Dardenne兄弟俩又得了奖。
戛纳的评委最偏爱他们，上上部Rosetta９９年得到金棕榈大奖，上一部０２年Le Fils里面的演员Olivier Gourmet（听起来让人胃口大开的名字）得到最佳男主角（Helen指的大概就是他，长得象loser的中年男人)，去年带去的L'Enfant又打败几个被人看好的影片（e.g., Michael Haneke's Cache)获得金棕榈大奖，被失望的影评人也扁过几下子。
他们拍片子倒也忒有规律了，几乎总是每三年出一部。很低产，风格很固定。曾经被炒作得好红的Dogma 95流派（Lars von Trier) 其实并不对我的胃口，反而是Dardenne兄弟拍的片子，比Dogma 95 还要 Dogma 95，全部用手提摄影机，无音乐，无倒叙，看上去几乎简单纯粹之极的白描手法（但是那是deceptively simple)。毫无玩弄任何手段技巧的野心。
今天在NPR上听到一个关于中国民工遭遇的报道，突然意识到Dardenne兄弟俩拍过的第一部剧情片La Promesse根本就是揭露民工悲惨遭遇的同样题材，你也可以说他们拍的东西简直跟那些表现社会底层劳动人民遭遇的中国片子是一回事。
但是其实并不是一回事。
L'Enfant不算他们片子里我最喜欢的，我更喜欢Rosetta和Le Fils，尤其是Le Fils，因为Gourmet的表演（天，我再也没见过那么纯粹的现实主义的表演，他真的太太太厉害了，决不夸张），实在是无法超越的一个境界。而且，前面这两部片子的结尾都让我哇哇大哭。而L'Enfant，没有能让我哭。
永远正确的Helen指出：不催人泪下的片子未必就不是好片子。L'Enfant的情节跟前面三部片子有很大的不同。Rosetta，Le Fils里面的主角，都是实打实的人性本善的标本，让人投入没得说。而L'Enfant里面的中心人物Bruno却相当让人讨厌，他是个盗窃团伙的小头头，毫无道德可言，对自己的宝宝撇一眼，象个包裹一样扔在一边。编导要在讲他的故事和历程同时尽量保持＂不评判＂的立场，我在一旁看着可郁闷死了，尤其是自然而然地同情他的女友。更糟糕的是，这种人我见过活生生的，一下子就联想起来，想呸他一声。
过去三部片子里的人物都没有Bruno这么含糊复杂，而且现在还多了个女主角, 两个人的戏几乎平分秋色。Dardenne兄弟的片子人物极少，全集中在一两个人身上。也不知他们是否终于想讲复杂和戏剧性强一些的故事了，L'Enfant里面的矛盾冲突远远超过前面三部片子，甚至还有一段飞车追捕戏！不过，我不能多说情节，想看的人最好事先不看任何评论和介绍，对故事一无所知，一张白纸地去看。他们特别不按照俗套出牌，许多次我依照着电影小说固有的惯例期待情节如何如何发展，结果，总是猜错。靠了过去拍记录片的经验和对真人实地的敏锐观察，他们的设计没有设计的痕迹，真实感极强，所以才是意料之外，让人醒悟到我们看电影的心理完全被无数来回重复的戏剧套路洗了脑，现实不是那样的。看了这种现实主义后，再看俗套和闭门造车的东西我就特别不耐烦,再也难以下咽。
我不太经常向别人推荐Dardenne兄弟拍的片子，倒不是如何high brow, 如何晦涩难懂，如何深奥抽象，正相反。不过他们的故事从来不给观众安全舒服的娱乐，迎合人们的饭特希，在大家早已定型的世界观和人生观里打圈子。不，他们给你看你从来没注意过的角落，你一向瞧不起的地方和人，按他们自己的说法就是落进社会夹缝里挣扎活下去的那些人，被主流社会抛在脑后扫到墙角视而不见的那些人。故事讲完时揭开的却是最常见最普通的人性。听上去好象很灰暗很depressing，并不合乎多数人的口味。Ironically，我觉得他们对人性的解释跟那个写了很多血腥暴力的小说的Henning Mankell一样，其实是非常理想主义的；他们都拒绝相信人之初性本恶，而是相信是罪恶的环境造就了罪恶的行为。所以看到最后，那颗已经冻硬的心总会自己软化变暖，即使周围仍然是零下四十度。
他们的片子要一个人静静地仔细地去看，注意每一个细节，因为没有了大吵大闹的过激表演，没有看了前面猜到后面的套路，没有震耳欲聋的音乐灌输给你每时每刻＂必须＂的感受（导演叫你笑就笑，哭就哭，煽情就煽情），没有白纸黑字的提示。一切都要你自己去figure out. 要很有耐心地去看。基本上多数的反响是节奏太慢不知所谓枯燥乏味等等。不是我持精英态度，他们的片子不适合所有人。
我想，演员在Dardenne兄弟的片子里干活，不知是什么感想，恐怕是相当extraordinary的经验。没有一星半点的glamor，连化妆都似乎没有，简直跟非专业的群众演员一样。没有供你借力的大量对白，表现内心情绪和心理转化几乎全靠肢体表演，连表情都是非常节省的，一定要能够举重若轻无中生有。Olivier Gourmet在四部影片里都出现过，两个重要配角，一个主角，这次没有适合他的角色都客串一把。L'Enfant里面两个年轻演员都很出色，我事后查IMDB才发现主演Jeremie Reiner竟然是La Promesse里面那个小男孩，完全没认出长大后的他。十年前我看La Promesse的时候才刚刚发现了洛杉矶的Landmark影院和各色独立电影，外国电影，主流之外的电影。一晃这么多年过去了。
[影片]L'Enfant
[影片]L'Enfant
Last edited by Jun on 2006-08-30 20:35, edited 2 times in total.
