Lolita

I love this film so much, but i have to make a lot clear to show my stand point. Humbert spent his whole life looking for the girl he lost, death turned him into an ugly man. It was never about Lolita but the love he was putting into her believing he had found his first love again. He loved the version of Lolita he created, but not in the way he made it seem. It was obvious obsession but him still being able to “withstand” her even after she left speaks louder than most in the movie. Humbert was so mad she left but he still couldn’t bring himself to change his view on her, Even after he found her again and her view on him had changed entirely. To him Lolita was his world and he the sun. He believed he could circle around her forever. Humbert’s reasons to his rhymes, all of them, came from the death of Annabel. It wasn’t loving her that turned him into this,But the thought of someone being able to love him like that again. As a child he had no where to put that grief, the love. And as a young boy it’s especially hard. Annabel died right when he felt they had been deepest with each other. So instead of a memory to hold onto, something to look back and learn from. He ends up with something preserved, untouched almost sacred. And that’s when the distortion began. When grief isn’t processed it could turn into idealization. Annabel becomes, perfect, eternal, unchanging and forever tied to youth. That is how he connects to his love life after her death, he most likely didn’t love Annabel either. But the feelings he had when he was fourteen makes him feel different. Humbert spends his whole life chasing emotion, not love, and certainly not people. He turned his grief into entitlement, never really able to see his partner as a separate person nor real. And love requires you to do both. After all it wasn’t Annabels love that turned him like this, it was her death.He is trapped in his adolescence, frozen by unprocessed grief. Instead of learning how to let go he let the thought of time plague his mind. His life runs in loops. Annabel, died. he grieved and searched. He then found Lolita. she then left. he grieved and searched. and then ultimately, death. When Lolita leaves and he spends years looking for her that subjectively mirrors the beginning half of the novel, when Annabel died and he began to spend his whole life up to the point of Lolita looking for her. To Humbert both loses feel like the same event. On the premise that Humbert is chasing the version of himself he becomes when he believes he is in love, or “It was never about Lolita.”, Humbert came to a point where he’d hit lolita if she didn’t do what he wanted. When that version of her would distort and she’d start to become a real person with a mind. not just a “nymphet”. When Lolita wasn’t who he chalked her up to be in his mind he didn’t resort to sadness but control. Because what he’s protecting is not the girl, but the version of himself that exists inside his fantasy. If she becomes a real person with her own mind, that version of him collapses. The tragedy of the book is not that he loses or even does that what he did to Lolita. It’s that he never allows her—or himself really—to truly exist as a person. He took her life from her, she had nobody and it was all his fault. The center of Lolita is not desire but narrative control, Humbert’s need to keep reality matching the story. That is why the end of the novel/film is so messy or theatrical, Humbert is disrupted in his cycle of repetitive compulsion. with all that being said humbert’s actions are inexcusable and inhumane. His coping efforts costed a little girl her life.