Metropolis

This time, I would like to talk about a film that has fascinated me since my teenage years - Fritz Lang's ‘Metropolis’ (1927)!

Metropolis was a silent film from the German director Fritz Lang in 1927, and it is considered as one of the greatest sci-fi films in the history of cinema. The style encompassed German expressionism, which could also be seen as following a wider trend of Modernism in the early 20^th century.

The film is influential because it is extremely visual and visionary. Metropolis is an almost textbook example regarding German Expressionism. With cinematic artists like Lang. F. W. Murnau, G. W. Pabst, and Robert Wiene, German Expressionism would prove to be inspirations for the American and European crime films and Film Noirs of the 1940s. The artistic influences of expressionism were evident in the sound films, and Welles, Kubrick and Kurosawa were all influenced by this stylistic movement. Fritz Lang would eventually exile to America, and made a great Film Noir known as ‘The Big Heat’ in the 1950s.

The story ‘took place’ - is past tense even appropriate here? - in the ‘futuristic’ year 2026. It was about Freder, the son of an industrialist Fredersen, who owned a lot of industrial complexes in the future city Metropolis. Certainly, the workers were seen nothing more than slaves or cogs in the complex machines, and there were already discontented brewing among the workers. When a meeting with a worker known as Maria, followed by an untimely accident that has wounded a number of the workers as a result, Freder had an awakening of conscience and decided to help the workers to fight for the worker’s well-being. However, the situation was complicated by Rotwang, the inventor who also worked for Fredersen. Overcome by grief of the loss of his true love, Hel, who ironically married Fredersen and then died soon after, Rotwang decided to make a female robot as a replacement of Hel. Fredersen forced Rotwang to make the robot resemble that of Maria (henceforth the ‘false’ Maria), so that it could mislead the workers to think Maria as a spy for the industrial complex. Rotwang kidnapped the real Maria, and the false Maria started to stir up the emotions of the workers to revolt against Metropolis. The false Maria led the workers to destroy the machines, yet it led to a massive flooding in the worker's part of the city, and drowning some of the children that the adults have left behind. Would Freder and the real Maria save the day?

Fritz Lang has stated that he has got his inspirations from a visit to New York in the 1920s. While he was definitely in awe of the beauty of the tall buildings and modernized cityscapes, he seemed to also detect an undercurrent of danger behind these advanced architecture. What is also interesting to look is that the world of ‘Metropolis’ was not merely about new things – the futuristic setting was balanced or juxtaposed by Gothic architecture of the 19^th century, as a reminder that humanity could not detach from their past. This type of juxtaposition or retrograde culture can also be felt with any dystopian or cyberpunk films, such as Blade Runner and Akira.

Metropolis was a visionary film exploring the man-machine interaction, and this vision has clearly influenced many subsequent filmmakers. Stanley Kubrick was among one of these filmmakers, as he often explored the theme of man vs. machine in many of his greatest works. Both Lang and Kubrick were concerned with the inevitable mechanical dehumanization offered by these man-made systems and technologies. Indeed, the artistic movement of Modernism was about the drastic changes humanity had to face in the modern world: emergence of advanced technologies, mass production, and facile connection through transport systems. The modern world, while apparently promising better lives for its inhabitants, can lead to a sense of alienation unprecedented for the past and simpler lives. Kubrick, Antonioni and Malick are among some of the key filmmakers who have expressed similar concerns in their films.

The modernist cities could be frightening, but it was not because they had intimidating heights or advanced appearances. They were frightening because they were too ordered and rational. Just like in Kubrick's films, Lang’s future is perceived as planned, functional and performative. The issues of the future are planned out in detail through rational judgments, and everything, including the humans within the system, are seen as merely nuts and bolts and are assessed based on their instrumental applications. Lang and Kubrick wanted us to contemplate about such a possible future - one with a stunning, yet dangerous, mechanical beauty. While Lang, with his engagement in Expressionism, used high contrast lighting and unusual angles to bring out the tension between men and machines, Kubrick used every ordered composition, harsh lighting, sharp edges and lines, and cold colour tones to heighten the tension and the fundamental differences between humanity and his creations. 

The exploitation and dehumanization of workers; the treatment of other humans as instruments, were also themes that were explored in Metropolis. In Sergei M. Eisenstein’s silent classic ‘The Battleship Potemkin’, he adopted a different type artistic style - Russian montage – to address the same issue. The sailors on the battleship were treated by the lowest way possible. Both films culminated in revolts by the workers, and certainly had deep political meanings. That was why some detractors of Metropolis criticized the film as a celebration of communism, and I would not dwell into the political issues here.

Expressionism, much like surrealism, uses dream-like images to enhance the atmosphere. In Metropolis, Freder had a few hallucinations when encountering stressful situations, and that gave the whole film a dream-like feel, often a signature in many expressionistic films. In many silent films, a dream-like atmosphere often reinforced the visual power of the resulting work. From the expressionistic work like Wiene’s ‘Caligari’ and Murnau’s ‘Nosferatu’, even to Buster Keaton’s ‘Sherlock Jr.’, aspects of the dream element were often found. After all, it should not be too surprising that many pioneers of early cinema have stressed the dream-like nature of cinema at the beginning of the era.

It has been 90 years since the emergence of Lang’s nightmarish vision of ‘Metropolis’. Its imaginative impact still continues to shock and fascinate the later generations of film enthusiasts.

by Ed Law

8/9/2017

Film Analysis

The Shining

'Hereeeeeee's Johnny!!'

When I started to have the idea of writing about Stanley Kubrick's films, I knew that there is a certain point I have to write about 'The Shining' (1980). To put it simply, the presence of this film will likely attract a lot of attention given its cult status in pop culture. Here I am, planting the flag on the horizon of this memorable classic, a film that I intensely enjoy - and watch again, again and again...

‘The Shining’ is a special film to me, because it was the only Stanley Kubrick film I have ever watched in the cinema. My friend, ‘G.’, and I have watched a re-release of this film back in 2006, when the Broadway Cinematheque in Hong Kong was celebrating its 5th anniversary and therefore has organized a Stanley Kubrick film festival, in which it showed all the available Kubrick films. I remember that my friend had a great impression on this modern classic, and though I have already watched ‘The Shining’ a couple of times before this showing, the cinematic atmosphere, with the intense soundtrack system, created quite a memorable experience for such a thrilling film.

