"Lolita"_A tree of pear blossoms pressing down on begonias

As you can see.

This is a story about an old husband and a young wife, a love affair that is difficult to be accepted by the world, a love movie full of desire and temptation, a pure love and betrayal.

Another translation of this movie: A pear tree crushes begonias.

The eighteenth bride and the eighty-year-old man have pale hair and red makeup.

Mandarin ducks sleep in pairs at night, and a pear tree presses the begonia.

The term "Lolita" can be roughly summed up as the popular "Loli complex" in layman's terms. The word Loli is also abbreviated from Lolita and refers to those over 9 years old. Cute girls under 16 years old. (Isn’t Lolicon really a legal nickname for pedophilia?)

The original work "Lolita" was created by the Russian writer Vladimir Nabokov in 1954 and published in 1955 It was later banned globally for being accused of being "pornographic and perverse", and was criticized by critics as "young America raping aging Europe". It was remade into movies in 1962 and 1977 respectively.

The 1962 version was directed by Stanley Kubrick. Due to the technical limitations of the time, the film was black and white, and the theme of the film focused more on the satire and criticism of this abnormal love affair.

What I’m going to talk about today is the 1977 version, directed by Adrian Lyne and starring Jeremy Irons and Dominic Swann. Lolita, played by Dominic Swann, is a 12-year-old American girl, young, beautiful, and full of evil temptation like a fairy. Jeremy Irons plays Humbert, a pedophile university professor who falls into endless lust after meeting Lolita and eventually leads to destruction.

Lolita.

The light of my life, the fire of my desire.

My sin, my soul.

She can fade and wither,

But with just one look, all kinds of tenderness will flood into my heart.

First Encounter and Fall

Humbert, who is from England, accepted a teaching position at Beardsley University in the United States and decided to go to his uncle's house to complete a new book during the holiday before the start of school. However, due to a fire in his uncle's house, Humbert was arranged to stay with a widow named Charlotte Haze. Haize is a pretty widow who still has charm. She falls in love with Humbert, a handsome English gentleman, at first sight. She chatters to Humbert, and Humbert makes excuses to leave in embarrassment.

In the garden, Hayes introduced his daughter, Lolita, to Humbert. At this time, Lolita was lying on the grass wearing a short skirt close to her skin color. The shower wet Lolita's clothes, highlighting the girl's immature body curves. The girl who was flipping through the magazine noticed the stranger's gaze, raised her head and smiled brightly.

Humbert fell.

It all started when Humbert was 14 years old. Humbert just got his first girlfriend, and they had sex in a hazy way. However, the accidental death of his girlfriend greatly stimulated Humbert, causing him to suffer from pedophilia. The bodies of underage girls were as tempting to Humbert as drugs.

Humbert stayed for Lolita.

Infatuation and Depravity

During the days spent with Lolita's mother and daughter, Humbert quietly observed Lolita. This ignorant girl is the epitome of the character and behavior of young American girls, rebellious, flamboyant, and self-righteous. Heitz used the following ten words to describe her daughter in her children's personality survey: provocative, noisy, trouble-seeking, suspicious, impatient, easily angry, nosy, listless. , disobedient and stubborn. This shows Lolita’s rebellion and the unharmonious relationship between mother and daughter.

Lolita did not cover up or change much about Humbert's arrival. Instead, she secretly exuded a fatal temptation to Humbert.

She stepped over Humbert who was reading the newspaper with her bare feet;

went to the toilet with the bathroom door ajar;

sat on Humbert’s lap A piece of chewed gum was stuck to his diary;

He approached Humbert unscrupulously and had physical contact, and his ambiguous movements deliberately seduced Humbert. She knew nothing about her own charm, yet she seemed to know everything. As Humbert said: She seduced me first. Before Haydes sends Lolita to boarding school, Lolita rushes back to her room and kisses Humbert.

Here Lolita is purely childlike with curiosity and playfulness, without any emotion. Lolita has always been in the dominant position in their relationship, but she never took it seriously.

Although Humbert had fallen at this time, he still had the self-control and moral restraint of an adult. He just wrote everything down in his diary. In order to stay with Lolita, Humbert marries Hayes. From here on, Humbert begins to get lost in desire.

