The mother figure is a genius version of Maria from Shouts and Whispers. Selfish, arrogant, charming, good at acting, she wants to make others love herself but never loves others, the love given by others will not be remembered by her, she only sees her own charm from it. While envious of the family life and intimate love of ordinary people's lives, they despise them without caring. She has always been a child, asking for love, trying to be brave and being admired by everyone, not knowing or avoiding her own shortcomings, not admitting them (“not good at living”, “feeling not living”), always describing the love of others for oneself. Unwilling to pay the price for love and therefore unwilling to love others. Being good at acting out love so that others can continue to love oneself constitutes a false promise to the viewer.
Why does a mother insist on describing the love others have for her? She never felt enough, not enough. She has never loved others, doesn't know the meaning of love, and never bears the price of love, so the love of others has only a superficial meaning to her, representing her own charm and success, a symbolic love that she doesn't realize. She desperately seeks to be loved, and she also has a whole set of performing techniques to show love to everyone around her, carrying out this kind of emotional kidnapping, but she can't understand the love of others. An insatiable drink, she only knew what she wanted to eat had a similar taste, but didn't know where it came from, so she couldn't find it anywhere.
Is the daughter a total victim? She accuses her mother throughout the film, repays her with the emotional kidnapping she gave her when she was a child, and sets the trap of revenge on her mother with guilt from the very beginning. I think it's easy for audiences to empathize with her because she's an ostensibly perfect victim, and even her harm to others can be justified in childhood trauma, just as we've got psychology in our hands now. as others claim. This defense itself constitutes emotional kidnapping, requiring others to "understand", not to blame, and to give in. She told her husband "I don't love you", and spent half her life taking care of herself.
Her conversations with her mother were filled with back-and-forth emotional kidnappings, constantly asserting her identity as a victim and giving her the identity of the perpetrator. My mother responded in the same way she defended herself: I was actually in a lot of pain. This constitutes a new layer of emotional kidnapping. When the daughter said "I'll try to understand you", she put her mother in the position of a vexatious child, and herself in the position of a submissive, considerate and benevolent victim, another layer of emotional kidnapping. That's how it goes back and forth. But even in the course of such a malicious exchange, a real touch was formed, allowing the two to reveal their hearts and tell the most secret self-analysis and analysis of each other, shaking the insurmountable wall. How it all resembles us in reality.
The birth of son Eric gave Eva a true love, and her temperament changed greatly. Her husband said, "We were very happy at that time." After the son's death, "everything will be different after this." This allows Eva to believe in the possibility of mutual care at the end of the film, walking in front of her son's grave, thinking of going home to cook for her husband and sister, and for her mother Write a letter seeking reconciliation.
Many people in the comments say that the ability to love is a gift, and the implication is that they do not have this ability. Even the inability to love others is due to the misfortune of God's injustice, stepping into the victim's boot. Of course it makes you feel comfortable. This kind of "love incompetence" claim generally occurs when hurting others, to constitute a defense of oneself and absolve responsibility. In the film, the mother and daughter, who claim to be incapable of love, have their thirst for love manifested in some covert but hysterical way, the frivolity of mother Charlotte and the hatred of daughter Eva. They are not lacking in the ability to love. Charlotte, who lacks the talent for love, will not empathize with Chopin so deeply (Bergman deliberately let Charlotte play Chopin's entire prelude to the audience, then It's very touching indeed.), Eva, who lacks the talent for love, will not love her son so deeply, and love her childhood mother so much. Their ability to love is obscured by other things, by the pursuit of excellence, by winning the love of others too easily, by hatred, by fear.
The "saint" in this film is Eva's husband. He sighs that he is "confused and insecure". He has pain but neither self-pity nor inferiority, and he has seen happiness. Maybe he is always healthy, just like Anna, the maid of Agnes who prayed for himself and his deceased daughter every day in "Cry and Whisper".
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