Foreword: Marvin's Room is a typical art film of the nineties. The cast of the film is really touching, including the goddess Diane Keaton, Meryl Streep, and Leonardo in the fresh meat period, and even the guest doctor is Robert De Niro.
This old film mainly tells the story of Beth, a middle-aged single woman, who spends most of her life caring for her eccentric aunt and her bedridden father who has suffered a stroke. As a result, he also suffered from blood cancer, and the only hope for survival was his sister Li, who had no contact since leaving home 20 years ago. In order to escape family responsibilities and choose to leave home to pursue herself, Li's life is not good: the eldest son rebelled and set fire to the house and went to a psychiatric hospital, and Li took her younger son homeless and had to live in the convent.
The two sisters, whose relationships are rigid, reunite due to illness, and through repeated contradictions and struggles, eventually, each of them regains the true meaning of family responsibility and affection.
American family ethics dramas have their own characteristics, different from the typical personal heroism in commercial blockbusters, and also different from the bleakness and sensationalism of general films about illness and death. The whole film does not deny the cruel reality, but it is full of light warmth, there is no too fierce conflict in the film, but it is full of contradictions and problems in the details.
Today, I will analyze the psychological changes of several characters in the film at different stages through the contradictions and conflicts shown in the film, and the choices and decisions of each person behind these psychological changes. At the same time, based on the family responsibilities and kinship of the characters in the play, I will talk about the realistic thinking that this film brings to me.
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<h1>Sister Li: From escaping family responsibilities to seek self, to finally understanding family responsibilities and returning again</h1>
In this film, Aunt Mei plays the older sister Li of the two sisters. She is a divorced mother on the verge of obtaining a beauty industry certificate, with a rebellious eldest son, Hank, and a nerdy youngest son, Charlie. More than twenty years ago, because her father was paralyzed in bed due to a stroke, but Li was bent on realizing her self-worth, so she ran away from home after a quarrel with her sister Beth in order to avoid responsibility, and there was no contact.
However, Li, who has always stressed that she is about to get a degree, is actually a mess, and her ideals have not been realized for more than twenty years. Other than that, she never seemed to understand love. Not only was she unable to take on the responsibility of caring for her father, but even her own son, she could not do anything about it.
At the beginning of the film, there is a scene in which Hank is imprisoned in the juvenile management office because he hates his mother and burns down the house. As a mother, Li faced her son's psychologist and said, "I can't control him, why should I come to see him?" She poured a few jelly beans on her son while he was asleep.
I think that seeing this, everyone seems to think that Li is a daughter of an incompetent mother and no filial piety. In fact, looking down carefully, it is not difficult to find that Li's own heart is still an immature child, and whenever there is a problem, she uses escape to solve the problem. It's as if we made mistakes as children and didn't dare to take responsibility. When her father fell ill, she rushed to run away from the family and the responsibility of caring for him. When he couldn't figure out his son, he wanted to try not to look at her and pretend that it would be okay.
Is Leigh really that selfish? Not really. In the middle of the film, when her son apologizes to her in front of the psychologist, Li is not like a mother, but like a nervous and cramped child, who does not dare to respond positively. When she heard that her sister Beth had cancer, her first instinct was that I was going to go back and save her. When she stepped into her father's room again, her heart was withdrawn, and others gathered around her father's bed, only she stood like a child who had done something wrong, standing far away.
In fact, at this stage, Li has love in her heart, but more is fear, she is afraid that she is powerless to take responsibility, she does not know how to love, and she is powerless to love others. So in the face of love and responsibility, she kept running away like an ostrich.
As time went on, Watching her sister Beth and her son get better and better, Lily, who at first warned Beth that "we will only stay for a few days and don't try to make friends with Hank", is now sour in her heart. I think she was envious, even a little jealous. While chatting with her sister late at night, Lily learned for the first time that Beth had suffered from losing her lover. As she watched Beth take off her hair cover and thin her hair because of chemotherapy, Lily hid herself and wept, her heart was deeply touched.
In fact, by this point Li had already regretted it, and her inner defense line had gradually loosened. She tried to communicate with her son at Disney, and she tried to help Beth take care of her family. However, at this moment, she is still evasive and afraid.
