Fred MacMurray as Walter Neff
In the Mood for Love (2000) and Double Indemnity (1944) are two vastly different movies from different periods and cultures, with different stories and presentations but some things are just universal. For example, both films use shade and light to show the internal processes and emotions of our characters.
Maggie Cheung and Toney Leung play two would-be lovers, but they cannot act on their desires or love for each other due to the both of them being already married. Their love is not only unconsummated but it is also unspoken. They are bound and imprisoned by external circumstances to keep their love for each other contained and repressed as so beautifully illustrated in the above scene from the movie, where the shadows create an illusion of the two characters being trapped in a cage.
Walter Neff's story is not as romantic but just as tragic. Before he is wrapped up in the schemes of the Phyllis, we see him bathed in the shadows cast by the windows. His suit is marked with stripes, mimicking a prison jumpsuit. This is a foreshadowing of his eventual spiral and downfall, from an innocent insurance agent to a murderer and most likely, to a be hauled off to a prison, a prison of his own making.
"In the Mood for Love" is probably one of my favorite movies. I think the title "prisons of our making" perfectly sums it up. Outside from their external circumstance, do you think there is anything internal driving them?
ReplyDeleteThat's a great question! I think a lot of it boils down to their own morality - while Walter eventually succumbs to temptation and taints his morals by becoming involved with Phyllis, the couple in "In the Mood for the Love," do not. Their own spouses are having affairs but Maggie Cheung's and Tony Leung's characters both decline to start affairs with each other as to not stoop to their spouses' level.
DeleteBut, I think in a way that is an excuse, I think deeper than the moral reasoning for not deciding to be together, they are both just not courageous enough to go through with their affair - consummation it might sully it, damage it, they could end up falling out of love,- it could be ruined - it could just end up like their marriages. But by their love remaining an unconsummated, "pure" romance, it becomes elevated to something higher than the physical affair of their spouses. It becomes an ideal and a dream. As time passes, things are lost, things deteriorate, love being one of them. But memory always seems to persist. I think perhaps, in their minds, it is better to be haunted by the memory of love, of a would be perfect romance, than to live in a (potential) reality where time erodes their love for each for each other until one day, it is nothing.
jesus so many typos but hopefully my point gets across lol
DeleteInteresting. I've been thinking about love in regards to Zizek's quote "We have a perfect name for fantasy realized. It's called nightmare."
DeleteThe word phantasy in itself pertaining to psychology as an imaginative fulfillment to frustrated wishes.
Perhaps fantasy is the only mechanism that will truly deliver us to paradise.
Who knows? I certainly don't! Anyways, I don't really have a point in this comment.
PS: No worries about the typos, I don't notice them, just like I don't notice my terribly grammar.
I love that quote! It perfectly encapsulates what I was trying to say - I should read more books on film theory lol
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