How about the other audience and critics when the film first came out in 1980? Well, rather shockingly, it was a huge disappointment. While the film made a decent result in the box office, the critical reviews were bad. Stephen King, whose novel the film was based on, had a legendary hatred on the film (and also Kubrick). The major reasons for these sentiments were actually quite similar to that for 'Eyes Wide Shut' - a justified over-expectation, the challenge of genre categorizations, and the slow pace. Many people at that time did NOT find ‘The Shining’ horrifying - because the film was shot in broad daylight and wide composition, and these characteristics defied all the grammatical rules for a traditional horror movie. And, many people felt the narrative of the story was rather slow and not intense enough, and especially for Shelley Duvall's character, Wendy Torrance, critics saw her performance from hateful to misogynistic.

I believe the above observations are totally valid, if you are making the above assumptions. Without these assumptions, I see 'The Shining' more as a thriller, a film that relies on slow-building suspense rather than cheap scares. To be honest, is it that surprising to see that Jack Nicholson's Jack Torrance will eventually go nuts at the end? I believe most audience will expect that to happen, and indeed want that to happen. It is the gradual deterioration of the man's psyche that makes the film thrilling. While I do not disagree that a dark and expressionistic atmosphere will make a film scarier, Kubrick's original approach makes the film more chilling. The deliberate cleanliness and brightness of the environment will certainly contrast the sudden appearance of the hidden demons and dark forces, and such a high contrast approach will certainly make the film more thrilling.

Like many of the Kubrick films, The Shining has evolved throughout the last 35 years and it has established a cult classic among many audience members. I would say 'The Shining' is likely to be his most popular and entertaining film, and it will certainly be the first Kubrick film to watch if anyone is fascinated by the director. The film signifies what that means to be Stanley Kubrick: perfectionism, obsession, discipline, a concern with performance, and the emphasis on visual. The Shining is an extremely visual film - the visual details are so plentiful that they could be more important than the rather banal and often heightened dialogues the characters said. Indeed, the reason why the film can have such an everlasting impression on the audience is because when they view them again and again, they will discover more and more insights from the film. Their commitment and curiosity as a careful observer will be rewarded. Numerous interpretations and fan theories have been proposed everywhere, and just reading these views can already be enjoyable.

‘The Shining’ has an intense impact on the subsequent films. When you see a cinematic composition very symmetrical, 2 doors next to each other, 2 twins standing hand in hand, the presence of a maze, a bartender in golden light, someone shouting 'Here's Johnny', and a few Pixar films like 'Toy Story', you can feel ‘The Shining’ 's influence. Ironically, some of the creators in Pixar turn out to be huge fans of 'The Shining', because while many Pixar films have thought-provoking themes regarding families, 'The Shining' is likely an un-family friendly film. The film seems to suggest that domestic life is bloody hell –with blood being guaranteed in the film.

‘The Shining’ is a film about performance. Kubrick has become infamous among actors when it came to the production of ‘The Shining’, because he has asked for a large number of takes from the actors, even in some mundane scenes. While one can easily attribute this to a sort of self-indulgent obsession or egomaniac perfectionism, many viewers believe that this strategy is deliberate. It makes sense if Kubrick was seeing the actors as an instrument (bear with me, I do not mean to be offensive), or more appropriately, a function of the film. I am not saying that Kubrick was dehumanizing his actors – because in the design of the film Kubrick has not really intended to make ‘psychologically realistic’ characters, those you will expect to see in the real world. It is more appropriate to see these characters as archetypes, or ideas released in human forms. Kubrick was wise enough to understand the repeating demands for more takes will generate an anxiety from the actors – because, as they are humans they will perceive they are not fulfilling Kubrick’s requirement. So, they will try to explore a whole spectrum of possibilities for their performance. They can tighten up, act in a more stylized way, and contradict their own interpretations of the film. True, you can argue it is not fair for the actors, because in a human-centered point of view, you are undermining the creative contributions the actor may be investing into their roles, and Kubrick is like treating them as tools rather than artists. Yet, I feel that it makes sense if the style of a film is detached, and of course not anyone may identify with this style –hence the detractors of Kubrick films. Nevertheless, the actors in the film have all given really memorable performance, and I believe a lot of audience members can come to identify with this over the years.

This aspect of the film leads us to a minor, yet significant criticism by a number of critics and the members of audience. They complained that the film was ‘non-psychological’ or not psychologically realistic. The reason for these people’s disappointment originated from the preference that Kubrick did not provide any conclusive – especially psychological - reasons why Jack Torrance has gone crazy. Kubrick did not provide any information regarding Jack’s conditions through his quotes – they were basically all rants and banal statements that made not much sense. Furthermore, Kubrick did not provide even a narrative how Jack would have reached this type of psychological condition – like some previous traumatic events for example. In Stephen King’s original conception, King at least has attributed Jack’s situation to alcoholism. For a more traditional approach of American cinema, psychological realism is a requirement for a story with a clear narrative – even an evil character has to be made clear what his motivations for doing something bad are. It seems not to be the case in ‘The Shining’, a film about an American family from an American director.

Many critics, by contrast, believed that these preferences were deliberate by Kubrick, because as I have stated above, he had no intention to base the film on psychological realism. Kubrick wanted to present Jack as a psychologically hollow man, a bit like the psychopathic samurai in ‘The Sword of Doom’, where the filmmakers in both of these films did not intend to explicitly explain why the characters behaved in such a way. The philosopher Deleuze said that Kubrick was being more of a ‘symptomatologist’ here – he was showing the symptoms and expressions of Jack Torrance's craziness. Of course, there certainly existed some reasons or processes that would lead to Jack's situation, yet Kubrick chose to communicate these reasons indirectly through the images, rather than expressing them directly in words.

