Last night I went to the Hungarian Cultural Center at the Galaxy SOHO next to the company and watched the movie "Tercett - Zsigmond Móricz's Women". It's like a stage play, telling the story of a Hungarian writer, Zsigmond Móricz, and the oscillating relationship between his wife of 20 years and the actress who has been performing his plays for many years. Whether it's Europe or the East, stories are always similar.
The movie blurs the scenes, with only simple high-brightness solid color backgrounds in red, yellow, blue, and green. The dialogue is dense and of high quality. What I like is that the movie doesn't take a moral high ground to judge anyone, but rather peels back the layers of different characters' inner thoughts. Traditional stories always have the two opposing roles of "the original wife" and "the third party", but if you are someone who has truly experienced life, you will understand that life is often not black and white, and labeling either side is too one-sided.
The actress and the playwright have been working together for many years. This kind of collaboration, where he writes the words and she reads and interprets them, undoubtedly brings emotional resonance to both parties. However, she knows that it is not possible with a married man, so she always coldly rejects him in the theater dressing room. But she is emotional, her heart is not made of stone, she is torn and hesitant, thinking about sending a telegram of condolences when his mother passed away, is it appropriate, not too much? However, her official telegram message, which is usually serious and official, reveals her softened heart.
The wife sees his words on the writer's computer and knows that his mind has strayed. She finds it hard to accept, she loves him, she is not interested in anything else, only him. She is no longer calm and starts to lose control. He leaves home and goes to Vienna, and she pretends to commit suicide by taking sleeping pills to trick him into coming back...
If the above is all cliché in an affair drama, what attracts me more are some subtle things. For example, when the actress is performing her lines, the writer and his wife are watching from the audience. The lines she is saying are actually words spoken by the writer's wife, words they said when they were arguing. In the first few scenes, the two women tell their stories separately, but after a few scenes, they finally appear in the same scene. In the movie, the wife puts on the actress's performance gown and pins up her hair, while the actress's face changes to the wife's attire. For a moment, it is hard to tell who is who, who is the subject in this relationship, and who is the intruder. Who does the writer love, or maybe he only loves himself, so when his affair is discovered, his first choice is to escape. He leaves home and stays in a hotel, but he keeps writing letters to the actress and when he sees his wife again, he says he loves her, and gives her a dress (which looks very similar to a bright yellow dress worn by the actress).
Fortunately, this movie does not pass moral judgment. The moral judgments often seen on the internet in daily life are tiresome. How complex can human emotions be? It's hard to define them with a few dimensions. He is who he is, and his face can also be replaced by someone else's face. Sometimes, a person's emotions are beyond their own control. But for the wife, what kills her is not the disappearance of his love, but the cold violence of tenderness. The tender one uses their tenderness and sweetness to make you willingly offer up your heart, but the cold violence of the tender one hurts even deeper than the cold violence of the inherently violent one, because not only are you hurt, but you also doubt yourself, and even collapse.
For a woman, in different relationships, she may be a "wife" or an "actress", depending on her position. A person can be both at the same time in different stages. In the past, when I was in love, I discovered that my ex and the new receptionist at his company were interacting frequently, including him taking her home when drunk and asking her to accompany him to pick out a birthday gift for me... At that time, I exploded, I stood on a moral high ground, he begged, and I forgave. But as in the movie, the writer has an affair, and after arguing with his wife, there is a temporary calm, but the wife will mention the "actress" in less than three sentences, and even without mentioning it, the atmosphere between them is no longer the same as before. The writer says, "If you still want to live with me, if you still want to continue with me, then you must find a way to give yourself a resolution." But if she can really live with him while harboring resentment, then she must not love him anymore. And at this point, the relationship should also come to an end.
There is a monologue by the actress in the movie. She says, "I don't mention his wife, I'm like the person who destroys his family relationship, but the more I mention his wife, the more he resents her for hindering his happiness." This scene feels familiar to me. In high school, the person I liked chose the red rose over the white rose, and I kept studying and working harder. They got married before graduating from college. Several years later, the red rose turned into mosquito blood, and I became the moonlight. After many years of no contact, it was abrupt for him to try to enter my life, and I became her imaginary enemy in a passive situation.
In every relationship, each person has a different standpoint, and there is no absolute right or wrong. But one thing is certain - think about the consequences. Societal norms and moral standards may limit the richness and diversity of human emotions, but respecting the dignity and feelings of the other person in a relationship, accepting the corresponding consequences of one's own actions, whether you are a scientist or an artist, this is what an adult should do.