The movie "Lust Caution" tells the story of several college students assassinating traitors in the 1930s in China...
After watching the movie, many people couldn't help but regret the tragic life of the protagonist, and at the same time, they were also impressed by the perseverance and courage of the heroine Wang Jiazhi and the actions of giving up for love and sticking to love. At the same time, there are endless criticisms, controversies or derogatory aspects about "Lust and Caution". If you develop a psychological analysis of the plot and characters based on the sound and picture information of the movie, it is not difficult to find that "Lust and Caution" is an extremely real love tragedy. It symbolically presents the truth of a traumatic personality to us with an almost "realistic" artistic technique. The actions and final choice of the heroine Wang Jiazhi in the play are full of human nature and are completely understandable.
1. Wang Jiazhi’s family dance - the wound of abandonment! Where can I find intimate love that comforts the lonely soul?
German psychotherapist Bert Hellinger (Bert Hellinger) believes that the hidden laws in the universe not only affect all things, but also operate within the human family system. He likes to call it "Tao" in Chinese. In Helinger's view, as a social life, everyone belongs to certain systems: they will be members of a family, residents of a certain community, members of an organization... and he himself is a system, a system composed of various elements of body and mind. From individuals to families, families, tribes, and nations, these systems of all sizes are interconnected to form a complete social system. Everyone is conceived, born and grown in such a social system. In other words, everyone's behavior and destiny are inevitably "influenced" and "involved" by members and system dynamics. Among the systems we live in, the family is the most basic and important system. This is consistent with the psychoanalysis idea. Hailinger discovered that in the family system, there are some hidden laws of emotional motivation that are not easily conscious or perceived by people, which determine the relationship between family members and the fate of the individual. If we follow the "system's power law" to get along with our family, our lives will be harmonious and everyone can grow up happily and healthily; if we ignore it and violate the basic laws of system operation, we will be troubled, and these troubles are "involvement".
So, in Wang Jiazhi's inner world, what is the feeling of family? "My father prefers boys over girls. When my mother passed away, my father promised to take me to study in the UK." Such conversations and explanations appeared in the play more than once. We can understand it as: in Wang Jiazhi's feelings and emotions, she is not as important as her younger brother in the family and emotional space with her father. Although she may try to accept this cultural reality of "favoring boys over girls" at the conscious level, at the unconscious level, helplessness, grievance, anger, and resentment arise naturally with her mother's death and father's departure. For a child who feels not loved and affirmed in the family, there must be a loss of self-worth, which is a problem of growth. She needs compensation and satisfaction of love, that is, through love, she finds the man who can give such compensation, and hand over herself, and completes the "re-raising" of herself in the embrace of love.
After receiving the news that my father had already gotten married in the UK and was unable to receive her in the UK because she could not pay the tuition fee, Wang Jiazhi showed more confusion and sorrow. Faced with "father's abandonment, father's breach of trust in his mother's promises and his rejection of his own expectations", she showed calmness and a faint sorrow. My only relative in Shanghai also wanted to sell the house left by Jiazhi's father to take her in and let her go to school.Who cares about Wang Jiazhi in the movie? Who cares about her? How can she find safety, warmth, value, care and emotional belonging?
Faced with such an emotional dilemma, perhaps we can understand why Wang Jiazhi was "wrapped" with a large group of boys who were full of energy and worry about the country and the people, because this will allow her to "replacement" to find a safe belonging, and appear to be "needed", "respected" and "valued" because of the so-called "revolutionary mission"; perhaps we can understand why in these "hot-blooded young people", apart from the heroine, a background girl is arranged -? , because this is actually a mother-like role, a mother's substitute in the psychological sense, and when Wang Jia is wronged, she acts as an emotional soothing mother. Through such plot creation, the movie "Lust and Caution" uses symbolic techniques to "move" the hidden emotional connections in his family system in Wang Jiazhi's real life.
The overall feeling that Wang Jiazhi left to the audience is a girl who lacks warmth, care, and value. She lacks the care and protection of her parents. She is a child who feels neglected and abandoned, and looks cold, melancholy, mature and incredibly persevering. This is somewhat inconsistent with her age and college student identity. Although these young people formed an alternative "big family" because of a "revolutionary mission", unfortunately, the function of this family is not to compensate Wang Jiazhi's lack of love, but a space to reproduce Wang Jiazhi's "traumatic family system involvement". To understand this, we might as well explain the emotional entanglement between Wang Jiazhi and Fisherman Kuang.
2. Wang Jiazhi's love begins - from expectation to giving up! Can idealized "transference" compensate for family emotional deficiencies?
According to the principle of psychological analysis, "transference" refers to emotional transfer, which refers to the process in which a person projects his past and some important characters - usually relatives in his original family - onto an object or a certain type of object in real life. Transference is a form of emotional transfer that can be seen everywhere in life. In most cases, empathy usually looks for objects that can arouse similar emotional experiences of the parties involved based on the rules of "similarity" or "compensation", that is, finding a substitute for past relatives in the real life you are in.
