Cinemyths

During the watching, the way the characters interact throughout the various situations in Veteran reminds me of what Adorno once worried about in his book Minima Maralia: The ability is lost … to close a door quietly and discreetly, yet firmly … What does it mean for the subject that there are no more casement windows to open, but only sliding frames to shove, no gentle latches but turnable handles, no forecourt, no doorstep before the street …(40) Although Adorno here mainly puts emotion to the structure of modern house (in particular the bungalow), he actually points out certain essential loss under today’s context. The distance between humans of “suspending space” that for waiting, hesitating, and feeling out has disappeared. The discoursive power, no longer dissolved through the “silent buffer zone”, pierces toward the vulnerable objective, again and again. As such, the nature of communication is hard to be perceived in this film, what instead is the consensual encountering derides from unrooted beastliness. That is, the constant becoming of the animal pole; between body and bodily embodied energy, there is the most primitive form of manipulation, or in other words, the format of action.

Nevertheless, the world which is only limited to bounded entropy growth is, in contrast, developed in an optimized manner, totally placed on the opposite side that far from being disastrous of violence. That is why I consider that the energetic circulation here, despite being constructed under a seemingly less profound system, is yet wrongly described concerning the unbalanced output. At the time the narrative attempts to emphasize some purified physical outbursts, it potentially forces the weak, who are put into the objectified position bore with fearfully looking, overwhelmingly listening, and unspokenly speaking, to irrationally absorb too much already-released, yet unsettled energy, which temporarily maintains the virtuous phenomenon measured by sociological appearance, however, at the cost of disease inwards the silent rest.

—— 2024.11.21