Then I realized that for a long time, I haven't seen a movie as controversy as Notes on a Scandal. The plot simply boils down to an elderly woman, Barbara’s fantasy for her younger coworker Sheba, who at the same time had an adultery affiar with her 15-year old student. However I do not think that the core of this movie was to merely challenge homosexual love or affair between student and teacher. And even if so, I would not be discussing those issues in this post (as for the former, I have believed that it is only about love, not about gender or age; for the latter, I can start a whole new post on why I agree with the laws that it's inappropriate). But the movie explored more about our morality, fantasy and deeper and much more.
Up to the middle-half of the movie, “morality” seemed to be the key word. Barbara came off as the old-fashioned history teacher who valued self-discipline in students and was miser with smiles and sympathy. When Barbara spit out the word "moral" after she discovered Sheba's affair, the scene captured two policemen walking toward the camera's direction. It was far beyond our moral tolerance for Sheba's shameful affair, but Sheba was not the only immoral person. Having had a crush on Sheba, Barbara decided to have her jealousy and anger under control, in order to play Sheba's secret into her advantage. By threatening Sheba about reporting this crime, Barbara fancied that sharing such a big secret with Sheba would have created some intimacy, both physically and emotionally between them. Barbara's selfishness continued to culture what she had considered immoral behaviors.
The movie did not stop at the morality level, but flipped with the collapse of fantasies. Sheba’s 15 year old student won her heart with his primitive courage and his ignorant rebel against laws; however the second he learned about the leak of their affair, his courage was gone and he yelled just like a vulnerable boy. Sheba realized that the love from an immature boy was too fragile to face any challenge; but in the end, it was her husband who had the courage to forgive her published infidelity. On the other hand, Barbara's fantasy for Sheba cracked when Sheba refused to go see the dying cat with her, plumped when she found out that Sheba did not stop her affair as she had promised to, and eventually collapsed when Sheba threw the diary of Barbara's deepest secrets at her after discovering Barbara's conspiracy. Indeed, Barbara's happy fantasy was constructed on Sheba's pain. Thinking of Sheba who was asked to move out by her husband and had to stay at Barbara’s, Barbara no longer feared the mocking from journalists that crowded at her door. My nose felt sore from the forming of tears when I saw Barbara, the physically weak old lady, walked up straight like a warrior through the pressing crowds. For that moment I was touched by the power of love. Love made Barbara brave to protect Sheba from the catastrophe that she was a big part of, ironically.
The movie dug even deeper and indicated that the source of these twisted lusts was, in my opinion, loneliness. Sheba was not satisfied with her dry marriage. She could not even admit that the man that looked the age of her father was indeed her husband. An artist, Sheba set up her own studio that had bright windows and iridescent crafts inside, looking like a paradise, an escape from the frustrating reality. However to her husband, that studio was simply "Sheba’s lair". So her student's avid passion in drawing became irresistible. In the movie, Sheba explicitly said that she enjoyed being pursued, which was something that she had not experienced for a long time. When one feels lonely, one becomes vulnerable; when one becomes vulnerable, one might attach him/herself to a wrong person.
And so was Barbara. In a dim bath, she defined loneliness as the following:
"People like Sheba think they know what it is to be lonely. But of the drip, drip of the long-haul, no-end-in-sight solitude, they know nothing. What it's like to construct an entire weekend around a visit to the launderette. Or to be so chronically untouched that the accidental brush of a bus conductor's hand sends a jolt of longing straight to your groin. Of this, Sheba and her like have no clue.''
This monologue stings to people who ever went through a period of solitude for whatever reason. Such despair turned Barbara into a predator for intimacy. She misunderstood Sheba's courtesy for interest; mistook the start of misery for a sign of victory. The collapse of her fantasy had already begun, when Sheba carelessly tossed her little golden stars on the happy pages of her diary into the trash can. I believe that Barbara did fall in love with Sheba, but the love was overdone with obsession and possession, which truthfully led to her own tragedy.
One's star, another's garbage; one's candy, another's poison. Hope all that are tortured by the past could free themselves and heal.
P.S. eventually decided to combine both blogs.
