黑泽明

1985年, 75岁的日本导演黑泽明在富士山拍摄根据莎士比亚戏剧《李尔王》改编的古装巨作《乱》。投资拍摄这部“史上最贵日本片”的法国制片人Serge Silberman（长期与路易斯·布努埃尔合作）委托法国导演克里斯·马克（Chris Marker）拍一部纪录片，于是，有了这部弥漫诗意的《黑泽明》(A.K.)。马克曾拍片致敬苏联导演门德夫金和塔可夫斯基（1993年的《最后的布尔什维克》和2000年的《告别塔可夫斯基》），也迷恋日本文化（1983年的《日月无光》大部分在日本拍摄），对黑泽明充满敬意。因黑泽明拒绝在现场接受采访，纪录片拍摄也尽量不搅扰《乱》的拍摄进度，马克的摄影机多隔开距离、却是细致入微地观察（拜长焦镜头所赐）。        《黑泽明》分为十个段落，呼应《乱》的主旨意境、黑泽明其他作品、及马克自己的趣味：战、忍、义、速、马、雨、莳绘、火、雾、乱，以日、法、英文字幕呈现。马克的摄影机不断横向运动：横移或橫摇，无限延展水平空间。景深浅，大量特写：群众演员的盔甲细节、烤火的手套、手指、脚、细微的面部表情……因了太过迫近的呈现，有种陌生化的亲密与质感，马克标记性的、对人的好奇。黑泽明长期合作的七位影人，被马克戏称“七武士”，唯一的女性、黑泽明的助理野上照代曾写过本书，中文译作《等云到》，关于天气、拍摄苦辛与影片的氛围。美国导演约翰·福特曾对黑泽明说：“你电影里很多下雨场景啊！”后者答：“你真用心看我的电影了。”富士山的冬雾中，作曲家武满彻独自探寻搭建的古堡。他现代主义气息浓郁的弦乐四重奏，也出现在纪录片中。    黑泽明对马（或马的影像）的迷恋，在他为山本嘉次郎电影《马》（1941）作副导演时已见端倪。马克令其中黑白影像呈现于一个电视屏幕上，衬着红色背景。这也是片中《乱》片场外的唯一场景。影片穿插其他时候对黑泽明的采访，他谈及自己的电影理念，声音显得辽远。黑泽明对演员表演要求甚高，不厌其烦地演练与重拍。他对一位演员说：“声音不要太高，那会让你没有威严感”。黑泽明的电影受到日本能剧美学观影响，还有“莳绘”，漆器上以金、银、色粉等绘制纹样装饰的日本传统工艺。《乱》中黑泽明要达到的效果，是金色与黑色：将路边芒草染成金色，天边挂一爿绘成金色的新月，夜色昏暗，老者策马踽踽而行。这个场景拍了，却并未出现在成片中。电影，总是遗憾的艺术。

Chris Marker (1921-2012) was a prominent of the Left Bank subset of Nouvelle Vague movement, whose essayistic, non-narrative output encompasses a vast cosmos of its own. Marker's short THE PIER (1962) is a heteroclite time-travel experiment marvelously constructed from and concatenated through black-and-white still photos, formally constituting an unnerving ouroboros of one's own fatality not before presciently cautioning audience that humanity can still be saved under its post-apocalyptic milieu.Here are three feature-length documents that spanning 27 years. LETTER FROM SIBERIA is an hour-long colorized ethnocultural reportage of Siberia, its nature, people, customs and the 20th century modernization. A diverting eye-opener garnished with a witty, sometimes even sardonic commentary written by Marker himself and some ingenious divertissements, like the adorable animation sequences about mammoth and a fake TV commercial plugging the utility of a reindeer, joyously jeering the western consumerism. Plus a demonstration of Kuleshov effect (depicting the city of Yakutsk) perceptively hits the mark of how to calibrating a documentary's objectivity. Elsewhere, Marker's missive keeps its distance from engaging with the local denizens, gaping at the ethnic visages and get-ups, intoxicated with their otherness while digressing into other sideshows: the gold rush, the taiga and permafrost, a domesticated bear, just to name a few. Whereas the film is almost guilty as charged for being an outsider viewing and scoping a remote land and culture with a touristic inclination (a go-to approach from a curio-seeking western angle), what Marker achieves with a difference is a stimulating combo of wry humor, alacrity and felicity, emanated from his keen observation, off-kilter erudition and humanistic rumination.

Marker's epistolary philosophizing and pluperfect facility of synchronizing between his texts and imageries come into full bloom 25 years later in SUN LESS, whose title borrows from Modest Mussorgsky's eponymous song circle. Ostensibly a loose travelogue shot by a borrowed 16mm Beaulieu camera, casting a curious look into Japanese culture and life, the film turns out to be far more comprehensive and contemplative. Compiling also footage from Guinea-Bissau, Cape Verde, Iceland, Paris, San Francisco (revisiting the places in Hitchcock's VERTIGO, 1958), some of which are plundered from other artists (the killing a giraffe sequence is disturbingly indelible) and cued by the opening quote"Because I know that time is always time. And place is always and only place." from T.S. Eliot, it is a metaphysical essay on how we navigate our thinking and memories among the spatiotemporal variables. For instance, a montage sequence fluently intercuts between clips of Japanese movies (either scary or erotic) with the faces of passengers napping in the metro, implying their inner, perhaps subliminal thoughts. A mischievous jape nonetheless prompts viewers to ponder over the unfathomable: how one's mind works? Is it an inherently solipsistic process which is privy exclusively to each individual being? Its unknowability makes a fascinating thought. Another snippet about a cat's temple underscores Japan's Shintoism and its reverberations at large, the reverence towards the unknowable, the impermanence. Further integrating Moog synthesizer and avant-garde digital image-visualization to Marker's sonic-optical experiments, SUN LESS establishes itself as an exquisite potpourri of cultural observation and self-involved rumination, and Marker's supernal intellect can guarantee that his keen critique and wide-ranging aperçus are heuristic, thought-provoking, trenchant, anything but navel-gazing.

