2006-10-26 22:31:40no name
小說與電影，great expecataions
無關迷失，只有兩性刻板教條--《烈愛風雲》Great Expectations
英國大文豪狄更斯的的小說《孤星淚》不知已在螢幕上翻過幾回，這回由曾執導《新小公主》的艾方索柯朗（Alfonso Cuaron）將時空移至二十世紀，果真靈驗了中國的古諺：橘逾淮為枳。窮困階級努力上流的故事永遠是最好的童話，從瓊瑤的電影到《鐵達尼號》，如果沒有窮人子弟（最好是男的，如此才可在高攀富貴階級時，因為窮而志氣的轉化過程，才能產生無以倫比的震撼效果，敘事才能鞏固男性的真誠∮權力，和藉此展露女性是否貪婪富貴或者有勇氣去愛），故事也多半說不下去。
故事的主軸在兩性的刻板印象中展開，一條有關男子間情誼（brotherhood）的鋪敘從小漁村的孤兒因緣巧合地救了一個逃獄犯殺人犯（勞伯迪尼諾飾）開始，而後，這名殺人犯成就了小男孩的事業與夢想，又，這個被姊姊（又一個女性）拋棄的小男孩是由姊姊的男友一手養大，這是另一條資助兄弟情誼的鋪敘；另一條則有關女子對男性的報仇的主線，這個小漁村的男孩無意間無意遇到一個當地最有錢富婆，一眼愛上她的外甥女，可惜這個富貴女只把他當作練習如何男人的對象，只有最後女孩在離婚後，又重頭回到這個已稍有成就的藝術家男人身邊。
在這樣的刻板安排下，原本《孤星淚》的重頭戲描述小男孩成長後迷失在金錢、名利和慾望的誘惑就只剩下小小的說謊，和面對喬叔叔（一手養大他的姊姊的男友）才參觀第一次畫展時，表現的倉皇無禮。
這樣說來，此一現代童話又道道地地是真實世界的模擬，如假包換地符合男性意識型態的需要。男性情誼總是挽救男孩的重要關鍵，而女性與愛情雖為所求，不免又同時責難女性的負心和貪圖。你對這樣的真實世界有很大的期望嗎？至少我沒有。（刊於破報復刊9期）
BY ELIZABETH McCRACKEN | It’s hard for me to write anything about ”Great Expectations” that’s not a pure love letter. I have loved the book ever since I was first made to read it in high school (just after being forced to read ”Ethan Frome” for the third or 20th time -- ”Ethan Frome” being one of worst and most constant punishments of my New England adolescence). ”Great Expectations” is laugh-out-loud funny and heart-breakingly sad; it’s a moral book, without any clear moral directives. Its language is beautiful, its plot compelling, its characters complex and complete. You feel, reading it, tenderly toward nearly all of the people (excepting, perhaps, Drummle and Jaggers; even Orlick has his moments).
I want to say that ”Great Expectations” is -- nearly 120 years after its initial publication as a weekly serial in Dickens’ own magazine, All the Year Round -- a peculiarly modern novel. That’s late-20th century-centric: ”Great Expectations” is merely timeless, and, like all timeless work, not written to be timeless. It is about all the things that life is about: how relatives can be loving, or abusive, or merely deeply annoying; how people can choose their own families; how a woman might be driven to destroy her child, or give her child away; how people -- those technically criminal, and those technically high class -- may be corrupt, may be redeemed; how your upbringing defines your character, and how you may rise above or embrace that definition; and how, finally, love (romantic, familial, friend-to-friend) is a choice and a path, not an exalted stasis.
People, Dickens tells us, are not always what they seem. Not simply because they’ve disguised or hidden or renamed themselves, like Magwitch; not only because those who seem most beautiful may be, in fact, most terrible, like Estella. People are not always what they seem because people are never only one thing. The wretched Mrs. Joe becomes nearly lovable after her injury; Mrs. Havisham melts (before she burns); Magwitch in trouble terrorizes Pip, but in prosperity is his benefactor; Wemmick’s character is dependent on his location; there is a hint that even Estella, at last, is not as brightly cold as her name and nature suggests; and, of course, Pip is at first good, and then snobbish and profligate, and then, finally, good. Money changes everything except human nature. Human beings change: not for the better, and not for the worse, and not permanently. People change, then change back. Their changes do not necessarily make them happy. That is the human condition.
