《山河故人》 賈樟柯鏡頭中那個變遷的中國

Three times in “Mountains May Depart,” the latest from the transformative Chinese director Jia Zhangke, people stand near a river that weaves through the landscape like a snake. In the first instance, three friends light fireworks that send out modest sparks. In the second, only two return to the river, where they ignite a bundle of dynamite. By the third trip, only one of the original three remains, everyone’s life having changed as profoundly as China, a cataclysm that’s expressed by a series of rapid explosions in the river, suggesting a drowning world.

《山河故人》是革命性中國導演賈樟柯的新作，劇中出現了三次人們站在一條如長蛇般蜿蜒而過的河流旁邊的情景。在第一幕戲裏，三個朋友放起了煙火，不大不小的火花升起來。在第二幕裏，只有兩個人回到河邊，點起了一捆炸藥。到了第三次，三人中只剩下一個人了。每個人的生活都經歷了和中國一樣深刻複雜的變化，河上一連串快速的爆炸展現出一場災難，暗示着一個被淹沒的世界。

Few filmmakers working today look as deeply at the changing world as Mr. Jia does, or make the human stakes as vivid. The three sending out those sparks are Tao (Zhao Tao), and her two close male friends, Zhang Jinsheng (Zhang Yi) and Liangzi (Liang Jin Dong). An affable, easygoing drifter with an expansive smile, Tao works in a small store in the city of Fenyang (Mr. Jia’s birthplace). Mr. Jia likes a slow reveal and it isn’t initially obvious that Tao is the movie’s emotional organizing principle whose feelings run, surge and erupt. The story tracks Tao and her relations with both Liangzi, who works at a coal mine, and Jinsheng, a budding entrepreneur.

如今尚在工作的導演之中，很少有人能像賈樟柯這樣深入地審視變化中的世界，或是鮮明地呈現人類的處境。三個燃放煙花的人是濤（趙濤飾）和她的兩個男性好友，張晉生（張譯飾）和樑子（樑景東飾）。濤是個善良隨和、笑容開朗的女孩，在汾陽市一家小商店工作（這裏也是賈樟柯的故鄉）。賈樟柯喜歡把故事慢慢呈現出來，所以一開始不能清晰地看出，濤的情感的持續、洶涌與爆發其實是影片的感情線索。影片講述了她本人的故事，以及她與礦工樑子和新型企業家晉生之間的愛情故事。

Eventually, Tao chooses one man over the other, a decision that fractures the trio and sends the narrative spiraling in different directions. Mr. Jia’s approach means that you have to do a certain amount of interpretive work, though mostly you just have to pay attention and be a little patient. If you do, you will notice that “Mountains May Depart” is a movie of threes: its main characters, moments in time, narrative sections, historical symbols and even aspect ratio come in triplicate. This schematic quality isn’t necessarily obvious on first viewing, even though the story’s time frames — 1999, 2014 and 2025 — are announced on-screen and accompanied by a corresponding increase in the size of the image, an enlargement that mirrors the character’s expanding universe.

最後，濤選擇了其中一人，打破了三角關係，令敘事向着不同方向發展。賈樟柯的方式意味着觀衆必須自行做出一定程度的解讀，儘管多數情況下，觀衆只需專心觀看並保持一點耐心就好了。如果你能做到，就會注意到《山河故人》其實是一部關於“三”的電影：三個角色、三個時間點、三個敘事單元、三個歷史符號、甚至還有三種畫面比例。第一次觀影時，這種特質不一定明顯，不過，故事發生的三個時間點——1999、2014和2025年——都被標明在銀幕上，並隨着畫幅的增大而增大，這種擴大也反映出片中角色的世界在擴張。

When the movie opens in 1999, for instance, Tao is right in middle of the action (and the frame), dancing with a large group to the Pet Shop Boys’ dementedly catchy 1993 cover of “Go West,” an old Village People tune. The original music video for the Pet Shop Boys’ version, an exuberantly surreal pageant, includes shots of Red Square and Vladimir Lenin. Mr. Jia doesn’t reference the video, but it’s likely he used the cover partly because of its post-Soviet bloc resonance. Whatever the case, it’s a lovely, festive scene that suggests that everyone is in a party (or Party) mood. When Tao and the others form a conga line it seems as if they have decided to take the song literally.

