The color of the abyss is black
Li Li
In addition to the inevitable death, desire is also a huge abyss, and many people will threw themselves into it, experiencing the joy and chill of free fall before death arrives.
"Double Compensation" is a movie about this kind of fall. Its label is black. Black comes from the innate desire in human nature. Uncontrollable desires, irrational impulses, and specious love are all shady, covering and burying a person.
Walter is an insurance clerk who has been doing insurance for 11 years. He kept talking about this number for eleven years to increase the trust of customers.
Take a look at the time of the story. In 1948, Walter started insurance work in 1937. 1937, what a sensitive year, in the United States, the Great Depression that lasted for several years has already revealed its hideous features and swallowed countless people. Walter survived. For eleven years, he maintained the trend of prosperity, and finally passed through the fog of the Great Depression and World War II, and ushered in a new era full of hope. He moved everything with excitement and contentment: a good life is about to begin.
He went to renew the auto insurance contract for a rich man, and met the rich man's wife Felice on the first floor. The way that Phyllis played is exciting, not only Walter, but everyone. This half-naked and rigorous image of Phyllis is her weapon and her attitude.
Walter was tempted by her, and in a short conversation, he kept talking about Felice's body and talked directly about Felice's ankle. Such seduce and provocation cannot be called love, but human nature, which is a widespread desire. As for whether the provocation is successful, and even whether the business is successful, Walter has no time to take care of it. He already has the confidence to suffer a loss of an insurance policy.
At this time, Walter went smoothly, and the company supported him a lot. Most confident men choose desire between love and desire. Because love is too rare and too slow to bear the kind of success that desperately needs to show.
Facing Walter's temptation, Phyllis was not stunned or angry. She knows men. At this moment, she not only knows men, but also needs a man who is accomplices. Who else is more suitable than the man who is fascinated by him in front of him.
In the afternoon two days later, Phyllis deliberately chose a time when her husband was not at home, and asked Walter to visit again. The maid also left by coincidence. Men and women face each other, and each other's breath is entangled. Feeling that the time had come, Feilisi put forward a request one by one: Whether he can buy a personal accident insurance for her husband without his knowledge, she is the beneficiary.
Walter is a successful insurance clerk, and one of the foundations of success is a lot of experience and shrewd anticipation. He immediately realized that Phyllis wanted to murder her husband and oil merchant Dickinson.
Walter picked these out and left.
At the beginning of the movie, Walter spoke to the microphone as a murderer. The person on the other side of the microphone was not a policeman, but his boss and claims manager Button. This kind of beginning is different from the suspense film where the truth is peeled off layer by layer. It creates another kind of suspense: how a person becomes a murderer and needs such confession and repentance.
When Walter picked out Felice's scheming and left, we couldn't help but wonder how he refused to conspire and became the murderer.
The biggest reason is still desire, a hidden pursuit of sin, the natural yearning for something for nothing, and the urge to challenge one's intelligence and abilities.
Rejecting Phyllis, Walter returned to his apartment, the residence of a single man. This is not like a home, but it is also a sign of identity and a starting point for continued struggle. If Walter continues his career, it won't take many years for him to have everything in the middle class, using his family as his appearance.
But Phyllis found Walter's phone, and then came to Walter's house.
A married woman came to the apartment of a single man, which in itself was a big event. The bigger thing is that Phyllis recounted the misfortune of her marriage, and the endless violence and cold violence of her husband Dickinson against her. Walter's heart at this moment is complicated, good and evil are intertwined, unable to calm down. The sense of mission to save people from fire and water, the criminal act of murder and the deprivation of their wives, the longing for loving each other, and the coveting for huge insurance compensation, all intertwined in a small apartment for a time.
Walter and Phyllis kissed and embraced all night.
This is a sign that marks a substantial step in the relationship between two people. But this is not a crime, at most it is a moral transgression, it is a discussion of crime. A woman with an unfortunate marriage and a man who pursues worldly success may not be able to pass on forever. Of course, it is easier to slip into a dark abyss.
In the days after Phyllis visited the door, Walter was intertwined with various emotions, fear and impulse for crime, expectations and doubts for self-certification, and yearning for wealth. It was not any of the above factors that decided Walter to commit the crime, but he thought of a plan that he thought was feasible.
Why did Walter commit crimes and kill people? The answer is that he can.
The answer to why Walter conspired with Phyllis is, he can.
The answer to why Walter fell into the abyss is that he can.
Walter thought he could. His plan was to kill Dickinson before going out on the train, then pretend to be Dickinson, jump off the car, and abandon Dickinson’s body on the rails to make a fall accident, and then get double the amount of money. compensation.
This is a seamless plan and a plan full of loopholes. If the police did not intervene in this, and the insurance company did not have a claims manager like Button who had "big data" in his head, this plan would be seamless and amazing.
