The Taste of Others

"Flattire" is a newish word which describes an ersatz satire which actually celebrates and defers to that which it is supposed to be sending up. Watching this moderately entertaining film about fashion, I wondered what further word you'd need for flattire with the satire removed. Perhaps "flattery" covers it.

Meryl Streep plays Miranda Priestly, the super-scary New York fashion editor with the appropriately adverbial surname. She is of course similar to American Vogue's legendary Anna Wintour, although Priestly wears her dark glasses outdoors only. On the principle that servants are like lovers - if you want to keep them, you must treat them badly - Miranda has an emotional S&M relationship with the staff and the S is her prerogative; she bullies and humiliates them and they worship her in return.

Enter Andy (Anne Hathaway) a goofy young provincial woman with good grades and bad clothes, hailing from Ohio, one of what the fashion world calls the "flyover states"; she's applying for a job as a stopgap before she becomes a real writer. From some unfathomably cruel caprice, Miranda decides to hire the terrified Andy as her assistant, who feels she must get the hang of fashion or die of shame. Gradually, Andy becomes more stylish, more beautiful, more hooked on the drug of high fashion, more slavishly adoring of Miranda. Is she (gulp!) turning into Miranda?

Inevitably, like so many other books and movies about the seductions of the big city, The Devil Wears Prada wants to have its non-fat, vegan cake and eat it. It wants to hitch a free ride on all the high-speed excitement of the wicked fashion biz - before finally growing up and deciding it's way too superficial. Andy winds up being scared by how badly she's behaving, though of course she never does anything really bad.

Streep is undoubtedly a good turn in the dragon lady role, especially at the very beginning, interrogating Andy in a chillingly light voice with a misleadingly upward inflection. "And you want a job here, despite having no personal sense of fashion or style ...?" "Well, I think that's a matter of -" "It is not a question."

When Streep is absent from the screen, however, the interest factor plummets. Stanley Tucci plays the obligatory Bald Gay Male Confidant figure (Willie Garson did it in Sex and the City). He does his best. The real disappointment is Emily Blunt as the Brit bitch who works opposite Andy: the one actor here who really does look as if she could work in fashion. But she is strained and awkward and has none of the drop-dead-sexy hauteur she showed us in My Summer of Love. Embarrassingly, she is made to say "loo" to show off some real limeyspeak. Perhaps she can be grateful she wasn't given bad teeth.

Then of course there are cameos for real-life fashion stars coming on woodenly as Themselves, and that is always, always the kiss of death. Real fashionistas, however stylish, are a boulder-sized lump of Kryptonite for comedy - here, as in Altman's 1994 fashion film Prêt-à-Porter. In fact the film has a couple of all-too-serious speeches about how important fashion actually is, thank you so much. Now, I'll be the first to admit I don't "get" fashion, but to intimate its ephemeral pleasures to the non-believer and non-understander, I think you'd need a more astringent and detached - and a funnier - movie than this.

 

Guaardian Unlimited Film 

     Martin Scorsese has got his groove back, or most of it, with what is arguably his best picture since GoodFellas: a big, brash, splatteringly violent mob opera starring Jack Nicholson giving it the full Pavarotti, with an outrageous and outrageously enjoyable performance that doesn't so much go over the top as go over the ionosphere.

    The Departed is a tale of Boston Irish tough guys on both sides of the law. Matt Damon gives the best performance of his career as the creepy and conceited young wiseguy Colin Sullivan who becomes the protege of south Boston's biggest gangster: ageing sociopath Frank Costello, played by Nicholson. Costello secretly sponsors Colin through police academy to become his personal executive-class snitch on the inside. Meanwhile, Leonardo DiCaprio is William Costigan, a moody kid with a brace of uncles known to the authorities, who is now genuinely trying to make it over to the right side of the tracks with a career in the police. He is headhunted by senior intelligence officers, fatherly Martin Sheen and his attack-dog lieutenant Mark Wahlberg, who offer him a new opportunity: use his family connections and credibility to go into deep cover in Costello's gang.

    It's a remake of the 2002 Hong Kong thriller Infernal Affairs, with Tony Leung and Andy Lau, and where that movie emphasised a cool and elegant symmetry between the doppelganger finks, with the storyline indirect, and the violence kept relatively low, Scorsese's movie dots the is, crosses the ts, stomps the skulls and puts Rolling Stones numbers on the soundtrack.

    William Monahan's firecracker script cleverly channels the skirling of bagpipes that we heard in the original, from the band of the colonially-influenced Hong Kong police. Now those bagpipes are anything but colonial: they are the sound of Catholic-Celtic Boston in full cry, pure angry brawn, tribally committed, territorially obsessed, the music of people who get their retaliation in first. The Chinese motif surfaces, perhaps in homage to the source material, with a plot MacGuffin about Costello selling stolen military computer hardware to some Beijing hard men, and showing no great respect for his customers' culture when they appear not to have the money.

    Damon and DiCaprio are nicely contrasted; where Sullivan is smooth of face and style, Costigan is resentful, hunched and clenched, as if wearing a wire coat hanger under his jacket. He just has to sit there and take it when he is harangued - very wittily - by Mark Wahlberg's magnificently abusive undercover cop Dignam, for no reason other than to subject him to a little forensic ball-busting. Costigan makes the mistake of coming back at him with a quotation from Hawthorne, and Dignam jeers: "Wassa matter - you don't know any Shakespeare?" Frank Costello, wearing his own learning lightly, at one stage taps his head with gravitas and growls: "Hey - heavy lies the crown!"

    Everyone gets good lines in Monahan's screenplay, but the lion's share, understandably, goes to Nicholson himself, each witticism a diamond in the most dangerous rough imaginable. Having menacingly asked after the ailing mother of one of his courtiers, and been told that she is "on the way out", Nicholson grins as if receiving good news. "We all are!" he declaims. "Act accordingly!"

    And he certainly does, growling and snarling like an aggregate of the previous dark destroyers in his career, and incidentally finishing the movie with a half-moon gout of blood on his lower lip, as if reprising his Joker from the Batman movies. What a barnstormer this is from Nicholson, the kind of performance that no one else could possibly do, but which he could probably do in his sleep: and in his more heavy-lidded moments gives the impression of actually doing - without it ever being less than fantastic value for money. At one stage, musing angrily on the presence of a suspected rat in his ranks, Nicholson actually does an impression of a rat: two big front teeth suddenly pop out over his lower lip and that great snub nose twitches malevolently. I can't see Pacino or De Niro getting away with it. Whistler once said his exorbitant fees were not for the hours' work at the easel, but for the experience of a lifetime, and that is what we are getting with Nicholson: a great screen actor whose charisma has, through the decades, rolled over like a recurring lottery jackpot. Will the 69-year-old Nicholson get a part like this, with a director like this, ever again?

    As for Scorsese, it is a return to the fluent, muscle-flexing movie-making with a visible directorial signature. Gangs of New York, though very good, was atypical. This is an unapologetic, unironised crime-family drama, which the director puts over like a roundhouse punch. It certainly felt like a work from Scorsese's golden years, and even has a scene in an old-fashioned porn cinema, of the sort once patronised by Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver and which surely ceased to exist long ago.

