Distance between Attachment and Detachment

Monty 2022-04-22 07:01:31

After reading it, there are a lot of ideas, let's start with the name. Detachment, the root of which comes from attachment. I think the film has a layer of meaning to tell about this kind of emotional or spiritual sustenance and relief, which is emotional attachment/detachment. The male protagonist only serves as a class teacher and only makes a short stay in each school. In fact, it is because he does not like to have any spiritual dependence and emotional fetters. This has to do with his dark childhood. Including the little girl he sent away later. His mother's suicide when he was a child made him fearful of any emotional dependence, of facing the excruciating pain of this forced separation. So, he always detaches his emotional attachment by pulling away before he has an emotional attachment to anyone.
As a teacher, he also said at the beginning that everyone always thinks that teachers will have a great influence on students, and even change their lives. However, Meredith's death told him that in fact everyone is so insignificant, who you think you can change, in fact, the depression of death is still powerless. When he faced the painful blow of death again, he went to the little girl, who could warm his heart, and their relationship was a kind of redemption for each other.
In fact, his life with the little girl was hopeless. The phone call basically told the audience that the little girl was HIV-positive. The shadow of his childhood lingered there, and he would keep changing schools. . . His self-positioning, which needs warmth and hope, and keeps a distance because of the cold, is always tossing between attachment and detachment. It is also a tug-of-war between the inner world and the real world. That's why I especially liked the passage from Camus at the beginning of the film, and it is also very relevant: and never have I felt so deeply at one and the same time so detached from myself and so present in the world.

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Extended Reading

Detachment quotes

  • Henry Barthes: I am money, I change hands like the dollar bill, that has been rubbed by a lamp; Then a genie appeared and cried loudly, with volume; But the tears were all for myself, and that's where it all went wrong

  • Henry Barthes: [In nursing home] Grampa, you doing any writing in your journal?

    [Thumbs through empty journal]

    Grampa: I don't remember much, I lost the habit. You can't think in this place, you can't make new memories.