And if you look closely at the details, especially the speed of the train, the wounds of the corpse, etc., you can find that this is a stupid plan.
Walter is stupid, and so is Phyllis. It seems that people are stupid in the face of desire.
In order to make this stupid plan look more and more seamless, for quite a few days, Walter and Phyllis could only communicate by telephone on the street, and they could only pretend to be customers at convenience supermarkets, hoping that everything would be traceless. .
This kind of effort made their plans more and more irresistible, whether perfect or stupid.
Mr. Dickinson had to use crutches because of his injury, which made Walter's plan more perfect, because crutches would become the focus of everyone, and it would be more convenient for him to play Dickinson and cross the sea in the dark of stations and trains.
As this criminal plan driven by many desires advances step by step, love, beauty and wealth must all become compensation for this criminal plan, double or even multiple compensation.
Walter did not kill people because of love or money. The impulse to commit crime came from the unspeakable and lingering desire in the depths of human nature.
When the plan is implemented, love and money must be rewarded.
The killing is smooth sailing, and the movie is not about creating suspense or reversing.
It's not surprising that Patton saw through the problem. Walter suddenly couldn't hear his footsteps when he returned home on the night of murder, as the dead would do. He couldn't help asking himself, did he make every step wrong, otherwise, why would there be no footsteps?
Of course so. When Walter pretended to be Dickinson and jumped out of the car, another passenger on the train chatted with him. This was an unexpected situation that could not be planned. Although Walter distracted him, the man had become an eyewitness, seeing the age of the fake Dickinson in front of him. He was a young man.
Button has a process of seeing through this accident. This is probably the most suspenseful part of the whole movie, because Button recognizes the extent to which Walter's fate will have a corresponding ending.
If Patton only believes that there is a problem with the matter and refuses to make a claim, then family member Phyllis can go to court and change from accident to suicide. Walter is all right and can't get the money.
If Patton only thinks that there is a problem with this matter and concludes that Dickinson and the dead Dickinson are not the same person, then Phyllis can insist on denying the case. Even in a lawsuit, rough identification techniques cannot ensure that the cause of death is found. Phyllis can't get the double compensation, and Walter is all right.
If Patton passes Mr. Dickinson’s insurance policy and finds out the connection between Walter and this matter, then Walter must be exposed. Button is also a proud professional and will not let the truth he unearthed be overwhelmed.
The desperate desire for double compensation has left Walter and Phyllis with no retreat.
What's more deadly is that, also as compensation for murder, love has changed in this period. In order to prevent the relationship between the two being discovered, Walter and Phyllis could not be in contact, and the feelings quickly deteriorated in this daily lack of contact, turning into resentment and responsibility.
When Mr. Dickinson's daughter Laura made a special trip to find Walter, things hadn't changed anything.
When deceiving Dickinson to sign the accident insurance, in order to confirm afterwards that enough parties were present, Phyllis pulled Laura to accompany her to play chess, so that Laura knew Walter. What Phyllis did not expect was that it was Laura who had turned from a used witness to the final blow to ruin herself and Walter.
Laura witnessed Phyllis wearing a funeral gown looking in the mirror a few days before Dickinson’s accident, and recalled how she persecuted her biological mother to death and became Dickinson’s new wife when she was a nurse. And it is not the above incident that makes Laura full of resentment towards Felice, but her boyfriend and Felice are fighting fiercely, a posture of true love. The subtext of the movie is that Laura doesn't care about the life or death of her parents in essence, but she can't stand the stepmother who has robbed her boyfriend at all. Such emotions and reality make people shudder, but the movie is very fascinated by it.
Lola's narrative gave Walter a huge turn-just as his attitude had changed the last time Phyllis visited the door in person.
Walter was caught in a triple trouble. First, Patton’s doubts continued. Patton reasoned more and more about the truth in front of him. Second, the fact that he could not meet with Phyllis made the whole thing meaningless. In order to gain meaning, he became anxious and resentful. Third, Lola's words were actually consistent with his impression of meeting Felice for the second time, that is, Felice was actually an unscrupulous person. If you sever all contacts with Phyllis during the second meeting, Walter will not fall into the abyss. Not only the story, but the direction of his life will be completely changed.
Walter comforted Laura not to tell the insurance company and the police what she knew, while confronting Phyllis.
It was originally a long-lost reunion, but here became complaints, accusations, curses, ridicule, humiliation, scuffles, seizures of guns, murders, escapes... Walter left Felice's home alive, but could no longer survive.
One thing he did before he died was to make Laura's ex-boyfriend and Phyllis look good now, don't walk into the house, and don't have any further involvement with Phyllis.
As for Walter's narration throughout the film, there is no intention of repentance, only a thick darkness rises from the abyss and swallows everything.
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