    Scorsese has hit his stride again, and he has produced something with as much as gusto as his best films of 20 or 30 years back; it grips and shocks and entertains - all with the help of a first-class writing from Monahan, firing off dialogue of which Mamet would be proud. Scorsese, that American movie giant, has never been asleep exactly, but now he is very much awake.

 

The Guardian Unlimited Film

Pedro Almodóvar has let his hair go grey. Though his bushy locks remained suspiciously dark well into his fifties, now "the snows of time have silvered his temples." This poetic description comes from the lyrics of 'Volver', the bittersweet tango that lends Almodóvar's sixteenth feature its title. 'Volver' means 'going back' or 'coming home'. And after the rigours of the male-dominated Bad Education (2004) the new film stages at least six returns: to comedy, to women, to his native La Mancha, to his actress-muses Carmen Maura and Penélope Cruz, to the theme of motherhood in general, and to his own much mourned mother in particular. Almodóvar himself goes further, claiming that this return to his roots is also a celebration of a "bright, light Spain" where a funeral can be a fiesta. It's a world away from the black legend of Spanish ruralism, steeped in reaction and repression.

But things aren't quite so simple. Volver suggests that if you go back to the country, you might return with more than you bargained for, not least an undead body in the boot of your car. The film is a tale of two sisters. Feisty Raimunda (Cruz) is a desperate housewife coping with an unexpected emergency: her daughter has accidentally killed the abusive father who tried to rape her. Timid Sole (newcomer Lola Dueñas) has her own problems: on revisiting their native village to attend a funeral she encounters the ghost of their mother (veteran Carmen Maura), who accompanies her back to the city where she has unfinished business to settle.

Volver is the first feature by the famously agnostic Almodóvar to host a supernatural theme. And the superstitious have noted that the director's sixteenth feature marks six years since his mother's death and 26 since his father's, and that in the 1980s Almodóvar made six famous films with Carmen Maura, who is now 60 years old. But more is at stake here than this string of sixes. Once movie-mad Spain has seen a steep fall in its box office over the past year and Almodóvar himself is no longer the most popular person in the industry, having recently resigned from the Film Academy after being snubbed at the Goyas (Spanish Oscars). As Volver opens he is about to receive a rare retrospective at the Paris Cinémathèque, in which his oeuvre is screened alongside those of Sirk and Cukor, Murnau and Renoir. But the director remains a prophet misunderstood in his own land, and one wonders whether with Volver he can rescue an ungrateful Spanish film industry one more time. Will the new Spain, where smoking is banned in public places and same-sex marriage commonplace, wish to see the ghosts of the past resurrected or will it find this uncanny revival of rural roots too embarrassing?

Commercially canny as ever, Almodóvar has gambled that if you scratch an urban sophisticate, you'll find an earthy peasant underneath. After all, most Spaniards are still only one generation away from the village. And queuing outside Madrid's huge Palace of Music theatre a week after Volver's premiere in March, it's clear his bet has paid off. The line stretches round the block, and half a million people nationwide have seen the film already.

And what an audience! There are as many walking sticks in evidence as there are knee-high boots. Old women who could have come from Almodóvar's home town jostle with the fashionistas who, with a little help from Spain's best-known cineaste, have made Madrid the most modern of European capitals. A surprising number of foreigners have made the pilgrimage too, and the sense of excitement is contagious. Two hours later the vast auditorium will ring with applause.

So what of Almodóvar's multiple returns? First, Volver is blissfully comic. Maura's ghost-mother is placed in a series of farcical situations (hiding under a bed, impersonating a Russian vagrant), with the supernatural presented in a naturalistic way, resulting in an uncanny realism. Fans will savour too the revival of the wacky wit: for instance, when one village daughter shows off her mother's plastic jewellery she notes proudly that it's made of "the good plastic".

The film also marks a return to a world of women and to La Mancha. Sisters Raimunda and Sole rely more on each other than on any man, and have transplanted their country ways to the graffiti-scarred barrios of southern Madrid. When Sole goes back to their village for the funeral, the scene might have come straight from Lorca: black-clad widows huddle in a cloistered chamber, muttering prayers, while the menfolk hunker down over their drinks on the patio. This is a land, now as then, where women and men lead separate lives, and only solidarity among women can be counted on. Almodóvar even shows us repeated shots of that ancient icon of La Mancha, the windmill - only now a high-tech model that provides the villagers with renewable energy. The region's most famous son since Don Quixote is demonstrating that tradition and modernity can rub along.

Almodóvar's relationship with Carmen Maura is another miraculous survival: the giddy 1980s of What Have I Done to Deserve This? and Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown now seem as distant as Cervantes' golden age. After Spain's most notorious public quarrel, their reunion is a media phenomenon that doesn't disappoint. For an established star, Maura is conspicuously lacking in vanity; as the ghost-mother, with her hair in grey rats-tails and a wardrobe out of a charity shop, she looks authentically deathly. And Almodóvar cannily rations her appearances, giving her little to do in the first half but letting her loose with a shattering six-page monologue in the final act.

The return of Penélope Cruz, who played small roles in Live Flesh (1997) and All about My Mother (1999), is less momentous but no less moving. Betrayed by bad career choices in Hollywood, Cruz here is nothing short of sensational. As the housewife coping with a dark secret, a dead husband and a ghostly mother, she is a domestic goddess in the mould of the formidable women of Italian neo-realism. Almodóvar even includes a clip of Anna Magnani, the strong and sexy mother in Visconti's Bellissima (1951), glimpsed on a rural television set.

Cruz's fierce, dark look is strengthened by a liberal use of black eye-liner, a make-up design Almodóvar acknowledges as coming from Italy. A distant cousin of Carmen Maura's deadly housewife in What Have I Done...?, Cruz looks fabulous even in a mix of tacky purple cardigans and the season's most fashionable shoes: Raimunda hobbles down the mean streets of Madrid, pulling a shopping trolley behind her, in peep-toed espadrilles with the highest of wedge heels. She allegedly rehearsed for three months to lip-synch the fiendishly tricky tango that gives Volver its title, a musical interlude carefully crafted to be a classic moment in Almodóvar's filmography.

Raimunda is the latest in a long line of tenacious and inventive mothers, risking all for a beloved daughter. As Almodóvar has often claimed, mothers are a source of storytelling as well as of life, while men are marginal bit players in the family narrative. Raimunda's doomed husband is unemployed, scratching the twin itches of sex and alcohol; her father took a darker secret to his grave. Almodóvar has said that he never felt closer to his mother than when shooting Volver, and he even enlisted his sisters as dialogue coaches and cookery consultants on a film whose gastronomy is as rich as the cinematography by José Luis Alcaine.

