The whole secret of the movie "May December" is hidden in the words of Elizabeth, played by Natalie Poman, when she confronts questions from students.
When the student provokes her if she has ever filmed a bed scene, she ignores the teacher's explanation and confronts the question.
She said: "When two people are naked, under the gaze of countless staff, I can't tell whether they are pretending to be excited or pretending not to be excited. You can feel the nervousness of those staff members trying to hide the sound of their own saliva. At this time, I was faced with the conflict between reason and desire, the opposition between my own gaze and the gaze of others. Every time I had to give in to this tension. ”
What was she talking about?It is the initiator of taboos, the intoxication that arises in the intertwined emotions of excitement and fear. It is the inner desire of the bystander, stimulated by the taboo, and the secret effort to try to suppress this desire. It is the initiator of the taboo who feels the deeper excitement and tremor of the gaze of the onlooker.
These three are intertwined to make them all willing to let the drama continue.
This passage reveals the essence of the film and is what makes the film compelling.
Not only are we attracted to desires, but new desires arise when desires are hindered. The latter is a desire for drama, an underlying fascination.
Elizabeth is exactly that. She is passionate about performing forbidden things on stage, so she is known for participating in nude and love scenes. As can be seen from the comments of the male neighbor at the beginning of the film, she enjoys prestige among the general public.
She clearly enjoyed the feeling of being in a forbidden state. For example, she unconsciously seduces the male lead, of course, she can use the excuse that she needs to understand the inner world to play the role, but apparently she also enjoys it.
Why should she confront the rude and rude question of male students?She wanted to tease the inner secrets of the malicious questioner with her frankness. When she answered the question, the seemingly condescending questioners and onlookers seemed nervous, which actually gave her a lot of pleasure.
She is addicted to this sense of inner and outer drama and is addicted to acting. When she was on the set at the end of the film, the director was satisfied, but she insisted on doing it again, and this is the proof.
The director deliberately showed through the lens of the on-set monitor, which actually represents the gaze of outsiders, and she can't extricate herself between her own performance and others**.
In fact, Julianne Moore's portrayal of Grace bears some resemblance to Elizabeth. This is also the reason why the movie compares the two. One is an explicit performer and the other is a recessive performer.
Her inward performance is: she is a weakling. She insisted that it was his little lover, who later seduced her first.
The reason she had to insist on this argument was that if the man had taken the initiative, she would have lessened the guilt of having such an affair with a teenager as an adult.
On the other hand, it is also a kind of moral kidnapping that cannot help but be low-key. She had placed her husband in a moral subordinate position, and he would have to be held accountable for the moral torture of this woman, so that moral guilt would bind her husband tightly to her. It's a kind of implicit control.
Externally, it is another kind of performance, she is showing his strength.
If she reveals a little weakness, it proves that she actually has guilt in her heart, then her relationship is wrong. Her disdain and dismission is a resolute rejection of the vulgar moral judgment of the masses. The confrontation with the masses has an indescribable attraction in itself.
She must insist on this appearance of her innocence, because only by insisting on this innocence can her indecent love affair be the madness of two most affectionate people, and that the world is not worthy of them, not the other way around.
But the love letters kept by her young husband revealed her secrets, and she apparently knew the meaning of this indecent relationship from the beginning, knowing that it would cause an uproar in society. She was clearly not as ignorant and innocent as she suggested to the outside world and to herself.
The letter certainly does more than that. It also shows one's natural love for that tragic one. Reading between the lines, we can see that she was fascinated by the tragedy of the intolerance of their relationship, and she obviously did not want this tragic consequence to come, but the dangerous aura that emanated from it attracted her like a black hole.
This young husband is also performative, and he keeps that love letter, which you can understand as leaving a wonderful memory of his shocking romance. But he showed Elizabeth, which showed his subconscious selfishness. Like Grace, he wants to prove that the main responsibility for this affair lies with the other party, and he also wants to shirk his own moral responsibility. His online chat with an unknown woman, as well as his dewy affair with Natalie Poman, prove that he has lost interest in the relationship, and that he just does not dare to run away or resist openly.
