Closeness doesn't belong to two people.
"Human Surrender."
Note by the author.
Shen Bailu is a female film critic. She didn't want to judge the film, she just wanted to watch it slowly: See how the light falls on your face, see how the "Are you" gets cold, see how a kiss doesn't stop in a kiss, but is taken away by subtitles, viewers, tails and memories later.
The first half was like an old drawer that slowly turned open: love, hands, moon, eyes, debt, O's silence, one by one, and finally it was discovered that they belonged to the same secret.
Some of the films finish the story, and some of them clean up like one person at night. The lights were not bright, and everything was still there: a bed, a wall, a few words that had not been put out, a hand reaching out and shrunk back. You thought she was looking for something to lose, and later you knew she was looking for the shape she left behind.
Human Surrender is such a movie.
It appears to be very violent. Some say love, some kiss, some fall on the ground, some do not speak, and others are watched. But it's too cheap to see these scenes as a stimuli. This film is really cold, not because it's made intimacy, but because it doesn't let it belong to two people.
One man says to another, "I love you." The camera was there. One person asked, "Are you there?" Subtitle was there. A man kisses, a debt is present. A man is silent and an empty seat is present. A person is still being asked, and the fear of society as a whole is present. In the fourth part, even the audience is in the relationship. It's worse with the tails, it's entanglementing the living into a role name, as if it's sewn up in a dream.
So the true sentence of this film is not "Are they in love?" It is: "No one can save it alone once intimacy has happened."
There's a dark line in the whole picture: love is spoken up and caught by a camera immediately; the body is close, experience immediately exposed cannot be shared; the eyes do not recognize themselves, water and kiss start to account; Ricky and Cary kisses do not reach love, but rather "reward"; O's silence pushes the relationship to a witness; Amon's temperature questionnaire pushes the witness to a physical diagnosis; immediately moves these private questions to a public space; and the end of the film puts everything into a name.
It's not a summary. It's the movie's fate.
When love comes out, it's not simple anymore.
00:01:20. There's red light in the dark, and there's seen embarrassment. Love had no opportunity to be alone from the beginning.
00:06:28. A few hands, like temporary wires, lit up and made it clear that currents don't keep people alive.
Love at the beginning of the film is not beautiful. It does not appear in a clean, suitable room where a confession can be made, but in a dark, red light and near offensive view. When love opens, others hear it, the machine takes it in, and the restless light shines.
It's like Human Surrender's first judgment of intimacy
People never fall in love in a vacuum. There's always a third thing between two people. It could be a camera, it could be a subtitle, it could be a rehearsal room, or it could be all of us later.
The early hands were particularly tight. The wrists, the backs, the face on the back and the yellow light form a short circuit. It's like consolation, like experiment. People try to connect, but it doesn't mean they understand. Some say, "You won't understand," and it's like a needle, breaking the warmth.
All the more violent scenes of the film can be heard from here. Contacts are real. I don't understand. Love is real, not exclusive.
Amon wasn't alone, he was waiting.
00:28:05. It's not sweet, it's like a night check: make sure the other one's still there and that he hasn't fallen.
00:32:20. The eyes were supposed to go back to themselves, but the film turned them into an empty well.
If you look at Ammon just by the number of times you're out, you'll miss her. She is not always in the middle of the picture, sometimes not in the picture, but the film has been preparing her position.
The position is simple and difficult: someone has to answer "I am".
"Are you" sounds like a soft word between lovers, but in this film, it's more like a confirmation signal from a system.
It's not about love, it's about existence. Are you still there? Will you suddenly disappear? When I speak, will I be alone in the room?
And then the eyes failed. The characters say they can't see themselves in each other's eyes. It'll probably be a sad poem in a regular love movie; it's more like an inspection report in Human Surrender.
The eyes are no longer reliable. There is no guarantee of recognition and no guarantee of return.
So the film needs another confirmation. Not the eyes, the body. Not "Do you love me or not", but "Do you feel hot", "Do you still fear", "Can you continue".
That's where Amon came out. She's not a passive lover, she's a warmer in relationships. She asked that she catch it, and she asked someone to say what had not collapsed. Her tenderness was not easy. It was like a thermometer. The closer she was to her body, the better she knew she was ill.