But the dead hand of the patriarch hangs heavily over Volver, Almodóvar's bitterest attack on machismo. Absent fathers may not take the form of ghosts, but their memory haunts their traumatised daughters. Cruz's perfect eyeliner is all too often smudged by tears, and the film's comedy is undercut by loneliness, ageing and death. Chus Lampreave, Almodóvar's cinematic grandmother, still best known for What Have I Done…?, appears briefly as an elderly aunt but looks cruelly aged: it's unclear how much of her poor health is acted or simply lived. And the timid, wide-eyed Sole, whose name means 'Solitude', responds to her ghostly mother's enquiry about how she is with the words: "Alone, as ever." Sisterly solidarity, it seems, can make up only for so much.

Lampreave's character seems stranded in La Mancha and the sisters wonder how she can survive alone: village life is thus no communal paradise. Almodóvar himself has spoken of the empty streets of his childhood, lashed by the wind, and now the local river, where his mother took him to do the laundry, runs dry. The riverbank, where once housewives sang as they worked (the song plays over the film's first sequence), will serve in Volver as an improvised cemetery, another memento mori. In popular superstition the village that features in Volver is known for madness and burning buildings, both blamed on the relentless wind, and Almodóvar's cast of walking wounded will be damaged by both these phenomena.

Central here is an actress who is making her debut for Almodóvar. Blanca Portillo is known to Spaniards as an independent urbanite in the Friends-style sitcom 7 Vidas but is almost unrecognisable in Volver as Agustina, the most rural of the film's women. In a scene of cruel comedy Agustina will appear on television searching for her lost mother: the ghoulish presenter announces to the audience that she is suffering from cancer and calls, inevitably, for "a big round of applause". Rural reserve wins out over big-city exploitation (Agustina walks off the set with some dignity), but sickness and death cannot be spirited away. And the cycle of motherhood seems to have broken down: Agustina has neither mother nor children but only ghosts to care for her.

When Almodóvar himself appeared on television to promote Volver, he shed tears not for his mother, whom he said was so close during the shoot, but for his father, a much more distant figure. And Volver shows the conscious, even chilly mastery of technique we've come to expect from the director's mature period. Rejecting the tricky flashbacks and reversals of Talk to Her (2002) and Bad Education, Volver's structure seems simplicity itself, with Almodóvar cutting coolly between the highly coloured city narrative (the disposal of a corpse) and the plainer rural strand (the encounter with an all too realistic ghost). The shooting style is similarly transparent: the camera tracks fluidly through the gravestones in the opening cemetery sequence, but more often simply sits alongside the women and asks us to pay attention to what they are saying. The occasional high-angle shots come as a surprise, as when Sole is mobbed by mourners or the camera looks cheekily down on Cruz's cleavage as she slaves over the washing up.

Even the score by Almodóvar's close collaborator Alberto Iglesias, recently Oscar-nominated for The Constant Gardener, is discreet and unshowy. Deftly following the film's frequent changes of register, Iglesias offers Hitchcockian strings for the thriller elements and tender harp chords for the supernatural apparitions. Almodóvar no longer needs to prove himself through the flashy visuals and soundtracks that characterised his earlier films, but seems rather to be posing - like his main character - as a simple workhorse. It's typical that when Volver visits Madrid's high-tech, Richard Rogers-designed new airport terminal it is only because Raimunda has a part-time job mopping the floors. The director's achievement is to get us to accept Cruz as an ordinary working woman, even as we (and he) marvel at her beauty. Like the film itself, she combines force and fragility.

The last line of dialogue in Volver is: "Ghosts don't cry." Uncovering what he has called (in a typically rural metaphor) "a well of emotions", Almodóvar has shown that after the bracing coldness of Bad Education he can return to deep feeling. It is a move he has made under the pressure of great expectations, both at home and abroad. Indeed, Carmen Maura has described how different it is filming with the director now rather than in the early days, when they were unconcerned by money or fame and just out to have fun.

Almodóvar himself is well aware of how difficult it is to sustain artistic creativity: recently he spoke of Fellini as a director who didn't know when to quit, and as Spain's own Fellini - once famous for his love of the grotesque - he must fear that he too will run out of inspiration. But his latest film bears no sign of decline. On the contrary, it continues an unbroken run of some 25 years of artistic and commercial successes that has few precedents in European cinema.

The tango 'Volver', sung by Cruz's character to her dead mother, promises that the encounter with the past is painful, but not impossible. And the film Volver proves that Almodóvar's body of work is now enriched by facing up to his own past. Suddenly the one-time "most modern man in Madrid" can afford to look behind him, even likening film-making to therapy. With two new projects in the works, Almodóvar, for all his silvery temples, is surely at the peak of his powers.

By Paul Julian Smith

Sight and Sound 2006 May

踏入21世纪，有关于性别的最最流行说法，大概是“打破疆界”。

强调男/ 女为压迫者和被害者的二元对立关系老套了，人们想追寻更贴近人性的诠释，结果发现一个人不过是世界的偶体，压迫者或被害者、弱者或强者、同谋或敌对、爱与恨、壮烈或卑微，惟有在明确的界限稀释后，叙事艺术才找到更诚实的词汇。

《艺伎回忆录》为什么没有看头？因为巩俐是坏的、章子怡是好的，这种编派太过稳固，失去人性变幻莫测的乐趣。艺伎的回忆和皇宫秘辛的后妃情仇，不过按照同一个逻辑演出。既然真实本身不可追回，每个说出来的回忆都要被编织过——不怕它假，只怕它假得不够精彩；精不精彩就在于它怎么说：要用什么样的语言、什么样的声音唱歌，我才能够告诉你那些隐蔽的、看不见的秘密。

什么是秘密？

一种还未曾说出来的东西。

洞察秘密，必须学会聆听自己内心的声音。《艺伎回忆录》最不可思议的一点是：这分记忆竟然没有隐密的角落。这是哪门子的回忆？她必然不是为自己而回忆的，所以才如此干干净净，黑白分明。

曾经有个女作家写日记写了45年，由于“没有读者、不需检验”，毋须担心他人阅读以后的感受，她写出了内心深渊中的憎恨舆欲望，每个字都巡梭在内心的秘密上，这样悖逆道德的声音，具有了人性的力量。这迭日记后来抽出其中最重要的一个年份，写成小说出版，后来又被法国导演菲腊高夫曼（Phillip Kaufman）拍成电影——《 情迷六月花·Henry And June 》，是的，女作家就是日记家安娜伊丝宁（Anais Nin），且听她后来如何表白：“对于小说，我背叛了自己的日记；对于日记，我背叛了自己的小说。” 艺术无从捕捉真实——哪怕要捕捉的是一份感情或幻想——安娜伊丝宁此后是双重的背叛者。

