[Slate]Humans Seeking Their Other Half, A Reality That Rejects Fusion

Aristophanes's Myth and the Origins of Love
From Wholeness to Longing: The Human Condition After Zeus's Division

In Plato's "Symposium," Aristophanes tells a unique origin story of humanity. According to him, the earliest humans were complete beings with round bodies, two heads, and four arms and legs. They were divided into three types: male-male, female-female, and male-female. Intoxicated by their own strength and arrogance, they challenged the gods. In anger, Zeus split them precisely in half. From then on, these halves, left with only one head, two arms, and two legs, began to yearn for their lost counterparts. Aristophanes explains that this is the origin of love.

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The message of this story is clear: love is an impulse for a being that was once whole to become complete again-a manifestation of the human nature to fill what is lacking. Because we are aware of our own insufficiency, we are instinctively drawn to others. In this sense, Zeus's punishment may not have been a simple penalty but rather a device that saved humanity. Although we became incomplete, we gained the freedom to distinguish between "me" and "you" and to move toward each other.

Director Michael Sanks's film "Together" offers an intriguing variation on this duality. The couple, Millie (Alison Brie) and Tim (Dave Franco), leave city life behind and move to the countryside. When Millie gets a job as a local elementary school teacher, aspiring musician Tim passively follows her lead. Stuck in a stalemate, the two experience a mysterious transformation after encountering a mystical spring inside a cave. They develop an overwhelming attraction and become unable to separate from each other. Soon, their minds grow hazy, and their individual identities begin to dissolve in their union.

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Their physical union serves as a metaphor for the tendency of identity and boundaries to blur in human relationships. It physically demonstrates the message that, by becoming deeply dependent on each other, one can lose oneself. The film visualizes the dark side of emotional entanglement as the horror of codependency.

However, it is questionable whether this fully captures the essence of love as described by Aristophanes. The "journey to find one's lost half" can be interpreted merely as a warning against unhealthy dependency. The philosophical depth of Zeus's division seems reduced to a modern relationship issue. The film's messaging is also overly direct, which somewhat limits both the unique horror of the body horror genre and the lingering philosophical resonance.

That said, it would be unfair to say that "Together" takes the wrong approach. For contemporary audiences, a method that confronts the concrete problems of relationships may be more meaningful than abstract classical philosophy. While Aristophanes's myth reflects the perspective on love from 2,500 years ago, this film explores pathological love within 21st-century individualism. As times change, so too do the dangers of love.

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The terror of physical union depicted in the film also carries social significance. In particular, the image of two people forced to remain attached, losing their individuality and suffering, mirrors the reality in which privacy and personal space disappear in a 24/7 connected digital environment. In this context, "Together" is not simply a translation of classical love philosophy, but is likely to be remembered as a new parable for the contemporary era.