings on the wall in the memory. The second is the kettle, which he covered with a rattan cover, and only in front of his stepmother, but in front of Xiuwei in his memory. These show that the person taking the medicine is actually Xiuwei. At this time, he played the personality of a stepmother. why? At this time, someone at the table was indeed speaking in the tone of a stepmother, because the father responded, and a normal person would not have auditory hallucinations. Obviously it is impossible to be sister Xiulian, so the only possibility is: Xiuwei is talking at this time, but Xiuwei thinks that she is a stepmother, a typical personality split. Then can't all of this be an illusion? I don't think so, because a key is present-father. Do you remember that a former father told Xiuwei that Xiulian was dead? If everything is an illusion, then his father is also part of Xiuwei's illusion, then how could he say the above from his own standpoint? Shouldn't he see Xiulian like Xiuwei? In the same way, it can be proved that the dining table confronts one.
Episode five: abuse Xiulian. This was the cleanest personality transition. At this time, Xiulian only played the role of stepmother. The evidence was the bird that was crushed to death by him. From the back memories, Xiuwei killed the bird, so Xiuwei let the bird on the bed. Can't it be by someone? impossible. Looking at the bridge section behind, my father buried a dead bird in the ground, then looked up at the window upstairs, there was only one shadow, right? If these are not hallucinations, then there are at least two shadows, because Xiulian was forced to the corner window during the abuse, but do you see his shadow? Can't it be the scene at the end of the abuse band? That loud noise during the abuse, can't my father hear? He is downstairs. There is also evidence here. At the end of the film, my father heard it when the wardrobe fell, and the place where the wardrobe fell should be the same place from the wallpaper in the room-Xiulian's bedroom. At that time, the place where my father stood was not far from the place where the bird was buried that night. So he must have heard Xiulian's continuous smashing of the closet and the screams of her stepmother. If the stepmother is the real body.
Episodes 3 and 4 can be said together, because they are very close. During the afternoon tea confrontation, the first thing to note is that the time is evening, and the sunlight outside the window can be seen. Here Xiuwei does not act as a personality, and the stepmother who confronts her should be an illusion. The evidence is that the father came out of the toilet immediately after hearing the sound of breaking the teapot, but the stepmother who was sitting at the table pouring tea was gone, and only Xiuwei was crying. Is there no time difference? No. Because my father saw Xiuwei leave the table and walk towards the kitchen door, he inferred that it should be the action of smashing the teapot immediately. How can the stepmother disappear without a trace in a few seconds interval? Later, the phone rang, and according to the story behind it, it should be from the uncle's family (the reason why it is said to be uncle, there are details in the front table confrontation). It's also relatively clean here. Xiuwei is just a stepmother. There are two proofs. When the stepmother told a joke, he clearly said: "Our mother couldn't laugh when she saw it." (It basically means, I can't remember the original sentence) Unconsciously, something is wrong? From the following plot, this should be the stepmother talking about the uncle's childhood. Who knows this? Birth mother. I think this might be the reason why my aunt finally got scared, ha ha ha. It does not matter. The second piece of evidence is weird. When I want to understand, I jumped. Remember the previous dialogue between Xiuwei and stepmother? "I won't eat with that man" "That man is your uncle." Did you find something wrong? Yes, Xiuwei really did what she said.
The first big mystery is revealed. We already know the complicated relationship between Xiuwei, Xiulian, and stepmother.
Here is the second mystery: what is going on with Xiuwei's illness.
Xiuwei is the only person who knows the truth in the whole incident, that is, the stepmother is the complicity in killing her mother and sister indirectly, why is she complicit? Who is the mastermind? Haha, let me tell you later. Closer to home. In fact, the inner world of the real stepmother is also cleverly expressed through the setting of split personality, and at the same time it greatly increases the weirdness and brain-consuming degree of the film, which is the so-called kill two birds with one stone.
In fact, I have always felt that the stepmother is not a pure bad person. He and everyone in the film, except for mother and Xiulian (because there is no relevant plot proof), is just a person who often needs humanity to struggle with good and evil and often makes mistakes because of this. Ordinary people. Through Xiuwei’s mouth, one of the emotions of our stepmother is most likely to be resentment: for the man we love, we have to please her daughter in every possible way. Even if we are wronged, we have nowhere to complain. Wrong? (Suggest to watch "In the Mood for Love") Under such emotions, people will naturally be distorted. In addition, another thing that made me believe this is that after seeing Xiulian being pressed under the closet, the stepmother still wanted to save him, which is why she tried to turn back to save people after she was scared away. , It was just that Xiuwei was killed halfway, and after a ridicule, the stepmother's dark humanity broke out completely, and he was not saved, and said the sentence: "You should regret this moment." At this point, our mastermind is about to debut, she is --- Xiuwei. This is the first cause: regret.