去年秋季，在台北看过一部电影，在大马或许没有上映，但是“其他管道”大概可以试找：《爱上娜塔莉·Nathalie》，说是情色电影，其实没有太多的视觉冲击，震荡人心的张力在于语言，看得见的情色并不挑拨人，真正磨人的还是那些看不见的。一个妓女被妻子聘请来引诱丈夫出轨，条件是前者必须对后者详细道来当中过程每一细节。一个听、一个说，听与说之间，其刺激不输予一场真正的性爱。观众被引诱到一条自古以来的人性弊陋上，一劲儿只想知道：这一切是真的吗？当然，这是秘密。秘密的关键在于叙述者的身分，娜塔莉开始当叙述者，半是情愿的、半是不情愿。在本世纪流行“权力”＝“叙述”的文化理论公式之下，竟然也会有如此大剌列列、明明白白的“反证”。

21世纪的女性电影，必须抛弃的可能是“ 主义” 两个字——不是说就跑回厨房当家庭主妇了，而且体认到在找寻女性空间的同时，各种“空间”都有多种可能性，有人可以在一个小匣子找到私密天地，也有人非要在旷野上奔腾不可；假如一意强调厨房或摇篮是落后，相应的恐怕也失去了随意出入的自由，这该不是“解放”的用意。调回头看男女两性的关系，是对立？压迫？相吸或相斥，自不必然如此，然则同性之间女女或男男之间的联盟，也不见得摇旗张鼓喧嚷的那样稳固。首先要瓦解这种“救赎”的方程式，才能自由的思考。让我们面对这件事：假如女性主义、同志理论还守着固定的疆界分野，无异于邀请思想警察进驻脑袋。

法国女导演嘉芙莲布莱亚（Catherine Breillat） 就勇于挑战各种政治正确，作品《浪漫情色·Romance 》、《姐妹情色·Fat Girl 》和最近的《地狱解剖·Anatomy Of Hell 》，每一部都惹起各界争议。从她的电影中我们可以再确认一件事：艺术不是维护弱小的工具，更着迷的是，它挑战任何一个自认为最开明的思想界限——你能容忍别人反对你吗？假如你认为女性是弱势者、同志也是弱势者，而这两种团体势必要互相合作、理应要同阵相助，那么，你又能不能接受：这两个弱势者也很可能彼此憎恶和妒忌？直至今日我们必须感谢诗人波特莱尔的《恶之华》给我们的启发：艺术不止由爱或美而来，也因为恨和丑而绽放花朵。《 地狱解剖》 铺展了女性和男同志者之间的对话。这样两个看似彼此互相不需要对方的人，后来建立起来的关系，竟然是如此亲密，又剌痛，电影告诉我们：如果不打破表面的和平状态，那么我们将永远无法看到“自己所看不到的”，更甭说要邀请别人来观赏自己的秘密。

贺淑芳

Shake off those cobwebs. There's a new Batman in town, and he's younger, fiercer and klutzier than before. What do you want from a rookie? The Caped Crusader that Christian Bale plays so potently in Batman Begins is still working out the kinks. He nearly gives himself a wedgie scaling a building in a self-designed Batsuit that weighs a stylish ton. Director Christopher Nolan, who wrote the script with David Goyer, shows us a Batman caught in the act of inventing himself. Nolan is caught, too, in the act of deconstructing the Batman myth while still delivering the dazzle to justify a $150 million budget. It's schizo entertainment. But credit Nolan for trying to do the impossible in a summer epic: take us somewhere we haven't been before.
This stripped-down prequel grounds the story in reality. If Tim Burton lifted the DC Comics franchise to gothic splendor and Joel Schumacher buried it in campy overkill (a Batsuit with nipples), then Nolan -- the mind-teasing whiz behind Memento and Insomnia -- gets credit for resurrecting Batman as Bruce Wayne, a screwed-up rich kid with no clue about how to avenge the murders of his parents.

Batman Begins answers a long-standing question about Bruce the tycoon playboy -- a Paris Hilton with balls as previously played by Michael Keaton, Val Kilmer and George Clooney -- by showing us what he was doing before he put on his Bat drag, accessorized with lethal toys and learned to kill like a vigilante.

If you expect Batman to flap his cape the second you sit down with your popcorn, snap out of it. Nolan wants us to know the real Bruce. At age eight, Master Wayne (Gus Lewis) falls into a well filled with bats and freaks out. The bats represent his deepest fear. Bruce later dumps Princeton and his virginal Rachel (Katie Holmes -- OK, Tom Cruise, start raving) and heads for the Himalayas to toughen up. He's tossed into prison and is rescued by Ducard (Liam Neeson, with a funny accent), who ninja-trains him. Ducard is a member of the League of Shadows, led by evil genius Ra's Al Ghul (Ken Watanabe).

Seven years pass, and Bruce is still Bruce. Back in Gotham, he learns from the family butler, Alfred (Michael Caine purrs with warmth and humor), that he's been declared dead and that the CEO (Rutger Hauer) has taken over Wayne Enterprises. To get it back, Bruce teams up with Lucius Fox (a wily Morgan Freeman), a company scientist who specializes in military body armor (think Batsuit) and designs a car that looks like a tank (think Batmobile). That's when Bruce asks Lucius if the car comes in black. Fans can now feel free to go batty.

The buildup is steadily engrossing. That's because Nolan keeps the emphasis on character, not gadgets. Gotham looks lived in, not art-directed. And Bale, calling on our movie memories of him as a wounded child (Empire of the Sun) and an adult menace (American Psycho), creates a vulnerable hero of flesh, blood and haunted fire. Bruce's blood may be too hot for Rachel, now an assistant DA. She fumes when Bruce frolics with seminaked models. Look, honey, a secret identity takes work.

The Bat earns his wings soon enough. He enlists an honest cop, soon-to-be commissioner Gordon (a goodie Gary Oldman -- huh?) to help him rid Gotham of Carmine Falcone (overhammed by Tom Wilkinson), a crime lord with connections to the Waynes' murders. Like any movie with a surfeit of villains, none of them stick. Cillian Murphy comes closest as Dr. Jonathan Crane, a skinny shrink they call Scarecrow when he puts a burlap bag on his head. Each person sees his own worst fears come to life when they gaze at the bag. The low-budget headgear is typical of a movie that succeeds best when it hews to the rule of less is more. Beginner's luck evaporates when Nolan ends with a tricked-out car chase and a doomsday plot about a poisoned water supply. Nolan's too good for Bat business as usual. His secret for making Batman fly is as basic as black: Keep it real.


PETER TRAVERS
(Posted jun 09, 2005)

====

Drink the Kool-Aid. Wear blinders. Cover your ears. Because that's the only way you can totally enjoy Revenge of the Sith -- the final and most futile attempt from skilled producer, clumsy director and tin-eared writer George Lucas to create a prequel trilogy to match the myth-making spirit of the original Star Wars saga he unleashed twenty-eight years ago. Fan boys, of course, have convinced themselves otherwise. So have several critics, if you go by early reviews.
Heralded for its savagery (my God, it's rated PG-13), the film follows Anakin Skywalker (Hayden Christensen -- to merely call him wooden is an affront to puppets everywhere) as he loses his limbs and his conscience and takes on the evil mantle of Darth Vader. But thematic darkness is no excuse for dimness in all other departments, except the visual.

