《Art Forum》《艺术论坛》报道

　　《Art Forum》（《艺术论坛》）报道

　　陆川：《南京!南京!》

　　作者：托尼-皮波罗（Tony Pipolo） 托尼-皮波罗是《罗伯特-布列松：为电影殉情》（ Robert Bresson: A Passion For Film） (Oxford University Press, 2009)的作者，纽约的心理分析家。

　　1937年12月13日，日本军队占领当时中国的首都南京。投降的中国战士在城中被活埋或屠杀，成千上万的女人被强奸，儿童被摧残，二十万平民被杀。屠杀过后，留下很多关于日军暴行的照片，不少都是日军拍摄下来的。但我们所了解的关于南京大屠杀，很多资料都是来自当时在安全区的西方人的日记。其中有德国商人拉贝（John Rabe），以及两个美国人，一位是外科医生Robert O. Wilson, 还有一个是南京金陵女子大学的魏特琳（Minnie Vautrin）。

　　《南京！南京！》于五月十一日在纽约的电影论坛放映。在这部影片中，导演不动声色地将观众带入到南京城的恐怖和混乱中。在开篇的四十五分钟里，影片重现了南京沦陷的一幕，坦克轰城，中国军队溃败。导演在场景设计上达到了细致入微的地步，摄影机在城内的广角视野和中国军队抵抗日本侵略的主观视角中展开。慢慢的，摄影机穿过安全区的医院走廊，绝望无奈的人们，在死亡线上饱受残忍的折磨，工作人员被野蛮地推倒一边，病人在病床上被杀死，一个孩子被扔出窗外。这一幕幕精心营造的场景，令人愤怒而无语。

　　手持摄影机带来的黑白摄影令这些图像产生了强烈的视觉冲击，犹如经典影片《阿尔及尔之战》（1966），美学风格独树一帜的纪录片《战地摄影师》（War Photographer，2001), 这些作品以奇观的方式呈现灾难，激起人们情感上的震撼，而不仅仅是重现真实和史料，这也令《南京！南京！》在国内获得很高的票房。当然，国内对这部影片的评价存在着很多争议，但影片在戛纳以及欧美其它的电影节上，反响良好。对它的正面和负面影响，也体现了影片形式上的巧妙安排，此外，它对各方势力的兼顾，也是引起非议的一个原因：安全区的德国人拉贝，代表着“西方”；忠心耿耿的自我牺牲者唐先生，代表着中国；军官角川则代表着日本。

　　陆川，《南京! 南京!》，2009 ，黑白剧照 35毫米 132分钟

　　角川单纯讶异的视角和观众的目瞪口呆几乎并行。他是我们看到的第一个角色，在黑太阳下愉快地等待着命令（黑太阳暗喻他对天皇的忠心）。貌似“天真”的他爱上了一个中国“慰安妇”。影片结尾，拉贝返回德国，唐先生为保护怀孕的妻子而死去。面对同伴的累累暴行，角川忍受不了这般折磨而自尽。与这个日军“牺牲品”相互应的是最后一幕，在这座奄奄一息的伤城里，一个小男孩幸免一死。

　　结尾时日军屠城后前行的一幕。在一片令人作呕的血腥中，我们看到武士道式的欢呼和对天皇的膜拜，每个仪式般的动作和轰轰鼓声，带给人的是寒彻骨的凉。

　　Atrocity Exhibition

　　May 2011

　　Lu Chuan, Nanjing! Nanjing! (City of Life and Death), 2009, stills from a black-and-white film in 35 mm, 132 minutes.

　　ON DECEMBER 13, 1937, the Imperial Japanese Army, having laid siege to Shanghai and other cities, invaded Nanjing, capital of Nationalist China. Surrendering Chinese soldiers were buried alive or massacred in the middle of the city, thousands of women and children were raped, and more than two hundred thousand civilians were killed. Many incriminating photographs of the events exist, as well as footage of the torture and killing, taken by Japanese soldiers betraying no qualms about leaving a record of their behavior. But much of what we know about the “Rape of Nanking” comes from the diaries of Westerners living in the city who established a safety zone for refugees. These included the German businessman John Rabe (whose valiant efforts to save lives have been compared to Oskar Schindler’s) and two Americans: Robert O. Wilson, a surgeon, and Minnie Vautrin, head of the Ginling Girls’ College of Nanjing.

