“Anatomy of a fall”
I saw a brilliant film Anatomy of a fall a couple of months ago. Though categorized in the suspense genre, this film is not the typical suspense film. Unlike a usual suspense, this film doesn’t answer the question that has kept us on the cliff edge since the beginning. Often in most thrillers or suspense films (at least in my impression, aka. as in Hitchhock’s style), the culprit of a crime is revealed at the very end, or the quandary of the illness is explained with good reasoning.
Anatomy doesn’t seek to satisfy the mind of such truth-seeking audience.
Samuel, the husband of Sandra (a successful writer) and the father of Daniel (a blind boy), is dead from falling off the chalet on the Swiss/French Alps. The police suspects Sandra as the culprit who pushes her husband off the chalet during a fight. In the end, Sandra is not indicted.
Near the end of Sandra’s trial, Daniel stepped to the exact location that Samuel falls, trying to figure out why, how, and what. If nobody has pushed Samuel, is it possible that Samuel chooses to die? If so, shall we trace along Samuel’s suicidal signals that have emerged in the family?
Of course, the most important reason that I fall for Anatomy is nothing but the Chopin Prelude in b minor that ends the film. The same melody appears more than three times with distinct basses and harmonies. Isn’t the music a reflection of Anatomy, which consists of a myriad lens to explain the same tragedy, and a reflection of our own anatomy of life, which is laden with supposedly clear-headed attitudes that leads to no exact conclusion.
I’m always extra tearful when it comes to themes on family. Maybe it’s due to my chronic non-relationship with my own family. Maybe it’s due to my inability to reconcile with my family despite my capability to gather for all possibilities to be the best scholar, the best pianist, the best performer. Or maybe it’s my bewilderment over the repetitive destiny of a typical Chinese woman—perpetually entrapped by the judgmental gaze of people who’re supposed to be my most avid supporters, yet who’ve only succeeded in making me eternally wretched and haunted. I guess, what I’m trying to say is, when a Chinese woman is born, the very first exposure she has to confront arises within her own family: her dictatorial father, her patronizing brother, and her non-understanding mother who, despite sharing the suffocating experiences of being consistently underestimated, humiliated, and denigrated, doesn’t share the one thing that she would die for—a gaze that is not contaminated by the many gazes that have imprisoned women in the poisonous feudalism. In the field, we call this “unending feedback loop.” The woman has finally succeeded at undermining herself.
What else am I supposed to say? Attached some photos generously taken by my friend Cameron Green at Eastern Michigan University’s undergraduate philosophy conference last November. I love my listeners. I’m so lucky to have happened to communicate with the best interlocutors that one could possibly ask for. I’m so thankful to the dozens of comments I received:)
In the end, I guess I take philosophy, music, etc. as my family more than my real family. May I not be crucified for saying this. Thankfully, at least my parents can’t read English.