In this heretic's opinion, Sith is a stiff, brought down by that special knack Lucas has of turning flesh-and-blood actors into cardboard cutouts. To hear Anakin and his pregnant wife, Senator Padme (the vivacious Natalie Portman rendered vacant), discuss their marriage -- a secret that could get Anakin defrocked as a Jedi -- is to redefine stilted for a new millennium. The minute any character -- human or droid -- opens a mouth to speak, your eyes glaze over.

I kept thinking how much better Sith would play as a silent film, with only Chewbacca allowed to do his Wookiee growl and John Williams to trumpet his recycled score. And yet, Revenge of the Sith is the movie that will do more business (my guess is $400 million-plus), sell more popcorn and brainwash more audiences than any blockbuster this summer. There are reasons: Sith is the last time Lucas will ever skywalk with the Skywalkers on the big screen (talk persists of a TV spinoff). There is enormous goodwill built up by the original series Lucas began in 1977 with Star Wars: A New Hope, continued in 1980 with The Empire Strikes Back and ended in 1983 with Return of the Jedi. All three of those movies belong in my personal time capsule, despite the Ewok blight on the last one. That's why you, me and everyone we know lined up for 1999's juvenile The Phantom Menace and 2002's atrocious Attack of the Clones. We watched with stifled yawns as Anakin grew from a snot-nosed kid (Jake Lloyd) to a whiny teen lover boy and wanna-be Jedi (Christensen). We justified the thudding lifelessness (a pox on those Jedi councils) by praising Lucas' digital artistry and nurturing the hope that Revenge of the Sith would spin our heads around with the dark magic of Darth Vader.

Not even close. Until the last half-hour, when Lucas actually does establish a emotional connection between the landmark he created in 1977 and the prequel investment portfolio he laid out in 1999, the movie is one spectacularly designed letdown after another. Chief culprit? The script. Even with a reported polish by -- say it isn't so -- British playwright Tom Stoppard, the words are leaden, faux literate, mock-Shakespearean and devoid of humor. The late critic Pauline Kael once dismissed Star Wars as "an epic without a dream." I disagree. Lucas' dream is a grand one: to build a mythic futuristic fantasy out of the influences of his youth -- the Bible, the Bard, H.G. Wells, Jack London, John Ford westerns, Flash Gordon serials and long afternoons at the movies. If only for the original Star Wars, Lucas deserves a place in film history. He transformed pop culture into Pop Art. Lucas' major error was believing he could do it all alone. With Empire -- now officially the best of the Star Wars six -- Lucas had the invaluable help of screenwriters Lawrence Kasdan (Raiders of the Lost Ark) and Leigh Brackett (The Big Sleep), and director Irvin Kershner, who knew how to loosen up actors. For those who wrongly criticized Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher and Harrison Ford back when, all I can say is, look and weep.

As Mace Windu, even the lively Samuel L. Jackson looks embalmed. Ewan McGregor fares better as Obi-Wan Kenobi, if only because mischief is embedded in his DNA. Best of all is Ian McDiarmid as Supreme Chancellor Palpatine, the true badass of the piece. As Palpatine draws Anakin into his web and away from the Jedi code, the film is briefly enlivened by the thrill of temptation. McDiarmid paints an insidious, seductive portrait of evil. It's too bad that playing the grotesque Darth Sideous, Palpatine's Sith lord alter ego, drives the actor into horror-show hamboning.

As for the good stuff, none of it involves human speech. There's Obi-Wan taking on the droid general, Grievous, whose metal arms can swing four light-sabers. There's the massacre of the Jedi when Palpatine calls for Order 66. There's Palpatine taking on Yoda (again voiced by Frank Oz), whom he contemptuously calls my "little green friend."

As for the much-touted opening aerial dogfight with Anakin and Obi-Wan firing on the clones in a cluttered digital landscape, the effect is pure video game and purely without threat. Lucas fills Sith with so much computerized wizardry that it barely jibes with the low-tech original, taking place decades later, which shows the touch of human hands and plays all the better for it. But as cop-outs go, you can't beat the reasons that turn Anakin bad. Suffering nightmares about his wife dying while giving birth, he joins the Sith, who claim power over death, to save the woman he loves. If it means the killing of Jedi younglings, so be it. If it means letting his hubris run amok like any yuppie exec, so be it. It's like hearing that the young Hannibal Lecter was weaned on food instead of live flesh.

Lucas almost pulls the plot out of the fire in the film's final section, showing Obi-Wan hacking away at Anakin with his light-saber on the lava planet of Mustafar. Lucas even drops a hint that Anakin thinks Padme and Obi-Wan may have been getting it on. As we watch Anakin nearly melt in the lava, only to be put together, Frankenstein style, in a lab while Lucas intercuts scenes of Padme giving birth to the twins Luke and Leia, a link to genuine feeling is established at last. It's too little and too late. To hail Revenge of the Sith as a satisfying bridge to a classic is not just playing a game of the Emperor's New Clothes, it's an insult to what the original accomplished. To paraphrase Padme: This is how truth dies -- to thunderous applause.


PETER TRAVERS
(Posted May 13, 2005)

Japanese director Masahiro Kobayashi had harsh words for his homeland on Thursday when presenting "Bashing," his new film about a freed hostage who is rejected by society when she returns home.

The issue could hardly be more topical after a Japanese security contractor, 44-year-old Akihiko Saito, was captured in Iraq on Sunday.

Kobayashi sought to play down the link between his movie and real events, but there were clear parallels between his main character, played by Fusako Urabe, and real-life Nahoko Takato, a Japanese aid worker kidnapped in Iraq then freed last year.


French Riviera resort of Cannes, where "Bashing" is one of 21 films competing for the coveted "Palme d'Or" prize and the first of five Asian films in the main line-up to be shown.

"I know a hostage has been taken in Iraq, but the topic of the film is more the harassment of the hostages (when they return)," he added, speaking through a translator.

When asked to explain why Japanese who return from Iraq having been kidnapped can be ostracised, Kobayashi said he found the phenomenon hard to explain.

"To tell you the truth, it's difficult for me to explain," he told reporters. "It's perhaps due to the fact that Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi adopted a very negative stance.

"He rejected responsibility for their (hostages') acts and said it was up to the hostages to shoulder the responsibility," Kobayashi said, adding that the country's conservative media had also swayed opinion against freed hostages.

"JAPAN IS SICK"

Three Japanese held hostage in Iraq, including Takato, were released in April, 2004, after Koizumi rejected kidnappers' demands that Japanese forces withdrew from the country.

Two of them said then that they planned to return to Iraq, stirring controversy in Japan where many had criticized their decision to go to a dangerous area in the first place.

"I think that Japan is sick," the director said. "There is a tendency to try and take revenge, to attack the weakest."

Urabe, who plays the troubled central character shunned by society, sacked from her job and dumped by her boyfriend, told reporters she had read Takato's book about her experience before making the film.

"What I would like to do when I get back from Cannes is to meet her and hear what she has to say about the film," she said.