Therefore, ‘The Shining’ is very much like ‘2001’, where a number of perspectives are possible to make sense of the film. This approach of ‘anti-realism’ should not be seen as negative without careful consideration, because Kubrick 's concern in his later films was often about the way how characters performed as a function - much like a pawn piece on a chessboard  - in a given environment and how the character would interact with the environment. He was also concerned with how these resulting interactions (in this case, Jack's apparent possession by the Overlook Hotel) would impact the other characters and the surroundings. Thus, there was not a requirement to guarantee the portrayal of a psychological interpretable character in this case, because it was the interaction rather than inner-psychology that mattered. Certainly, some viewers might find it difficult to accept this approach and saw it as a weakness on Kubrick’s part. Yet, this detached approach can be a powerful one when the concerns of the story are on bigger ideas, including the more allegorical, abstract ... and timeless ones.

by Ed Law

2/9/2017

Film Analysis

Eyes Wide Shut, Part 2

The most memorable sequence in Stanley Kubrick’s ‘Eyes Wide Shut’ was certainly the ritual orgy sequence. While it is sexually charged, and can be offensive for certain viewers, it is one of Kubrick’s most atmospheric and beautiful scenes in all his films. The only unfortunate flaw is that there some CGI-generated images were inserted into the scenes by the studio in fear of the award of a NC-17 rating. For this sequence, which I would call ‘1999: A Sex Odyssey’, it was seen through Bill’s subjective viewpoint. Through the use of a steadicam-style tracking shot and a wide-angle lens, the audience, just like Bill, was like observers when they were penetrating and exploring the dangerous world of sex.  During this sequence, all sort of sexual acts have been seen, yet what was rather ironic was these sexual ‘scenes’ were more like artifices – it would generate awe rather than any sensational emotions from the audience (and probably Bill too). The sexual acts were detached, and they were almost devoid of emotion. It would not be too ridiculous to say that these actions were almost mechanical, as if there were some ‘sex robots’ carrying out their assigned programs (see later). I can think of Lars von Trier’s recent film, ‘Nymphomaniac’, to this end. In the film, the female protagonist, Joe, had an unstoppable impulse for sex, yet she could not find any true love or relationships from any of her encounters with other men – which many of them were scumbags in the first place. Sex was always detached in Joe’s scenario. She would have to be subservient to the power of Eros, and the destructive power this impersonal energy would exert on her. Joe’s tragedy was that she could not transform Eros into a more positive element to her life, such as a fulfilling relationship.

While the orgy scene is atmospheric, it is also a very chilling scene, as the viewers are experiencing the entanglement of two powerful and impersonal forces – that of Eros and the mechanical dehumanization of institutions. In the lushly-colored rooms, filled with books and nicely designed furniture, powerful patrons and the ‘sex slaves’ – the poor naked ladies, all masked to ensure anonymity, were engaging in decadence and all forms of perverse sexual acts. The power of Eros, like Schopenhauer’s Will, was penetrating the room like a great and destructive force. Kubrick, being a brilliant satirist, made the sex acts so sterile and unattractive that the audience members were more than certain that that was nothing enjoyable from the ladies’ perspective. They have been dehumanized by the institutions, and they were nothing more than tools to fulfill the big brasses’ thirst for sexual perversions and exploitations. No matter how many books – the symbol for knowledge of human wisdom – and how clean and well-decorated the room was, with paintings and expensive furniture, very much like ‘Barry Lyndon’, this ‘high culture’ failed to conceal the monstrous and dark side of humanity.

The theme of mechanical dehumanization has been explored in almost every Kubrick film since ‘2001’, and like in ‘Barry Lyndon’, ‘Eyes Wide Shut’ employed a very similar strategy to explore this rather chilling reality. Kubrick has been heavily influenced by Freud’s ideas, not only in terms of dreams, the unconscious and the Oedipal theme, but also on civilization. Freud, in his famous work ‘Civilizations and its Discontents’, has stated that repression was required by civilization on its members so that all the members could serve a peaceful and non-chaotic co-existence. However, this control would certainly be against one’s instinctual urge and impulse, which was often irrational, dangerous, and could cause harm and destruction to others. Kubrick expanded on Freud’s ideas, yet he did not totally agree to Freud’s conclusions. While Kubrick appreciated the contribution of civilization to human intelligence, he felt that the instinctual urge demanded by humans would continue to threaten and destabilize civilization. He did not serve the optimism that civilization could win out the battle of barbarism at the end. The two forces will continue to battle and intimidate each other, and it is what Kubrick’s work is often about.

The development of institutions, which is an important element of a civilized world, will inevitably lead to mechanical dehumanization. Many people are not aware of the power of the social machine and the cultural machine, and they accept these values without questioning or thinking about them. In a number of Kubrick’s films, most notably ‘A Clockwork Orange’ and ‘Full Metal Jacket’, he showed that humans could be conditioned and programmed to serve instrumental purposes. Many viewers have noticed the weirdness of certain characters in EWS, as if they were some sort of programmed or brain-washed individuals. While it cannot be accurately verified, there has often been conspiracy theories (mostly in fiction, bad news if in reality) that has used brain-washing or programming techniques to condition human individuals, to control them, and they become tools for whatever selfish purposes, be it political, exploitative, and so on.

Now, while the idea of turning humans into automatons can be a bit outlandish, we cannot underestimate the impact caused by mechanical dehumanization, which individuals are employed as instruments rather than respectable human beings. The mask is an important motif in the film, most obviously during the ritual orgy scene. The mask is used to conceal the identity, on the rich patron’s side that is because they do not want to take any responsibilities in all these perverse sexual acts. Obviously, these rich guys have no reservations about helping themselves to exploit those lower on the social ladder than themselves, who are the masked and naked ladies for the sacrifice. For these sex slaves, they are masked because the authority wanted to eliminate any forms of identity or subjectivity from them, and they became instruments to provide sexual pleasures to the patrons, and to comply with the ritualized movement they have to do during the ceremony. In a sense, they are very much like the soldiers in ‘Barry Lyndon’ and ‘Full Metal Jacket’, which all of them are branded together like a machine or instrument to do the job, only this time we have a sex machine in this decadent mansion. The use of masks not only alienate the poor ladies, it also served a constitutive power to brand them up, so that all of them became selfless and participated in this hideous acts.

When we speak of mask, we can also associate to the idea of performance. When I start to think more about Kubrick’s cinema in general, I start to appreciate the flip side of the coin – if his films are not merely about mechanical dehumanization, then it is also about performance, and the two concepts do go hand in hand.   

Aren’t we all wearing mask, after all? In a sense, we take on different personas to perform well in a certain role. These are all demanded by the cultural and social machines that govern our lives. Being a doctor, Bill believed that he could quench all sorts of sexual desire even when he was inspecting a naked woman during practice, because he felt all these things were very impersonal and objective. Victor, the billionaire who invited Bill and Alice to the party, believed well in a polite society by praising whatever women he has encountered, even if the statement had absolutely no significance to him. Through the family institution, Alice did every duties a normal housewife had to perform, even if her psyche was rift with discontents. Even in the orgy, all these powerful patrons, the ‘best people out there’ in the society if we recalled ‘The Shining’, was of a lower rank to the master of the ceremony, and they all stood there silently, all wearing masks to ensure an impersonal presence. The characters led the appropriate performance because they wanted to fit into the picture, just like the various aristocrats trying to fit into the painterly 18^th century Europe in ‘Barry Lyndon’. If you were not a good enough actor to fit into the narrative, you were doomed to be marginalized by the others. Yet, Kubrick questioned, did all these performances really fit nicely into the perfect system humans claimed to have created, and could things go wrong?