”That was a memorable day for me,” says Pip, after first visiting Satis House, ”for it made great changes in me. But it is the same with any life. Imagine one selected day struck out of it, and think how different its course would have been. Pause, you who read this, and think for a moment of the long chain of iron or gold, of thorns or flowers, that would never have bound you, but for the formation of the first link on one memorable day.”
”Great Expectations” is no less instructive for not being morally definite. That first link will change you, as the circumstances of your childhood will. It is your own duty (I believe Dickens says) to change yourself inwardly as you are changed outwardly.
God, the pleasure of reading ”Great Expectations” -- pleasure being, I think, sometimes an underrated part of reading serious fiction. Everything is so right and so surprising, from plot to language to the details of character -- Pip calling himself a ”connubial missile,” Drummle being described as so sulky that ”he even took up a book as if its writer had done him an injury.” (Dickens is so often seen as a model of plot and character that it’s easy to forget what a beautiful stylist he is.) Still, and of course, his characters, major and minor, are unforgettable: Joe, the Aged P., Mr. Wopsle the enthusiastic amateur, pale Herbert Pocket, even Mrs. Joe as she asks Biddy to place her arms around Joe’s neck as she dies.
Still, the character who lives most in my head is Miss Havisham. She is brought into the book as a woman defined by the things she owns: her dark house, her tattered clothing, her money, her beautiful ward. If she were left at that, a splendid invention, she’d still be forever memorable. And yet she -- who has not even changed her clothing or the time on her clocks for decades -- memorably changes, is changed. It isn’t that Dickens gives her a second chance; instead, he takes from her chances that she (and the reader) doesn’t even realize she has. This improves and then kills her. Throughout the book there is the opportunity for heartbreak -- why is it that Pip can be destroyed by Estella, whom he barely knows, but Joe lives with Mrs. Joe and ever speaks of her with (cautious) love? Lasting romantic love is always cautious in ”Great Expectations” (Dickens had just left his wife, after 22 years of marriage); every couple who marries has known each other for quite some time. It’s friendship that’s passionate, requited, transforming. Be careful, Dickens seems to say, of who you allow to break your heart. Mrs. Havisham is, of course, forever a symbol of heartbreak -- of heartdeath, really -- but what makes her magnificent is her passion at the end of her life. There she is, wrapped in cotton wool, on her table, kissed, but insensible to kisses. She has forgotten how someone else once broke her heart. She repents only how she has broken her own. It is the same with any life
英國大文豪狄更斯的的小說《孤星淚》不知已在螢幕上翻過幾回，這回由曾執導《新小公主》的艾方索柯朗（Alfonso Cuaron）將時空移至二十世紀，果真靈驗了中國的古諺：橘逾淮為枳。窮困階級努力上流的故事永遠是最好的童話，從瓊瑤的電影到《鐵達尼號》，如果沒有窮人子弟（最好是男的，如此才可在高攀富貴階級時，因為窮而志氣的轉化過程，才能產生無以倫比的震撼效果，敘事才能鞏固男性的真誠∮權力，和藉此展露女性是否貪婪富貴或者有勇氣去愛），故事也多半說不下去。
故事的主軸在兩性的刻板印象中展開，一條有關男子間情誼（brotherhood）的鋪敘從小漁村的孤兒因緣巧合地救了一個逃獄犯殺人犯（勞伯迪尼諾飾）開始，而後，這名殺人犯成就了小男孩的事業與夢想，又，這個被姊姊（又一個女性）拋棄的小男孩是由姊姊的男友一手養大，這是另一條資助兄弟情誼的鋪敘；另一條則有關女子對男性的報仇的主線，這個小漁村的男孩無意間無意遇到一個當地最有錢富婆，一眼愛上她的外甥女，可惜這個富貴女只把他當作練習如何男人的對象，只有最後女孩在離婚後，又重頭回到這個已稍有成就的藝術家男人身邊。
在這樣的刻板安排下，原本《孤星淚》的重頭戲描述小男孩成長後迷失在金錢、名利和慾望的誘惑就只剩下小小的說謊，和面對喬叔叔（一手養大他的姊姊的男友）才參觀第一次畫展時，表現的倉皇無禮。
這樣說來，此一現代童話又道道地地是真實世界的模擬，如假包換地符合男性意識型態的需要。男性情誼總是挽救男孩的重要關鍵，而女性與愛情雖為所求，不免又同時責難女性的負心和貪圖。你對這樣的真實世界有很大的期望嗎？至少我沒有。（刊於破報復刊9期）
BY ELIZABETH McCRACKEN | It’s hard for me to write anything about ”Great Expectations” that’s not a pure love letter. I have loved the book ever since I was first made to read it in high school (just after being forced to read ”Ethan Frome” for the third or 20th time -- ”Ethan Frome” being one of worst and most constant punishments of my New England adolescence). ”Great Expectations” is laugh-out-loud funny and heart-breakingly sad; it’s a moral book, without any clear moral directives. Its language is beautiful, its plot compelling, its characters complex and complete. You feel, reading it, tenderly toward nearly all of the people (excepting, perhaps, Drummle and Jaggers; even Orlick has his moments).
