这部电影以及原著小说，乃至于最最根本的根源 Virginia Woolf 的"Mrs Dalloway" , 都给我留下了深刻的印象。但是也是很久没有想起了。最近一个朋友提起，又勾起了从前的种种印象， email 往返，索性记下来，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) 通常大家觉得 Richard Brown 的自杀可以理解，一个艾滋病人，生不如死，跳窗自杀可以理解。 Virginia Woolf ，一个神经兮兮的作家，自杀了也就自杀了，没有什么可追究的。唯一不可理解的是 Laura Brown, 有一个正常的家庭，可以说是爱她的丈夫，儿子，而且怀孕，居然想自杀，然后是逃离现实生活，离开家庭孩子，简直是不可理喻，甚至是其后家庭种种厄运的罪魁祸首。于是有了关于她的种种探讨。 ----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，弘一法师）， Śākyamuni( 释 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... --书中的 Laura 不是不爱她的丈夫孩子，不是不热爱属于她的生活，可是她差一点走向了死亡，最终她还是选择了离开家庭，独自去面对自己的内心。 Sometime you just feel don't belong to. 我想这就是我们的问题。有时候面对家庭琐事，面对孩子，会觉得自己的灵魂已经游离。有时候面对对面滔滔不绝的嘴，你会觉得不知所云。我想这就是我们 feel don't belong to 的时候。
--《The Hours》里 的 Laura, 我想她应该是沉湎于精神世界里的一种人。她永远游离于她所存在的现实生活，即便她的物质的身体客观地在那儿。她了解那种平凡的幸福和正常人应该满足的生活，可是她无法摆脱内心的那种渴望与需求。 Laura 最终的出走，我想，于她是一种精神的回归，是一种必然的结局。
--“ 游离 ” 的感觉你应该知道，与具体的人物事件无关，与本性有关，是一种内心深处的感觉。《 The hours 》里面的 Laura 也并不是不喜欢她的家庭生活，她甚至很努力地去试图扮演好自己的角色。可是她以失败告终。我想这种精神的游离感来自于一种内 心深处的需求，它是脱离于现实生活的，或者说是高于现实生活的。所以现实生活永远无法满足这种需求，无论如何接近完美。 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. |