Among the many characters in the movie "Lust and Caution", for Wang Jiazhi, Kuang Yumin and Mr. Yi are two important characters. However, due to the completely different personality traits of these two people, they represent two opposing father prototypes: Kwong Fisherman - represents national justice, is full of vitality, and is a protector. Because in a symbolic sense, the country and the world are! "Home" and "country" are things that are highly related and are consistent. Therefore, protecting the country is protecting the family, and saving the country is like saving the family. The traitor, Mr. Yi, represents national betrayal, cold and melancholy, and is an abandoner and betrayer. It is no exaggeration to say that Fisherman Kuang became Wang Jiazhi's "idealized father" role from the beginning, while Mr. Yi is an absolute stand-in for Wang Jiazhi's "real father" or "bad father".
"Idealization" usually refers to the process in which the party subjectively regards the other party as a "good object" with rich resources, outstanding abilities, psychological and other "good objects" with superior qualities, so as to put themselves in a relationship fantasy to compensate or offset the harm caused by the "bad object" to the party. Idealization is a good medicine to relieve spiritual pain! On the way to Hong Kong, Wang Jiazhi was already infected by the patriotic passion of college students. Fisherman Kuang was full of vitality and passion, patriotic enthusiasm, courage to act, young and handsome, and full of energy. This is exactly the ideal emotional betting object in Wang Jiazhi's mind.However, how did this man who has always been loved by Wang Jiazhi and love Wang Jiazhi at the same time treat her? As the plot develops, what changes will happen to such a relationship between them, so that loss is an emotional tragedy of "the color is used" and "the abandonment again"?
Starting in Hong Kong, under the planning of many classmates, Wang Jiazhi approached Mr. Yi as "Mrs. Mai", seduced Mr. Yi, and gained the trust of Mr. Yi, and then looked for opportunities to give everyone the opportunity to assassinate Mr. Yi. Jiazhi must carry out the "Beauty Plan" to implement this plan. Wang Jiazhi, who appeared as "Mrs. Yi", chose an "experienced" among several boys to have sex with her in order not to reveal that she is a virgin and has no sexual experience, the night before Mr. Yi was expected to date her. Note that this was not chosen by Wang Jiazhi herself, but was agreed upon by other members of this "big family". Wang Jiazhi is just a "chess piece" role to "implement the resolution", and she has almost no choice. More importantly, the fisherman Kuang whom she loved deeply (for whatever reason) acted as a "escaper" and "abandoned". Wang Jiazhi "dedicated" to the so-called "revolutionary belief". However, the first time he had sex with him was not fisherman Kuang.
Three years later in Shanghai, when she had become "Mr. Yi's lover", Fisherman Kuang took the initiative to kiss Wang Jiazhi with guilt. In the film, Wang Jiazhi faced this a bit of sudden action and said with a little blame and nine-point sadness: "Three years ago, you could do it, why not?" At this point, we can no longer see the expectation of love on Jiazhi's face. All that is left is complete loss and the sorrow of abandonment remaining in our hearts, as well as a hint of indifference and silent protest. In fact, since that day three years ago, love has changed so far! A friend of mine who was engaged in psychoanalysis all said to me humorously after reading "Lust and Caution": "Do you know? If Wang Jiazhi had not died, I was really worried! What I was worried about was nothing else, that is, the fisherman Kuang would become Wang Jiazhi's next target of seduction and murder!" I think this seemed not a boring joke.
From the perspective of the heroine Wang Jiazhi, although Fisherman Kuang still has a feeling of love for her, she has reason to believe that Fisherman Kuang has had a love for her from the beginning, except for revolutionary needs, revolutionary friendship. This is the ironic part of the film "Lust and Caution" - opposing revolutionary needs and emotional needs (this is also the most likely place where "Lust and Caution" causes controversy and stimulates the patriotism of the Chinese people). For love, Fisherman Kuang is not only a very untrue, extremely unfaithful, extremely uncourageous and extremely irresponsible abandoner, but also a planner who pushed this weak woman who lacked care and protection down a more dangerous situation, and a hypocritical user. Therefore, the guilty kiss of Fisherman Kuang three years later naturally could not recall Wang Jiazhi's lost love and cold heart. One of the essential characteristics of art is to express the truth of human nature in absurdity and reveal the necessity of human nature in accidents. As the plot develops, we seem to be unable to avoid another more important question - why did Wang Jiazhi, a weak woman who has been covered in bruises, continue to act as a "pornographic spy" and execute the revolutionary order to assassinate Mr. Yi without hesitation? What is the significance of Mr. Yi to Wang Jiazhi?
3. Wang Jiazhi’s journey of seduction—from opposition to fusion! Can human love overcome the hatred of "losing a father"?