If we have a civilized world, if we can develop instruments to lead to a better control of our lives, and if we can pull performance to fit into the setting, then why do the battle between barbarism and civility never seize? Kubrick’s films often remind us the reason. It is the sad fact that our higher cognitive abilities - which have led us to our ego and hubris, has also caused us to be oblivious of our limitations - our animalistic and mechanistic nature. Though we might be more intelligent than most of the organisms, we can never escape from our animal instincts, and the mechanistic designs that define homo sapiens. Instinctive urge is uncontrollable and potentially destructive, because it cannot be explained in a rational manner. It is a part of us, which is intuitive and is ingrained into our genetic design. Such is the case for the need of sex, violence and the carving for power and control. In Kubrick’s cinema, many scenes remind us of our true nature. The presence of bathrooms, in one occasion a hideous act or exploitation has almost led to the death of a woman in EWS; all the eating scenes, reflecting our biological needs, and also the constant threat to corporeality. Disturbingly, it is often the bodily aspect of humanity that has led to our limits, and through a perverse sense of creativity, that has also led to many approach to control others - as we can especially see in ‘A Clockwork Orange’. The bodies in ‘Eyes Wide Shut’ have been exploited - prostitution and sexual beta kittens in the orgy, and even the costumer’s daughter, whom he was willing to pimp her out to an unwilling Bill. Humanity is nothing more than the mannequins that are neatly organized in the costumer’s shop. The powerful ones wanted these people to have their eyes wide shut. They did not want them to question the motivations behind these acts. They wanted them to be docile to do what they were conditioned to (think of the Stepford Wives). They also wanted the observers to have their eyes wide shut, too, so that no one would challenge their actions and they would continue be benefitted from their advantaged position. Culture, customs and other rituals are merely tools to divert our visions to something else – so that these horrendous legacies of our dark sides will not be confronted by our glaring visions.

When a mask is fallen off, a dress down is inevitable. Throughout the film, Bill has been dressed down in a number of occasions. To put it anther way, masculinity, embodied by Bill in this film, has been challenged by various parties just like many of the male characters in Kubrick’s film. Not only he was forced to take his mask off and exposed his true identity to every one during the orgy, he was also forced to take his clothes to serve as a humiliation. He was harassed by a bunch of college boys, who accused him of being homosexual. Throughout his night of Odyssey and the morning after, he was challenged by people from the different parts of the sex spectrum, to see whether he was brave to take them on. For a number of times, he had to resort to his professional social status to get what he wanted and continued his journey. Even Alice taunted him an challenged his claim that he had no desire on the various women he saw during work. But for our Dr. Bill, rational as he was, was just a human. He showed all the human attributes of jealousy, desire, and emotion as anyone was. After Alice’s confession, Bill has imagined again and again, also like replaying a scene in a film, the scenario between Alice and the naval officer, as if a sort of self-punishment. Even in his imagination, the naval officer looked strong and handsome – a celebration of masculinity.

When Bill was asked to take off his mask, another individual was also willing to do this metaphorically. At the point Bill was about to take off his clothes and subject to some forms of punishment, one of the masked woman stood on the balcony and declared that she was willing to accept the punishment incited on Bill. This woman has already warned Bill some time ago that he should leave the place as soon as possible, and although her identity was ambiguous, many audience members believed her to be Mandy, the prostitute saved by Bill from an overdose in Victor’s bathroom at the start of the film.  When Mandy expressed her will to sacrifice for Bill, this action served as a tremendous challenge to the system where these powerful people they have firmly established. Her action was devastating because by singling herself out   Kubrick made this visually by having her standing alone at the center of the balcony, she asserted her individuality. The other members, by contrast, were forming a circle to signal a sort of unity for the private club, with no intention to assert any form of singular identity. The subjectivity that the institution has tried to undermine has been retrieved and brought up by her. It was clear that Mandy has been the protector of Bill at the point he entered the Somerton mansion, first asking him to run away. Yet, controlled by his desire and curiosity, Bill decided to penetrate further into this dangerous horizon until he was being caught. Remembering that Bill has served her life once, she did all this out of compassion. Through the selfless sacrifice, Mandy transformed herself from a pre-assigned function of erotic flesh to a compassionate love. To me, Mandy is probably one of the most courageous characters in the film, and probably in the whole Kubrick cinema. We had no idea about how harsh the punishment would turn out to be, we only knew that eventually Mandy died from an alleged overdose. While the middle man, Victor, tried his very best to deny the secret organization responsibility and said Mandy died circumstantially from another overdose, and said all that happened in the orgy was merely a charade to scare the hell out of him . he audience and Bill had no final answer offered to them. Apparently to blackmail Bill further, the mask that Bill has somehow misplaced was mysteriously appeared on his bed, and Bill broke down and decided to tell Alice everything. Or, it could be a signification of the end of the dream...

I have said in the previous passages the barbarism and civility were forever locked in a struggle at war with each other.  There is another dueling pair, also attributed to Freud s ideas. It is the battle between the 2 forces that define human existence .Eros and Thanatos. Eros and Thanatos are situated closer than one may ever imagine – they are entangled like an organic unity, locked in a Viennese waltz. In Eyes Wide Shut, sexual desire (Eros) and the death instinct (Thanatos) was intertwined, and the threat of death was always lurking from behind. The satiric aspect of the film was that Bill s erotic encounter to the female characters, imaginary t not, would eventually lead to their destruction. Bill has encountered 3 times, and curiously, she was naked all 3 times. As Alice has questioned Bill in their bedroom, a force of desire should have most likely to be arisen from Bill’s psyche. What was rather tragic was that all 3 incidents were tied to death  the first time Mandy was at a near death from overdose, the second time would like to lead to her punishment and eventual sacrifice, the third time Bill was watching her corpse in the morgue. When Bill rejected the call girl Domino s sexual advance due to Alice s interrupting phone call, he knew the next day that Domino was diagnosed HIV positive. Has the sexual intercourse been taking place, it would certainly lead to Bill’s destruction. Bill, with the audience, would be thrilled to learn that that death has always been lurking behind the sex drive and pleasure fulfillment. 