Tokyo-born Kobayashi, a former postal worker, folk singer and prolific television script writer, said with a smile that he knew how Takato and Urabe's character felt.

"My situation in Japan is as follows: I am the subject of a kind of 'bashing' by the media, who ostracise me from the 'good' film society. They are close to the feelings I have myself."

He said he was unsure how Japanese audiences would react to the movie, which tackles one of society's "taboos."

Kobayashi is known for homing in on social problems. His previous works include "Koroshi," which highlights the end of Japan's economic boom by depicting an unemployed salary man forced to accept work as an assassin to support his family.

Thursday May 12 1:26 PM ET

尽管恶评如潮，滚石杂志的Peter Travers还是写了一篇挺玩味的影评。加上好莱坞版的续集让日本版的导演田中秀夫操刀，我想我会入场吧。同样的，迷离暗水的好莱坞版有《中央车站》、《机车日记》的导演出马，一样令人好奇。

It's the way Naomi Watts spits out the line, "I'm not your fucking mommy", that got me thinking: Maybe The Ring Two isn't a horror flick at all. Maybe it's a subtext-loaded thriller about child abuse. You can make a case for Rosemary's Baby as a lapsed Catholic fable about a bride who marries outside the faith and thinks she's giving birth to Satan. You can argue that The Exorcist is the tale of a girl possessed, not by a demon, but by her unexpressed hatred for her neglectful movie star mother.

So lets deconstruct The Ring Two: Watts is back as Rachel Keller, single mom to Aidan (David Dorfman), a sullen weirdo (with the eyes of Haley Joel Osment) who refuses to call her mommy. Rachel keeps a tight smile going, but you can tell she's not pleased about leaving her cool job as a reporter in Seattle to move to Astoria, Oregon. She feels overqualified reporting for a local rag, despite its hottie editor (Simon Baker). But she needed to get Aidan away from that cursed videotape from the first Ring movie. That's the tape that looks like a Nine-Inch Nails video. You play it and you're dead in seven days after seeing skanky, stringy-haired Samara (Kelly Stables), the ghost girl whose adoptive mother drowned her in a well. So Rachel runs, and when the tape shows up again you knew it would she gets it in her head that Samara wants to possess Aidan. Rachel almost drowns him in a tub when he starts acting like Samara. When doctors intervene and see the bruises on his body, Rachel goes with her demon alibi. Then Aidan ever so sweetly calls her mommy. Ooo eee ooo.

At least the child-abuse theme bolstered when Sissy Spacek does a killer cameo as Samaras nut job birth mother who tried to kill her daughter to stop the dead from getting in gives you a provocative theme to chew on while the sequel goes about scare business as usual. The generic quality of the jolts is a surprise, considering that Hideo Nakatathe gifted Japanese director of the original Ringu in 1998 and its 1999 sequel has stepped in for The Ring director Gore Verbinski. It's Nakata's first Hollywood film, and you can feel the tension between his dark J-horror (the J is for Japanese) instincts and the pressure to protect a PG-13 franchise (Verbinski's Ring grossed a whopping $129 million) that favors suspense over splatter, gloss over grit. Formula is not something you associate with Nakata.

For starters, Ehren Kruger's script for The Ring Two not only veers from Ringu 2 but strains credulity at every turn. This is not to say that Nakata doesn't give you the hebbie-jeebies. Look out for hostile reindeer, a doctor (Elizabeth Perkins) with a needle, a corpse with a face twisted to resemble Edvard Munck's painting The Scream and that Medea moment in a bathtub.

Since avenging ghosts are part of the J-horror tradition, Nakata fares best showing Samara up to her old mischief. She keeps following Aidan around, popping up on his TV and in his dreams. Stables, an actress in her twenties, is quite a terror as the teen Samara. But even in mottled, blue-veined skin, courtesy of makeup wiz Rick Baker, and only one eye exposed behind long hair, Stables persuades us to see the lost child in the demon. Her performance deepens the complex relationship between Rachel and Aidan. Watts is dynamite, finding nuances in a role built without them. Her scenes with Dorfman give the film a needed psychological gravity. The rest is cliched horror gimmickry. Example: Aidan takes a digital photo of himself in a mirror. Checking the shot in the monitor, he sees Samara behind him. It's a still photo, but Samara is suddenly three-dimensional and moving. The chill you feel might have cut deeper if The Ring hadn't already pulled the same trick with a fly.

Nakata gets back up to speed for the finale in which Rachel faces her demons real and imagined in a well. Scream or not, you have to admire Nakata's skill at letting the dead run free while hinting that we may have more to fear from the living. With a braver step in that direction, this middling movie would ring more than box-office bells.


PETER TRAVERS
(Posted Mar 17, 2005)

Just went to the Aviator preview at my university. The movie actually sucks (lame and plain), if compare to Mr. Scorsese previous works. Michael, a renowned movie critic from Hong Kong, has written a funny critic towards this movie.

“ When Cate Blanchett first appeared in the scene as Katherine Hepburn, I couldn’t help but laugh away…this is considered as a self-help move from Miss Blancehett. Look at how the family of Hepburn is portrayed, as if members of Adams Family being summoned.”

--------------


每首人生曲都值得一唱，這是毋庸置疑的，可是非得勞師動眾搬上銀幕來個人頭湧湧的大合唱不可么？做善事賑災籌款還罷了，再不忍卒睹的勵志勸世仍然出于一片好心，無端白事揪出某甲某乙唱個不亦樂乎，吃飽飯沒事做也不應該隨意污染空氣呀。

剛剛在奧斯卡金像獎出過一陣鋒頭的兩部影片，標榜的可巧都是真人真事改編，也都令人嘆氣。《娛樂大亨》（Aviator）的問題比較輕鬆，反正娛樂掛帥，沒什么大不了，荒腔走調不過教人聽得起雞皮疙瘩而已，頂多貽笑大方，不至于遺害萬世。后果更不堪的是以希特勒作主角的《衰敗》（Downfall），擺出一副大公無私的模樣為納粹魔王立傳，有意無意間替蓋世太保招魂。

先說史高西斯導演的《娛樂大亨》。第一點令人愕然的是它的無為，說它粉飾太平么，它倒又似乎熱衷于揭建制的瘡疤，然而由頭到尾散發一股吊兒郎當的氣味，擦擦問題的表皮，過門而不入。傳記電影如果能夠引人入勝，不外因為編導找到獨特的講述角度，或者掌握了不為人知的一手資料，又或者，覺得有借古喻今的意義寄情抒懷的作用。巴巴地將人家的生老病死搬演一番，平鋪直述既無細節亦欠新意，連“后現代”這個方便的藉口，也不能成為有信服力的托詞。據說向侯活曉士開刀，是李奧納度狄卡比奧的主意，我們的天之驕子與老前輩惺惺相惜，莫非認同恃寵生嬌在好萊塢的特權？

