The Son Trapped in the Mind” is like a cold novel.It is slow, restrained and immersed; unobtrusively brings you into the gradually cold emotions, like a gentle but hidden dangerous stream. It gathers its energy in the gap of the mountain, small, transparent, not easily perceived. But at a certain moment, it falls from a high place, an unstoppable force, breaking the huge rocks of reality, and breaking down the defenses of the human heart.
French writer and director Florent Zeller’s new film, released after two years, mirrors “The Father Trapped in Time”. One is about an aging father suffering from Alzheimer’s disease battling broken time and memory, and the other about a young child caught in adolescent depression, bringing irreparable pain to the whole family.
Family, what a warm word, becomes cold and sharp in Zeller’s film. It’s not that the family members live with hatred for each other – like those cheesy soap operas where there is a daily mess of trivialities worth fighting over – in Zeller’s film, you don’t even see “a mess In Zeller’s film, you can’t even see the “chicken feathers”, the clean space, the exquisite life, everyone keeps decent, but everyone is like imprisoned in an invisible cage, unable to express the love from the heart. Emotions, blocked by something invisible.
The hue of the picture constitutes the most dominant visual language. In Zeller’s films, color is able to make people feel the temperature from the eyes that only the skin can feel. Blue, green, gray, white, black – these colors make up the main color palette of “The Son Trapped in the Mind”. Unlike “Father Stuck in Time”, it is colder and darker more thoroughly and decisively; warm reds and yellows brush our eyes only for a moment, the orange sweater worn by the mother, the red jacket worn by the mother, and all the rest of the moment images are cold. Like dipping the city and people into the cold sea, the transparent blue and green extend to the bottomless dark abyss.
The cold color of the scene that struck me the most was the image of the father and mother reminiscing about the family’s trip to the island. A montage of flashbacks, the sun shining on the crystal waves, silver and blue waves in succession. In such a beautiful, clean and supposedly warm scene, we cannot feel the blaze of the summer afternoon sun, there is a coolness overflowing from the picture, like extracting the energy surging in the sea water, making people always feel that the bare skin is cold, the wind is cold, even if it is a warm reunion holiday, it also conceals the unstoppable disintegration in the future.
In contrast to the cold colors, the clean lines in the space are also the “sharp edge” that Zeller makes good use of. In “The Son Trapped in the Mind”, no matter what social scene the character is in, he or she must be blocked and bound by various lines. Typical as the protagonist Hugh Jackman as the father, such a rich life, decent work, family seems to be a beautiful elite male, walking between the gray-green glass grid every day. Behind his seat is a huge glass frame, visible crowded and indifferent urban forest; he walked in the cramped elevator, corridor, deep lines will squeeze him, people as in the gap in life.
Back at home, the delicate lines also constitute everything about Peter’s father. The white door, the gray curtains, the dark green coffee table, and especially the bathroom with its strictly symmetrical mirrors. The cold water gushing out of the faucet and the fine white lines washing over the mind, taming one into a slave of life day after day.
On the one hand, it replicates the orderly civilized society in reality – the ideal workplace space, the ideal family space, all revealing the elegant taste and the good life this class should enjoy; on the other hand, it extracts the indifference that follows the reality, like the ubiquitous smell of disinfectant water for the sake of cleanliness. The ubiquitous smell of disinfectant water separates people from each other, expressionlessly in the elevator, expressionlessly at home, and the expression of love has become a weak behavior that is out of place.
A scene in which a mother and her son are separated illustrates the “vacuum” in the family space. Before the mother can say the real greeting, the son has already taken over the words without greeting, and so on, the meaningless words form an awkward and stagnant atmosphere in the air. A door closes and the two people are separated. We feel the scene that often happens in reality, the ineffective conversation between children and their own parents, or between parents and their own children, is described in such a condensed way in the film, as if the invisible wounds are nakedly displayed.
The director, who is a writer, seems to know the ineffectiveness of language better than the common people. The intimate people say, “Let’s talk”, “We need a talk”, “Let’s talk”, “We need a talk”, “Let’s talk”, “Let’s talk”, “Let’s talk”, “Let’s talk”, “Let’s talk”, “Let’s talk”, “Let’s talk”, “Let’s talk”. “Shall we talk? (Shall we talk)”, but none of the conversations (talk) play a real role. Especially between the two main characters of the movie, the father and the son, each conversation leads to a bigger fall. The son has done his best to show his father his pain, but the father thinks he has not said anything and that he should give a reasonable explanation. –Why didn’t he go to school? Why lie? Why in the park? What are your plans for the future?
The son kept stating that he just felt tired, tired in his pain. He couldn’t understand why his father and mother had separated, why his father’s current wife had interfered in their lives, why he had to go to school why he couldn’t walk outside, why no one understood his loneliness and pain, and how no one could hear him when he was already so vocal but only blamed… …
The young actor who plays the son, Zen McGrath (Zen McGrath), is heartbreaking in his innocent and somber silence. In conversations with his parents, he tells them with all his voice that he needs to be loved, to be noticed, to have a little time to relax and rest, but no one can really hear him. He is constantly being asked to “give an explanation”, but this explanation is only a separation from the adult utilitarian orderly social scene, using the power to subdue the child, asking the child to give a solution to the failure. But the child doesn’t have a plan, he simply tells you, “I can’t do it, I’m in pain!
