纽约亚洲电影节授予林岭东终身成就奖
纽约亚洲电影节授予林岭东终身成就奖
It’s been not quite 30 years since a group of young Hong Kong-based moviemakers, now in or near their 60s, reinvented the gangster film, infusing the motifs of the American crime drama with the balletic action, nimble style and thematic preoccupations of their hometown industry. John Woo began the process with “A Better Tomorrow” in 1986 and became the movement’s standard-bearer in the United States, eventually directing a string of big-budget Hollywood films. The prolific Johnnie To emerged later, with “Breaking News” and his “Election” films, and is now a major presence on the international festival circuit.
不到30年前，一群年轻的香港电影人以美式犯罪剧为基调，为其注入芭蕾舞般的优美武打、机敏的风格以及本土电影工业最受关注的主题，重新塑造了黑帮片这个类型;现在，这些电影人已经到了60岁左右的年龄。吴宇森(John Woo)于1986年开始拍摄《英雄本色》(A Better Tomorrow) ，并因此成为了这一改造运动在美国的旗手，其后更是执导了一系列的好莱坞大片。随后，多产的导演杜琪峰(Johnnie To)凭借他的《突发新闻》(Breaking News)和“黑社会”(Election)系列电影出现在人们的视野中，现在已是国际电影节中的一个重要角色。
Lost in their shadows, at least in the United States, was Ringo Lam, whose “City on Fire” in 1987 was another landmark of the Hong Kong cops-and-crooks genre. After a career marked by hits and misses in Asia and a handful of American productions (several of which went straight to video), he took a hiatus from directing. “Wild City,” set for release next month in China, will be his first feature in 12 years.
林岭东(Ringo Lam)1987年的作品《龙虎风云》(City on Fire)是香港警匪片的另一个里程碑。但至少是在美国，他的名字在吴宇森和杜琪峰的光环之下总是显得十分黯淡。经过了事业在亚洲的起起落落、拍摄了几部美国电影之后(其中有几部直接发行影碟)，他的导演生涯中断了。下个月于中国上映的《暴走迷城》(Wild City)是他12年来的第一部长片。
So it’s fair to say that among the more than 50 movies in the New York Asian Film Festival, which begins on Friday at the Walter Reade Theater, the most exciting discoveries may be a pair of tremendously entertaining Lam classics from two and three decades ago. “City on Fire” and “Full Alert” (1997) are being shown this weekend as the festival presents its lifetime achievement award to Mr. Lam, 59, who will attend Saturday night’s screening of “City on Fire.” Amazingly, neither film appears to have received a mainstream commercial release in the United States, showing up only at festivals, art houses and Chinatown theaters, and neither is available from any of the major streaming services.
因此，如果说在纽约亚洲电影节(上星期五在瓦尔特·里德剧院[Walter Reade Theater]开幕)上放映的50多部电影之中，最激动人心的新发现就是林岭东导演在二三十年前拍摄的两部超水平的娱乐经典电影，也毫不为过。《龙虎风云》和《高度戒备》(1997)在周末作为电影节展映影片。59岁的林岭东也被授予了终身成就奖，并将出席星期六晚上《龙虎风云》的放映。令人惊讶的是，他的影片并没有在美国进行商业性的放映，只出现在电影节、艺术片影院和唐人街的戏院里，而且在主要的流媒体上也不见踪影。
The funny thing is that Mr. Lam’s work from the 1980s and ’90s remains relatively obscure here, even though it was more American in mood and style than that of his Hong Kong peers. (Or maybe that makes perfect sense.) He didn’t demonstrate Mr. Woo’s ability to poeticize gunplay and violence, or Mr. To’s icy precision. He stood out by combining his own considerable gifts for staging action with a human touch and careful observation: His tales of weary policemen and jumpy criminals have a depth, and a romanticism, that come from characterization and attention to quotidian detail rather than sheer visual polish.
有趣的是，林岭东从上世纪八九十年代的作品在美国仍然不怎么出名，但与香港同行们相比，他的作品在气质和风格上其实更接近美国片(也或者正是因此才合情合理)。他并没有吴宇森将枪战和暴力诗意化的能力，也没有杜琪峰冷峻的精准表现能力。 但他具有呈现动作戏的天赋，并为之赋予人性化色彩和细心的观察，这一点令他脱颖而出：他故事中疲惫厌倦的警察和胆战心惊的罪犯显得既深刻又浪漫，而这一点不是单纯靠着视觉效果上精细打磨，而是来源于对人物特点的设计以及对平凡日常的细节的关注。
Not that “City on Fire” and “Full Alert” don’t look great. Mr. Lam takes full advantage of the Hong Kong image bank: the neon nighttime skyline, the Star Ferry plying the harbor, the arrival halls and frighteningly intimate runway of Kai Tak (still the city’s airport at the time). His camera glides through Kowloon’s serpentine shopping streets and finds the pulse of the crowd, making everything in the frame part of the action.
