A key to start humanity

Brandy 2022-03-14 08:01:02

Re-watching "Desert Island", I finally felt the humor in it, and I had to praise Polanski's talent. The limited scenes and characters create necessary dramatic conflict and tension, and at the same time, show a corner of human nature in a humorous way.

The intrusion of the murderer broke the seemingly peaceful life. The fact that the wife is restless is shown at the beginning of the film, and later the wife also flirts with the guests recklessly. With the development of the plot, the wife's dissatisfaction with her husband can be seen everywhere: for example, when the two are alone, the wife's indifference to her husband; when in front of the murderer, she mercilessly mocks her husband's cowardice. Compared with the husband, the wife is obviously more scheming, and the relationship with the murderer is more outgoing and calm. Not only is she not afraid of the murderer, but she takes the initiative to provoke her. After discovering the weakness of the murderer, she deliberately stimulates the conflict between the murderer and her husband, and finally successfully escapes the danger. , and the desired escape from her mad husband, which also means her escape from a depressing and uninteresting life.

The husband's role is even more intriguing, more like a representative of the middle class. He has some money and pursues taste, but he has no courage at all, and everything is based on a compromise attitude as the law of survival. Therefore, in the face of the intrusion of the murderer, the husband had no choice but to be enslaved. But in the final analysis, the husband is still a man, so he longs to maintain the dignity of a man in front of his wife, but succumbs to the power in front of the murderer and loses the courage to maintain his dignity. Therefore, the husband is a struggling existence from the beginning, and the last struggle may be an irrational choice made by both power (pistol) and self-esteem (wife's instigation). So after the murderer was killed, the husband completely lost his ability to think and became a walking corpse at the mercy of power and dignity.

It can be said that this time the murderer's intrusion completely destroyed the values ​​created by the protagonist's painstaking efforts. For example, the castle purchased for the sentiment of the middle class cannot actually be warmed in winter at all; the military experience deliberately fabricated is completely in front of the murderer. Slap in the face; pretending to be a plan in front of friends is aborted due to the existence of the murderer... The pursuit of the middle class is nothing but this, the appearance of fragility and uselessness, once it loses the face of the barren life, it may only go crazy.

The murderer is like a key, successfully liberating the shackles of human nature, and showing how human nature is displayed under the mask of rationality under extreme circumstances. What is even more rare is that Polanski adopts a dark humorous approach to express all this. The laughter created by various image contrasts makes people laugh and make people laugh at the disguise of humanity in this society. Yes, just how exactly did the audience look when the husband ended up going crazy on the rock?

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Extended Reading
  • Ken 2022-03-17 09:01:10

    Powerless absurdity; uninvited guests; exposure and distortion of nature.

  • Octavia 2022-03-15 09:01:11

    The character relationship and image style are similar to the variation of "Knife in the Water", lonely house, seaside, uninvited guests, thirty years later there is "Death and the Virgin", sadomasochistic upgrade has become "Bitter Moon", and the body is strong and full of Charming blonde. 66 Golden Bear

Cul-de-sac quotes

  • Richard: You lunkhead! Come on down. I won't eat ya!

  • Richard: Mind you, I recognize everybody's opinion. I concede there are a few priests who really believe in what they preach, but most of them are phonies. It's the same thing everywhere.