复仇 英文影评 Revanche Movie Review

The bank robber who made a tragic error in judgement
by Roger Ebert

"Revanche" involves a rare coming together of a male’s criminal nature and a female’s deep needs, entwined with a first-rate thriller. It is also perceptive in observing characters, including a proud old man. Rare is the thriller that is more about the reasons of people instead of the needs of the plot.

Alex and Tamara are a sad couple. In a trashy Vienna brothel, she is a prostitute from the Ukraine, he is an ex-con who works as a bouncer for the reprehensible pimp Konecny. They are having a secret affair. Neither has the nerve to cross the pimp, the ruler of their world. Konecny has his eye on Tamara, and at one point, visits her for ual purposes while Alex hides humiliatingly under her bed.

Both Alex (Johannes Krisch) and Tamara (Irina Potapenko) are pitiful. They steal moments of love in their grubby rooms, and Alex plots a bank robbery. He brings her along in the getaway car. It will be easy, he says. Nobody will get hurt. Look — his gun isn’t even loaded. But it does go wrong, and a cop turns up just as they’re driving away.

Alex takes refuge at the only place he can think of, his grandfather’s humble farm. And it is here that the story transcends crooks and hookers and bank jobs and becomes so surprisingly human. The catalyst, I think, is the character of the grandfather, played by Hannes Thanheiser.

He’s a proud old man, living alone, mourning his wife, feeding his friends the cows, resisting well-meaning attempts to move him into a “home.” When he dies, he wants to be carried out of his farmhouse. He has seen little of his grandson. Alex goes to work, chopping a mountain of firewood for the winter. They eat simple meals of sausage, cheese and bread. I liked the old man and wanted to give him some mustard.

Susanne (Ursula Strauss), a neighbor’s wife, visits Alex with offers of assistance. He appreciates her friendliness but not her help. Alex is distant and unfriendly. She takes good notice of him, and out of the blue, asks him to visit her that night, when her husband is away. He does. No formalities. They have on her kitchen table.
Of course she is the wife of the cop who happened upon the bank robbery, but none of them can know this. We do. We also know that the cop cannot give her a child, and she wants to become pregnant. In this limited world, the old man’s son is the only eligible father; she loves the old man and sees the son working hard for him. The suspense at first involves whether the cop will happen upon them having .

Then “Revanche,” nominated this year for the best foreign film Oscar, begins to involve a great deal more. It’s here that the film’s power resides. It seamlessly brings together the possibility of violence, of Alex’s exposure, of threats to Susanne’s marriage, of harm to the old man’s well-being, in a way that doesn’t seem to manipulate these things for advantage. Instead, it simply tells a good story, very well. Susanne becomes the protagonist. She is taking dangerous risks. All three of the men are unhappy and touchy. In a way, she represents their only hope.

As I watched “Revanche,” I became grateful that I didn’t know the actors. American films often involve actors well known to me, which is fine — but also sometimes stars chosen primarily because they’re “bankable.” Few bankable stars could work in this material. The Austrian actors look ... normal. Unglamorous. Plausible. Ursula Strauss, as Susanne, looks sweet and pleasant but is care-worn and not a great beauty. As Alex, Johannes Krisch looks like a loser marginalized by crime and prison. As the prostitute Tamara, Irina Potapenko retails what beauty she has in a buyer’s market.

All of these actors create characters who are above all people, not performances. That’s why the film is peculiarly effective; it’s about their lives, not their dilemmas. And the bedrock is old Hannes Thanheiser, born in 1925, as a strong, stubborn, weathered old man who doesn’t live through his grandson, his neighbors or anyone else, but on his own terms, in daily mourning of the wife who shared his long life. That harm or loss could come to him would be a great misfortune.

How often, after seeing a thriller, do you continue to think about the lives of its characters? If you open up most of them, it’s like looking inside a wristwatch. Opening this one is like heart surgery.  www.130q.com

"Revanche" was a 2009 Oscar nominee.

石头抛向原本平静的湖面，它直接穿透了湖水，继而在重力作用下逐渐下沉，清澈的湖水包裹着石头，将它带向充满未知的湖底，然而波纹终究是会散去的，当它散去的那一刻，整个湖面又将恢复平静，但是此刻的湖面已经不再是之前的那个湖面了。 
 
“复仇”作为一种行为其本身就相当纠结，一方面它经受着人类社会最严厉的法律的制裁，另一方面它又受到道德准则的极大推崇，法律与道德之间的这种矛盾，造就了“复仇”的两面性。是默然忍受罪恶暴虐的毒箭，或是挺身反抗内心的愤怒不满，通过“复仇”亲手把罪恶扫清，这两种行为究竟哪一种更加高尚？这个问题似乎永远都不会有一个明确的答案，但有一点十分明确，不管是文学作品还是影视作品，只要一旦涉及到了“复仇”这个话题，那么他往往就具备了先天的可塑性。
 
影片《复仇》就是这样一部试图通过复仇这种行为来深入探讨人性的电影作品。同样的片名，若是放在好莱坞或者同好莱坞日益靠近的法国，那么很容易就会让人联想到这是一部动作电影，其中必定充斥着大量的火爆场面以及怨气冲天的血海深仇。然而出人意料的是，此次的这部《复仇》却是来自于小国奥地利，从这个欧洲艺术黄金殿堂中所出产电影，不可避免地蕴含了典型的欧式人文主义，影片最终也的确验证了这样一个事实。没有紧张刺激的背景音乐、没有极具视觉冲击力的运动镜头、就连最为核心的复仇方式也完全没有任何详细的描述，暴力在这里被彻底的抛弃了。导演所真正关注的，是影片中的这群人物，以及环境对于他们的压迫。
 