Ricky and Jared: First kiss, already with the books.
00:37:48. The water, the fish tank, the touch, the kiss, did not end up in romance, but in "thank you" and "return".
00:43:55. O stand there, don't talk. The empty seats are there, too, and they don't testify. The film suddenly turned into a proven failure.
Ricky and Garrett's kiss was the first intimacy that brought people closer to nowhere. But the film doesn't make the kiss a victory.
There's water in front of it. Water is always dangerous, like memories, like debt, like people can't explain. Fish tanks, swimming, falling off the boat, helping, thanking you. These things come all the way, and when the lips finally touch, the audience realizes that the intimacy does not necessarily lead to love, but to liquidation.
The word "return" is cold. It takes the kiss out of the temperature and puts it on the books. Whosoever owes him, who saves him, who gives him what with his body, shall have the right to say that this is nothing but debt. The film did not answer for them, but kept the water and skin close.
Soon, the O in the circus tent appeared. She has no voice. It is because of the lack of sound that she was easily left out in the past, as if anyone who did not speak in a play were not present. But movies are not human.
It's about proof, memory, proof by me alone. O there, there's an empty gallery. One has a voice, one has a body and one has a seat in a row without witnesses. The relationship here is no longer about "who loves whom", but about "who can prove what happened".
This is it.
O
Getting back important. She reminded us that there are many intimates in Human Surrender that do not appear on the lines. By standing, by distance, by silence, by a man who is not heard, they are preserved.
From O to Amon: The most secret cut in the movie.
00:45:58. After O's silence, the film cuts to Amon's breathing and fatigue. Proof of failure, body taking over.
01:07:50. Instead of keeping the world out of the door, that kiss brought death, friends, society and everything to the bed.
I almost felt that the whole movie had a very small key hidden in O cut to Ammon.
In the circus tent, the problem is proof. Did it happen? Who saw it? Who can testify? O's silence has left the problem unsettled.
The empty seats don't help. They're just there, like a row of cold teeth.
Then the picture cuts to the outside, to Amon's body. Breathe fast, heart beat fast, you're tired. The problem suddenly changed. Instead of asking "who can prove it", he asked, "Do you still have it?"
This is not an ordinary transition, but a transfer of relationship mechanisms. O is silent witness endpoint and Ammon is a physical interrogator. The two cannot be combined into the same person, nor can they be vaguely described as a female symbol. They were standing in different positions, but together they pushed the film from "Has it happened" to "Can it go on?"
Ugly and Ammon kisses at the bottom of this line.
The scene took place at Amon's house and the wall was filled with film posters. It can't be seen as just an introspection, because I did consult with the production history of the film, which makes it even more complicated: it is also a moment when the real intimate experience is captured by the camera. Ugly gave his first kiss here, and the film did not create a kiss after the fact, but left his first awkwardness, heat, breath and questions in the picture.
But the kiss still didn't stop on the kiss. Kisses are not followed by silence, but by more precise language.
Are you still hot?
A little warm.
Not that kind of hot.
Are you still scared? Death, intimacy, friends, society, everything.
The warmth here is not love talk, it's like the number on the thermometer. Fear is not tender; it is reported in one piece, like a night closet, with no clothes, only the world. Death, friends, society, everything, come to a bed.
Turns out that intimacy did not keep the world out of the door, but reduced it to two-person breathing.
Amon's meaning here is clear. She's not "loved." She makes relationships go on. She asked about the temperature, caught fear and kept the scene intact. She's like a person, like an interface. Her care was not a soft background, but one of the hardest jobs in the film.
Part Four: Private relationships finally reached the audience. Let's go.
The latter part did not leave intimate. It simply moved the previous private recognition, temperature measurement, observation and debt into a brighter, colder and less easy to escape public space.
Many people look at Part Four and feel that the film suddenly changes its shape: from private relationships to public performances, devices, scenes and viewers. Not really. The fourth part is not to leave the intimacy ahead, but to make it public.
