For me, the show "Melrose" is difficult to chew over and over again, because the look and feel is really bad, and when I watch it, I will fall into it unconsciously... After writing the last article" "Melrose" E1-E2: It's the shadow that tortures you for a lifetime ", I had to make up my mind to write this.
Although I haven't read the original book , I have witnessed the madness of "Bad News", peeped at the root cause of "Never Mind", ignited the flame of "Some Hope", endured the poison of "Mother's Milk", experienced "At Last" "After the ups and downs, I think the show is full of hope at the end: Patrick still carries the "cancer cells" of the Melrose family, but he is doing his best not to spread and pass it on to his lover and children.
little hope
London, November 1990.
"Old acquaintance" Bridget hosted a birthday party for her husband Sonny. Under her careful planning, the banquet attended by Princess Margaret became a grand gathering of nobles and celebrities.
In this regard, Patrick refused in his heart.
Every inch of the place exudes a familiar atmosphere, and everyone's tone of voice reminds him of his father's taste , not to mention Nicholas, the poisonous elder, who is noisy by his side...
But at the suffocating banquet table, Patrick unexpectedly gained a different experience-Bridget's cousin Mary, the girl who was supposed to "watch over" him, was able to chat with him.
"It's impossible not to be disappointed, redemption or something goes away at the touch of a button..." Mary listened to the dejected words of "don't listen to evil " among celebrities... Maybe this banquet wasn't that bad.
The sudden appearance of the little girl Belinda touched a certain nerve in Patrick.
Belinda apparently has similar confusion and anxiety as her own childhood, but these symptoms are still "light" on her, because her eyes are bright and she is looking forward to seeing the princess.
Although the subsequent results were not ideal, for Patrick, the harvest was enough.
Julia brought the rare fragrant moments at the banquet, but when Patrick started to go to the clouds with her, what he tasted was bitter...
Before entering the door, she was sarcastic at Bridget's sultry attitude, and after entering the door, she bluntly stated that she had a relationship with Johnny... Today, or Patrick's whole life, has enough troubles, and he doesn't want to add more.
He values the meaning of his good friend Johnny more to him, and there are only a handful of friends who can make Patrick speak his heart out.
The experience of the day made Patrick feel that he could make a change, and after hesitating, he told Johnny the truth.
The most interesting is the gecko .
In the third episode, the gecko appears again and again in Patrick's hallucinations...
Only then did he say what the gecko meant to him.
"If I can get into that gecko, maybe I can get through it..." The gecko is Patrick's lingering escape plan since he was a child, and it is also a symbol of his constant avoidance of memory and escapism.
After this conversation, the gecko was never seen again by Patrick.
For Patrick, the "good news" was much more than that.
Bridget, whose husband Sonny wanted to hold his son and actually cheated on her, was sorely heartbroken, and finally decided to change her mind, tear off the fake mask, and take her mother and daughter to leave this splendid and hypocritical place of right and wrong.
Patrick may not know exactly what happened, but he is familiar with all this, and he will not fail to understand what he has witnessed.
The traditional aristocracy is still cherishing itself, but the fate of the sun is unstoppable... An era is coming to an end .
This is a historic moment that Patrick wants to see and experience.
After saying goodbye to Johnny, Patrick unexpectedly found that the players at the previous party were familiar, and asked in an uncertain tone: Kili Willie?
He did not recognize the wrong person, and the other party also remembered him. Two addicts who used to hang out together in New York seem to be doing fine now.
"It's a miracle that we didn't die in confusion." Kili said goodbye to Patrick with a smile. He still didn't say a word, but Patrick understood: "We should cherish such a miracle."
Johnny suggested that the way to "turn the page" is to find a girl to fall in love and marry, start a family, and have two children to share a family relationship... It is better to hit the sun than to choose a day. Under such a beautiful moonlight tonight, what do you think of Mary, who is a confidant How pleasing to the eye.
The third episode "Some Hope" is my personal favorite and most exciting episode. The first half of it was still extremely depressing, but then it was slowly released by Patrick's mentality (like measuring blood pressure--) , after reading it, it is like being put to death and then reborn. The spiritual power of self-salvation and transformation contained in it really makes people feel the value of "hope".
mother's gift
Lacoste, France, August 2003.
It's still the old house where the painful memories are buried. The difference is that Patrick has already started a family and has two sons, Robert and Thomas. The same is that his mother Eleanor, who is still in her old age, still drives herself crazy, and there are still a group of uninvited guests at home.