谁说妓女没有爱情，妓女也同样渴望过上幸福的生活，现实世界的残酷致使她们不得不出卖自己的身体，在物欲横流的红灯区中用自己的泪水换取那一丝生存的权利。当同样在红灯区里打杂的男人爱上了妓女，他们之间的结合使她头一次享受到了爱情的愉悦，爱情让男人意识到了自己的责任，他想要带自己心爱的女人离开这座喧嚣的城市，去恬静的地方过平凡的生活。然而他们的计划中所缺少的恰恰又是最为物质的金钱，对于一个生活在社会最底层的男性来说，他只能用最原始的抢劫来证明自己仅存的那点雄性本色，也正是这种粗暴直接将爱人变成了下孤魂。爱情在这一刻变成了魔鬼给塔玛拉的致命游戏。
 
影片的前半段用了将近45分钟的时间来刻画边缘社会中的人物生活状况，在霓虹灯下拉客却遭人戏弄的塔玛拉，替老板开车却不敢正视老板的阿历克斯。透过这两个人物所展现出来的，是边缘人最真实的日常生活，没有声嘶力竭的呐喊，只有悄无声息的忍受，成功者在纸醉金迷的红灯区中始终都以一种强者的姿态站在高处发号施令，而生活于社会最底层的妓女则只能默然忍受发生在自己身上的一切。巧妙地是，导演并没有把镜头过多得停留在妓女的工作上，而是把镜头聚焦在了妓女的爱情生活上，爱情与生存之间的矛盾，塔玛拉最终选择了“爱情”，而这种“爱情”直接使“生存”变得紧迫，阿历克斯的抢劫更是将这种紧迫感直接带向了悲剧的彼岸。
 
从阿历克斯带着塔玛拉一同去银行打劫的那一刻起，悲剧的序幕已经被渐渐拉开，当警员罗伯特射偏的子弹穿过驾驶座进入塔玛拉的身体时，死亡已经不可避免的发生开来。那堆冒着生命危险抢劫而来的现金刹那间没有了半点意义，伴随着生命的消逝，仇恨的种子瞬间生长成了参天大树，遮蔽了原本明媚的阳光，将阿历克斯拖入了漫长的黑夜。
 
复仇的主题在这里终于得以上演，出人意料的是，整部影片的画面在塔玛拉死后瞬间从浓艳的霓虹世界转向了恬静的乡村小镇，没有张扬不羁的暴力行为，有的只是幽闭树林中所透入出来的沉重压抑。塔玛拉的死同过去不堪回首的生活凝结在了一起，向阿历克斯不断袭来，那原本触手可及的未来在此刻突然变得遥不可及，孤寂、内疚、迷茫、造就了阿历克斯内心最深的仇恨，他试图用子弹结束罗伯特的生命，但是复杂的内心却又一直在责怪着自己的罪恶。当他把上了膛的对准晨练中的罗伯特时，最终还是选择了放弃。
 
他开始在年迈的祖父家深居简出，每天重复地砍伐木柴，通过不断地工作来克制自己心中的那份仇恨。与此同时，塔玛拉的死也彻底地改变了罗伯特与妻子苏珊娜原本和睦的家庭生活。罗伯特为自己的过失深感内疚，始终都觉得身边的亲友在为此责怪他，他没有办法像过去那样欢笑着与家人谈笑，生理上的缺陷也使他的家庭变得危机不断。当苏珊娜与阿历克斯发生了关系之后，这两个家庭之间的联系开始变得愈发复杂，愈发纠结。复仇不再是纯粹的你死我活。罗伯特的妻子靠阿历克斯有了身孕，这可以算是阿历克斯对于罗伯特另一种形式的复仇，但同时这也是阿历克斯对于罗伯特婚姻生活的一次挽救，在阴暗的小屋中，他答应苏珊娜为此事永远保密。
 
死去的塔玛拉再一次成为了真正的悲剧，无论是她在世时的妓女生涯，还是她死时的不明不白。她的死亡就像是被抛入湖中的石头，在原本平静的湖面上制造出了巨大的波纹，可是最终依旧要归于平静。在初秋时节的湖岸，阿历克斯与罗伯特头一次有了正面的交流，他感受到了罗伯特心中的那份自责，罗伯特也点破了他始终不敢面对的事实——他不该带那个姑娘一起去抢银行。塔玛拉的死归根结蒂还是阿历克斯自己所造成的，那么自己犯下的罪，又究竟该去找谁复仇呢？
 
《复仇》中的每一个角色都是孤独的，他们过着封闭的生活，但又始终渴望着被人理解，在这里复仇不再是一种肃清仇恨的方式，而成为了一条极端压抑的救赎之路。当阿历克斯对苏珊娜说出了真相的时候，苏珊娜并没有表现出巨大的震惊。往事已经过去，生活还要继续，生命到底重生了没？我们不得而知，但是开放式的结尾给予了阿历克斯生命第二次机会。

文/基督山伯爵  更多 www.130q.com