Lolita: the fire of desire, the light of life
If you admit that you have a little secret in your heart, it is sealed in the corner, and the darkness in the darkness is unknown. You hate it because it is too private to share with the closest people around you, because you tried so hard to get rid of it but failed; You hate it because only it can bring you irresistible infatuation like a whirlpool, and this infatuation brings you secret ecstasy and leisure, so that you have to admit a kind of almost sinful pleasure. If you have such a little secret, then you will definitely like the film Lolita adapted from Nabokov's masterpiece. It's about an evil, incest that is despised by the world. While unscrupulously expressing infatuation and intoxication, obsession and self-indulgence, it poses a question to all of us: Is there an inevitable connection between love and ethics, beauty and morality?
Jeremy Irons, English actor. Nobleness is his positive side, and he is indifferent and aloof from others thousands of miles away. He is thin and tall. But because it is slender, it also reveals some fragility and the warmth that comes with it. Contradiction is the actor's character, which combines reserve and enthusiasm, indifference and loneliness, nobility and romance, strength and weakness. If the story can break away from the frame of good guys and bad guys and enter the depths of the characters' souls, then all actions have a basis and explanation, and there are reasons for understanding and tolerance. Jeremy Irons has a kind of body and grace, and he can describe the human nature in trouble almost without performing. He, because of his sincerity, has been forgiven by us in advance before all his actions. Only he can give this film a credible and important premise: a middle-aged professor falls madly in love with his 14-year-old adopted daughter. Love, that's the key.
Dominique swain plays his adopted daughter. A famous scene: She is reading a movie "Impurity" on the grass. The grass is green, the faucet is spraying water, which wets her tightly wrapped thin skirt, moistens the curve of the girl's body and is full of temptation; Her feet are hanging in the air, and her glittering skin is stained with mud; When she saw him, she paused, then grinned, revealing the hoop of orthodontics and innocence.
He said it was beautiful. It's beautiful. This is the keynote of the film: look at this abnormal love from an aesthetic point of view.
His first love in his teens died of a sudden illness. This relationship has become a fossil in his heart, smoothed by years, and has become the only mirror that reflects his love in the adult world. His love is frozen in his youth, like a bouquet of poppies, blooming in the body of adults, emitting intoxicating fragrance, but it will also poison him. He loves her, her 14-year-old body and its youthful atmosphere. He loves her as uneasy as a teenager falling in love with a girl. But the wrinkles and loose skin around his eyes, even if his back is straight, are ugly to outsiders. It violates the foundation of human existence, that is, our morality. It tells us that a wrinkled mouth is ugly when it kisses another pair of fresh red lips. Stepfather's affection for stepdaughter can only be limited to a certain extent, otherwise it is evil. Our morality does not see the soul of a teenager in a wrinkled body.
After indirectly murdering Lolita's mother, he took her on a trip across America. If the economy permits, I believe he hopes this solitude with her can last for a lifetime. What he has to do is to stay away from the world, from the crowd and from morality.
The stories here are all beautiful, thanks to Jeremy's wonderful performance: passionate infatuation but not limited to pornography, uncontrollable possessiveness but also devout service. He is not as sophisticated as an adult. On the contrary, he is very passive and always carefully tries to figure out the heart of a girl of 14 years old. His lust belongs to the teenager, but the adult's reason closely guards it and wants to kill it again. We saw the struggle, and we also saw the powerlessness and helplessness shown by the struggle. So we sympathize, and we are always willing to sympathize with the weak. We only hate those powerful things because they will hurt us.
Now let's talk about the girl. It was the first time she seduced him. In bed, she wanted to show him. She is pure and lovely, but there is an evil temptation in her natural body. She is also contradictory, pure and sinful. She is his lover and his orphan. As a lover, she takes the initiative to order him to do anything she wants; As his orphan, she is very weak, and she has nothing to rely on in this world except to put her head on his shoulder and cry. This lover and stepfather, no matter what, are the only people in the world who can rely on them. Where can she go?