看預告片的時候，我還枉作小人，以為是史老先生向《大國民》（Citizen Kane）致敬之作。也難怪我表錯情，財大氣粗的國民肯恩影射名振一時的傳媒大亨赫斯，此人威風八面，並不屑單單坐在報館獨沽一味，也曾雄心勃勃加入電影圈，從事捧女明星的偉大事業，和以航空業起家、在娛樂界叱吒風雲的曉士不乏共通點。人家說史高西斯恨拿獎恨到發燒，以史上公認的最佳影片為藍本拍一部鉅製，也不失為心想事成的捷徑罷。人各有志，多講無謂。誰不知猜錯了。真的當搬運工人倒又好呢，就算精神學無可學，肯抄襲抄襲形式，恐怕也不會這么難看，起碼有點結構可以依傍，不至于一塌糊塗潰不成軍。

除了以天空霸權的鬥爭揭發美國官場黑暗面的一節，整部影片實在平面得很，怪癖財主一時以奧遜威爾斯扮報業大王的姿態擠眉弄眼，一時又追隨馬龍白蘭度搭兩站慾望號街車，始終沒有活起來。凱特布蘭琪扮嘉芙蓮赫本教我笑得合不攏嘴，但這當然是戲蟲在作反，不顧理智皺眉：她算是自救了，可憐她那群家人被描繪成恐龍，活脫脫變了《愛登士家庭》的成員。給人道聽途說的瑣碎感還罷了，壞的是所有的蜚短流長早就耳熟能詳，新鮮程度與冰箱的隔夜菜相若──八卦新聞一乏善可陳，根本就沒有存在理由。更糟的是附送淺薄的心理分析，似是而非用一加一等于二的方式替人物行為找俐落的答案。潔癖和性之間的千絲萬縷，高手如希治閣費了一整部《神秘賊美人》（Marnie），也只不過理出冰山一角的頭緒，哪有這么便宜，以一組廉價的回憶鏡頭，就說得清嗜大波的富豪為何倣傚麥克白夫人洗手成狂的道理？

據聞希特勒也有驚人的潔癖，但是描寫他生命終途的《衰敗》沒有旁及。按道理，編劇如此踴躍為魔頭添置血肉，出盡法寶把一個冷血的變態殺人狂親切化，實在不應該忽略這么能夠表現“人性”的細節。我這種不屑的口吻，維護文藝創作自由的使者聽見要吐口水的：把壞蛋寫得立體感人，不是值得表揚的功蹟嗎？對不起，雖然原則上我完全同意，然而觸及希特勒這種殺千刀的人渣，請允許我發揮一點冬眠了很久的正義感。

《衰敗》的危險性，在于有撥亂反正的副作用，喪心病狂的政客一旦被賦予高貴的情操，所作所為無疑給人合理的幻象，定力不夠、基本歷史課不及格的軟耳朵，馬上會慷慨施捨同情。這和張藝謀的《英雄》同出一轍，幽幽陰陰殺人于無形，令沒有防備的觀眾吸了宣揚極權的毒素還不察覺。秦始皇的焚書坑儒一統天下，和希特勒的消滅異族純種主義，簡直是一個故事的兩個版本。前者年月隔得遠，對西方人尤其陌生，歌頌他的《英雄》可以過關不難理解；但是后者印在近代史的油墨還未干透，集中營受害者家屬仍在聲討之中，為什么《衰敗》居然能夠穿山越嶺耀武揚威？抗議哈利王子穿納粹軍服參加舞會的聲音，全部去了北極度假么？

邁克：隨便登台
中國報

一直就知道自己是多么一个不合时宜的人。总在别人热闹着某些什么的时候，我怀抱恍惚的心事独自走到自己的角落沉默，想着有的没的，到了慢半拍的神经终于意识过来，好奇地往那团热闹走去，所有的什么也早就风云流散了。

并不是自己多想与众不同，不过就因为那点不怎么负责任的随性，不过就因为我喜欢兴之所至去做某些来到某时某刻才想做的事。

现在，连今年的奥斯卡颁奖礼都过去了，我才想讲去年奥斯卡的热门竞选电影之一，苏菲亚哥普拉的《Lost In Translation》──我不知道中文译名该按香港那边比较具有在地色彩的《迷失东京》，还是该按台湾那边叫《爱情不用翻译》，后面这个太废话一句（到底什么样的爱情是要用上翻译的呢），我不喜欢它排除了东京，至少我以为这部电影的主角之一就是东京。异乡人眼中的东京，精神洁癖者用影像模拟的东京。

这部片子是在今届奥斯卡颁奖礼前三周才看的。朋友都觉得奇怪，因为他们知道我喜欢苏菲亚的《The Virgin Suicides》，这虽然是部小说改编电影，但仍反射着浓郁的个人色彩，那些朦胧的青春期性意象、清教徒式的精神洁癖、对性的沉溺与疏离……一部风格阴柔怪异而不在乎你怎么去明白的电影，一切都是朦朦胧胧的，像莫奈的画，我奇怪地在里头看到印象派的光。有些电影负责说故事，有些就为了说一个笑话，有些只在乎美丽的手势，有些为了反照自身的影像，更高境界的会写诗。有些，就纯粹捕捉个人视网膜上的那片印象。

《The Virgin Suicides》并没有让苏菲亚跻身一线导演行列，你知道后来那部才是，让她捧走大大小小的奖，更加巩固她的才女地位，尤其应了那句“才女报仇，十年未晚”——想想看她在十多岁的当年出演她老爸的那部《教父III》受到了多少责难和攻讦。但当去年一整年光芒都聚焦在她那部《迷失东京》的时候，我究竟都在做些什么呢，我竟没有动过一点想看的念头，尤其在这DVD通行到人人都有戏可看的年代。

我是直到今年一月多听到意大利时装精品集团Prada有意革退旗下奥地利籍设计师Helmut Lang之后才动念的。已经忘记Prada是几时收购掉Helmut Lang这个个人时装设计品牌的了，必然是那几个超级精品集团狂掀收购浪潮开始全球坐大的1999年（我会说这是时装界的灾难年，多少独立体系的时装品牌被收购被吞并，让法国、意大利那几个精品集团的势力扩张达到颠峰）。这一年Prada收购德国时装设计Jil Sander之后，第一件事是革退Jil Sander本人。再把Helmut Lang踢走，不过是重复历史吧了。

当然是让人愤慨的，一个设计师还在他有生之年失去自创品牌的设计权。我不知道也不在乎知道《迷失东京》到底拿走多少奖，但我知道Helmut Lang赞助了电影男主角的全套行头。我几乎是为了看那些简约到其实出自谁的手笔都根本不重要的低调设计，而把DVD光碟塞入放映机里。

然而这部电影让我想谈的不是时装，虽然HL的西装和灰色系便服穿在Bill Murray身上适度地遮盖了他突出的外型（在亚洲人的城市显得过于高大）以及他炫技式的肢体语言，给了他一点雅痞的都会风品味（至少我们不怎么联想他在《捉鬼敢死队·Ghostbuster》的角色）。还有我第一次发现比尔梅利(Bill Murray)那么高（必然超过180+公分），而美丽的Scarlett Johansson竟那么矮（看来只有150+公分），东京街头那些路人甲很有效地起了对比作用。

