孤獨與瘋狂 郝譽翔

孤獨與瘋狂
郝譽翔


Loneliness and Madness
Hǎo​ Yù​xiáng​

http://news.chinatimes.com/Chinatimes/Philology/Philology-Coffee/0,3406,112009082000381+11051301+20090820+news,00.html


I really like Takeshi Kitano. A few days ago I went and saw "Achilles and the Tortoise. Only seven other people showed up to the matinee showing I attended. There in the darkness I cried my eyes out. I know this movie, and most of the other recent movies by Kitano, provoked a very mixed response, but I what can I say, I really like this film. I even loved its flaws. Even something's flaws can be part of it's appeal, like how his face won't stop twitching after he's been hurt.

Incredibly, there's a creator who can make me yearn for tolerance. This is probably the joy of being a reader. But, that's just my personal feeling. When I was in the theater, and the lights hadn't come up yet, I heard a guy get up and say to his friend in front of him, "I'm definitely going to fall asleep." They both nodded and yawned. Later, I heard couple of girls who were complaining as they walked out, "It's like a crazy person made this movie."

Sitting there with a face still wet with tears was more than a bit awkward. You would think that audeince at the Changchun theatre would be full of people who really liked movies, but their reaction was incredibly different than mine. Everybody piles into a little dark droom and for two hours develops a unique impression no one can guess at. The illusion that the projector brings about is like the director leading each person with a flashlight according to the darkness at the pit of their soul. Sometimes it really makes me think that watching a film is more solitary than reading, and maybe more sad.

I just remembered, I actually became acquainted with Kitano's work when I was a kid.

When I was in my first year of middle school my father took me to see Nagisa Oshima's "Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence". That was the last time we went went to see a movie together. Even after I was older we still never went again. His take on "Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence" is something I'll never forget, with genuine shock he said, "This movie didn't even have a single woman in it!"

I still remember my father buying scalped tickets for the movie. Thinking back it's hard to imagine, but Oshima's film was full of violence. There wasn't a single open seat at two-story theater at Ximending. I had no idea it was an art film, and had no idea who the director was. Although I just stumbled into that film, when it was over it was like I was a new person. On the way home I just stared out window and didn't say a word. I was only thirteen then and I didn't know much about anything, but that movie set off something inside me. To this day I still don't know what it is about that movie that so moved me. I was so crazy for the movie that I went and saw it eleven times. I kept the story it was based on in the pocket of my school uniform for three years. I'd put my hand over it and get a strange feeling of relief. I memorized the details of that source material backwards and fowards: the culture clash of East and West, the symbolic meaning of rituals. Imagining I understood it all, I took it all in. It didn't hurt my impression of the film or lead actor Ryuichi Sakamoto's intensity.

That intensity makes me nostalgic. Kitano is also one of the leads in the film and his perfomance is no less impressive than Sakamoto's. Back then probably nobody knew, and I definitely didn't know, that that bald commander in film would one day become a famous director.

But, who cares if I didn't know? I'm nostalgic for that time when I didn't have any intellectual background or any reasons. I miss when I just had pure enjoyment. I didn't care about art or theory, I just wanted to sit in that dark room and watch people who lived in a world totally different from ours. If these days I still have some kind of romantic yearning for the past, it's probably just to sit in a packed theater. In that sealed off era, movies were the one light for our hearts.