<The Hours> 這部電影以及原著小說，乃至於最最根本的根源Virginia Woolf的 <Mrs Dalloway>, 都給我留下了深刻的印象。但是也是很久沒有想起了。最近一個朋友提起，又勾起了從前的種種印象，email往返，索性記下來，以作存念。 http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/The_Hours_(novel)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hours_(novel)
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/The_Hours_(film) 通常大家覺得Richard Brown 的自殺可以理解，一個艾滋病人，生不如死，跳窗自殺可以裂解。Virginia Woolf，一個神經兮兮的作家，自殺了也就自殺了，沒有什麼可追究的。唯一不可理解的是Laura Brown, 有一個正常的家庭，可以說是愛她的丈夫，兒子，而且懷孕，居然想自殺，然後是逃離現實生活，離開家庭孩子，簡直是不可理喻，甚至是其後家庭種種厄運的罪魁禍首。於是有了關於她的種種探討。 ----Actually I think they are just the truth, the deep truth, nothing to depress, it's just the true life, live or die, it's all about the time, the hours... ----I think Laura is an extreme case of those who feels not belong to. She cannot stay the life anymore, either die or escape. She chose to live, then she had to endure more, even more than death.
---The "What if" should make things different. People seeking for soul mate to help with the loneliness born with them. If her husband is her soul mate, then she will be able to share her inner world with the outside world, life will be easier for her, I think. --Probably the Laura's despair of her family life came from the personality miss-match between her and Dan. Although they seemed love each other, but they definitely did not understand each other. Do you think Laura will be happy if she married a more sophisticated man? --If Laura was just escaping from the life, then definitely she has nowhere to go. But if she has something in her spiritual world, like Li ShuTong(李叔同，弘一法師），Śākyamuni(釋 迦牟尼), they left their family for the spirit, then it will be a different story. For some people, spiritual world is much more important for them than the physical world/stuff, even including the family, although they love them too. --There are times when you don't belong... " some people stay there with empty body, some people simply go to where they belongs to. --"To look life in the face. Always to look life in the face and to know it for what it is. At last to know it. To love it for what it is, and then, to put it away." some people look too deep into the life, some people never know it, some people never love it, some people never put it away... 書中的Laura不是不愛她的丈夫孩子，不是不熱愛屬於她的生活，可是她差一點走向了死亡，最終她還是選擇了離開家庭，獨自去面對自己的內心。 Sometime you just feel don't belong to. 我想這就是我們的問題。有時候面對家庭瑣事，面對孩子，會覺得自己的靈魂已經游離。有時候面對對面滔滔不絕的嘴，你會覺得不知所云。我想這就是我們 feAel don't belong to的時候。
<The Hours>里的Laura, 我想她應該是沉湎於精神世界裡的一種人。她永遠遊離於她所存在的現實生活，即便她的物質的身體客觀地在那。她了解那種平凡的幸福和正常人應該滿足的生活，可是她無法擺脫內心的那種渴望與需求。Laura 最終的出走，我想，於她是一種精神的回歸，是一種必然的結局。
“游離”的感覺你應該知道，與具體的人物事件無關，與本性有關，是一種內心深處的感覺。《The hours》裡面的Laura也並不是不喜歡她的家庭生活，她甚至很努力地去試圖扮演好自己的角色。可是她以失敗告終。我想這種精神的游離感來自於一種內 心深處的需求，它是脫離於現實生活的，或者說是高於現實生活的。所以現實生活永遠無法滿足這種需求，無論如何接近完美。 Cunningham's [novel] touched on notes of longing, middle-aged angst and the sense of being a small consciousness in the midst of a grand mystery.But Daldry and Hare's [film] sounds those notes and sends audiences out reverberating with them, exalted."[ Dear Leonard. To look life in the face. Always to look life in the face and to know it for what it is. At last to know it. To love it for what it is, and then, to put it away. Leonard. Always the years between us. Always the years. Always the love. Always the hours. There are times when you don't belong and you think you're going to kill yourself. We live our lives, do whatever we do, and then we sleep. It's as simple and ordinary as that. A few jump out windows, or drown themselves, or take pills; more die by accident; and most of us are slowly devoured by some disease, or, if we're very fortunate, by time itself. There's just this for consolation: an hour here or there when our lives seem, against all odds & expectations, to burst open & give us everything we've ever imagined, though everyone but children (and perhaps even they) know these hours will inevitably be followed by others, far darker and more difficult. Still, we cherish the city, the morning, we hope, more than anything for more. Heaven only knows why we love it so. I've stayed alive for you. But now you have to let me go. But I still have to face the hours, don't I? I mean, the hours after the party, and the hours after that... Someone has to die in order that the rest of us should value life more. It's contrast. Try to understand Laura a little bit more as in the novel... Laura wants desperately to desire nothing more than the life she has as a wife and mother, to be making a cake, and sees both the cake-making and her present lot in life as her art, just as writing is Virginia Woolf's art: - She will not lose hope. She will not mourn her lost possibilities, her unexplored talents (what if she has no talents, after all?). She will remain devoted to her son, her husband, her home and duties, all her gifts. She will want this second child.
-Laura's thoughts, the final sentences of the chapter, p. 79, 1999 Fourth Estate paperback edition - Why, she wonders, does it seem that she could give him anything, anything at all, and receive essentially the same response. What does he desire nothing, really, beyond what he's already got?...This, she reminds herself, is a virtue.
--Laura ruminates on Dan's relentless contentedness. p100, 1999 Fourth Estate paperback edition. - Her cake is a failure, but she is loved anyway. She is loved, she thinks, in more or less the way the gifts will be appreciated: because they've been given with good intentions, because they exist, because they are part of a world in which one wants what one gets". p100-101, 1999 Fourth Estate paperback edition.
- Why did she marry him? She married him out of love. She married him out of guilt; out of fear of being alone; out of patriotism.
--Laura reflects on the complex reasons she married Dan. p106, 1999 Fourth Estate paperback edition. - The question has been silently asked and silently answered, it seems. They are both afflicted and blessed, full of shared secrets, striving every moment. They are both impersonating someone. They are weary and beleaguered; they have taken on such enormous work.
--Laura and Kitty embrace in the kitchen. p110, 1999 Fourth Estate paperback edition. |
