Solaris had a very interesting concept of desire. When the movie first began, I thought it was going to be a horror flick. The way that the people on the spaceship described the phenomenon made it seem as if there was some type of monster on the ship terrorizing them. I was even more convinced of this when George Clooney’s character, Chris, arrives on the ship only to find dead bodies and the only two people left acting strangely.
I was amused to find that the people on the ship were actually being terrorized by their own desires. The oddest part of the entire situation, in my opinion, was not that the people that they desired most to see were being physically manifested, but the fact that when they were finally able to see these people, they couldn’t handle it.
My favorite line in the movie comes at the beginning when Chris is asked to go to the ship to help. The man in the video says “the obvious solution would be to leave, but none of us want to.” I think that this line speaks to a lot of what we have read about desire in our class. People don’t know what they actually want, and when they think they do, they resort to masochistic measures to obtain it. Even with his wife telling him that she was not human, Chris wanted to be with her. He practically made himself sick trying to keep her alive, and at the end he sacrificed his own life because he didn’t want to leave her. And because he was being told that he couldn't have her, he wanted her more.
On a less dramatic scale, at a party I attended the other day, my friend was talking about her boyfriend, which she does often. She said that for the first time in her life, a boyfriend had denied her sex. My other friend responded, “And that only made you want him more, right?” and she said “Absolutely!” They had immediately started joking that he had denied her with the purpose of making her want him more, but it stuck me how the actions of the people that we desire, even if the actions are insignificant to person doing them, affect us so much. So I guess it is understandable how the significant actions, such as Chris’ wife’s suicide, would change his psyche completely.
I Am Love:
I am going to start off by saying that I love Tilda Swinton. Aside from being an incredibly intelligent person, she has this amazing talent to express more with a simple glance into the camera than most actors can with hundreds of lines. You know exactly who the woman she is portraying is within the first couple of minutes of the movie, as if you had known her beforehand, which works to engross you even more when her character begins a transformation.
I really enjoyed I Am Love because, unlike many books and movies about desire, the desire expressed by Tilda Swinton’s character, Emma, seemed to be more empowering than damning. I think that "I Am Love" is similar to Madame Bovary in that the story is not so much about the act of adultery as it is about the female pursuit of happiness in a patriarchal society. It is not about Emma being a bad person or a good person, but a person; capable of evolution and revolution, restlessness and desire.
In her interview with Charlie Rose, Tilda Swinton mentions that prior to the film Emma is happy, but when Emma sees that her children are changing and transforming into adulthood, she beings to change as well. I think that her change came when she found the letter from her daughter. The letter expresses this deep infatuation that her daughter has with another woman and I think that this impacted Emma greatly. There were hints of her impending change when she was introduced to her son’s girlfriend, but I think that her daughter’s love captivated her more because it was non-traditional, adventurous, and recklessly steadfast. I think that she wanted to emulate the type of love that her daughter had developed. She wanted a love that she could actively participate in, a love that wasn't so stagnant. Antonio offers her this type of love. She is able to express all of the different sides of her personality and culture that she was forced to hide away before.
At one point in the movie, Emma says “‘Happy’ is a word that makes me sad.” But I think she is referring to the facade of happiness that she had become accustomed to wearing, in the same way that she had become accustomed to the name “Emma”. When Edoardo dies, Emma no longer has a reason to keep up the facade or hesitate. His death is all the more reason to enjoy life and chase her desires.
No comments:
Post a Comment