@CrisRibeiro
Public
I just watched The Watchers and I loved the movie and I came here to chat...
It's the story of Mina, a young woman who ends up lost in a forest and finds a shelter where other people are trapped. Every night, they need to stand before a large glass wall while mysterious creatures watch them. And there's one very clear rule: you can't get out.
The premise is already great for a suspense. But what really interested me was the subject of the look that, psychoanalytically, is never such a simple thing.
We like to think that there is a comfortable difference between who looks and who is looked at. It's just, in practice, the other person's eyes begin to live inside us very early.
The child learns to perceive himself through the eyes of his parents. Then come school, friends, loves, society.
“This can.” “This can’t.” “So you look beautiful.” “So you’re overreacting.” “Don’t do this.” “Don’t be like that.”
And when we realize it, no one needs to send... we watch each other alone. Prune yourself. It adapts. And many times, it's cancelling just what makes us who we are.
And here comes a very psychoanalytic question: Who are we when nobody's looking? In fact, is there really no one?
Freud introduced us to the unconscious, this place where desires, fears, memories and conflicts remain that we often prefer not to find.
Jung, on the other hand, speaks of the shadow: what we do not want to recognize in ourselves and which, precisely for this reason, can gain a huge force.
And The Watchers plays deliciously with this idea: the monster is out there.
But the more history goes on, the more uncomfortable the question is: What if the monster's inside, too?
Not necessarily as a literal creature, of course, but as what we repress, we do not want to remember. What we try to keep locked up because it seems easier to live without looking.
Only the unconscious has a bad education, right? He doesn't usually knock before he comes in.
And maybe that's why the movie is so unsettling.
Fear doesn't just come from the external threat. It comes from the feeling that there's something about ourselves that we still can't see.
And there's something else I found very interesting: the film works with the idea of belonging. Because when we're scared, we accept absurd rules with an impressive ease! Not necessarily because we believe them. But because we desperately need someone to tell us how to survive.
This is how many power relationships begin: someone offers security, then offers rules.
And by the time you realize it, you're already calling prison protection.
This may be one of the most humane things in the movie.
We endure a lot when we believe that it will keep us safe, including versions of ourselves that no longer fit.
In the end, The Watchers can be seen as a film of creatures, forest, mystery and suspense (and the good ones), but it can also be seen as a story about identity, trauma, memory, repression and this almost childish desire to find someone who finally says: “I know who you are.”
And there lies the greatest danger: being seen can be wonderful.I, but it can also be scary.
Especially when someone sees what we spend our entire lives trying to hide from ourselves.
“Who are the Watchers?” Do I really need to know? Or you'd better ask: “Who is looking at you when you think you are alone?”
Because it is not uncommon for the person who watches us most, charges us, punishes us and tortures us to be the one who lives within us. And maybe growing up has a little bit to do with it: stop living in front of the glass and finally find out who we are when no one is telling us to be something.
I'm in this painful process. What about you?
