🎥🎞️📝: <Damn Multiverse>｜The Greatness of Nothing

My choices made me who I am today

Evelyn, Joy After the infinite universe shakes, one side is nihilistic negative and the other is existential positive; however, the heated debate between the two highlights the uniqueness of choice: " My choice has made me what I am today. "Or " Those regrets left in the past pile up the untouchable future ." The album " The Ballad of Cleopatra " by the American folk band Lumineers This album covers five songs and a 24-minute MV, using Cleopatra's perspective to see her. The choices she made in her life, and more importantly, the choices she wanted to make but didn't. This 24-minute life slideshow also explains the difference in life brought about by choice

“You are only one decision away from a completely different life.”

(You are just one step away from a very different life)

Through her memories, the heroine in the MV imagines, "If this was the case at the time, what would happen next?" Those good times that never happened, with the boyfriend who proposed marriage, the father who was dying, the child who insisted on giving birth, and the Make your own choices. It may seem that the idea of "knowing so why was it in the first place" is somewhat unnecessary, but we have all experienced these moments of retrospect in our lives:

If we hadn't been together

If I had chosen to study abroad

If I had chosen to be stationed overseas

If I had confessed to her directly

If I could have been more serious

If I had chosen to let go

...

Isn't it because we can't change the past that people's character of nostalgia is created? Covered with a filter of time, instead, the memories add a yellowed beauty to the unreachable distance. Through the days of dreaming and singing about the beauty of the past, it seems like a lifetime away, and we can still use the hand of memory to grasp it. The past that we don't want to let go. However, like the heroine of the MV, the irreversibility of memories can only be realized after waking up from a big dream, and those too late can only be left in the past.

In the movie, the same sense of sight also appeared. The dialogue between Weimen in a straight suit and Evelyn in a high-spirited alley is worth thinking about, not only because of Wong Kar Wai-style scenes, but the dark and depressing lights often carry the taste of life. You Qi took a puff of cigarette, looked at Evelyn and said:

"Where you can't reach is far away"

Weimen's words seem to be a kind of Sanmao-style insight and seeing "If the heart has no place to rest, it will be wandering everywhere" , or in other words, rewrite this sentence in the tone of this movie

"What you can't achieve is your dream"

However, Weimen did not say this sentence with an attitude of looking at the world. On the contrary, he told Evelyn with a positive and positive sincerity that even if his life was restarted again, he would still choose to be with her. Under the dark lights of the street corner in this scene, the unique brilliance of Weimen in this universe is highlighted; as if in this universe, he is the best interpretation of eternal return " Only those things I am willing to repeat are the things I should choose. things to do. ”

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A black and white world?

This movie reminds me of the question in my heart:

 Who gave me the dualistic thinking that everything in the world has "good and bad"?

In such black-and-white values, we can't see the possibility of making a choice; even, such dualistic thinking directly and rudely divides the world into two, without a gradual process. Unfortunately, this kind of thinking dominates the world view of many people, and each choice will only bring out good/bad outcomes, and each outcome will lead you to a different life path.

Jiang Xun, an aesthetic master who has talked openly about loneliness many times, described this arbitrary thinking as ideological violence in his book "Six Lectures on Solitude". Not everything can be viewed from a good/bad perspective, you can even take a step back and ask the decider, what are the criteria for doing good/bad? If the individual has not yet been able to distinguish between good and bad standards, then, can our society tolerate the individual to think more? The violence of the mind creates the loneliness of the mind. In a fast-paced society, the immature people are driven to the shelves; the price of pursuing collective efficiency is the loss of individual autonomy.

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The greatness of nothing

A TFT partner once told me that she sees a "greatness of nothing" in little people. The seemingly compatible narratives of the two are in fact embedded with diametrically opposed values; in a society of meritocracy, these little people appear sadly to have accomplished nothing, yet it is this “nothing accomplished” filter that prevents us from seeing their true nature. She believes that they are devoted to their posts and silently prop up this society, and that every individual in this group is great for nothing. As Michelle Yeoh mentioned in an interview, her role as Evelyn in "Multiverse of Mom" made the world re-examine the most neglected role in the family - mother.

We are born independent, but we are tied to each other

I once heard a friend mention to me that “after giving birth, a woman will no longer be an individual, but the mother of the child.” From a legal point of view, the conversion of women’s identities before and after childbirth is indeed true, and of course, it is also true of men. However, I think women don't become mothers immediately after the baby is born, they start to learn how to be mothers. This sudden change of identity is like the binary thinking of black and white. Once a woman chooses to have a child, she will become a mother; just like, every choice will bring consequences.

Legally, a change of identity can indeed take place at midnight; however, a change of identity in the mind requires years of effort and does not happen at the click of a button. That is to say, I think the starting point of comparing human nature should be "the concept of mother is gradually developed along with the process of parenting" , and the concept of identity of son/daughter is also developed in this process.

For Evelyn, she is learning how to be a mother; similarly, Joy is learning how to be a daughter. Therefore, the family in the movie is learning how to become a family, how to give up the dreams they have pursued for each other, and how to underestimate the blame they have carried. That's why my partner sees the "greatness of doing nothing" in Mom so precious. Their failure to achieve anything is not the result, but the reason ; how much the mother has given up for the sake of the child and how much she has done, it is only in the choice that the mother can see the greatness of the mother.

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After the movie, we still have to face the world without cosmic shake and ask ourselves "have you been satisfied so far?" If not, because you still have a choice for the next time, which will take you to the extreme different time and space. Cherish every choice, in our short and small life, that is our ticket to enter the universe.