　　In City of Life and Death––which opens on May 11 at Film Forum in New York––Chinese director Lu Chuan hurls the viewer into this nightmare with virtually no explanatory context, evoking a sense of the confusion, shock, and horror that must have swept over the inhabitants of Nanjing. In its first forty-five minutes, the film reenacts the siege and fall of the city and the decimation of the Chinese army as tanks bombard the citadel. Through this meticulously staged rout, Lu’s mobile camera alternates between wide-angle views of the inner city––an astonishing achievement of set design––and subjective perspectives of Chinese soldiers evading or firing on the Japanese. Later, as the camera moves through the corridors of the hospital in the safety zone, registering the desperation of those making pathetic appeals to protocol, it is driven by the relentless surge of intruding soldiers as they shove interfering staff aside, murder patients in their beds, and throw a child out a window. As chaotic as they are craftily choreographed, these sequences infuriate even as they paralyze response.

　　While the visceral immediacy of such images, intensified by black-and-white cinematography and handheld camerawork, recalls such classics of historical reenactment as The Battle of Algiers (1966), as well as authentic frontline documentaries like War Photographer (2001), City of Life and Death also courts an audience more responsive to spectacle and emotional manipulation than to mere facts and testimony, a strategy that helped make it (under the title Nanjing! Nanjing!) a box-office hit in China. And though domestic critical reception there was mixed, the film was praised at Cannes and other film festivals in Europe and North America. No doubt both the positive and the negative reactions reflect the film’s formulaic trappings, as well as its efforts to placate all interested parties. This it does by highlighting the fates of three characters, representing the key political forces: Rabe, the German leader of the safety zone, stands for “the West”; while Mr. Tang, his loyal, self-sacrificing secretary, represents China; and Kadokawa, an infantryman in the Imperial Army, Japan.

　　It is Kadokawa’s wide-eyed inexperience that most closely parallels the viewer’s stance of open-mouthed disbelief. He is the first person we see, basking in a blinding sun while awaiting orders—an apt metaphor of allegiance to the emperor. His “innocence” is symbolized by his virginity, which he loses to a Chinese “comfort girl” with whom he falls in love. By the end of the film, Rabe returns to Germany, and Tang dies defiantly after sending his pregnant wife off to safety. But Kadokawa, having witnessed the worst and been complicit in barbaric acts, puts a bullet through his brain. As if to counteract this image of a Japanese “victim,” to which Chinese audiences might understandably object, Lu contrives a final shot of a little boy, having escaped death in the fallen city, laughing, somewhat forcibly, at his own good fortune.

　　Lu’s ambition to forge an epic about China’s triumph over disaster is commendable, but his style often compromises this goal. Scenes of women blackmailed into serving the sexual needs of Japanese soldiers in order to protect the safety zone are diminished by melodrama and gratuitous close-ups. As if he mistrusts the power of his material, Lu rarely forfeits a great shot in favor of understatement. He turns a field into a mass graveyard and fills a church as if it were a stadium, until sheer numbers blind us to what they denote. At one point, the camera rises majestically over the head of a centrally framed soldier until the vast sprawl of the massacred Chinese army beyond him comes into view––a beautifully calibrated shot that upstages its expository purpose.

　　Several viewings have convinced me that fewer jaw-dropping effects would have allowed Lu’s better instincts to shine. But not every exercise in style lacks bite. The Japanese victory march near the end is a case in point. After what has preceded, we can only stare at the triumphal dance to the warrior code and the deity of the emperor through a haze of blood and disgust. Every ritualized gesture and boom of the drums rings hollow.

　　Tony Pipolo is the author of Robert Bresson: A Passion For Film (Oxford University Press, 2009) and a psychoanalyst in private practice in New York City.