It may seem absurd to imagine that, if our instincts demand us to survive and preserve the life drive, why would we be obsessed with its arch-nemesis, the death instinct? Upon much thinking and experiencing of the unprecedented First World War, which was unprecedented in history  in terms of scale, fire power and casualties, this tragedy of  human history motivated Freud (he even did a correspondence with Einstein) to make sense of all these human aberrations. Freud thus proposed the existence of the death instinct, which was a manifestation of our violent side, reflecting the dark side of us. Since no one wants to harm himself, the death instinct is exerted by harming others. Freud believed that the battle between Eros and Thanatos, and more sophisticated ways and technologies to execute things in the modern world, Thanatos stood a higher chance to win out. He believed that many people had a sense of despair or felt unhappy in modern life, because in their minds they were starting to be aware of thus awful truth. Kubrick, by showing these truths in a visual term, asked us not to be discouraged. He did not offer us a simple and happy ending to cheer us up, he motivated us to think about these questions, which would generate self knowledge, which are insights that will enrich us, and may eventually lead us to have a fundamental change.

What can we learn from ‘Eyes Wide Shut’? For Kubrick, Eros and desire are not something wrong per se. He disagreed to the fact that ‘true love’ – or those banal phrases like ‘I love everyone’ - was normal, and as some humanists would have said, Eros and desire were dirty, obscene or aberrant. If someone claims that he/she does not have desire, then he/she is either defective or hypocritical. Yet, Kubrick asked us to contemplate the fact that, even if Eros is part of human nature, it is an impersonal force and can be destructive. It is very much like his view on violence, if we cannot get away from our true nature, we can at least divert it to cause less destruction to ourselves and others. What we need to do with Eros is to channel and transform this energy to a more positive direction, that of romantic love or relationship based on compassion and mutual respect. Then, no matter how banal or mundane our existences are, it will lead to a road of happiness and fulfillment.  

by Ed Law

27/8/2017

Film Analysis

Eyes Wide Shut, Part 1

Is life merely a dream? Can our dreams and imaginations be transformed to shape the reality of our existences, and to define what we are or what we can be? Can the impersonal power of desire lead us to self-knowledge, and have a constructive contribution to our happiness? Above all, are dream and reality, or their metamorphic cousins, Eros and Thanatos, so entangled that there is no point to distinguish between them? All these questions have been explored in Stanley Kubrick’s final achievement – ‘Eyes Wide Shut’ (1999)!

‘Eyes Wide Shut’ (henceforth EWS) proved to be the final words from the visionary director, when Kubrick died a few days after he has submitted the final version of the film to the distributors. Just like almost any other of his films, EWS was initially received poorly among the public, only to be re-evaluated and risen in status throughout the past 15 years or so. Personally, I first regarded EWS as a lesser work of Kubrick, when we compared it to films like ‘2001’, ‘A Clockwork Orange’ and ‘Barry Lyndon’. Yet, I soon realized I was wrong. Just like most of Kubrick’s later efforts, EWS is so visual that you will discover more and more when you repeatedly watch the film, and you start to generate more and more insights throughout the process. After all these, I would say EWS is no less in terms of achievement to his greatest films, and it can be compared to ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’ – rather it is a sexual odyssey for EWS. Thus, ‘2001’, ‘Barry Lyndon’, and ‘Eyes Wide Shut’ can be considered an ‘Odyssey’ trilogy, encompassing the past, present and future, from psychological to cosmological.

Why was EWS so poorly received when it was first released in 1999? I guess it can be summarized by 3 reasons: wrong expectations from the audience, ambiguous genre categorizations, and its deliberate pacing. Many members of audience were expecting to watch a film with the then-married Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman to engage in some naughty, hard-core sex, and other forms of sexual perversions. If that was the case, then these viewers were doomed to be disappointed. ‘Obscene’ is the last word I would use to describe EWS – while there are full-frontal nudities and the film is primarily concerned with sexual issues, the film is very un-erotic and un-sensational when it comes to the treatment of sex. We can say the film is more psychological – or psychosexual in a Freudian sense. EWS is not merely a film about sex. The reason why many people have started to appreciate the film is because it encapsulates the consistent philosophical vision Kubrick has been delivered in his films since ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’. EWS, like the other Kubrickian films, is multi-layered and it should be understood in many different perspectives, be it psychologically, culturally and sociologically.

EWS is one of Kubrick’s most ambitious film, because he always felt that the most difficult challenge in cinema is to make a film that represented his own era. Of course, it sounds like a weird idea at first sight because who is not often making films about their own times, except one is making a sci-fi, fantasy or period film? What Kubrick meant was that if you were making a film about your own times, then it was too easy for one to be subjective and sentimental, and all you would get was a view-point which was narrow in scope. Kubrick, ambitious as he was, wanted to inspire his audience and viewed his era in a more clinical and anthropological viewpoint when he was making his films, because that would certainly benefit the audience in long term. He loved the project – when he has secured the right to the novel ‘Dream Story’ by Schnitzler in the late 1960s, he originally planned to make the film in the 1970s, after ‘2001’ and ‘A Clockwork Orange’. Has Kubrick made EWS during the 1970s, I am sure his approach would be far more daring and the result would certainly be a modern masterpiece.

What sort of genre can EWS be categorized into? One of the issues many audience and critics were confused initially was that they found it challenging to categorize EWS into any conventional genres. Kubrick’s films often defied genre expectations, and revealed the malleability of a traditional genre. While EWS can be rightfully considered as an erotic thriller or psychological thriller, the very formalized and ritualized style can make it a chamber play; the fact that the male protagonist, Bill Harford (Tom Cruise), was exploring around the darkest labyrinth of New York City can make it an adventure film; and, I would even say it is a war film – as it is about the struggle and ‘rebellion’ between Bill Harford and the world around him. On the other hand, many critics were not only unhappy with the lack of sex scenes, but also the slow pace of the film. Upon repeated viewing, I feel that the film is justified to have a running time of 2.5 hours, as Kubrick would likely want the intricately connected episodes to unfold slowly, and the result was a nice internal rhythm, almost like ‘Barry Lyndon’.

An aspect that is worth mentioning regarding Eyes Wide Shut is that the female characters seem to take a more significant narrative importance as compared to his previous films. Kubrick has often been criticized as a sexist filmmaker, because many of his films seemed to be concerned with men or viewed from a male perspective, and the female characters tended to be undermined and not narrative important. In Eyes Wide Shut, though many of the female characters were exploited and subject to mechanical dehumanization, a few of them were highly imaginative and courageous, and were far more charismatic and likeable than the other male characters in the film. Though we are still valid to say that EWS is a male-oriented film, because we are looking from Bill’s point of view and inaccessible to the female characters’ perspectives, the female characters are not like Lady Lyndon or Wendy Torrance – they are seen with more significance to the story.