Regarding what kind of person Mr. Yi is, the film does not provide a specific introduction to the background information of this character. We only know that he is a traitor, an accomplice of a larger traitor and a middle-aged man with status and status in Shanghai in Japan occupied by Japan, and a bad person who has been sorry for the country and nation. If we pay close attention to the indirect information about Mr. Yi in the film, we will know that he is also a person who hurts women because he once killed someone else's wife. Obviously, there may be no necessary logical connection with his special professional identity as a "traitor".These fragmented information clearly shows that he is a betrayer of a "family and country", a man who abandons his "country" and "people" and work hard for foreigners, and a man who may have other women besides his wife and lover. If we compare Mr. Yi’s personal information with Wang Jiazhi’s father based on the principle of “similar meaning”, we will find how amazingly consistent it is.
Wang Jiazhi's father: a person who deviates from his motherland and lives in a foreign country, an objectively abandons the custody, protection and care of his daughter, a person who has other women besides his daughter, a person who may have caused his wife to die prematurely due to some reason, a person who is roughly the same age as Mr. Yi, and perhaps (probably) a person with a melancholy and anxious expression. The above characteristics are highly consistent with Mr. Yi's psychological role. Therefore, it is not understandable that Wang Jiazhi's determination to complete the task of "assassinating Mr. Yi" without hesitation is due to his deepest resentment towards his father, and "resentment" is the only psychological motivation. But the person who was about to be assassinated was not the real father, but the father's substitute.
However, when Wang Jiazhi really approached Mr. Yi, when Mr. Yi put down his defensive mask more and faced Jiazhi with tenderness and emotional love, when Mr. Yi's inner pain was more overwhelming, Jiazhi was moved by it.
Mr. Yi is very tired of living. When Jiazhi sang a song, she cried and she cried twice... Music can often break through a person's defense well and enter the unconscious level, and enter the warm and real emotional level of a person. At the beginning, Mr. Yi met the need to "relieve anxiety" during the sexual process of Jiazhi, and was mixed with the components of "resentment and opposition". The sexual relationship was characterized by the violent characteristics of "sadvocacy and abuse". For Mr. Yi, "sex" may only be to meet the needs of "relieving stress and anxiety". After long, he and the young, beautiful and sexy Jiazhi found what he needed in sexual behavior but could not experience in their marriage life, the young Jiazhi was like a fresh and pure wind, greatly compensated Mr. Yi for his marriage defect of "who was immersed in mahjong and wearing jewelry all day long." Love is the emotional root of Mr. Yi’s ability to remove defense, rigidity, prudence, viciousness, hypocrisy, self-protection and anxiety.
In the video, Wang Jiazhi's feelings for Mr. Yi have gone through a process of "from hatred to love, from resentment to mercy, from opposition to fusion, from attachment to rescue". This process is well explained through three sex fragments. During a sex scene with Jiazhi on a business trip to Nanjing and then back to Shanghai, the two sides had such a conversation:
Wang Jiazhi: "I hate you! You know I hate you every minute. There is no word in the past few days you left!"
Mr. Yi: "I am back now, do you still hate?" (Making love)
Wang Jiazhi: "No more hate!"
Mr. Yi: "Don't you go back to Hong Kong? Didn't you say you want to go back?"
Wang Jiazhi: (not sure) "I want to go back..."
This kind of resentment caused by separation and understanding due to return reveals the psychological connotation of father-daughter love, and also lays the groundwork for the change in Wang Jiazhi's inner mood. Because Wang Jiazhi not only felt Mr. Yi’s care for her, but also in this passionate desire satisfaction, both parties found the value they once lost - this is a compensation for the traumatic experience of losing their father. Wang Jiazhi's emotional role requires herself to maintain respect for her sense of existence, which is the motivation for her to enter Mr. Yi's emotional world. Otherwise, she will have self-experience chaos in her deliberately playing the role of "porn spy".
Symbolically speaking, Wang Jiazhi's feelings for Mr. Yi are mixed with love and hate.Hate is because he is a traitor, a betrayer, and an abandoner of the "family-country". This corresponds to the abandonment of Jiazhi's daughter by his father in reality; love is because he is a man who can give "father-like" care, a man who makes her feel a sense of existence and value in the emotional world, and a man who can make her return to reality and satisfaction from depression and fantasy.
Therefore, what the entire story version of "Lust and Caution" tells is not a real story of "murdering traitors", but a "inappropriate" theme borrowing due to "commercial box office needs" - borrowing Zhang Ailing Ai Ling's historical story recorded in the novel "Lust and Caution" is a symbolic method to tell us a story about our daughter and father. The protagonist of the story ultimately chooses love and help, not resentment.
Unfortunately, for Wang Jiazhi, this is just a subjective "projection" process and a wrong "transfer" reaction. Because neither Kuang Fisherman nor Mr. Yi were her real father, and for this love that she could not actually have, she finally gave her young life. This is the tragedy of "Lust Caution", this is the reality of human nature revealed by "Lust Caution", and it is also the psychological reality of "Unconscious Creator" of "Lust Caution" as an emotional drama and art film.