这并不是说《龙虎风云》和《高度戒备》在视觉效果上不好看。林岭东充分利用香港的图像资源：夜晚布满霓虹灯的天际线，天星小轮来往于各个港口，启德机场(当时的香港机场)中的到达大厅和狭窄得吓人的跑道。他的镜头从九龙长蛇般蜿蜒的购物街上滑过，从中寻找人群的脉搏，让画框中的一切都成为影片的一部分。
Some viewers may have trouble with the ’80s surface of “City on Fire” — the acting can be histrionic, the sentimentality pervasive, the action slightly cartoonish, the shoulders awfully padded. But look past it, and Mr. Lam’s inventiveness and sure narrative sense are apparent. (Credit should go, too, to his rookie cinematographer, Andrew Lau, who would become a celebrated director of crime dramas himself with the “Infernal Affairs” films.) The opening sequence, a chaotic stabbing in a night market, crisply sets the tone and is punctuated with a haunting image of a bloody face pressed against a sheet of sheer white fabric.
一些观众可能对《龙虎风云》的80年代风格感到很不适应。演员的表演可能有些过度戏剧性、弥漫着伤感情绪，略显卡通化的动作戏，奇怪的垫肩……但是撇开这些不谈，林岭东的创造性和叙事上的掌控力是显而易见的(这也应该感谢他当时初出茅庐的摄影师刘伟强[Andrew Lau]，他后来凭借《无间道》系列电影成为犯罪片著名导演)。影片的系列镜头是夜市上一场混乱的刀刺事件，干脆地为影片定下基调，同时强调出一个在人们心中挥之不去的画面：一张血淋淋的面孔被狠狠压在一块薄薄的白布上。
“City on Fire” also offers the immeasurable bonus of Chow Yun-fat’s virtuosic performance — part Cary Grant, part Jimmy Cagney, part young Christopher Walken — as the hero, Chow, a petty criminal turned reluctant undercover policeman. Forced to take part in a dangerous jewel heist, he gradually befriends a fellow gang member (ably played by Danny Lee). Moving adroitly among Chow’s squabbles with his mostly indifferent bosses, his risky dance with the gang and his comic-relief efforts to hold onto his girlfriend (Carrie Ng), the film explores the standard Hong Kong themes of trust, brotherhood and the gravity of violence with sufficient style that Quentin Tarantino famously incorporated elements of its plot in “Reservoir Dogs.”
在《龙虎风云》中，周润发大师级的表演是另一个无可估量的加分项。他的表演分别汲取了加里·格兰特[Cary Grant]，吉米·卡格尼[Jimmy Cagney]，以及年轻时的克里斯托弗·沃肯[Christopher Walken]的风格。他饰演的影片主人公是一名罪行并不重的罪犯，却不情不愿地成为了一名卧底警察。他被迫参加了一起危险的珠宝抢劫案，并渐渐成为了一个黑帮成员(由风格干练的李修贤[Danny Lee]饰演)的朋友。剧情巧妙地转换，既有周润发和他的老板们(大多很无情)之间的争执，也有他在黑帮内危险的舞蹈，还有他为了留住女朋友(吴家丽 [Carrie Ng]饰)而做出的富于喜剧性的努力，令影片最终触及了香港电影中典型的主题：信任、兄弟情和暴力的严重性，带有鲜明的风格，无怪乎昆汀·塔伦蒂诺 (Quentin Tarantino)在《落水狗》(Reservoir Dogs) 中也引入了该片情节中的若干元素，这件事已经广为人知。
Released 10 years later, within weeks of the handover of Hong Kong to China, “Full Alert” tells a similar story in a radically different key — deeply melancholic, bordering on nihilistic. Now the hero is a single-minded, haunted cop, played by the veteran actor Lau Ching-wan with expressive stoicism and a thousand-yard stare, and his adversary an embittered civil engineer (really) planning a revenge robbery, played by another Hong Kong stalwart, Francis Ng. Once again, there’s common ground for the foes, both doomed to disappointment in a shallow and corrupt system, but this time there’s nothing sentimental about the inevitable guns-blazing showdown.