  

A brief sketch on the story. Dr. Bill Harford (Tom Cruise) and Alice Harford (Nicole Kidman), with a daughter, were living in an upper-class area in New York. One evening, after attending a party the other day, the couple got into an argument regarding their sexual desires, and Alice admitted that, at some point during a trip the year before, she saw a handsome naval officer and contemplated cheating on Bill, and she was willing to sacrifice her whole future and relationship to sleep with the naval officer for only one night. While we had no way to verify whether it was the truth or only Alice’s imagination, the story devastated Bill, and after visiting a dying patient, he embarked on a nocturnal Odyssey in the streets of the New York City, meeting various people, including a number of women which his actions would have led to (mostly negative) outcomes for themselves. His adventure climaxed in his party-crashing a private masked ball in Somerton, where a number of secret ritual orgies and sacrifice ceremony were taking place. After being spotted out as an intruder, Bill’s life was being endangered by veiled threats and more uncanny incidents taking place around him. Will he get out alive, and can he be able to mend fences with Alice at the end?

  

In ‘Eyes Wide Shut’, the boundary between dream and reality was a thin one. Certain critics and viewers even pointed out that, there was absolutely no point to distinguish which part of the film was a dream or fantasy or which part was really happening, like the endless debates in films like ‘Inception’. Because, Kubrick, like in Schnitzler’s treatment, has placed an elliptical narrative and made the story so ambiguous that it would make the film more appropriately as ‘dream-like’ rather than asking for a ‘dream/reality dichotomy’. Indeed, the style of the film can be considered Modernist, as Schnitzler and Freud, who has influenced Kubrick and his ideas are explored in the film, are also part of the Modernist movements in the early 20^th century. Indeed, one may identify EWS with James Joyce’s ‘Ulysses’, a Modernist masterpiece and a similar scenario regarding some sort of an Odyssey was illustrated in the book. The Modernist movement has also influenced early cinema, especially the silent cinema. It is evident that Kubrick has adopted Imagist or silent movie approaches in many of his films, as these approaches tend to rely on a visual mean to convey the message. The visualization of thoughts has been employed in EWS, most notably in Bill Harford’s imagination of his wife Alice making love with the naval officer, even shown in black-and-white. Of course, recently Christopher Nolan has also used silent film approaches to generate suspense and atmosphere in his latest film ‘Dunkirk’, as he was attempting to use a visual mean to tell the story.

What is rather ironic, however, is that Kubrick has committed a sort of anti-realism in Eyes Wide Shut. Thus, there is a form of artifice in the film, where the apparently ‘real’ New York did not resemble the real New York; the dialogues were banal and stylized; and the story followed a formalized structure which some people would criticize as a bad example of narrative cinema. The philosopher Zizek has pointed out that these apparent inaccuracies might be deliberate – to show that Bill was dreaming and therefore having these wish-fulfilling scenarios and co-incidences taking place. Certain attentive viewers have also discovered spatial inconsistencies or uncanny observations throughout the film, as in the case for ‘The Shining’, suggesting that certain parts of the films likely took place in the dream or imaginary space.

  

Eyes Wide Shut has a dream-like quality, and it seemed to be playing with a number of psychological ideas, most notably from those of Freud’s. The idea of the unconscious part of the mind has been demonstrated through the imagination of Alice’s fantasy with the naval officer. When she was delivering the story, it was as if she was doing a free association exercise from a psychoanalytic session. And, I believe there is a reason why her narrative concerned a naval officer, because it symbolized exploration, which was wish-fulfilling because she might want to escape from the grip of the domestic environment and identity she situated in. I can think of a further wordplay here with the naval officer. It would be an ‘oceanic’ feeling for her if her dream has really come true.

There are numerous wordplays in the film. Not only many of the character’s names may have symbolic meanings, the dialogues are also stylized. Some of the dialogues were deliberately made to be banal, and also it was evident that characters often repeated one another’s quote or had a similar structure when they were talking. The formalized style here was fascinating, because it was very non-naturalistic when we looked at films that were concerned to enhance the realism. Some critics believed that these dialogues contributed to the dream-like quality of the film, it was like the characters (possibly Bill) were thinking out the dialogues himself to generate a wish-fulfilling result. The dream-like quality was enhanced by the presence of co-incidences, which incidents seemed to parallel each other at various parts of the films.

  

Certain critics have also pointed out that, Kubrick has deliberated used some rather strange editing techniques to generate an uncanny feeling in the audience and made them question themselves about what they have really seen. For example, traditional films seem to use a classical continuity editing approach, so that the spatial relations between 2 characters can become clearly defined and enhance the narrative consistently. In EWS, while Kubrick has painstaking ensured a rhythm of fluid style – almost like an Ophuls film – through the use of steadicam long takes and tracking shots, the general approach seemed to be violated in a number of times, when that involved 2 interacting characters, an 180 degree cut that crossed the axis were used instead. This seems awkward because the sudden ‘bumps’ in terms of style will attract audience attention. Yet some critics feel that these are more than visual gimmicks, because Kubrick might be providing clues that the images were only imaginary projections from Bill’s point or view. Thus, that was Bill’s dream-space we were situating in. After all, as the Chinese philosopher Zhuang Tzu has questioned in the Butterfly Dream scenario: can we really distinguish between dreaming and the waking life, and are subjectivity and objectivity really that clearly defined?   

(1/2)

by Ed Law

26/8/2017

Film Analysis

侍

我在之前介紹過岡本喜八的’大菩薩嶺’ 。 最近, 香港重映了’大菩薩嶺’和另一部岡本的作品 – ‘侍’ (1965, 又名’大刺客’) 。 今次我就談談’侍’這部值得一看的作品!

‘侍’可以說是反武士式(Anti-Samurai)的電影。 岡本在片中控訴武士道規條的虛無, 和封建社會對個人的殘害。電影的視角甚為悲觀, 而且為強烈的宿命論所主宰。故事模仿充滿佛洛依德意味的神話, 加上頗為強烈的暴力場面, 交織出一個被虛無主義主宰的荒誕世界!

三船敏郎飾演的主角鶴千代, 是一位充滿雄心而又武藝精湛的浪人。 他加入一個暗殺組織, 可惜在一次行動中有叛徒通風報信, 首領誓要揪出叛徒!  由於眾成員對鶴千代認識不深, 所以他與其朋友便被懷疑為叛徒。 導演倒有讓觀眾了解鶴千代的背景:  原來他是一個幕府的大將與其妾侍所生的, 機緣巧合下, 他在小時與父分開, 所以從來都不知道其生父是誰。鶴千代奮力希望立下大功,  以爭取武士席位, 終在一次慘烈的暗殺行動中, 拔刀斬殺’井伊’ 。 不過井伊與他的關係, 相信必然會令他抱撼終生!