In fact, if you carefully analyze the moment when the accident happened, all people think of is where the sound comes from, it's very simple. The stepmother should be the first to have bad ideas. From the plot behind, if the mother and daughter of Xiulian died like this, she would not have a rival in love, and it would be very cost-effective. However, the moment he stayed in the corridor, the change in expression and his last attempt to turn back both showed that she had actually dispelled this sinful thought until Xiuwei appeared, and he opened the box like Pandora. In summary, Xiuwei is the real murderer who killed her sister. This is the second cause, fear, deep fear.
I think it is appropriate to describe Xiuwei as Pandora. He is more like a symbol, representing the principle of human fragility. In the long struggle between satisfying the id and satisfying the superego, I am afraid that only a handful of people can hold on to it. What the film best illustrates is the view from the window of Xiuwei at the end. It seems that her sister’s call for help stopped her, but the figure of the stepmother, or Xiuwei’s hatred of her father and stepmother, made her feel bad. The heart was once again deceived, and since then it has ruined a better ending. However, if you savor it carefully, isn't all the hatred because of love? Because of the younger sister and birth mother, because of the beloved man, Xiuwei and stepmother entangled each other, and finally merged into a twisted existence. Maybe it's because the love is not deep and broad enough... I remembered a sentence: We compromise, but don't want to lose more. This is the final cause, hatred.
Can our patients just walk into the abyss step by step and can't extricate themselves from it? Is everything going to end in such a tragedy?
Looking at the end first, my father personally put the pill in Xiuwei's hand, seeing all this Xiuwei ate it in despair. In fact, the pill here is a symbol of disease. As long as you eat it, it proves the existence of the disease. Do you remember the previous episode of family eating? At that time, it was not Xiuwei but the stepmother who faced the pill. In other words, even if she admitted that she was ill, it was only Xiuwei's imaginary personality and not Xiuwei herself. What's more, the film never told the audience that the stepmother at the time was exactly. Did she take the pills, so I don’t know if Xiuwei admitted to her illness at that time. However, there was a plot later that when Xiuwei complained to her father that her stepmother had abused her sister, her father told Xiuwei the truth that Xiulian had died. At that time, Xiuwei was shocked and ran away angrily. It was obvious that this At that time, he had not yet acknowledged the existence of hallucinations, and from the later development, it was his father's narration at this time that laid one of the fuses for Xiuwei's awakening. What is the other fuse? Quite a lot: the clothes in the closet at the beginning of the film, the same notebook in the desk, the underwear in front of my father's door, and the uncle's "I don't remember". In short, what makes him suspect that what he sees and feels does not actually exist. The question is, why is it important to admit that it does not exist, because if a patient with split personality and schizophrenia admits his hallucinations, it means that he no longer believes in his fantasies, and he is almost fine. In fact, the whole story stems from Xiuwei’s evasion of reality. She is still unable to face her own faults (it’s a bit like "The Mechanic" here), so she turns her hatred, fear, and regret into the personality of her stepmother. Just shirk all responsibilities. Of course, he did not completely deceive himself, the only exit in the darkness is his sister, where all his love is stored.
Having said that, evasion does not mean salvation, Xiuwei can become a normal person only when facing reality, and becoming normal seems to be the most happy ending. Going back to the previous inference, Xiuwei swallowed the pill after having painful memories. It seems that Xiuwei should have accepted the reality in the end. Acceptance is better than escape, isn't it? It seems that the heavy atmosphere of the film can be regarded as a touch of sunshine. So at that moment he actually recovered. But the question is, if he recovers, he will no longer have hallucinations? His stepmother personality should also disappear with it? But how does this explain the plot of Xiuwei sitting on the bed and calling her sister's name? As a result, the screenwriter leads us to the third mystery-is there any haunted?
Continue our speculation in the previous paragraph. If Xiuwei finally sees the hallucinations, then the part where her stepmother was scared by ghosts in the room can be explained as Xiuwei's second personality at work. In this way, Xiuwei successfully pushed the guilt of her sister and biological mother onto her stepmother, and then returned to her identity as a patient, thus proving that there was no ghost. However, this argument has many doubts: the
first thing that cannot be explained is the ghost upper body of the invited couple. Is it real or fantasy for my uncle to come to eat at home? This will rely on the role of the father. As a normal person, the paragraphs in which he participates should be true. At the beginning of the film, a father told the doctor (I guess it should be) on the phone that his uncle was invited, so they should have really come. And when saving the aunt, the father was also one of the participants, so the couple should be real. The horror is coming, do you remember what the wife said in the car? "I saw a little girl under the closet"...