I want to say that ”Great Expectations” is -- nearly 120 years after its initial publication as a weekly serial in Dickens’ own magazine, All the Year Round -- a peculiarly modern novel. That’s late-20th century-centric: ”Great Expectations” is merely timeless, and, like all timeless work, not written to be timeless. It is about all the things that life is about: how relatives can be loving, or abusive, or merely deeply annoying; how people can choose their own families; how a woman might be driven to destroy her child, or give her child away; how people -- those technically criminal, and those technically high class -- may be corrupt, may be redeemed; how your upbringing defines your character, and how you may rise above or embrace that definition; and how, finally, love (romantic, familial, friend-to-friend) is a choice and a path, not an exalted stasis.
People, Dickens tells us, are not always what they seem. Not simply because they’ve disguised or hidden or renamed themselves, like Magwitch; not only because those who seem most beautiful may be, in fact, most terrible, like Estella. People are not always what they seem because people are never only one thing. The wretched Mrs. Joe becomes nearly lovable after her injury; Mrs. Havisham melts (before she burns); Magwitch in trouble terrorizes Pip, but in prosperity is his benefactor; Wemmick’s character is dependent on his location; there is a hint that even Estella, at last, is not as brightly cold as her name and nature suggests; and, of course, Pip is at first good, and then snobbish and profligate, and then, finally, good. Money changes everything except human nature. Human beings change: not for the better, and not for the worse, and not permanently. People change, then change back. Their changes do not necessarily make them happy. That is the human condition.
”That was a memorable day for me,” says Pip, after first visiting Satis House, ”for it made great changes in me. But it is the same with any life. Imagine one selected day struck out of it, and think how different its course would have been. Pause, you who read this, and think for a moment of the long chain of iron or gold, of thorns or flowers, that would never have bound you, but for the formation of the first link on one memorable day.”
”Great Expectations” is no less instructive for not being morally definite. That first link will change you, as the circumstances of your childhood will. It is your own duty (I believe Dickens says) to change yourself inwardly as you are changed outwardly.
God, the pleasure of reading ”Great Expectations” -- pleasure being, I think, sometimes an underrated part of reading serious fiction. Everything is so right and so surprising, from plot to language to the details of character -- Pip calling himself a ”connubial missile,” Drummle being described as so sulky that ”he even took up a book as if its writer had done him an injury.” (Dickens is so often seen as a model of plot and character that it’s easy to forget what a beautiful stylist he is.) Still, and of course, his characters, major and minor, are unforgettable: Joe, the Aged P., Mr. Wopsle the enthusiastic amateur, pale Herbert Pocket, even Mrs. Joe as she asks Biddy to place her arms around Joe’s neck as she dies.
Still, the character who lives most in my head is Miss Havisham. She is brought into the book as a woman defined by the things she owns: her dark house, her tattered clothing, her money, her beautiful ward. If she were left at that, a splendid invention, she’d still be forever memorable. And yet she -- who has not even changed her clothing or the time on her clocks for decades -- memorably changes, is changed. It isn’t that Dickens gives her a second chance; instead, he takes from her chances that she (and the reader) doesn’t even realize she has. This improves and then kills her. Throughout the book there is the opportunity for heartbreak -- why is it that Pip can be destroyed by Estella, whom he barely knows, but Joe lives with Mrs. Joe and ever speaks of her with (cautious) love? Lasting romantic love is always cautious in ”Great Expectations” (Dickens had just left his wife, after 22 years of marriage); every couple who marries has known each other for quite some time. It’s friendship that’s passionate, requited, transforming. Be careful, Dickens seems to say, of who you allow to break your heart. Mrs. Havisham is, of course, forever a symbol of heartbreak -- of heartdeath, really -- but what makes her magnificent is her passion at the end of her life. There she is, wrapped in cotton wool, on her table, kissed, but insensible to kisses. She has forgotten how someone else once broke her heart. She repents only how she has broken her own. It is the same with any life