曼哈顿(1979)

在写这篇东西之前，我曾对你夸下海口，说什么“曼哈顿在我的血里，绝对能写得比市面上的都好。”事实证明真是想多了。比我有才华的人那么多，他们凭什么来看我拼拼图。但我还是要写，因为我傻啊，别和我讲道理。 * I told you I hate writing reviews. But this one is to you, dear fellow sufferer. Today I wandered around the deserted corners of St. Michel, thinking about how, with my healthy contented approving glances, this is my Paris. A marvelous city. A marvelous city that everybody breathing here, even a non-citizen, can claim to be hers. A marvelous failing city that feeds on the idleness of her past, with a stylistic nonchalance that is, at heart, an incompetence. And she knows this all too well, casting a cold eye. * Chapter One. Fitzgerald wrote in some random book, “the city seen from the Queensboro Bridge is always the city seen for the first time, in its first wild promise of all the mystery and the beauty in the world”. Now, are we not at once enraptured and disturbed by the wild promise and sublime beauty of the scene where Issac and Mary sit on the bench facing the Greensboro Bridge? Why these two human beings fall in love is the biggest mystery. He hated her at the first sight. He hated all her talk about “the academy of the overrated” (she included Bergman, how dare her) and the negative capability. She is Paul from Midnight in Paris, the Columbia Professor from Annie Hall, the whore in the Whore of Mensa, Ellen Page from to Rome with Love. She is Woody Allen’s archenemy – the original self-possessed pseudo-intellectual. Now I’m writing all this on my inhibited memory, so bear with me if I get the lines wrong. Mary confessed, at one point, about her feeling towards the penis, that she’s both attracted to and repelled by it. A Freudian moment. There’s desire, and there’s repression. And this desire starts with an absence, an interval, a (moment of) lack. Like homophobics whose repression of attraction is transformed into hatred, Issac is saying “no” to these pseudo-intellectuals because, the hell, who can say he is not one himself? * I’ve discussed this with you: when the Columbia professor from Annie Hall started to talk about McLuhan in the queue, Woody broke the fourth wall to drag the real McLuhan into this scene, and “made” him say the following words: Man in Theatre Line: Oh really, really? I happen to teach a class at Columbia called “TV, Media, and Culture.” So I think that my insights into Mr. McLuhan, well, have a great deal of validity! Alvy Singer: Oh, do ya? Well, that's funny, because I happen to have Mr. McLuhan right here, so, so, yeah, just lemme lemme lemme — ［pulls McLuhan from behind a nearby poster stand］ — Come over here for a second. Tell him! Marshall McLuhan: I heard what you were saying. You know nothing of my work. You mean my whole fallacy is wrong. How you ever got to teach a course in anything is totally amazing. Alvy Singer: ［breaking the fourth wall］ Boy, if life were only like this! He said, if life were only like this. To this fictional scene, McLuhan is God, in the sense that he is the real and the supposedly “all-knowing”. The whole scene has a disturbing flavor of testing God and demanding a miracle. Remember Ivan Karamazov? You do not tempt the Lord. If you tempt God you will lose all faith in him and will dash into pieces against the earth. Woody wants to be the God of Truth, like when Issac told Yale that he would like to model himself after God. But look closely at McLuhan’s lines, and you’ll be amazed by director’s level of self-censorship. You mean my whole fallacy is wrong. His fallacy? This God of his is a God of fallacy. * He hated Mary, because he is Mary. * And because he is Mary, this is the gradual collapse of a history of narcissism. Just kidding. 太晚了，此刻我忽然不想谈论哲学，也不想写英文。我不想写yale-issac-mary之间的俄狄浦斯三角论，不想写Mary如何是一个woody女性角色标本化的试验品，不想写the double consciousness of the director。也许我应该停止理论化无法被理论化的情感，而去捕风捉影。我将他们在从Fellini片场走出来的那一段对话看了一遍又一遍，试图发现相爱的节点。 于是我有了一个新发现：不爱。 与yale的生物教室对峙，他念出了Zelda Fitzgerald这个名字。 See, I've always had this penchant... ...for what I call " kamikaze women." I call them kamikazes because they crash their plane. They crash it into you, and you die with them. As soon as there's little chance of it working out... ...something clicks in my mind. Maybe because I'm a writer. A dramatic or aesthetic component becomes right... ...and I go after that person. There's a certain dramatic ambience that's almost... ...as if I fall in love with the situation. - 《husbands and wives》 一种互相了解的错觉，词汇间的游戏，陈词滥调。Godard说要和语言暴君说再见。词汇和幻想，组成了这段似是而非的爱情。Adam Phillips 说我们永远不是在爱一个人的整体，而是爱一个手势，一个句子，一个笑 – 某种意义上我们都是fetishists – 而这是会失掉的。幻想一旦成为了现实就会失掉。Woody一直在翻来覆去说类似的话，你记不记得在Everyone says I love you里，Woody的角色（你看，这样的角色总是导演的）因为心理医生的情报，了解到Julia Roberts的每一个癖好每一个幻想每一个梦，他于是可以扮演一个完美情人，租一个在巴黎的完美房间，和她讨论完美的Tintoretto，完美的Bora Bora。然而她最终还是离开了他，“我的幻梦已经实现，于是我不再害怕它们了。” 我的幻梦已经实现，于是不再害怕，也不再需要了。 Mary和Issac的场景都十分戏剧化，一个精心搭建小心维护的世界 – fellini的party，午夜的曼哈顿，下着暴雨的天文馆 – 当场景慢慢的移到屋檐下，移到日复一日之中去，这场戏就悄然落幕了。 而此刻，tracy，tracy’s face, in her absence, 又成为了可以拿来造梦的东西。 Why is life worth living? It's a very good question. Um... Well, There are certain things I guess that make it worthwhile. Like what... okay... um... For me, uh... ooh... I would say... what, Groucho Marx, to name one thing... and Wilie Mays... and um... the 2nd movement of the Jupiter Symphony... and um... Louis Armstrong, recording of Potato Head Blues... um... Swedish movies, naturally... Sentimental Education by Flaubert... uh... Marlon Brando, Frank Sinatra... those incredible Apples and Pears by Cezanne... uh... the crabs at Sam Wo's... uh... Tracy's face... 可笑的是，他说出Tracy’s face 这句话之前，是一连串的标签与符号，cultural capital。是Mary可以理解而Tracy不能的事。可笑的是，他也对Mary说过，the Mind is the most overrated organ 这样的话。而当他表达爱意，还是要以这些cultural capital为参照系。他已经无法不透过这些滤镜去感受，他明白这一点。他不断地改着自己的小说，认为开头太corny。而且请注意，Sentimental Education，请注意。还有比这更为讽刺的事吗？ 太晚了，猫又在打架，抢我的柿子吃。明天写Chapter Three，关于为什么喜欢Tracy。 * Chapter 3 有些任性，写的时候在魂不守舍地看马蒂斯。暂且留着。

