Is inertia an irredeemable sin? Can one still prove the worthiness of his existence when he fails to fulfill the bourgeois society's expectations of him as a rational subject and reliable labor? Is the disobedience of order and middle-class morals still meaningful when one grows older? A barrage of philosophical questions are thrown upon the audience, yet Malle provides no hopeful solution in the movie. To him, life and death have swapped positions in the modern society. Now Thanatos has become the god of life, and one needs his poisoned kiss for transcendence. The protagonist's final resort to suicide attests to not only the destructiveness of the fire within, but also its authenticity as the the only vital force of life for the protagonist. The conforming residents of Paris, by contrast, are portrayed as the walking dead. And their relationship with the city of Paris is paralleled by that between the protagonist's Egyptologist friend and his studies, which is essentially necrophiliac in nature. To live, is to hang on in the boundless darkness called reality, watching the flickering flame inside gradually dying out.。

。