Corpse Bride is a very old legend. The animated masterpiece "Corpse Bride" which Tim Burton was said to have spent over ten years in was popular a few years ago. I didn't have the opportunity to watch it with my friend until a few days ago. The treatment of tone is a dim sorrow. The plot of the story is not very new. All mistakes are derived from a small ring. The corpse bride, who was a beautiful and passionate lady before her death, still kept her talent and soul, although her limbs would fall off when she danced, her eyes would roll out when she shed tears, and green worms came in and out of her head cavity. The favorite scene is at the end of the play, where the corpse bride turned into pieces of white butterflies and flew away.
Two impressions:
1, Rings in Western culture
The ring misplaced by Victor activated the Corpse bride. Because of the ring, the corpse bride believed that he was hers, and she should be with him for a long time. She even followed Victor to his girlfriend Victoria's pretty room and took Victor away from Victoria. Why do film and television screenwriters endow the ring with such great psychological magic power? My friend explained that in Western traditional culture, a ring was a round circle that without a beginning and an end, therefore it represented eternity and commitment. In the film & television and literary works, the effect of the commitment is amplified, so that "Till mountains crumble / Streams run dry / Thunder rumbles in winter / Snow falls in summer / And the earth mingles with the sky / Not till then will I cease to love you!" So the ring surpasses the meaning of love, from Wegner's classic opera "Der Ring Des Nibelungen" to the Hollywood blockbuster "The Lord of the Rings", in which the magic of ring is without a rival.
2, Misunderstanding and abandonment
Misunderstanding-- derives from desire. The corpse bride was waiting for a promise, so there was a misunderstanding because of a ring. But Victor didn't love her. He had someone he loved. Even if the talent of the corpse bride was comparable to Victor, while Victoria didn't play the piano, love was not conditional. This story is similar to the one I read many years ago, which made me miss it for a long time. That is the story of a bronze statue. A bronze statue uncovered from the ground was placed somewhere in the palace. One day, the prince, who is about to marry a princess, accidentally "pinned" the ring on the finger of the bronze statue temporarily. A moment later when he came back. he found that the bronze finger curled up that he couldn't take out the ring. The prince didn't care at that time. But the bronze statue came on his wedding night. At the end of the story, under the pleading of the gray-haired old king, the bronze statue dropped two tears and straightened her figure. After that, she returned to her original statue and continued to smile at the world but never moved again.
I have been conceiving such an oil painting: the picture is divided into two halves, half of which is a cold world like bronze, and half is the colorful living world. The intersection of the two worlds is on the side face of the bronze statue with the head slightly lowered, and the finger which is spreading slowly. And the picture is frozen at the moment when the tears flicker, the ring radiates light due to the change of the extension of the finger.
Love this story, for her giving up. Giving up on her desires. The last abandonment of the corpse bride also made her go as butterflies. They gave up by returning the ring. And there is Anderson's mermaid. She dropped the knife and turned into bubbles. To give up to a world that does not belong to us is to fulfill others, also to be responsible for ourselves. This is indescribably beautiful.
