۱. افتتاحیه فیلم مادر جون هو بونگ بو نوعی انگار پایان فیلم است (+). مثل اینکه فیلم در مسیری دایرهوار به اولش باز میگردد. مادر خستهی تنها که تمام زمان فیلم را صرف این کرده که پسرش را از زندان نجات دهد، اول با این هدف که ثابت کند پسرش بیگناه است و بعد حتی برای آزادی پسرش دست به قتل بزند در عنوان بندی ابتدای فیلم بر روی چمنزاری ایستاده است. موسیقیای روی تصویر شنیده میشود که انگار به گوش او هم میرسد چون کمکم شروع به رقص میکند. رقصی بیخیال با دستانی معلق در هوا که به هر سو میروند ولی ناگهان در میانه رقص میشکند، دستانش میافتند و حال گریه میگیرد. چند قدمی بر میدارد، باز به خودش مسلط میشود و دوباره از اول همراه با موسیقی میرقصد.
۲. روزمرگی مثل لباسی آدم را دربرمیگیرد، بعد کمکم شروع به نفوذ به درون پوست میکند و با سلولها در هم میآمیزد. در نهایت تا جایی پیش میرود که حتی به خود DNA هم میرسد و آن را تغییر میدهد. جهش و با حتی evolution به آن مفهوم مرسوم ژنتیک به حساب نمیاید بلکه فقط آدم را سازگار میکند، به قول خارجیها accustomed به زندگی میکند. موضوعات مورد علاقه را تغییر میدهد و حوصله فعالیتهای قدیمی را کم میکند. خندهها و شادیهایش منعطف به جزئیات کوچک هر روزه میشود و دردسرهایش تبدیل به برنامهریزی برای آینده. حتی شاید مثل مرد عنکبوتی ۳، احساس قدرت کند، سیاهی وجودش را بگیرد و همه چیز را فراموش کند. اما گاهی اوقات وسط این خندههای کوچک و شادی به خاطر جزئیات ناگهان آن خود قبلی بیرون میزند و مثل همان تصویر مادر رقصان چیزها در هم میشکند و آدم به خودش میآید که اینجا چه خبر است. اما روزمرگی همچون روح خبیثی که آدم را تسخیر کرده باشد دوباره کنترل را به دست میگیرد، آن موضوع خوشایند را جلوی چشم میآورد و دوباره خندهها و رقص از سر گرفته میشود. نه اینکه شادی از سر جزئیات زندگی به خودی خود چیز بدی باشد، بلکه این تن دادم به فقط این گونه شادی است که دردناک است. حتی مشابه گیلتی پلژر هم نیست؛ نوعی زندگی زایل شده است.
۳. این نبردیست که این روزها دائما در من جریان است و حتی وقتی که تمام شود، اگر تمام شود هم فکر نکنم به راحتی بتوانم سرم را بالا بگیرم و دوباره به زندگی سابق برگردم. به قول پل آستر در کتاب سانست پارک "وقتی که نبرد تمام میشود سربازها دیگر پیر شدهاند، آدمهای ساکتی که دیگر راجع به نبردهایی که جنگیدهاند صحبت نخواهند کرد."
یکشنبه، شهریور ۲۸، ۱۳۸۹
My friends made fun of me for resisting the new ways. When they weren't calling me a curmudgeon , they called me a reactionary and stubborn old goat. I didn't care. What was good for them wasn't necessarily good me, I said. Why should I change when I was perfectly happy as I was?
Apu has gone to the country to attend his friend's cousin's wedding. A traditional arranged marriage, and when the bridegroom shows up, he turns out to be an idiot, a blithering numskull. The wedding is called off, and the friend's cousin's parents begin to panic, afraid their daughter will be cursed for life if she doesn't get married that afternoon. Apu is asleep somewhere under the trees, not a care in the world, happy to be out of the city for a few days. The girl's family approaches him. They explain that he's the only available unmarried man, that he's the only one who can solve the problem for them. Apu is appalled. He thinks they're nuts, a bunch of superstitious country bumpkins, and refuses to go along. But then he mulls it over for a while and decides to do it. As a good deed, as an altruistic gesture, but he has no intention of taking the girl back to Calcutta with him. After the wedding ceremony, when they're finally alone together for the first time, Apu learns that this meek young woman is a lot tougher than he thought she was. I'm poor, he says, I want to be a writer, I have nothing to offer you. I know, she says, but that makes no difference, she's determined to go with him. Exasperated, flummoxed, but also moved by her resolve. Apu reluctantly gives in.
Cut to the city. A carriage pulls up in front of the ramshackle building where Apu lives, and he and his bride step out. All the neighbors come to gawk at the beautiful girl as Apu leads her up the stairs to his squalid little garret. A moment later, he's called away by someone and leaves. The camera stays on the girl, alone in this strange room, this strange city, married to a man she hardly knows. Eventually, she walks to the window, which has a cruddy piece of burlap hanging over it instead of a real curtain. There's a hole in the burlap, and she looks through the hole into the backyard, where a baby in diapers is toddling along through the dust and debris. The camera angle reverses, and we see her eye through the hole. Tears are falling from that eye, and who can blame her for feeling overwrought, scared, lost? Apu reenters the room and asks her what's wrong. Nothing, she says, shaking her head, nothing at all. Then we fade to black, and the big question is: what next? What's in store for this unlikely couple who wound up marrying each other by pure accident? With a few deft and decisive strokes, everything is revealed to us in less than a minute.
Object number one: the window. We fade in, it's early morning, and the first thing we see is the window the girl was looking through in the previous scene. But the rally burlap is gone, replaced by a pair of clean checkered curtains. The camera pulls back a little, and there's object number two: polled flowers on the windowsill. These are encouraging signs, but we can't be sure what they mean yet. Domesticity, homeyness, a woman's touch, but this is what wives are supposed to do, and just because Apu's wife has carried out her duties well doesn't prove that she cares for him. The camera continues pulling back, and we see the two of them asleep in bed. The alarm clock rings, and the wife climbs out of bed as Apu groans and buries his head in the pillow, Object number three: her sari. After she gets out of bed and starts walking off, she suddenly can't move-because her clothes are tied to Apu's. Very odd. Who could have done this-and why? The expression on her face is both peeved and amused, and we instantly know that Apu was responsible. She returns to the bed, thwacks him gently on the bull, and then unties the knot. What does this moment say 10 me? That they're having good sex, that a sense of playfulness has developed between them, that they're really married. But what about love? They seem to be contented, but how strong are their feelings for each other? That's when object number four appears: the hairpin. The wife leaves the frame to prepare breakfast, and the camera closes in on Apu. He finally manages to open his eyes, and as he yawns and stretches and rolls around in bed, he sees something in the crevice between the two pillows. He reaches in and pulls out one of his wife's hairpins. That's the crowning moment. He holds up the hairpin and studies it, and when you look at Apu's eyes, the tenderness and adoration in those eyes, you know beyond a doubt that he's madly in love with her, that she's the woman of his life. And Ray makes it happen without using a single word of dialogue.