【2022年更新，终于在旧照片里找到的Chapter 3】

看到第三遍，开始被Tracy迷得不行，而这完全不是因为她是个Hemingway。

之前有人评《Celebrity》：一无是处，yet, every minute of DiCaprio gives the whole picture a surge of energy which subsides as he exits.

我此刻在一个挂满Matisse的展厅里，“le studio rose." The monstrous thing is not that men have created roses out of a dung heap, but that, for some reason or other they should want roses. For some reason or other man looks for the miracle, and will debauch himself with ideas, and will reduce himself to a shadow. 我们都是疲惫不堪的骨架。Issac的脸摆在头骨边上是如此和谐统一。He uses ideas to flatten himself, forever looking for flesh. 而Tracy一往无前，毫无阴翳。前两次看我认为这是一种傻白甜，什么pure innocence，不就是蠢吗。

但，在其他人都是概念与幽灵时，她是血与肉。

她讲，not everyone gets corrupted; you gotta have a little faith in people.

而她真是这么认为。

她就像DiCaprio，分分秒秒给这个片子一种了不起的生命力。Issac十分patrionizing地叫她对和同龄男孩子玩。她怎么答的呢，她说，可我爱的是你呀。

就这么讲出来了，竟然。

很伤心，我的十七岁，似乎也没有那么远。那时还不懂滴水不漏，你进我退，没有用所谓知识装饰自己的习惯。玫瑰还是真正的玫瑰，不是含沙射影的隐喻。自己完好无损，世界完好无损。

For her, everything was justified, supremely justified.

Issac指着头骨说了嘛。我们迟早有天像她一样，也许还更糟。现在的我，两眼空空，清晨醒来会想不到任何名字，很难说受到什么打磨却疲惫不堪，看到别人的才华恨意就费劲地像怎样可以偷过来，抢过来，骗过来。

Tracy said, let's fool around. Let's do it some strange way that you've always wanted to, but nobody would do with you.