《龙虎风云》放映10年，香港回归中国几个星期之后上映的《高度戒备》讲述了一个类似的故事，但却带有一种全然不同的基调——深深的忧郁，近乎虚无。这部影片的主人公是一个单纯又焦虑的警察，由经验丰富的演员刘青云饰演。他演出了一种极富表现力的坚韧气质，总是带着茫然的神情。他的对手是一个心怀怨恨的土木工程师(这是真的)，计划着一次报复性的抢劫。这一角色由另一位香港演技派演员吴镇宇(Francis Ng)出演。和上一部一样，敌对双方有很多共性：他们都对虚伪腐败的系统注定充满失望。但这一次，无可避免的激烈枪战中不再有任何伤感气息。
And once again, there are beauty and emotional texture in the details, in scenes loud (a nine-minute car chase that momentarily dodges in and out among Hong Kong’s antiquated trams) and quiet (the clandestine burial of a gang member, the only sound the labored breathing of his colleagues).
这部电影同样长于细节中的美感和情绪质感，无论是在激烈吵闹的场景中(一场九分钟的追车戏，车子在香港古旧的电车之间来回躲闪)，还是在安静细腻的情节里(一场为黑社会成员暗地里举办的葬礼中，唯一的声音就是死者同伙们困难的喘息声)。
“Wild City,” like “Full Alert,” is about a Hong Kong cop (Louis Koo) battling a Taiwanese gang, and an early line — “This money is on fire!” — pays tribute to Mr. Lam’s breakout film. It’s not part of the Asian Film Festival, which is produced by Subway Cinema and the Film Society of Lincoln Center and is in its 14th year. But the festival offers several current examples of the Hong Kong crime film, including Fire Lee’s dark farce “Robbery” and Philip Yung’s bleak “Port of Call,” in which the disappearance of a teenage girl is the start of a story about the alienation and desperation of immigrants from the mainland seeking a better life in Hong Kong. Starring Aaron Kwok, the one-time Cantopop superstar, and shot by Christopher Doyle (Wong Kar-wai’s preferred cinematographer), it’s also laced with an aching nostalgia for a not too distant past when Hong Kong was Asia’s undisputed dream factory.
与《高度戒备》一样，《暴走迷城》也是关于香港警察(古天乐[Louis Koo]饰演)与台湾黑帮之间的争斗故事。开场时的一句台词——“这钱太迷人了!”——是致敬林岭东的突破之作。亚洲电影节是由地铁电影公司 (Subway Cinema)和林肯中心电影协会(Film society of Lincoln Center)共同制作的，今年已经是第14年举办，《暴走迷城》不是此次电影节的片目，不过电影节亦提供了几个近期的香港犯罪片范例，其中包括李家荣 (Fire Lee)的黑暗喜剧片《抢劫》以及翁子光(Philip Yung)风格荒凉的《踏雪寻梅》(Port of Call)。《踏雪寻梅》中一个少女的消失引出了内地移民的故事，他们为了寻找更好的生活来到香港，却过着疏离而绝望的生活。影片主演郭富城(Aaron Kwok)曾经是粤语流行音乐巨星。杜可风(Christopher Doyle)(王家卫的御用摄影)担任摄影师。影片装点着伤感的怀旧风格，纪念着不久之前香港仍是亚洲无可争议的梦工厂的那段岁月。
A few other offerings among the festival’s abundance this year: The first-time director Boo Ji-young’s “Cart,” part of a small section devoted to female South Korean filmmakers, is an empowerment story reminiscent of “Norma Rae” (in peppy Korean style, complete with dance numbers), based on an actual 510-day strike by cashiers and cleaners at a Seoul supermarket. At the other end of the experience scale, “Revivre,” about the complex life of an aging businessman, is the 102nd film by the 78-year-old Im Kwon-taek. And the festival closes on July 11 at the SVA Theater with Han Jun-hee’s “Coin Locker Girl,” in which the major South Korean star Kim Hye-soo — a sex symbol in the Diane Lane mold — cuts her hair, wears shapeless clothes and goes for even more acting awards as the vicious, Fagin-like leader of a gang of young criminals.
除此之外，今年电影节还展出了大量影片，包括导演富智瑛(Boo Ji-young)的处女作《购物车》(Cart)，带有活泼的韩式风格，有舞蹈表演片段， 其中一小部分向韩国的女性电影人致敬，是类似《诺玛·蕾》(Norma Rae)的女性赋权故事，改编自首尔某超市一次长达510天的收银员和清洁工罢工的真实故事。情感天平的另一端，《花葬》(Revivre)，是一位年迈商人复杂的人生故事。这部影片是78岁高龄的导演林权泽(Im Kwon-taek)的第102部电影。电影节将在七月11日于SVA剧院(SVA Theater)闭幕。闭幕电影是韩俊熙(Han Jun-hee)导演的作品《唐人街》(Coin Locker Girl)，其中韩国明星金惠秀(Kim Hye-soo)——跟黛安·琳恩(Diane Lane)一个模子里刻出来的性感符号——剪一头短发，穿着看不出身材的衣服。她扮演费金(Fagin)式的年轻犯罪团伙头目，风格残酷狠毒，这样的演出可能为她带来更多的奖项。