Morality aside, if we define love as temptation, infatuation, dependence and giving, are they different from the love we know well? If you have loved, just as a slave in the old society fell in love with the humble and hopeless love of the general, maybe now you will have sympathy. Slaves and generals should not have loved each other in the first place, because they violated the moral values at that time and were despised by our modern moral values just like lovers.
This film does not simply stop at this aesthetic concept. So there is a rare but important figure in this movie: Queldi. He also likes teenagers, seduces them, and then uses them to make pornographic movies. Quiddi had a conversation with "He" in the movie in a hotel. Quill sat in the dark and couldn't see his face clearly. He stood in the corridor under the eaves, waiting for his first night with Lolita. When all eyes and ears disappeared in front of him, he had to perform normally, although his hands were shaking. Quidditch sat in the dark and asked, Shit, where did you get her? sorry , what did you say? I said, the weather is getting better. Quayle saw their relationship at a glance. So he asked casually, and then cut in to change the subject. But all the symptoms are shown in that sentence. He said, Where did you get her? Girls are toys in Queldi's eyes. He gets them, plays with them and throws them away. This is also the introduction of the story that unfolds later.
He didn't catch what Quiddie asked him. Where did you find her? Otherwise, he will kill him, just as he killed him at last. He can't stand Queldi insulting her with such words, because insulting her is insulting his love. It is also because of love that he is different from them.
Let's go back to this girl. After a long journey, they finally settled down in a small town. She wants to live a normal life, the life of a 14-year-old girl: going to school, making friends and acting. Then, everything began to change, just like all love changed, not love changed, but people changed, especially because she was just a girl, of course she would change. After long-term possession, sex has no fresh excitement for her. She threatened him with sex, and she asked him to pay for the sex she provided. The relationship between the two is completely reversed. She no longer loves him, maybe never, only temptation and curiosity. But how long can temptation and curiosity last? She knows that he is afraid that she will leave him, so she can manipulate everything between them. He became one of her toys. She showed the cruelty of youth and ignorance again and again. So we began to pity the middle-aged man. Because we are used to pity the weak.
If it ends with him abandoning her, the story will be nothing touching. Players in our concept always like the new and hate the old. But he was never a player. On the contrary, he knew that she would leave him eventually. He said he was willing to wait for this fear, which was his irresistible fate. He knew he was nothing to Lolita. He said, "For her, I am not her lover, charming person, confidant or even human at all, but just two eyes or a muscular foot." He is nothing, but from beginning to end, it is not important to him. Because Lolita is everything to him, memory and past, youth and teenager. Lust is only the fuel that burns all this, and it is the fire of his life. But he knows how to light himself.
He stood there looking at the distant village, where there were voices and children's laughter. The film ends with the following sentence: However, they are too far away to tell what game they are playing in that vague street. I stood on the top of this high slope, listening to the slight music impact, listening to the gentle hum or occasional shouts of joy, and then I understood that it was not that Lolita was not with me, but that her voice was not in harmony, which stung my heart and made me desperate.
Does he want her around or does he want her to return to the harmony of children's laughter? Is love perfect or possessive? Give up or get? I think so, too. That's why love is fascinating, because it is two contradictory ends, and grasping only one end will sting you, so you can only grasp the middle blankly, struggle and try to make a choice. Love is never the result of choice, but the struggle and process of choice.
What about the relationship between love and morality? Just like the relationship between morality and beauty. Beauty and love are eternal, while morality is temporary. Every society has different moral standards in each historical period. People want its protection to maintain social order. But morality often hurts us in turn, because public order and good customs may not meet our unique inner needs. Beauty tells us that it only comes from sincere expression in the deep heart, so love is an out-of-control infatuation, and hate is the love of spoiled children. They are all really cute, and they are all incarnations of beauty in different coats.
It's just that they have nothing to do with morality.