01:22:10. The ground is like a low mirror and plastic cloth is like a non-transparent skin. The audience is not a background, but part of the device.
01:35:10. The eyes are painted on the body. Seeing is no longer just an organ, but a publicly read mark.
Reflecting ground, plastics, low slots, sitting audience, these things make space into a machine. People go in, not just acting, but being treated. The questions and answers that have taken place between the two before us now include the observers, the witnesses and the referees.
"Are you there" becomes "You speak."
"Are you still hot?" "Can you go on?"
"Who can prove" becomes "to show".
"I can't see myself in your eyes" turned into an eye painted on your body.
This last point is particularly impressive. The eyes should have been on the face, to see others and to see themselves. But to the fourth part, the eyes are painted on the body surface. It is no longer responsible for watching, but for being seen. The body became a piece of paper, which was read by the audience, by light, by plastic and by camera.
Amon was also dragged into the machine. She used to ask the temperature by the bed and offered the possibility to continue in her relationship; the care position was made public here. She is sometimes like a pacifier, sometimes like a viewer, sometimes like a living body whose name is temporarily not fixed. Caring is not always a soft safe haven, but it can also become a spoiled location.
It's not the end. It's the last time.
02:00:40. The audience was sitting there, and the question and answer of privacy finally became a public obligation.
02:33:20. Subtitles covering images, names like pins, nailing the living mess.
The fourth part of the report is coming back to look like an unwalled archives room. People are called to the public and are asked to say that they are asked to confess and to continue. But after the word "end", the scene was not really over. People are most afraid of this: their mouths are broken and their bodies remain where they are.
So the tail is not an appendix in Human Surrender. It's the last play.
Images are blurry in the back, subtitles are clear in front. Streets, evenings, crowds, signages are coming out of the back of the glass like reality. Words are stable, line by line, recategorizing people.
Amon is written as a role A (Amon).
O is written as role O, delayed in naming.
Ricky, Jared, Ugly and others were also put back in the list order. The film seems to have finally brought those kisses, silence, proof, temperature, fear and open gaze together, but this convergence is not tender. It's more like a calm hand, with bags of stuff scattered by the bed, in tents and on stage.
Can a name be a depositary? Not necessarily. The name only proves that a person has been called.
But sometimes this is already the cruelest and most merciful thing a film can do.
Closeness doesn't belong to two people.
Human Surrender does not film "Man cannot love". That's too light. It filmed that once a person is really close, the relationship leaves two people into a larger preservation system.
It goes into the camera. It goes into the subtitle. Get someone else's eyes. Enter the silence of O. Get into Ammon's interview. Get into Ricky and Jared's inexplicable debt. Enter the fourth part of the audience. Go to the tail. It's also in the film that we're seeing again today.
That's the real surrender in the movie. Instead of surrendering to someone, or surrendering to a director or machine, surrendering to a simpler and more embarrassing fact: we cannot fully have relationships that happen to ourselves.
When love happens, we think it belongs to us. It took a long time to know that it belonged to the one who saw it, the one who did not speak, the one who filmed its machine, the one whose subtitles were wrong and corrected, the last list of the film, and the one who later opened it one night.
So the film is not empty. It's just calming down near human.
It saves a kiss and also saves a question after a kiss. Keep one hand, and keep hands that cannot pass on past experience. Save O's silence and Amon's temperature. Keeps the body-drawn eyes and also saves the name of the late tail.
Intimacy does not belong to two people.
Closeness happened, and the whole world began to testify for it.
Related articles
"Human Surrender" as "the oracular work"
How words betray people - the original language structure of Human Surrender
No longer loyal to integrity - the final edition of Human Surrender Long Commentary
Theatre and Psychoanalysis
From symbols to events: academic thinking and influence on Erica Fisher-Lishit
The Grammar of Events: Actor-Generated Topology (AGT) and the birth of a postmodern subject (up)
p4 Third subject of theoretical analysis: a comprehensive exploration of Thomas Ogden's "third presence" theory
Group theory development from a psychoanalytic perspective: Theoretical practice and history of Deleuze and Gathari
P4 Theater, 10-year archive (partial)
I want to see Human Surrender on board. Long