Friday, April 18, 2008

時間


美漢24年冤獄獲賠逾百萬
美國佛羅里達州當局因為錯誤作一名男子定罪,令他坐了24年冤獄,向該男子賠償125萬美元。該名現年46歲的男子,在1982年被法庭裁定2項強姦及1項持械行劫罪,被判入獄130年。但到了2006年,透過脫氧核糖核酸(DNA)測試,證實他跟案件無關,當庭釋放。佛州州長克里斯特在簽署賠償令時表示,明白到無論多少錢也不能彌補對方失去的時間。該名男子在獄中修畢一個教育學位,並且擔當園丁,獲得滅蟲牌照。(明報2008/4/18)


今天看到這則新聞,想起了早前在電影節看過一套由周防正行執導的電影《儘管如此我沒做過》,引起了我一些回響。不禁到處問身邊的朋友:作為一位法官,釋放了一名罪犯罪大還是冤枉了一個無辜的人罪大?大部份的答案均是後者,因為大都認為犯罪者脫了罪,有二分一機會不再重犯,但捉了一個無辜的人,罪犯仍舊可以逍遙法外,那為何要多害一人?

對於受害者來說,誤以為罪犯已經繩之以法當然感到安慰,但對於無辜者來說,失去的不單是自由,還有那永遠追不回的時間,是無論多少錢也補償不了的生命。我想,這才是一位法官最罪無可逭的;而可悲的是今天有多少人,不是時間給剝奪了,而是自己甘願捨棄。

Friday, April 11, 2008

Cultural Revolution


Perhaps it is not so much about hauntology that we had discussed in class but I really wonder why the three films (The Blue Kite, Peacock, The Sun Also Rises) about Cultural Revolution we have discussed so far were structured in such a similar way that each of them was clearly divided into at least three main parts. When I thought it was telling a different story from time to time, it would then hint on me that the story was going on within the same circle of people and both the temporal and spatial settings had intertwined so closely that they actually came together as a holistic piece of work finally. But why it was like a formula that the 5th generation Chinese directors had to split their films in parts?

Each time when a new part began, a different perspective was suggested. For example in Peacock, the story was basically told through the perspectives of two brothers and their sister. Above this layer of three stories was another onionskin made of the memory of the youngest brother who happened to be the narrator to wrap up this entire bluish memory. As the surface slowly peeled off, we not only learnt about the grow-up stories of the three but also the daily trivial life of ordinary Chinese people after the Cultural Revolution, which could only be made objective and significant through multiple points of narrative. Simply no one caught a full picture of the incident and that any single point of view towards such an important traumatic history would be a disregard.

Changes take time. In order to capture the visible, the temporal framework of the films had to be expanded to, say, at least one year in The Sun Also Rises and 10 years in Peacock so as to pick up some diamonds in this spectrum of social change.

Monday, April 7, 2008

Wednesday, April 2, 2008

《孔雀》﹣顧長衛


Readymade Magazine
January/February
2007 Vol.08

千年善禱


While I was still thinking of the way Ann Hui constructed memory and cultural identity in Song of the Exile, another newly released film by Wayne Wang titled A Thousand Years of Good Prayers, which is screened in this year's Hong Kong International Film Festival, served as a good reference for me to think out of the box.

Both of the films were about parent-child relationship but instead of using lots of flashbacks, this later film by the director of Joy Luck Club talked about memory basically through dialogues and the acting of the father and daughter only. They were all being told in the present tense, which seemed to convey the fact that past is already past. Though it shaped what we are now, there is no use to be troubled by those bygone memories. Instead, we should think of the better side, just like what the father has said to the old lady in the park.

We used to think that conflicts between generations were mainly created by cultural differences and it is. Yet apart from this aspect, Wang's film has highlighted other aspects that could best parallel to Hui's film. The heroines in both films were situated to receive education abroad which provided a preconceived base of difference between their mindset and that of their last generation. Stuart Hall's idea of "diaspora identity" was mentioned as one "produces and is produced by a specific cultural environment." However, these external social factors are often emphasized to such an extent that other moral or psychological factors have been undermined. These factors had been the main focus in shaping one's memory in another recommended film for discussion–Atonement, in which the heroine's memory is constantly struggling between real and constructed fragments due to her guilt for her sister. The real and unreal interlaces each other in a way that even the heroine is gradually losing hold of her true memory.

Both Hueyin (Song of the Exile) and Yilan (A Thousand Years of Good Prayers) refused to talk to their parents face to face due to their guilt of misconduct in the past (basically their own character), not necessarily about their country, their homeland.