这是我最喜欢的台词，年轻真是太好了，很想抢过来。 * Chapter 4 罪与错，赛末点，卡桑德拉之梦，都是不厌其烦地讲一件事：为了地位你可以做到什么程度。Woody在一个访谈里也说到，这是一个自省的麦克白。曼哈顿里，阶级意识隐藏在情感和图像里——你看到的是私人艺术馆，只为你们开放的中央公园，Invitation Only的晚宴，镜头永远向上，你看不到的是躺在街边无家可归的人。这为什么是一个黑与白的片子，黑与白是什么意思？你说这是浪漫主义，是无可名状的怀旧，我却想到五十年代的研究者们误以为梦里是没有颜色的。梦通向无意识。梦里从来没有这两样东西：没有矛盾（There is no fighting between incompatible wishes – they simply resolve themselvesinto a compromise formation.），没有否定（the unconscious knows no negation, only “contents, cathected with greater or lesser strength”）。简单地讲，无意识不需要为自己写说明书，或是陈情状。黑与白是无意识对道德的报复。我有了一些十分阴暗的想法 – 棕黄色的水，凌晨三点打电话来向Mary求助的心理医生 – 这些都轻轻巧巧地出现在这个世界里，不需要推敲与解释，而是在Issac絮絮叨叨一如既往地抱怨中融化了。最有意思的是，这个故事没有顺序，你可以正过来读，倒过来读，从中间劈开挑出一页来读，都是同样的——同一个故事，同一种neurosis。 Issac的悲伤，在于他似乎想要醒过来，对于曼哈顿，他的总结陈词是“people in Manhattan are constantly creating these unnecessary neurotic problems for themselves - because it keeps them from dealing with more unsolvable terrifying problems about the universe.” Evelyn Waugh也讲过类似的话，For in that city ［New York］ there is neurosis in the air which the inhabitants mistake for energy. Tracy的作用是——她是一个门钥匙，你可以透过她的lens来看这个无意识的世界，看到这真他妈的荒谬透顶，于是你可以开始分析其中的矛盾，开始否定。当Issac和Tracy在一起的时候，他忍受不了Mary的那一套玩意儿（想要探讨ethics的你，也许可以把Tracy看作是他的moral foundation，然而我不愿这么想）。然而，当Tracy悄然退场，他单独见到了Mary。尤其是，这是在一场标志性的Fellini的晚宴之后（我实在很喜欢这个桥段/表述，还有比Fellini的晚宴更像梦的吗？），他“似乎是”爱上了Mary。他认为这场突如其来的爱情再正常不过，无需与自己和解 – 就好像对女同性恋的隐藏暴力，对class的轻描淡写，对中产阶级家庭观念的持之以恒 – 这些他都不讲！当然，他是一个艺术家，我们不该对他的社会批判有怎样的苛求。但当他对好莱坞嗤之以鼻，对这些文化垃圾恶心反胃时，我还是轻轻地摇了头。怎么讲，我们 – 尤其，作为局中人，剧中人 – 总是选择去看见我们想要看见的，而忽视我们想要忽视的。我们总是在梦与现实之间往返、兜转，在一个时刻企求另外一个，永无止息。他– 一个盲目自信、盲目自恋者 – 总是可以找到Tracy的，她似乎总是跑不远。虽然最后她还是跑掉了，并给了他一条难以置信的人生笺言。 P.S. "Your self esteem is like a notch below Kafka's." - if anyone ever doubts Woody's genius, this one-liner could shut them up. P.S.S. 打算在thesis里加一个章节，揭露作者本人的identity bias, and how that plays into the argument in this whole shit. 不知道Antonio会不会买账。

相较于本片，或许午夜巴塞罗那和午夜巴黎这两部片子更广为人知；事实上在笔者心中，曼哈顿可以算作是这三部城市系列中的第一部分。伍迪艾伦的电影长于长篇单口式对白与浪漫主义镜头语言和音乐语言，但借助于这些浪漫主义符号又往往表达的是对一种群体族群，一种阶层的刻薄讽刺。几乎所有的电影都可以用上面这句话来切入或者解读。但是这种讽刺有时并不是那么刺骨反而吹面不寒，同伍迪艾伦对于自导自演的倾向也许原因是类似的，用导演自己的话解释：“我永远不会加入由我这样的人组成的聚会。”，电影是导演对于自己的批判以及对于整个小布尔乔亚型知识分子的批判，所以一方面像蝙蝠一样厌恶自己，一方面又沉沦于这种题材，除了少数几部无出其右。说回电影本身，同午夜巴黎里明显的讽刺“掉书袋”以及午夜巴塞罗那里“叶公好龙”然后真香的闹剧式神经质爱情讽刺不同，本片通过对于一个大龄渣男爱情的再现幽微的表达了对鼻涕虫式学院派知识分子的鄙夷与同情（笑）。另外一个有意思的地方是本片中17岁少女身上所展现出的倒错，本身由于年轻“无知”被男主以及他的同伴们玩物化（原谅笔者可能过于主观），但对于至少是大家对于感情的公知有着比巨婴型男主远更成熟的看法。这位尚未成年的小女友依然保存着对爱情的美好向往，而不是将其看作摆脱苦闷生活的游戏。不懂生活的规则，可能会失去很多乐趣；但天真的人对世界有一种直觉的理解，这是费里尼告诉我们的真理。当然作为W.A吹本片并不止这一个看点，角色的复杂性也并非几句话可以表达清楚。读者还是自行观赏微妙。最打动笔者之处是WA在电话亭中心碎的停滞片段，也许打动我的也能打动你。