It seems to be afraid that we don't believe this. In the latter shot we saw a little girl sitting on a chair. (Look carefully, I didn't See clearly) What’s even stranger is that I found a rule. When hallucinations appear, the first perspective must be Xiuwei or her personality. In other words, she has seen it with her own eyes. It's the audience.........the
other doubt is Xiuwei herself. I found that in the main story, all the hallucinations of Xiuwei revolve around her sister Xiulian. So, why does she have the hallucinations of ghosts? There is a possibility that this illusion is a kind of feedback to the sister’s fear of revenge. This is quite reasonable, but the problem is that in the previous argument, we found that in addition to being seen by Xiuwei’s mental illness, ghosts were also seen by Xiuwei’s mental illness. The wife of the couple and all the audience saw that with these two eyewitnesses, everything is
hard to say... There is also an argument about whether the ghost is the younger sister or the biological mother? I think my sister should be an illusion. As explained earlier, she has always been a symbol of love, an object of protection, and Xiuwei's last hope of redemption. This is why only Xiuwei can see it herself. At the same time, he is also a personality. Xiuwei played the role of her sister in the late-night confrontation and the life-and-death struggle (the part where she lay on the ground and said "Save me") to feel fear and helplessness, thereby venting her fear and helplessness.
I think even if there is a ghost, it should be a mother. There are two reasons. First, sister Xiulian once chanted a spell, remember, he said it was used to summon his mother. And the ghost just appeared after that. Some people say that ghosts have already appeared after the confrontation in the middle of the night? No, first of all, it was obviously a dream. Three pieces of evidence can prove that, first, there is a scene where Xiuwei awakened in the following plot, and then, his father came up to see Xiuwei to prove that he did wake up, and the front was indeed Dream. Third, the eldest aunt. There is a section of the menstrual holiday behind. It can be inferred that Xiuwei is the only one who came to the menstrual holiday. Remember the blood between the nigger’s legs? If you don't explain it, it will be yellow, ha ha. Freud taught us that dreams are a reflection of reality. I think this nigger is more like a symbol of Xiuwei's fear, because in his previous dream, he was affected by the death of his mother and sister. Judging from the appearance of the nigger, he looked like a hanged mother. Why do I say it is Xiuwei's fear? Pay attention to the nigger’s company, don’t you think it’s a bit like a person? In the end, all the ghost images appeared twice, once at the table confrontation two, and once at the ending revenge. The same thing is that facing them is aunt, stepmother, Xiuwei's stepmother personality, do you find it strange? They are all afraid of their mothers and sorry for their mothers. Of course, the only people who have to take revenge are the stepmother and Xiuwei, but the tiger poison does not eat children, Xiuwei has been punished by the application, and the aunt is only an insider at best, and the father has been kept in the dark. But I believe he finally knew the truth. Do you remember the last episode in the hospital? There is a brand-new character who is standing at the end of the corridor and chatting with his father. Two points are worth noting. One is that he is not a doctor, and he is not a participant in the incident. Who is that? Second, when he was talking, his eyes were looking at the stepmother, indicating that the content must have something to do with the stepmother. And after hearing his words, there was a disappointed look on his father's face. I really have no evidence here, I can only guess, will he be a policeman?
The last question is whether the real stepmother is hell? I find it hard to say. Because from the plot behind, he went back by car with his father, but this does not mean that he was back to the house. There is no father in that paragraph, but this doesn't explain much of the problem. Also, that segment appeared after Xiuwei's thinking, couldn't it be his fantasy again. Some people say that the thought was passed between the two memories of Xiuwei, which proved to be an illusion. However, the two of them are co-participants in the event, so it is not impossible to have a common memory, and synchronized recall. And at the end of the final, Xiuwei shed tears at the end of the memory, indicating that he accepted everything and that he has recovered. At this time, the hallucinations are a little bit unreasonable. In short, I have no proof here. It is estimated to be an open ending.
Finally finished writing. In the end, I just want to say, cherish the beautiful, even if you have more reasons to choose to hate, you still give up love after all.
Attached is a legend related to "Rose and Red Lotus", thank you for enduring my rant:
Original story:
"Rose and Red Lotus" was originally a folktale that has been circulated in Korea for a long time, to the effect that there was once a pair of sisters. The famous rose and red lotus. The two sisters were regarded as a thorn in the eye by the stepmother Xu. In order to get rid of them, the Xu family peeled off the skin of a mouse and stuffed it secretly into the bed of the two sisters, so as to falsely accuse Rose in front of her husband Pei Junshou, saying that this was the proof that she had an adulterous pregnancy and a miscarriage; On the way to take the rose to grandma's house, Xu instructed her son Zhenshou to push her into the water and drown. After learning that her sister had been killed for no reason, Gulian was in distress. Under the guidance of the blue bird, she found the pond where her sister had drowned, and jumped into the water to commit suicide. The bright red lotus was blooming in the pond. The two sisters went to the head of the county to redress their grievances. Seeing the ghost, the head of the county immediately died on the ground. Since then, several county chiefs in the area have died because of seeing the two souls. The matter was finally known to the court, and a brave and shrewd county guard was sent to accept the case. After accepting the complaints of the two wronged souls, the county guard clarified the truth, executed the murderer Xu Lingchi, and set up a monument to comfort the wronged souls of Rose and Red Lotus.
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