The film begins with a voice-over saying: " Shakespeare said: 'Life is full of noise and commotion, but in the end, it has no meaning.' - "Macbeth "
Encounter with a Stranger is yet another Woody proving that life is meaningless, and yet another Woody-esque pessimism we are familiar with.
Let's take a look at the broken-hearted stories told in "Encountering Strangers":
Writer husband and gallery secretary wife's marriage breaks down,
After the writer husband fell in love with the woman in red, he slipped away because he might be found out that he had plagiarized other people's works, suggesting that the relationship was over,
The woman in red fell in love with the writer's talent and broke off the engagement with her fiancé,
The gallery secretary's wife failed to flirt with her boss, and the boss fell in love with her classmate,
The gallery owner and his wife have been separated for a long time, their relationship is broken, flirting with people everywhere,
Father-in-law broke up with mother-in-law, married a prostitute,
Prostitute cheats with gym guy, father-in-law breaks up with prostitute,
The father-in-law's attempt to restore the relationship with the mother-in-law failed.
In this movie, all forms of trust are broken apart from the relationship between the mother-in-law and his new lover, the old man, at the end of the movie. In this movie, everyone breaks their promises and does not keep their promises. Woody clearly does not believe in the spirit of trust and contract between people. As for the mother-in-law and the new lover, the old man, they finally got together because of absurd fortune-telling and superstition of the afterlife. Woody believes that living is a tragedy. People can only live happily by relying on unreal fantasy and self-deceiving hypnosis, and can abide by the spirit of the contract of love. As said at the end of the film: "Since life is so erratic and painful, how can we survive this life? Sometimes fantasy works better than medicine."
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