对这部电影我比较在意的那点是男女主角直到最后都没有发生肉体关系。我在意的是这样的处理更美好，甚或更大胆，尤其在这男男女女动不动都到床上发情的时代，你却去让一对美国来的又住同一幢酒店的男女靠近到没有肉体摩擦，大概还要招惹观众骂到更厉害，但就是这片嵌入霓虹东京（我不会忘记那是援助交际的发源地）的空白让我在想，在这个性容易发生到就像上便利店采买用品的时代里，泛滥的性生态大概也会来到金属疲劳的时候。让那些太容易发生的不那么容易发生，其中不是有着更清醒的自我坚持和试炼吗？

于是我在《迷失东京》和《The Virgin Suicides》看到的一致性，是导演苏菲亚对性的态度，既疏离而又审慎，她也许是那么一个有着精神洁癖的人，《The Virgin Suicides》里寻死的几个少女，到死都保留了处女之身（除了LUX，其实小说原着里她有着更病态的性爱沉溺），但她们同时也抗拒清教徒式的教育家规（所以自杀成了更决绝的反叛），所以她们，包括《迷失东京》的夏乐蒂，都不是清教徒式的排拒性爱，而是站到了局外疏离地检视；不是说性爱不重要，而是我们之中到底会有多少人真正地不用感官，而终于回到脑袋上精神性去思考这时代里的过度消费的性爱观，难道真的能那么容易就用动物本能去全盘解释吗，精神性这个领域毕竟已太久被现代男女排除在外了。

必然还有些人是那么想的，不是厌恶“性”，而是厌恶“性”太容易发生。容易到早就取消替代了性爱的价值。

2005/03/12 15:06:17
■祝快乐 "无时差国境"
Nanyang Press

已经连续好几个星期，我在周休日光顾不同购物商场，如常在逛完书局之后，拐个弯到电影院去，站在那儿浏览节目表找电影看。每次都找不到想看的电影，于是就没有妥协地掉头就走。

这样子说，就知道我从来就是个不入流的半调子影迷了。真正的影迷，不管上演的是什么电影，都该看了再说，在资讯发达时代，用他个人的雷达扫瞄在他眼中发光的珍珠，用那饱满的光泽继续为人生上色。也许得到的不是珍珠，而是一块质朴的石头，那说不定更好了，谁都知道文学史上有一块石头最会说话，也说出最瑰丽的故事。

再说，尽管主流院线的好莱坞名单吸引不了人，还有国际院线那些海报总是印上几根麦穗的外语片──几根麦穗不错是标明着这部片子曾经参展或在影展拿奖，但这也不能保证看在我眼中不是麻痹神经的大烂片。不管是有格还是没格的影迷，我们都不能迷信权威对不对？

憋了好几个星期找不到自己想看的片子，终于等到《驱魔战神·Constantine》上映，就毫不犹豫拐进电影院去了。也没有人保证这不会是三流电影，不过这里有奇洛李维斯咧，他的演技不错时好时坏，但他光站在那儿就是一种型了，虽说很可惜地这种型暂时还只能为一部电影塑造出经典的科幻角色，而不是为他个人形塑演技派的深度气质。

但是没有深度，不代表里面没有什么。村上春树有一次这么写俊美的爵士乐手Chet Baker：“那声音无比的清洁、感伤。里面也许没有深度，但没有深度反而触动摇撼我们的心，那很像我们在什么地方经验过的什么。”相比起一种让人百思不得其解的深度，也许我们偶尔会想，不必那么费力地在浅显的边沿，寻找自己曾经失落的什么，譬如青春期某一个情感遗憾留下的一道刮痕，尽管轻巧，却奇异地一辈子也抹不走。

《驱魔战神》我出奇地喜欢。好像MTV出身的导演都总能在主流力量中操弄出归属于他个人的叙事语汇，譬如总能让人神思恍惚的Spike Jonze，譬如拍出《Fight Club》这种奇片的David Finche──只要手中握的不是低智剧本，他们总能在影象里爆燃荡人心魄的火花。

我喜欢Francois Lawrence在《驱魔战神》里拍出的天堂地狱平行观。多少年来我们迷信天堂在上，地狱在下的形象化观念，但这部电影提供了另一种可能，观念上确实是表征着“向上升华，向下沉沦”，但从空间来看，那也可以是平行的空间，天堂地狱将人间夹缠其中，死亡作为最后的驱动力，把前行的轨道接续到其中一面空间。或者，在瞬间扭转了原来空间的质量，所以即使空间没有转移，那里的时间、温度、气味、色彩、生物形态，也全都变异了。

活与死皆在同一空间

当我在画面看到无论是地狱还是天堂，都隐约保留着洛杉矶（主角生活的城市）的都会景观（一个仿佛是遭过核弹浩劫的高温城市，一个仿佛是涂绘着文艺复兴云彩的未来都市，但都保留着洛杉矶的几座高楼地标）的那一刻，我就笑了。还真幽默得很黑暗是不是，死去后的灵魂仍然漫游在原有但质变的空间里，仿佛从来不曾离开。你活在你创造的，也死在你创造的。

一个礼拜天上教堂的朋友看了这部片后告诉我，他们的宗教相信，地狱的时间比人间慢了9999秒。我不知道朋友说的地狱时间是不是真的，因为关于宗教里同一个扰人的问题，你去问100个不同的教徒，就会有100个不同的答案。但电影有一个画面美丽地表达了那样的时差，当奇洛李维斯通过猫眼进入地狱再回来的那段时间里，走到门外的女主角转身扬起的一头浓发不过刚刚垂散下来。一秒钟的定格于是就有了答案。

其实东方宗教哲学里也有这么一句表征天堂地狱的缄言，早阵子香港一名天王巨星回应陈年旧情就答了这么一句，我从来对他的天王魅力没什么感应，但还真是佩服他在应答上的机智。

《驱魔战神》最让我放下一百颗心的，是最后男女主角站在天台上那若隐若现的情感。其实那是这部电影最惊险的一幕，几乎没让我掩面而去──设想男女主角如果按照好莱坞陈年定律两唇交印下去，我大概也要跟着叹息：“真是一念天堂，一念地狱了”。

导演罗伦斯非常节制，很少有初登大制作幕后的导演，有那样的淡定自信（谁会想到他使出召唤路西弗那一招，对于期待愈打愈激的观众，那一招可是很反高潮的），这部电影在最后一战只这么轻巧一转，没来到人魔大战到满天神佛的失控地步，我已经很感激了，就这么甘心地在个人的电影笔记上为他记名。

于是我知道我渐渐成为那种不再迷信所谓的美学艺术论点，不管什么电影，只要它懂得说有想像力的话，即使不过只有一秒钟，就是好电影的异教徒影迷了。

2005/02/26
■祝快乐

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祝快乐的文字似乎失踪了好一阵子。阅读她写的《Constantine》，足以弥补目前在日本无缘观赏的小小遗憾。