Until the end of the film, the younger sister Beth failed to match. In the shot, Beth looks depressed, and her father's pills are scattered on the ground, just like Lily's contradictory and confused mood at that time. Her first instinct was still to flee, and perhaps those two words were her background sounds. She hurried back to her room to pack up her things and prepare to escape. At this time, the son came back, a sentence of "where are you going" pulled her back to reality, she was silent for a moment, just faintly and said to her son, you go out to tell me, otherwise I am worried. It was the last time she escaped.
Li's transformation is really little by little, and here, Li's heart is struggling. In the selfishness and selflessness of human nature, the struggle between love and being loved, the compromise of understanding and acceptance, Li returned to reality and became a mother and daughter with flesh and blood. I think that for Lily, this is a real growth, and from Aunt Mei's interpretation, we can perceive a little bit of emotional change in this character. Eventually, for the sake of her son, for her sister, for her family and love, Li learned to let go and compromise, and also learned to take responsibility and choose. Staying is the final choice she made in her struggles again and again, and she has grown from herself to a family.
<h1>Sister Beth: From carrying the burden of family alone, suppressing herself to reopening her heart to accepting her loved ones</h1>
Some people say that the image of Beth in the film is positive and great. Diane Keaton's younger sister Beth seems to be a perfect character, with a gentle personality, who has been caring for her bedridden father and back-sick and eccentric aunt Ruth for twenty years. Her entire life revolved around her father Marvin's room.
However, in fact, at the very beginning of the film, it shows the fragility and escape of her sister Beth. When Beth went to the hospital for examination, in fact, she herself had always resisted, and for the blood test, Beth showed fear and cover-up. She kept stressing that I wasn't sick, just a lack of vitamins. In fact, this has laid the foundation for Beth's character psychological state.
Such a perfect character seems to form a sharp contrast with the selfish escape of the sister: the great and strong sister and the selfish sister who evades responsibility. In fact, Beth is also evasive compared to Lily's evasion of family responsibilities, and what she is escaping is facing her true self. When she chooses to shoulder the burden of her family, she has chosen to give up on herself.
In the film, in fact, Beth did not accept her sister Li, who had just returned. From Lily's mouth, we also know that in all these years, Beth has not even sent a Christmas card, which is enough to show that Beth is dissatisfied with her sister's original choice. From the bottom of her heart, she has not accepted or trusted her sister, but has been suppressing her emotions.
It wasn't until Li decided to choose a nursing home for her father that the plot pushed to a climax. The conflict between the sisters broke out completely. However, when Beth really vented the complaints that had been buried in her heart for more than twenty years, she began to have the courage to face herself, face her former self and her sick self. She finally told the sad story of her boyfriend's swimming drowning, and also took off the wig that she had been refusing to take off in front of her sister Li.
I think at this point, Beth has slowly come out of escaping from the past. There may still be a gap, but she has chosen to accept her sister Li and regards her as the closest and most trustworthy person. Therefore, after Beth fainted in Disneyland, she finally chose not to suppress herself, no longer to deceive herself, in front of her sister Li, she took off the disguise of strength and began to express her fear and weakness. If family affection saved Li, the same change in Li's family saved Beth. Beth used to be hard, now beth is soft and fresh.
<h1>Eldest son Hank: From rebellion and arson, lying to understanding the true meaning of love</h1>
About the eldest son Hank, played by Little Plum, it is the growth journey of a rebellious teenager. The child has a distinct personality, and from the arson at the beginning he burns all the pictures of his mother, leaving only half of the father's pictures, we can see that the seventeen-year-old Hank is full of hatred in his heart.
Every child longs to be loved and cared for during her own upbringing, but Hank's mother, Lily, is still a person who does not know how to love, so she does not know how to discipline her son, let alone how to express love. So Hank blamed Lily for his dad's departure. I think that Hank's heart is actually a contradiction, on the one hand, he is extremely disappointed in his mother, even set fire to the house, on the other hand, he actually longs for his mother's attention, hoping that her mother can come to see him.