比如，在影片一開始的1999年，鏡頭正中，濤和一大羣人一起跟着《向西》(Go West)的迷人音樂跳舞，這首歌是“寵物店男孩”(Pet Shop Boys)1993年翻唱“村民”(Village People)樂隊的老歌。“寵物店男孩”的音樂錄像充滿超現實主義的華麗場景，其中有紅場和列寧的鏡頭。賈樟柯並沒有影射那段錄像，他使用這個版本只是因爲它帶有後蘇聯陣營的感覺。不管怎麼說，這是一個美好的節日場景，表現出每個人都處在派對（或者黨）的歡快情緒中。後來濤和其他人挑起了康加舞，好像他們真的要像歌詞裏唱的那樣一起前行。

Mr. Jia never over-explains his work. The dance feels triumphant, at once choreographed and spontaneous, but there’s no immediate reason for it, even when the date 1999 appears on-screen. It isn’t until the next scene, when Tao is trading New Year’s greetings, that the dance feels tethered to a rationale. By that point, though, you will have had time to think about the dance, to turn it around in your head, consider its possibilities and wonder whether the revelers are spontaneously dancing or celebrating the end of the millennium or the 50th anniversary of the People’s Republic. Or perhaps the scene has more to do with Tao, a woman who smiles and who dances.

賈樟柯從不過度解釋自己的作品。那場舞蹈像是一種勝利，既像是精心編排的，也像是自發的，雖然“1999”字樣在銀幕上出現，也不能看出人們跳舞的直接原因。直到下一幕濤和他人互相拜年的時候，這場舞蹈才最終有了合理性。不過，到了這個時候，你就有了時間去思考這次舞蹈，在頭腦中回味它，考慮它的可能性，好奇這些狂歡者們究竟是在自發的舞蹈，抑或是慶祝千禧年的結束，又或是慶賀共和國成立50週年。又或者這一幕其實只和濤，這個面帶微笑，翩翩起舞的女人有關。

Ambiguity is a defining characteristic of the European art cinema; at its most clichéd, directorial solipsism is mistaken for mystery and empty images are turned into endlessly masticated cud for cultists. Although Mr. Jia is obviously conversant with the European art film — and East Asian cinema and Hollywood and so forth — he has carved out his own ways of making cinematic meaning, an approach that draws on different idioms and traditions. He occasionally folds an image into the mix that can feel enigmatic, but that over time make sense when considered in the context of the movie as a whole. A shot of an old-fashioned pagoda may not make ready sense, may even look like picture-postcard scenery, yet by the end of the movie it may make you weep.

模糊性是歐洲藝術電影的關鍵特徵，在其最俗套的時刻，導演的唯我獨尊被誤解爲神祕，空洞的畫面反而成了小衆擁躉們不斷反芻的糧食。儘管賈樟柯顯然熟悉歐洲藝術電影——當然也熟悉東亞電影與好萊塢電影等等——他開創自己表達影像意義的方式，與傳統和俗套都不盡相同。他偶爾會在影片中混入一幅謎一般的畫面，但隨着時間過去，就會在影片的整體語境中呈現出意義。一個老式宣傳口號的鏡頭乍看上去可能沒什麼意義，甚至看上去有點像明信片上的風景，但是到了影片最後，它可能會讓你潸然淚下。

Mr. Jia has characterized “Mountains May Depart” as his most emotional movie, which may underplay how deeply moving his work can be. While he invariably addresses larger cultural, social and political issues, sometimes openly, at other times obliquely, what makes his work memorable is how those larger forces are etched in the faces and bodies of his characters, in the coal dust that defines one man’s reality — and, by extension, one China — and the hard mask that defines another truth, another China. Here, when Tao first walks down a street flanked by modest brick buildings, she is moving through a country that is rapidly being lost to what’s optimistically called development. By the end, she is living in a new world even if, Mr. Jia suggests, her soul remains in the old.

賈樟柯說《山河故人》是自己最富情感的影片，他可能低估了自己的作品有多麼深切感人。雖然他總在講述較大的文化、社會與政治問題，有時是公開的，有時是隱晦的，但是他的作品最令人難忘的，還要算是這些大的力量如何在片中人物的面孔與身體上蝕刻印記：煤礦的粉塵呈現出片中那個男人的真實處境，乃至整個中國的真實處境，他那堅實的面具則呈現出另一種真相與另一箇中國。片中，濤第一次走上兩邊都是低矮磚房的街道時，她走過的是一個正在樂觀者所謂的“發展”中迅速迷失的國家。而到影片結束時，雖然她生活在一個嶄新的世界，但正如賈樟柯所暗示的，她的靈魂還留在舊世界之中。

“Mountains May Depart” is unrated and is in Cantonese, Mandarin and English. Running time: 2 hours, 11 minutes.

《山河故人》未分級，粵語、普通話與英語對白。2小時11分鐘。