Archenemy
My favorite character among all the movies we have seen this semester should be Elijah Price in Unbreakable. He was a patient of fragilitus ossium which made him easily get fractures. Mr. Glass, with which he was mocked at with in childhood was stimulated by comic books to find a man stand at another extreme point in this world, unbreakable. Elijah finally succeeded in guiding that superman, David Dunn, to utilize his power and save people. The ending is of O Henry style that Elijah was the director of all the tragedies like the landslide and the train derailment.
Elijah attracts me in two aspects. First, he was the weaker half in the movie, but he “won” the battle he was involved in with mind. Second, his insistence and motivation in finding the answers to “his place in this world” and “why he is here” was really charming and respectable.
Firstly, the success of the weak is always more precious than that of a superman because they have to overcome much more difficulties on the road. That is why I tend to take part with the weak. Elijah was a “successful” weaker part. He said “There are always two kinds (of villains). There is the solider villain, who fights the hero with his hands, and then there is the real threat, the brilliant and evil archenemy, who fights the hero with his mind.” Elijah was no doubt the latter one, an evil but wise man. He successfully directed tens of disastrous accidents and finally found the extreme person of the other side, David Dunn. He successfully led David to the road of looking for himself and getting rid of the feeling of sadness. He successfully exposed the truth to David, making the ending a comic style which he might expect from the beginning. He was surely a weak but also brilliant and evil archenemy.
Secondly, Elijah’s road of finding the real meaning of life was rough and tortuous. However, he did not give up, maybe because he was encouraged by his mother, or maybe he was stimulated by villains in the comic book. He tried to make his life not a tiny and ordinary story. It should be splendid even sad, moving even tragic, stirring even bad, just like the archenemies in the comic books.
The scene that Elijah chased the man escaping from the line in the stadium with insistence and he rolled downstairs, breaking several bones but finally smiled with a relief when he saw the pistol, a silver one with a black grip was still fresh in my mind. He was totally devoted to the plot of the “comic” story created by himself. I think he wanted to prove that life of his also could be special, as splendid as the comic book. He chose to be the archenemy of it and he was so lonely that he was eager to find the hero to enjoy life with. It was an unreasonable but respectable reason from my point of view.
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