In fact, Hank in the film is also evasive, his heart longs for love, but he has been running away from love. He pretended that he didn't care about anyone, pretended to be cold and heartless. He had to hide his fears by lying and talking big. Because his heart is devoid of love, he has always believed that all people do everything for a purpose, and there will be no emotion at all. Aunt Beth only cared about her because she had asked them for bone marrow.
Hank's transformation is in the backyard of Beth's house, where he steals tools, but Aunt Beth gives them to him sincerely. Beth tried to reach out and touch his head but was hit back by Hank. However, Beth did not get angry, leaving him with enough time and space to adjust his emotions. When he was willing to communicate again, Ness still chose to accept him and believe in him. And tell him, "You're my nephew, and I love you no matter what." ”
From this point on, Hank was finally recognized and accepted, and he began to confess his dreams and his fears to Beth. When a child gets attention, it is when he understands love. Hank understands that there is unconditional love in the world, and he begins to decide to go to the check-up, decides to stay with Beth, and begins to communicate with his mother.
<h1>04 Love and communication in the family is an eternal topic: the theme of the film brings me two points of reflection</h1>
Family affection is an eternal topic. The two sisters, one staying for love, the other leaving for themselves. The two people from the initial old and dead do not interact with each other to the final reunion ending, bring me some two points of thinking about family affection.
1. When we face family responsibilities, we need to make compromises;
The first time I watched this film, I just thought Beth was a very nice person, and Lily was simply too selfish. When I watch this film ten years later, I am already a mother and a wife, and I understand the meaning of family responsibilities.
Back to real life, we are actually more like Li, in order to work, in order to achieve self-realization and leave home. As children, we choose to struggle in the big city, and we cannot choose to accompany our parents. I think we were taught filial piety from an early age, but our sense of family affection became weaker and weaker, and the time spent with our parents every year was limited.
When our parents are still healthy, maybe we don't have a lot of responsibility. But when we really face family responsibilities, we must have the courage to make choices and the ability to take responsibility. Speaking of big points, China is a country that pays attention to family affection, and instead of sending "children want to raise and not waiting" in the circle of friends, it is better to take some time and accompany our families more.
When it's all gone, we at least won't regret it. We have compromised for family responsibilities. As Beth said, "I'm lucky because I have the ability to love people." ”
2. As "family", communication and acceptance of each other is really important;
Lily had complained that she hadn't received a single card from Beth for more than twenty years. It can be seen that the two sisters have never thought and communicated each other's ideas over the years.
Beth thinks That's too selfish to take on family responsibilities. So she said, "Our relationship is not good. That's why I didn't say anything sad about myself. And Li has always felt that Beth is hypocritical, there must be "interests", and there must be people who have never loved to choose "dedication".
I think that if the two people communicate early, maybe Beth will understand that Lily is not willing to be mediocre and wants to pursue her dreams, and Lily may also understand the pain of Beth losing her lover, and she will be more grateful to Beth for her dedication to this family.
In addition, the relationship between Leigh and Hank is in the same situation, is not it also because of the lack of communication between the two people? Li knew that her son hated her, but she only wanted to escape. Infected by her sister Beth, eventually, Leigh finally tells Hank:
If you want to know your father, why don't you ask me? Because your father abused you when you were a child, I chose to take you and my brother with me.
We suddenly felt that communication was not so difficult, and when we said it, the knot was already half unraveled, and the other half only needed to be handed over to time.
On the other hand, our family conflicts, parent-child discord, are more because they cannot communicate and do not accept the difference from themselves. A lot of estrangement conflicts. When we have time to think about it, we will understand that what we use to restrain ourselves may not be suitable for others, when we sincerely express our needs and fears, when we truly accept each other's differences and choices, it should be much more harmonious.
Conclusion: The story begins in marvin's room, where one daughter desperately flees the room and the other spends her life guarding it. The story also ends in the room of father Marvin, when the sister Li pushed the room open with the medicine, the whole room swayed with the light spots that her father loved, hitting the wall and hitting everyone's face...
Marvin's room represents family, responsibility, and love. At the end of the film, Marvin's room is so peaceful and warm, which means that after the characters in the play have experienced many contradictions and conflicts and self-struggles, they have all appreciated the meaning of family, and they have made their own choices in their hearts, reaching the final reconciliation and relief.
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