This man and this woman dramatized their momentary ** entanglement into a sea of dry love. When the East Window incident caused huge pressure, this huge external force allowed them to push this drama to the extreme, and the two of them formed a spiritual community. They must put this imagination of love into practice, and they must transform this difficulty of riding a tiger into an active moth to fight the fire. They use a sense of pathos to sublimate their love, which is not so beautiful.
This kind of performative also comes from the audience or the crowd of onlookers. When Elizabeth went to the place where the two of them were found, the boss took out a newspaper, and the headline on the newspaper was the boss's interview. He clearly enjoyed the moment of standing in front of the camera and being watched by everyone, and after all these years, he finally had a reason to show off his glory in the newspapers.
When the protagonist of the event becomes the core of a vulgar drama, these audiences also have a strange sense of glory wrapped up in a huge dramatic event. This is true of those who sent excrement to the couple. The same goes for those who have been placing cake orders for these two couples. The former participates in the event with anger, and the latter participates in the event with a sense of compassion. They all take pride in this involvement.
This man and woman dramatized their momentary ** dispute into a sea of rotten love. When they are caught up in great pressure and external forces, they push this drama to the extreme, forming a kind of spiritual community. They need to turn their imagination of love into reality, and they must take the initiative to throw themselves into that flame. They sublimated their imperfect love with a feeling of pain and pathos.
This performative nature is also influenced by the audience and onlookers. When Elizabeth went to the place where they had been found, the boss pulled out a newspaper with a copy of the interview he had been interviewed. He clearly enjoyed standing in front of the camera and being watched by everyone, and after years he finally had a reasonable reason to show his glory in the newspapers.
When they become the central characters of this vulgar drama, the audience also feels a wonderful sense of glory in being caught up in a huge dramatic event. Some people expressed anger at the couple's involvement in sending excrement;While others are involved out of compassion and keep ordering them cakes. Whether it's anger or sympathy, these people take pride in being a part of it.
However, what we need to be clear about is that this dramatic love is not really good. It was built on the basis of momentary ** and fascination, and although it was pushed to the extreme, it did not ultimately have a healthy and lasting foundation. This drama is only a momentary way of bewilderment and escapism, not a real mature and deep love.
The film starts with a bizarre peachy story, but ends up deconstructing it. It does not show a deep hatred, but a kind of active pandering that makes people cry and laugh, and how to painfully complete a huge drama through exaggeration and incitement under the gaze of others and self.
In the film, Grace's eldest son volunteers to concoct an even more sensational story of chaos to satisfy Elizabeth's curiosity. At the same time, Grace also refuses to have problems with her husband** their relationship, because tomorrow is the graduation ceremony of the children, which is the perfect node for their real drama, and she can't afford to have any slip-ups.
Based on this structure, the film shows a plot with both real and exaggerated textures. Although the plot of the film is basically realistic, ** transcends the real situation, with an obviously surreal sense of pathos. This tragic ** can be understood as the embodiment of the inner life of the characters, who are good at adding drama to themselves, just like at the beginning of the movie, Julianne Moore was just worried that there was not enough food in the refrigerator, but the intensity of ** made people mistakenly think that it was an apocalyptic cry.
It is through this deconstruction that the film reveals a deeper pathos. Tragedy is not only inflicted on us from the outside, but also caused by ourselves. Tragedy is not only pain, but also the sweetness that the protagonist does not know but enjoys. A stain is not only a stain, but also a testament to one's inner self-glory to some extent. In order to protect ourselves, we had to be actors of some kind. But the performance isn't completely forced, and the magic of the show itself will keep you hooked. Between truth and falsehood, we deceive others as well as ourselves.
There is an interesting mirror scene in the film, where the three mirrors refract a complex scene as Julianne Moore's daughter tries on clothes, which can be said to reveal a certain imagery at the heart of the film: we are both our own actors and our own audience. We are slaves to our desires and to our perfect selves in our own imagination. By the combination of our true selves, our disguised selves, and the gazes of others, we revel in our suffering, climax in our suffering, and gain a certain sense of existence—a sense of presence that is both comical and dignified.