天地悠悠

雷加达斯的电影《天地悠悠》可能像极墨西哥的龙舌兰酒，刚烈，苦涩，初尝之人绝不会想到舔盐过后才能品尝到它的真正味道。正是在这个意义上，我认为影片对生命力的表达不如对爱的理解的表达来得恰如其分。只有对爱绝望的人，才会有任意交配的荒唐人生行为，正是因为爱的对象、爱的情景的任意性，才让我们知道画家失去的是爱本身，才会绝望地想要寻找故乡和自杀。而他的手中只有画，他要画一个为爱独守的老农妇，她最好丧夫，独生，没有邻居，独自面对大山，面对天地，无处可述，一日一日地消磨时光。这是四处嚷嚷着自杀的画家沉默的另一面，不然老农妇为什么也喜欢同样的音乐，欣赏同样的画，热心帮助残弱的普罗大众，不然老农妇摸到手枪时为什么表达出了不动声色的理解，即使画家的性爱要求提到了生活荒谬的程度。她在画中释放着神一样的光芒，画家用爱的灵魂将其点亮，一群饮着龙舌兰的玛利亚奇哼唱：当她不理解的时候默默守护，她一旦明白，爱就是生命自由的轨道。

我想电影永远是一种非常私人化的东西，是艺术家来表达自我的工具，自由永远应该被讴歌。

画家试图自杀并跑到山中的剧情，让我想起了霍元甲电影当中李连杰躲到山里和孙俪学怎么种稻子的桥段？

这部墨西哥电影完全没有流俗，他用自然化的表现手段让我们对地理性的阻隔，山川河流，大草原被云朵遮蔽，这在电影院观影体验一定棒透了，让我们也会产生存在性的刺激，思考：人到底是什么？

佛经里不是也这样说吗？心净，则见天下皆是清净世界。

如果我心伤悲，那凡事莫不带着末日氛围。

当年雷加达斯这部处女作出道的时候，所有电影要人都没有对他吝啬赞誉，但是却害了他本人：

雷加达斯一直到现在都不会拍片子——他没有顺利的度过自己的学徒期，而是一味的强调悲观厌世情绪

，这也许是他的法宝，也永远是他的软肋。

看花絮中7分钟的短片，就知道一个艺术家试图自杀，躺进自己制作的棺材里，并且滚下悬崖，这就是他艺术的起点。

取消存在，站在存在的对立面。

一个自学成才者试图打破，所能想到的就是这个了吧。

First thing first, JAPÓN N is nothing to do with Japan the country, Mexican enfant terrible Carlos Reygadas’ staggering debut feature, takes its leave of modern civilization of Mexico City in the opening, following an unnamed gammy painter (Ferretis) who is contemplating suicide, into the vast rural region, he becomes a lodger of an old indigenous woman Ascen (Flores) whose ramshackle dwelling overlooking a magnificent canyon.

Shot consistently in the anamorphic format and often employed by a panoptic camera rotation, JAPÓN makes great play of its horizontal expansiveness but holds the limitation of its vertical perimeters, with Reygadas punctiliously and tantalizingly doling out the contents of what is presented, say, the aerial shots hovering around the painter lying beside a dead horse near a precipice, and in particular, the post-accident one-take tracking shot roves around the railroad tracks until it confirms Ascen’s destiny, thus ends the film on a high note, Reygadas manifests his incontrovertibly skilled craft in achieving visual phenomenon that is a requisite for today’s cinematic auteur.

JAPÓN is deliberately light on its narrative development, we have no background info about the painter, and the story meanders mostly through his eyes of and tentative interactions with this Arcadian existence, while his oscillation between life and death is taken on a new perspective standing cheek by jowl with a nascent communion with mother nature, and soon it transmutes into an amorous feeling towards the wizened Ascen (a dream sequence where a bikini-clad young lady sharing a kiss with Ascen does the trick of transference).

Human’s base instinct of copulation is Reygadas’ potent weapon, portended by a startling intercourse between two horses (a first time for this urban reviewer), the painter’s preposterous proposition of fornication is calmly predated by a classical music foreplay that bridges the two individuals’ disparity, and the next day, Ascen dons her Sunday best to the church before the anticipated appointment with the painter, which lays bare Reygades’ sage understanding of the Christian influence on the provincial folks like the God-fearing Ascen (her name is short for “Ascension”, for sure), however ridiculous, the painter’s proposal is a devotional calling that she can hardly refuse, the following sex scene is handled like a solemn, passionless ritual with a tad contrived fastidiousness (incredibly, both Ferretis and Flores are first-time actors, and baring it all in front of camera with such poise that viewers must take their hat off to them, unfortunately, the former was murdered two years later in 2004 at the age of 60, whereas the latter, a nonagenarian now, supposedly is still with us today), it doesn’t last long (foreshadowed by their horse counterparts), ends up with the painter in tears and later a tacit harmony, only to be disrupted by a band of workers to dismantle Ascen’s barn where the painter sleeps.

Beguiling in its imagery and coy in its message, Reygadas’ ethnographic debut constituents a surging trend of Ibero-American filmmakers from the millennium, compared with Lucrecia Martel, at this point, who might go much farther along the career path than him owing to her ultimate goodwill in exploring the intimacy among humans, Reygadas tends to lean toward a more numinous mystique to shape his contentious subject matter, but the gratuitous animal cruelty betrays his callousness, under no condition, we, who has the power, should victimize those powerless creatures, even it is for the sake of making a point of the hard truth, blatantly wresting a little bird’s head off is just beyond the pale.

referential entry: Lucrecia Martel’s THE SWAMP (2001, 7.4/10); João Pedro Rodrigues’ THE ORNITHOLOGIST (2016, 6.5/10).

當然電影不能衹以製造爭議性為榮，故筆者先撇開老婦與壯年男人床上戲不談，就從男主角心理描寫出發﹕對和藹老婦的殷切慷慨，超出了純粹尊敬尊重的情緒，竟然產生了與其「交合」的「奇想」，這種「奇想」在劇情舖排上已經說明了男主角是混淆了幻想式、對象是年青性感形象的性愛，這與片中現實裡男主角親近了老婦，令人產生了對靈與慾如何分別、如何辨識的思索，如果慾是生理作用，如何轉化成靈性的體會？如果一開始便出現了靈性的感應，卻無生理感覺，一般而言很難推動成性行為的發生，若不顧人倫世俗常規，後果可能會是一種「失事」後的尷尬與悲哀，作者讓這件事在片中發生，好讓我們代入角色以感受其中迷亂的狀態。