A.K. is a behind-the-scene documentary about Akira Kurosawa's filming of RAN (1985), his resplendent Sengoku period epic adaptation and transposition of Bard's King Lear shot near Mount Fuji, a high-priced France-Japan coproduction (its budget of $11-12 million made it the most expensive Japanese film in history), which grants Marker a vantage point to closely observe the maestro in action.However, adhering to Marker's trademark essayist methodology, A.K. is not a conventional making-of documentary. There is no talking-heads holding forth on the film they are producing, in fact, there is no interviews whatsoever. Instead, the camera retains a fly-on-the-wall presence, furtively tracking, panning, gazing at the production process and its environs (divided into 10 segments, whose titles ranging from battle, patience, loyalty to horse, fog and rain), focusing on the extras (ultra-close-ups are used to allow them some footage for remembrance as most of them cannot be spotted in the final picture), the elemental forces (against the mountain fog and the impetuous gust), and Kurosawa’s meticulous work ethic (gold-gilt blades of grass, artificial moon). Overall, the documentary goes hard to impress audience with an expeditious, collective labor of love in relation to RAN’s sheer ginormous production scale, and intermittently, sheds some light on Kurosawa’s personalities (conscientious but always kind and sans pretension). These three features (plus one short) are Your’s Truly’s introductions to Marker’s ineffably enlightening, incorrigibly Gallic anthropological universe. His audio-visual creations are a fertile symbiosis of poeticism and lyricism, mundane spectacles and spiritual introspections. By avoiding any intrusive perspective from his subjects, his showing-but-not-telling modus operandi conveys a ceaseless enchantment of his own steam of consciousness that transcends documentary’s message-burdening sobriety and rigidity. His opuses are as freewheeling as his meandering, idiosyncratic, melancholy-free philosophies and insights, which themselves are a seam of nuggets inviting audience to return in his headspace time and again. referential entries: Jessica Kingdon's ASCENSION (2021, 6.1/10); Gregory Monro's KUBRICK BY KUBRICK (2020, 6.4/10); Ingmar Bergman's FÅRÖ DOCUMENT (1970, 7.1/10); Jia Zhangke's I WISH I KNEW (2010, 7.3/10); Agnès Varda's LA POINTE-COURTE (1955, 7.2/10); Alain Resnais's HIROSHIMA MON AMOUR (1959, 8.1/10).

English Title: Letter from SiberiaOriginal Title: Lettre de SibérieYear: 1958Genre: DocumentaryCountry: FranceLanguage: French, EnglishDirector/Writer: Chris MarkerMusic: Pierre BarbaudCinematography: Sacha ViernyEditor: Anne SarrauteRating: 7.7/10English Title: Sun LessOriginal Title: Sans soleilYear: 1983Genre: DocumentaryCountry: FranceLanguage: French, JapaneseDirector/Writer/Music/Editor/Cinematography: Chris MarkerRating: 8.2/10Title: A.K.Year: 1985Genre: DocumentaryCountry: France, JapanLanguage: French, JapaneseDirector/Writer/Editor: Chris MarkerMusic: Tôru TakemitsuCinematography: Frans-Yves MarescotCast:Akira KurosawaRating: 7.3/10

豆瓣7.4分，1008人评价——这个分数对于一部关于黑泽明的纪录片来说，不算高。但别忘了，评分里有一半是冲着黑泽明来的，另一半可能被克里斯·马克的哲学术语劝退了。说真的，马克那种高卢式思辨在这部片子里简直像乱入的弹幕。他非要探讨“技术在记忆中的中介作用”，还要扯上“衰老议题”。你拍的是黑泽明啊！不是萨特！当镜头里黑泽明正满头大汗地指挥千军万马，马克的画外音突然开始背诵《存在与虚无》，我只想喊：闭嘴，让我看大师干活！但抛掉这些哲学包装，剩下的全是宝。黑泽明在片场那种偏执——为了一个镜头等三天云彩，为了盔甲上的泥点亲自拿刷子抹——这种细节比任何理论都动人。仲代达矢演叛将，一个眼神切换能让你起鸡皮疙瘩。还有野上照代，黑泽明御用场记，她在旁白里透露：黑泽明画分镜连士兵脸上伤疤的位置都标好。这种匠人执念，才是纪录片真正的核心。但如果你不是黑泽明铁粉，这片子可能会让你睡着。马克的叙事节奏像他的哲学一样跳脱，上一秒还在拍片场打仗，下一秒切到巴黎咖啡馆念诗。普通观众只想看黑泽明吼演员，不想看马克发牢骚。所以我的观点很明确：如果你是学电影的，这片子值10分——每一个镜头都能扒出分镜教案；但如果你只是想看《乱》的幕后花絮，不如直接找《乱》的making-of特典，更纯粹。马克把纪录片拍成了自己的散文集，黑泽明反而成了配角。这种反客为主，也许是导演对“作者论”的终极实践，但对观众来说，就是堵墙。最后说个细节：片中武满彻配乐那段，黑泽明安静地坐在剪辑台前，画外音是他的呼吸声。那一瞬间，所有哲学都闭嘴了。这才是纪录片的魔力——不是解释大师，而是让你看见他。可惜，马克太爱解释了。