DIRECTORS' NOTES:
No matter who you are, at one point or another, you would ask yourself, "what is the meaning of life?" After all, its answer is going to take a lifetime to figure out. Even the word "meaning" takes on several variations throughout the quest, because, at each point, we can only get a glimpse of life. Its visage is never complete, at times it can be so contented, at others, depleted of hope and joy.
We are often told to cherish our good times, our memories of love and happiness. No doubt that they are the pillars of our life, especially at times when we are going through hardships, but they are not the meaning or the answer to life.
Then we let the question slip away. We age. Having encountered more frustrations, we gradually lose our sensitivity towards the inner feelings, of our own and of the others. What we've lost exactly is not our youth or innocence, but patience. We believe that we are no longer in the process of becoming something or someone, we are already that "thing" and beyond reparation.
Here, Future is abruptly replaced by Fate. Fatalists cannot but choose a blind eye to hardship, to numb their pain. Like the Mann character when she couldn't seek helps or understanding from the others, she shut her "senses" down, whereas her precedent Ling did it in a permanent fashion. But suffering remains unchanged, and if you believe in the afterlife, the pain haunts forever, the living and the dead.
I believe that happiness is not all life is worth, suffering, too, is a very special delivery from life. Unwrap it and ingest, savour pain in its full scale, if you still survive, your sensitivity is bound to return, and perhaps, along with wisdom. In short, it opens another door to the knowledge of life.
No one dictates his fate, only some are better prepared. |
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