One failed conversation after another pulls the supposedly close father-son relationship further and further apart. When the grandfather, played by Anthony Hopkins, makes an appearance, the film’s literary quality is here like an aura, telling us that behind the problems of one pair of father-son relationships lies the problems of another pair of father-son relationships. Generational problems are cycling, reproducing loneliness and pain like genes. Some children are lucky enough to grow up against the pain and seemingly become strong; others, not so lucky.
The sunshine and essence on Hugh Jackman’s face is also genetically replicated by the success and arrogance of his father, Anthony Hopkins, in the film. They can sit elegantly at home waiting for the maids to serve them, or they can run every day with self-discipline and vigor, as if every day will have surprises and success waiting for them. Living under such a constantly defined creed, they take for granted that all failures and weaknesses and evasions are inexcusable. Just as the older father accuses the middle-aged father of being a coward, so the middle-aged father inevitably takes out his anger on his young child, unable to forgive him for any truancy. They strictly follow society’s jungle law of survival of the fittest, and the soft and tearful child is seen as a sign of early failure.
Although there is no obvious dramatic conflict, but the two-hour story, the author has meticulously shown the modern civilized society in which people are invariably asked to successfully make a disguise, disguise competent work, disguise exams can always get A, disguise family happiness, Hugh Jackman used to report a good lie to tell his ex-wife and son that everything is fine, the son is also used to report a good lie to tell his parents that he is becoming more and more The son is also used to reporting well-intentioned lies to tell his parents that he is becoming more and more awesome. –As a result, the crack suddenly opens itself one day, and you don’t know what day it started, but it’s clearly not closing when it does. People are caught off guard by these increasingly absurd and unresponsive cracks, just as we watching the story are coping with one tiny disaster after another in our lives. The disasters of life, the hidden dangers, are everywhere.
The literary narrative that unfolds, the seemingly calm and simple routine, slowly draws us into the dark depths. As viewers, we can clearly feel the scope of the shadows expanding, the disorder expanding, but we cannot tell what is wrong; the father, the son and the two wives are all alone in their own painted space, facing loneliness.
I love the performance of Vanessa Kirby, the actress who plays the young wife. Her tight face, supple body, how abundant energy she should have, but in this day by day dim home surrounded by the love and loneliness that can not be felt, she and the film’s son, like slowly losing the color of their own youth, but also in the gray, green those cold colors repeatedly against time. Each day, they are thinking about how to face failure.
In the conversation between the young wife and her husband, she finally confesses how lonely I am in this house. Even the lover who sits across the table and sees her every day cannot appreciate her loneliness – the hurt he brought to his ex-wife is replicated, as always, in the new wife, and there is no perfect husband who can provide the perfect marriage and family.
The young wife’s eyes were full of stubborn tears, but she refused to cry and pour them out. While the ex-wife can still say gently, “I feel like a failure as a mother,” the young wife braces herself to face it. She tries to be the one to embrace and open up, but also doesn’t get the reward she deserves.
Every intimate relationship in the film, between husband and wife, mother and son, father and son, constantly plays out in a vacuum of blocked communication. Despite the privileged social circumstances in which several people live, none of us in the audience want to be them – we are even filled with sympathy and pity that they are so pathetic.
It is this contrast that is as deep as a magnetic force, which sends distant questions from the depths of the images and the text: Can such an elegant and civilized life really bring us happiness and joy? All the intimate relationships we see are already like cracked porcelain that cannot be fused, not to mention those fellow workers, passers-by, and socialites who pass by in a hurry …… Every day, everyone spends in so many ineffective relationships, life seems to be cut by the sharp and cold edge of relationships, no complete time to respond to love and express love, but just It is as if life is being cut by the sharp and cold edge of relationships, without a full time to respond to love, to express love, but only to keep cutting one’s soul and time to adapt to new cold relationships and spaces – a futile emptiness.
The son who suffers from depression is a thread of fire that ignites all around him. The light of his burning own pain shines onto the faces of his father, mother, and stepmother, whose faces also show their pain and loneliness.
As the father looks at the child’s self-inflicted scars, he says, “When you hurt yourself, it’s like you hurt me.” The child is heartbreakingly soft: “When you hurt mommy, you’re hurting me, too.”
The cycle of love and hurt goes on and on. People love each other, the love of husband and wife, the love of father and son, the love of mother and son, but none of them can express the emotions that are inscribed in the depths, and they can only let the glorious memories flash back in their minds and become the warmth that remains in their hearts. When modern people live, “life” has become a passive posture. Love is hidden and indifference radiates without fear. Just like the ubiquitous glass mirror and metal door frame, people in the vacuum can’t be heard by their loved ones in the opposite direction.
The Son Trapped in the Heart” is undoubtedly sad. It speaks like a sorrowful low cello, making a restrained but heartbreaking sound. It is restrained to the point that there is a voice beyond the strings, and one must be patient enough to hear it. –It is a small but present vibration in the air, another sound that resists as much as it can.