Patrick has the shadow of his father David, and has a heart with nameless cruelty - but he is trying to seal it , and it is much harder to cover and release a small scorpion than to burn a small ant.
But her mother's words and deeds reminded Patrick all the time what kind of family she grew up in: She would donate the big house to the "charitable organization", the always smiling Seamus.
Patrick was furious, but he wasn't carried away.
This is Melrose's family cancer that has been passed down from generation to generation. Patrick can't stop his own "hatred", but he hopes that he can no longer pass it on to his children.
Of course, the reason Patrick is still awake is that his mother hasn't really done so - until she, despite her son's objections, is determined to leave the rest of her wealth to an ethereal "goodwill".
In fact, Eleanor's behavior is not difficult to understand. Just like many elderly people who are sucked by fraudsters, they willingly pay out, not because they call each other "uncle and aunt" more than their own son. Patrick's mother-son relationship is one It looks very bad, and it is inevitable that people will take advantage of it ...
More importantly, the existence of Patrick is the historical proof that Eleanor has been trying to escape . This kind of distorted psychology like "seeing raped women as unclean" makes Eleanor further addicted to those cheap False "relationships".
This time, Patrick was really hairy, and he began to be unable to stop the "beast" in his heart.
The behavior of jumping into the pool to "play" with Robert is very much like a low-profile version of David.
After drinking alcohol, the exit turned dirty, and he continued to break up the sleazy relationship with Julia, insulted and attacked all the people and things he disliked, and planned to tear down some property before losing the house...
Patrick wasn't his father David after all, and after all that was done, his anger and firepower ran out, and on the bright side , this was his chance to really "start over."
At least that's what Mary thought, and so was Patrick's heartfelt hope.
However, "it's hard to go from extravagance to frugality" is a real big problem. It seems natural for the family to go to Aunt Nancy after they become "poor ghosts"... Patrick hates rich and powerful people, but still To bear it in a low voice - what is the difference between this TM and the original? !
The string in Patrick's head was still broken.
It is easy to speak freely and scold happily, but what should we do next? More importantly, in Mary's eyes, Patrick is still repeating David's negative cycle, and seeing all this, Robert is becoming the next "Patrick"...
If you can't change, you can only leave.
The fourth episode "Mother's Milk" is as boring as the second episode "Never Mind". It once again uses the ruthless reality to tell everyone that "everything will be fine" is not so easy . While playing the victim, Patrick, He is still trying to stop himself from becoming a perpetrator, but unfortunately it backfires. The shadows left by his father, mother and even a whole generation are like maggots on the tarsal bones, which cannot be shaken off or thrown away.
finally
April 2005, London.
Eleanor is dead and this is her funeral. Although less than two years have passed, so much has happened in the past 20 months.
For example, Eleanor hopes to euthanize herself not long after asking her son to "kill me", but she changes her mind halfway through and regrets it...
Eleanor's capricious operation is similar to the effect of "whipping the corpse" on her son - it stimulates his nerves again and again, challenges his bottom line, and makes Patrick have few "feelings" left. Also completely gone.
And after a divorce (separation?), a drunken Patrick returns home to pick up personal belongings, wants to be close to his son and is driven by Mary...
Patrick tried to reform himself but failed, and lived as another crappy David; but Mary is not Eleanor who did nothing, in order to cut off the poison of the Melrose family's genetic "cancer" to the child, she will stand up and say "" No".
Drunk and dreaming, Patrick was finally sent to the "withdrawal treatment center"...
What Patrick wants to quit is not drugs or alcohol, but the psychological shadow that has accompanied him throughout his life, the recurring dream that seems to never escape.
He had to join a mutual aid group that he had always looked down on, couldn't help sneering, and was seduced by the manic and wild young lady... But at that moment, he suddenly had an epiphany.
Patrick ultimately did not set foot on the ladder that continued to sink, but made a full circle to return to the mutual aid group. Everyone's applause made him believe that he would get better.
Without Mary's genuine help, it would have been difficult for Patrick to make his mother's funeral a decent one.
This is perhaps his speech before the happiest moment - in addition to Mary, Johnny, Julia, who, the whole is not the last few funeral he wanted to see the face ......
Patrick's speech had only a question mark on it, and he couldn't write what he wanted to say to Eleanor, because when he mustered up the courage to ask his mother a question, he didn't get the answer he wanted, or even no answer at all.