電影風格方面, 岡本採納了客觀抽離的角度去敍述故事。 片中採用了不少深焦的鏡頭,  仿如古典美國電影的風格, 像約翰福特(John Ford), 奥森威爾斯(Orson Welles)的影片一樣。 深焦的攝影手法, 令所有角色都處於對等的地位, 突顯了他們作出互動時的張力。同時間片中加插了不少回憶和跳接, 令觀眾時有時空錯亂的感受, 這亦切合 六七十年代 流行的電影風格!

時代の悲歌

鶴千代可說是一位徹頭徹尾的悲劇英雄。 其一, 是鶴千代的際遇, 完全受宿命所主宰。當鶴千代決心要成為一位武士時, 他看到海上有幾艘外國的商船正向岸邊駛來。 鶴千代根本就是處於一個錯誤的年代: 他不知道武士的階級其實已經是夕陽工業。 不過, 鶴千代加入暗殺組織, 並不是為了任何政治信念, 而只是視為其生命棋局中的一步棋。 這就像在’大菩薩嶺’中, 龍之助加入新選組的目的, 只是為了滿足其渴望殺 人的意欲。 不過, 鶴千代在組織的眼中, 何嘗又不是 一件微不足道的殺人工具?! 就如幕府的武士受到儀式化的武 士道規條所約束着, 組織對其成員一 樣加以控制, 視這些人命為工具。 更荒謬的是, 當成員被錯手殺死時, 組織為了掩飾真相, 會把死者在名册上除名, 假裝這些人沒有存在過!  這就像小林正樹的’切腹’裏,  井伊家在主角半四郎死後, 企圖篡寫覺書裏的紀錄一樣。 巧合的是, 兩部片子的編劇都是橋本忍先生, 或者這是他對所謂的’客觀歷史’的質疑, 是歷史相對主義的視角!

'被'消失の殺人工具

說到底, 鶴千代只是殺手組織的一顆棋子。 組織根本沒有興趣去理會鶴千代的志氣, 因為組織認為鶴千代難以控制 (就如’大菩薩嶺’的情節一樣), 不但企圖暗殺他, 更決定將鶴千代在組織名册上除名, 等於將鶴千代’被消失’!  組織更捏造事實, 在紀錄上指是井伊被首領的兒子所殺掉。這意味着鶴千代不但殺死了自己的父親, 即使他永遠都不知道這個殘酷的事實, 他在不能因為暗殺立功而輔助自己成為武士階級。 除名, 就會使鶴千代在歷史上永遠消失! 這可謂多重諷刺, 是一個極為晦暗的結局。

宿命の死鬥

其實鶴千代是否完全沒有選擇, 要為宿命所馴服? 即使鶴千代無法戰勝宿命, 他仍然有 不少選擇, 令自己的一生過得更有意義。 例如, 喜愛他的女人甘於和他一起過平凡的生活,  不希望他去強求武士的席位。 縱使岡本喜八看通了人性的黑暗, 他亦相信這個世界真的是有好人的存在。 而鶴千代在組織中亦有一位真正關心自己的朋友。可惜, 鶴千代只顧自己的目的,  漠視和唾棄了這些人。 而且當組織懷疑他和其朋友是叛徒時, 鶴千代不但嫁禍其朋友, 更將其殺掉!  鶴千代此舉不但不是基於事實, 更不算是對其組織的愚忠。鶴千代這樣做,  只是因為他單純地相信組織會視此為功勞, 增加他成為武士的籌碼。當然, 最後組織發覺原來叛徒是另有其人, 是何其諷刺!

三月, 真是很少會下雪

最後, 盲目的鶴千代以為自己立下了大功, 卻不知道原來自己犯了倫理的死罪。 不過, 那又如何?  鶴千代已經陷入完全瘋狂的狀態。說好了的武士席位呢? 沒有了。正如旁述所言:  陪伴着鶴千代的, 可能只有無盡的瘋狂, 和那突兀的三月飛霜。

by Ed Law

20/8/2017

Film Analysis

John Sturges

I have always admired John Sturges and I deeply feel that he was an underrated director. Born in the same year as Akira Kurosawa, Sturges has made a number of truly iconic films, such as 'The Magnificent Seven' and 'The Great Escape'. However, he is not particularly well known in the history of film because he is seen as more a craftsman, than an auteur with an original style. You may have heard of the 2 famous films I have just mentioned, yet it is less likely that you know who made these classics.

Indeed, I have been acquainted with Sturge’s film at a rather young age! When I was a kid, we had a number of laserdiscs at home, one of which was ‘Gunfight at O. K. Corral’ by John Sturges. With Burt Lancaster at Wyatt Earp, it was certainly a wonderful experience for a young kid like myself. Though the incidents depicted in the film are far more dramatic than the real thing, I still think it is a rather decent work for one to go after.

His films often involve an all male ensemble cast, and many of these films involve the 'men on mission' theme, about the male characters conquering difficult tasks - the 'Seven Samurai' type. Since these films are rather macho in tone, female audience will be less likely to identify with Sturges’ work. Also, he had a roller-coaster sort of track records - while he has made really monumental films, he did also direct rather shallow and lesser work, often with poorly developed scripts. As Sturges has not really committed to develop a signature style, he has not be compared favorably to contemporary filmmakers like Nicholas Ray, Anthony Mann, Otto Preminger and others.

Nevertheless, most of Sturges’ best films have been able to capture the zeitgeist of their time, providing social critique - such as McCarthyism and Eisenhowerian conformity - in his diverse films. He was able to embrace with the latest film techniques and applied them to its own advantage. Sturges has been able to shoot pictures in anamorphic format, and he has been venturing in CinemaScope compositions in his 1950s efforts, which Preminger, Ray and Mann were also well-versed in. He has also been able to craft a number of nice genre works. Take ‘Bad Day At Black Rock’, the film which was recognized at Oscar and Cannes, as an example. Not only having Spencer Tracy showcasing a nice Judo throw, the film can be seen as a modern Western, and the elements of Film Noir are also evident in the film. It was a sense of paranoia so commonplace in the 1950s films, about people not trusting each other and having secret motivations. ‘Bad Day At Black Rock’ resembles many of the psychological Westerns of Anthony Mann in the 1950s, where the darkest psyches are rumbling on the brightly-lit Western landscapes. On the other hand, Sturges also showed a mastery of generating suspense in his film, and ‘Bad Day at Black Rock’ or ‘Ice Station Zebra’ are some nice examples. I suppose suspense was an element quite widely treasured by filmmakers before the New Hollywood era! His more iconic films, like ‘The Magnificent Seven’ and ‘The Great Escape’, all illustrate a humanism that is universal for audience, hence the enduring popularity of these films. 