After marriage, Haitz fell in love with Humbert wholeheartedly, but learned the truth from Humbert's diary. Haitz was heartbroken and wrote angrily to friends. He died in a car accident while sending the letter. In the letter, Haitz was still looking forward to finding a chance to get back together with Humbert after calming down for a while...

Humbert, who learned of Haitz's death, burned Haitz's letters and also burned them. Lost one's own conscience and morality. He quickly packed his luggage, went to the boarding school to pick up Lolita happily, deceiving Lolita that Hayes was just sick, and then started an elopement journey with Lolita.

In the hotel where she stayed, the charming Lolita attracted the attention of pornographic writer Quilty. It was also in this hotel that Lolita took the initiative to have sex with Humbert. But Humbert is just a pastime for Lolita when she is bored, and he does not know it.

Betrayal and Destruction

Lolita's willful Humbert always responded to her requests, but Lolita became tired and dissatisfied with having to rely on Humbert to survive, and began to look for Reason to rebel against Humbert's control. She used teasing to get Humbert's grace, used sex transactions of $2.50 to get money from Humbert, and used lies to deal with him. Humbert is aware of this, but there is nothing he can do. After a fierce argument, Lolita gained the upper hand and gained control of the relationship.

Lolita controlled Humbert's will like a drug, making him desperate and painful but unable to extricate himself. But Humbert's compromise was not rewarded, Lolita still escaped, and Humbert fell into a frantic search.

Three years later, the haggard Humbert received a letter from Lolita. Lolita is married and pregnant with a child. The embarrassment of life forces Lolita to hope that Humbert will provide some financial support. Humbert sold all his assets and went to Lolita to beg her to come back with him, but Lolita refused.

Humbert learned that the man who took Lolita away three years ago was the pornographic writer Quilty he met earlier. Lolita claims that Quilty was the only man she was obsessed with, but she was abandoned by Quilty after he refused his request to film a pornographic film. Humbert was so desperate that he kept all the money and killed Quilty in anger.

Eventually, Humbert was arrested and died in prison, and Lolita also died in childbirth.

This abnormal love that was despised by the world finally ended.

The secular world criticizes Humbert for his shame and unbearability, believing that he is the culprit who seduces Lolita into incest and indirectly kills Hayes. Indeed, Humbert has human flaws. He didn't love Hayes, which led to Hayes' death. He is a pedophile, and as a judgmental adult, he leads Lolita step by step into the abyss.

But.

Isn’t Lolita itself a sin? She knows how to manipulate Humbert's will and how to exchange her body for what she needs. Humbert's love is her negotiation capital and can be discarded at will when it is not needed. Although Humbert is her stepfather, Lolita is the master in this relationship. The evil behind her is unknown and difficult for people to accept. Humbert sacrificed all his time, money, and life in exchange for her slight frown. This girl herself is Pandora's box.

It is difficult to determine what is true and what is not, but through this sadomasochism, what we see is the exploration of human nature and original sin. Under all the erotic and loving language, what the original author wants to describe is always a serious narrative about "desire". All sins originate from desire. In the face of desire, Humbert lost all restraint and rationality and became Lolita's slave.

I don’t want to stand on the moral high ground and blindly condemn Humbert, because when we reflect on ourselves, we are all in the midst of irresistible desires. Through this movie, what we need is the recognition of original sin in human nature and the introspection of our own desires, just like Adam and Eve in the Garden of Erie learned about shame after eating the forbidden fruit.

Humbert's love is pure, only for Lolita. Even after being betrayed and abandoned by Lolita, he still loved her.

When he found Lolita three years later, the Lolita in front of him was no longer the same as before. She was "bloated, pale, vulgar, and pregnant with another man's child. But I knew, as I knew I must die, that I loved her more than anything I had seen or imagined on earth." .

And Lolita is like a fairy-like Lolita. I don’t know what her life is for. I just hope that her ignorance and depravity will not happen to you and me. In the face of such original sin, we can keep our desires. After all, the best result of the years we have experienced is that while increasing our wisdom, we also learned restraint.

The original text was published on the movie public account Midsummer Listening to the Wind

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