Eleanor always knew about David's sexual assault on Patrick. Not only did she not stop her, she always deceived her son, and kept Patrick down to despair... In the whole thing, she always regarded herself as a "victim", except Other than that, she said nothing.
This is someone who is far more "escape" than Patrick, but Patrick has been hoping to get her back for a long time...
"You can never wake someone who is pretending to be asleep." The same applies here, and this falsehood alone is enough to keep Patrick from turning over forever.
Finally got through the hardest part, Patrick's "headache" continued, Nicholas kept buzzing in his ears, Annette, who loved her mother, took the opportunity to "preach". Fleur, the rotten guy that Lino helped, couldn't open the pot, and even Julia's disrespectful attitude made people panic...
All the negative emotions "exploded" after Nicholas fell to the ground: he finally closed his mouth when he fell ill, Fleur pretended to be deaf and dumb, Annette used "meditation" to rescue, Julia was yin and yang There was a hint of schadenfreude in his tone... no, none of this was what Patrick wanted.
Only Johnny, who worked hard to save people, and Robert, who was frightened around him, were normal people. Patrick suddenly realized what he wanted.
Before leaving, Mary and the two children's invitation to Patrick to come home for dinner was declined, but the closed door had been quietly opened again .
Nicholas didn't survive... Patrick suddenly realized that this was the last person in his parents' social circle to die - reality told him again: an era is over.
Patrick called the number, it is not a new understanding of the waitress Helen nor lingering Julia several times, but really honest with his wife Mary.
To this day, I don't know whether Patrick in his childhood refused or refuted David righteously. This seems like a fantasy...
Bravely say "no" and smash all the ugly and hypocrisy - even if it's not true, it's never too late for this moment to come true, as long as you have the courage to take that step, it's never too late.
The shadow of Patrick Melrose's life begins inside that room in his mansion in Lacoste, France, and ends outside the gates of a small flat in London, England - hopefully.
There used to be darkness and sin behind that door, and light and hope behind this door .
The fifth episode "At Last" finally left a happy ending, which is somewhat inconsistent with the melancholy style of "Melrose", but I still like this ending, between the painful reality and the beautiful ideal, The play dedicated the whole body to the former, but made a gesture of rushing towards the latter, no longer afraid.
Acting session
The text is written above, and the next paragraph is purely a "addition" for Benedict Cumberbatch's excellent acting skills.
We've already seen "shiver" and "manic " in the first episode of "Bad News, " but the surprise is far more than that.
He wanted to say something important, but was always interrupted by the waiter who didn't have long eyes. Patrick suddenly turned around and scolded.
Before that, he was already in a state of being on the verge of collapse, and he had been hidden all the time. Benny's transition was astonishingly explosive, like a flat thunder , which also set off his humility when he apologized later.
When he was almost out of control by his mother's anger, Patrick uttered quite emotional hate words with basic rational emotions.
Although everyone knows that "rationality" and "sensibility" are not in conflict here, Benny's hysterical feeling is really well executed .
There is also the scene of Patrick smoking a smouldering smoke in the rain, which has been said more than once to resemble Hugo Weaving's David .
In addition to thanking for the makeup, but also admiring Benny's performance, he obviously did a lot of homework to speculate and understand David's image in the play, and then achieved "spiritual resemblance", which is more rare than "shape resemblance". The character of "Can't escape the shadow of my father" becomes more three-dimensional and vivid.
In the scene of sneaking out to buy wine, Patrick was like a hippie and smiling bastard most of the time, but he burst into tears when he was on the phone.
This scene is purely abusive, simple, rude and powerful , "people trapped in the quagmire desperately want to grab a useless straw", probably so.
And in the middle of the funeral speech, I couldn't help but run out and talk to Mary, which is somewhat like the "master" of several previous scenes.
Benny's performance here is not enough to fit in a single motion picture. In just two shots, Benny experienced madness, anger, fear, sadness, despair, calm and other states in turn, which can be called smooth flow .
In addition to so many wonderful "releases", Benny also has a lot of "received" beauties - after the family showed their willingness to return, Patrick took a deep breath and stood up straight like never before.
This can be regarded as the "basic performance" of an actor's ability to "retract and release freely".
I haven't seen many plays, and my mouth is rather stupid, so I can't speak professionally, so I can only say this for the sake of it... But I really think "Melrose" can be one of Benedict's masterpieces. Patrick's performance adds so much color to the show, it can't be overstated.
[The plagiarism of a certain headline has resurfaced, so I can only continue to watermark the picture, sorry... Welcome to my public account "You Love Comment Area". 】
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