Sturges has certainly achieved a craftsmanship that can be compared on equal terms to the other original artists of his era.

by Ed Law 

Film Analysis

The Trial of Joan of Arc

From May to July, there will be a few re-releases of the French auteur Robert Bresson’s films in cinemas in Hong Kong. It is a great opportunity to watch the classics made by this cinematic master, who has influenced the French New Wave and various art cinema movements around the world. I have already talked to his masterpiece, ‘Au Hasard Balthazar’ before, and this time I would like to talk about another of his film, ‘The Trial of Joan of Arc’.

The film was special because Bresson has attempted to achieve a maximum authenticity in his version of Joan of Arc’s story. Derived from historical records and transcripts, he required the actors in the film to deliver out the lines ‘as it was’, without any dramatic enhancements through performance. The result was a very unsentimental, or even stoical for certain viewers, portrayal of Joan of Arc’s unjust trial by the English officers before she was burnt at stake. Bresson’s film has been attracted comparison with Carl Th. Dreyer’s silent classic. Through Bresson could not totally identity with Dreyer’s style when the latter was approaching the same topic, both film succeeded in their own rights because the directors have respectively deployed meticulous techniques to generate genuine feelings from the audience when they witnessed the unfair and ridiculous treatment of an iconic heroine of history.

Bresson had a strong belief that the unique aspects of cinema should be harnessed to create to good film, to make a film ‘cinematic’ rather than ‘theatrical’. He tended to be critical of an over-stylized performance from the actors, and therefore he would rehearse the actors until they were not showing any forms of performance when they were acting, until the specific portrayal was natural and ‘as it was’. That was why the audience would seldom find any overt emotions from the actors in a Bresson’s film (similar to Jean-Pierre Melville’s films), and it could often alienate certain audience because they expected to see sentimental performances, abundant in traditional American cinema.

What is also essential for Bresson’s approach is ‘cinematographie’ – by using camera positioning, which is certainly a unique aspect of motion picture – to lead to audience’s identification. A great example was the one in which when Joan of Arc was locked in the prison cell. Curiously, there was a ‘peeping’ hole on the door, and the judge and a number of other English officers attempted to gaze on her through this portal, as if they were executing clinical gazes on her proclaimed asexuality and virginity. The camera’s positioning made the audience notice that Joan of Arc was aware of being spied on, and this compositional arrangement could draw the spectators into identification, without a need of any exuberant performances.

Anyone interested in cinema should not miss these valuable opportunities to revisit these art-house classics!

by Ed Law

27/5/2017

Film Analysis

蜘蛛巢城

人性被視為脆弱, 是因為每一個人都要面對身旁的各種負能量, 和足以摧毀自身的誘惑。如果只懂得戀棧權位, 酒醒之時, 或許就會變成一無所有, 存在仿如殘夢! 今次我談黑澤明改編自莎士比亞‘馬克白’(Macbeth)的電影- ‘蜘蛛巢城’!

‘蜘蛛巢城’是黑澤明五十年代的電影。這部史詩式黑白片預示了黑澤明後期的‘影武者’和‘亂’的華麗風格。黑澤明認為, 縱使‘馬克白’發生的時代和他的作品的背景代 有所不同, 但在背後關於政治和人性的課題就大有共通之處。他希望透過‘蜘蛛巢城’, 令觀眾有機會面對人性的黑暗, 誘惑, 欺詐, 迷信等各種負面的能量。

雖然黑澤明沒有封對莎翁原著作很大的改動, 不過, 他的處理手法其實頗具原創性。黑澤明的手法, 可謂‘東西合壁’ 。 在佈景方面, 他成功營造一種陰冷的感覺: 孤寂的古堡, 木訥的瘦樹, 儼如死水的百川, 紛亂的戰馬 - 黑澤明運用各種影像, 描繪那個時代的混亂, 眾人心中誠惶誠恐的狀態。 這種如繪畫般的構圖手法, 當然在西方導演 亦為常用!

與此同時, 黑澤明在片中亦加入了東方藝術的風格。他在片中採納了很強的形式主義, 參照了能劇(Noh Theatre)的風格去敍述這個發生在古代日本的故事。能劇風格往往用抽象的表達手法和反現實主義, 簡約和儀式化的演繹手法, 突顯了故事肅殺和寂寥的氣氛。這其實與原著所營造的氣氛如出一轍。尤其重要的, 是能劇的風格往往反映一種無常的哲學, 暗示世事的變幻, 往往不為人們所運籌惟幄。其實, 馬克白 在故事裏既要抗拒巫女的迷惑, 又要壓抑自己對權力的慾望; 如此的難題, 相信用盡洪荒之力也未必能解决! 或許, 馬克白確是有其陰暗面, 但其面對的問題以及他最後個人身份的迷失和瓦解, 亦令他成為一位悲劇英雄。

其實, '鷲哥'鷲津武時(三船敏郎飾)與馬克白一樣悲劇收場, 都是因為兩個原因。首先, 就是這個角色錯誤解讀了女巫幾句意義含糊的說話。我們不必去猜度女巫背後的動機, 但我相信莎士比亞創作這一幕時, 他的目的是想突顯語言的陰暗面。不錯, 語言的目的是要用來澄清抽象的想法。不過語言也可以被濫用, 也有其摧毁性。回看歷史時政, 有意栽花之徒, 可以用語言去借題發揮, 無限上綱, 或是故意扭曲說話本身的原意。因為擁有話語的解釋權, 其實就等同掌握權力。就像後結構主義所表現的思想一樣: 語言的意義, 其實從來都是不穩定的。不過, 同時推波助瀾的因素, 就是鷲津/馬克白的過份自信。他扭曲了女巫說話的意思, 以為這就代表自己可以逆天而行, 為所欲為。可惜, 宇宙宏大的機理, 其實已為其撰寫了悲慘的宿命, 最終不但滅了自我, 還傷害了週遭的人......

‘蜘蛛巢城’的故事, 盼望大家能以此為鑑!

by Ed Law

14/5/2017

Film Analysis