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helenClaire
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I have forgotten how beautifully Roger Ebert wrote about the previous Dardennes' movie "Le Fils" (made in 2002, released in 2003). Be warned though, that both Ebert and I strongly encourage you, if you want to see the movie, to watch the DVD first, alone, in total darkness, before you read the review. Also a repeated caution: Dardenne brothers' movies are not for everyone. Many will be bored or lose patience. But if you dim the lights and just watch and forget your presumptions, the reward is enormous.
The Son
Release Date: 2003
Ebert Rating: ****
By Roger Ebert Feb 21, 2003
"The Son" is complete, self-contained and final. All the critic can bring to it is his admiration. It needs no insight or explanation. It sees everything and explains all. It is as assured and flawless a telling of sadness and joy as I have ever seen.
I agree with Stanley Kauffmann in The New Republic, that a second viewing only underlines the film's greatness, but I would not want to have missed my first viewing, so I will write carefully. The directors, Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, do not make the slightest effort to mislead or deceive us. Nor do they make any effort to explain. They simply (not so simply) show, and we lean forward, hushed, reading the faces, watching the actions, intent on sharing the feelings of the characters.
Let me describe a very early sequence in enough detail for you to appreciate how the brothers work. Olivier (Olivier Gourmet), a Belgian carpenter, supervises a shop where teenage boys work. He corrects a boy using a power saw. We wonder, because we have been beaten down by formula films, if someone is going to lose a finger or a hand. No. The plank is going to be cut correctly.
A woman comes into the shop and asks Olivier if he can take another apprentice. No, he has too many already. He suggests the welding shop. The moment the woman and the young applicant leave, Olivier slips from the shop and, astonishingly, scurries after them like a feral animal and spies on them through a door opening and the angle of a corridor. A little later, strong and agile, he leaps up onto a metal cabinet to steal a look through a high window.
Then he tells the woman he will take the boy after all. She says the boy is in the shower room. The hand-held camera, which follows Olivier everywhere, usually in close medium shot, follows him as he looks around a corner (we intuit it is a corner; two walls form an apparent join). Is he watching the boy take a shower? Is Olivier gay? No. We have seen too many movies. He is simply looking at the boy asleep, fully clothed, on the floor of the shower room. After a long, absorbed look, he wakes up the boy and tells him he has a job.
Now you must absolutely stop reading and go see the film. Walk out of the house today, tonight, and see it, if you are open to simplicity, depth, maturity, silence, in a film that sounds in the echo-chambers of the heart. "The Son" is a great film. If you find you cannot respond to it, that is the degree to which you have room to grow. I am not being arrogant; I grew during this film. It taught me things about the cinema I did not know.
What did I learn? How this movie is only possible because of the way it was made, and would have been impossible with traditional narrative styles. Like rigorous documentarians, the Dardenne brothers follow Olivier, learning everything they know about him by watching him. They do not point, underline or send signals by music. There are no reaction shots because the entire movie is their reaction shot. The brothers make the consciousness of the Olivier character into the auteur of the film.
... So now you have seen the film. If you were spellbound, moved by its terror and love, struck that the visual style is the only possible one for this story, then let us agree that rarely has a film told us less and told us all, both at once.
Olivier trains wards of the Belgian state--gives them a craft after they are released from a juvenile home. Francis (Morgan Marinne) was in such a home from his 11th to 16th years. Olivier asks him what his crime was. He stole a car radio.
"And got five years?" "There was a death." "What kind of a death?" There was a child in the car who Francis did not see. The child began to cry and would not let go of Francis, who was frightened and "grabbed him by the throat." "Strangled him," Olivier corrects.
"I didn't mean to," Francis says.
"Do you regret what you did?" "Obviously." "Why obviously?" "Five years locked up. That's worth regretting." You have seen the film and know what Olivier knows about this death. You have seen it and know the man and boy are at a remote lumber yard on a Sunday. You have seen it and know how hard the noises are in the movie, the heavy planks banging down one upon another. How it hurts even to hear them. The film does not use these sounds or the towers of lumber to create suspense or anything else. It simply respects the nature of lumber, as Olivier does and is teaching Francis to do. You expect, because you have been trained by formula films, an accident or an act of violence. What you could not expect is the breathtaking spiritual beauty of the ending of the film, which is nevertheless no less banal than everything that has gone before.
Olivier Gourmet won the award for best actor at Cannes 2002. He plays an ordinary man behaving at all times in an ordinary way. Here is the key: o rdinary for him. The word for his behavior--not his performance, his behavior--is "exemplary." We use the word to mean "praiseworthy." Its first meaning is "fit for imitation." Everything that Olivier does is exemplary. Walk like this. Hold yourself just so. Measure exactly. Do not use the steel hammer when the wooden mallet is required. Center the nail. Smooth first with the file, then with the sandpaper. Balance the plank and lean into the ladder. Pay for your own apple turnover. Hold a woman who needs to be calmed. Praise a woman who has found she is pregnant. Find out the truth before you tell the truth. Do not use words to discuss what cannot be explained. Be willing to say, "I don't know." Be willing to have a son and teach him a trade. Be willing to be a father.
A recent movie got a laugh by saying there is a rule in "The Godfather" to cover every situation. There can never be that many rules. "The Son" is about a man who needs no rules because he respects his trade and knows his tools. His trade is life. His tools are his loss and his hope.