冲破黑暗谷 Tommy(1975)
演员：
影评：
- 番外篇之一：电影与音乐的差别比较
专辑“tommy”在当时的意义可是划时代的，它让大伙儿看到了摇滚发展的一个新领域：宏大、叙事、史诗等这些以前似乎只属于小说、电影和戏剧等艺术形式的专利。从这一点上来说，“tommy”的意义是革命性的。同时，令人遗憾的是，这革命性的意义远大于“tommy”音乐本身的意义。也就是说，在宏大、叙事、史诗等词汇已在摇滚乐界泛滥的时候，现在去听“tommy”，就不会再像当年那么激动了。虽然，平心而论，“tommy”的音乐还是非常出色的；可是，当我们想到“tommy”时，我们会先想到它革命性的创作手法、完整的故事情节、隐晦的政治暗示，然后才是它的音乐本身的精彩，不是么？
同时，与专辑相比，其同名电影的水平实在令人遗憾。“tommy”的情节是比较单一的，故事色彩相对单调，它更适合被改编成一部歌剧，而非对故事性要求更高的电影。电影似乎只满足于把这个故事讲出来，实在敷衍了事。勉强加进去的几个新情节，如tommy母亲对儿子的深厚感情、tommy面对镜子发挥想象，都显得十分小儿科。如果没有专辑的珠玉在前，电影的可看性，几乎就剩不下什么了。
电影还有一个败笔，就是请了太多的明星助阵。请明星倒没什么，问题是这些明星都太爱抢戏，弄得原本还算流畅的故事情节横生枝节无数，幸好还不到一盘散沙的地步。比如扮演医生的jack nicholson，这家伙是好莱坞第一花花公子没错，但也没必要在片中继续发挥自己这一“特长”罢。电影中描绘他是惑于tommy母亲的美貌、才把tommy医治好的。这么改编实在没必要。再如roger daltrey，他是个出色的舞台表演艺术家，身材也瘦削性感，不过在影片中他有太多时候都光着上身了，这表明他只顾展示自己，而忘了自己是在演别人。
多年以后，当人们听着“tommy”、怀念起the who的时候，只会有很少人在同时还怀念着这部电影。
番外篇之二：“tommy”与“the wall”的比较
从个人经历上来看，pete townshend和“the wall”的主创roger waters都非常坎坷，“tommy”和“the wall”都可以看作是他们对童年不幸遭遇的一次大的发泄。只是townshend在乐队中虽然是主要的词曲创作者，但绝非唯一领袖。The who的四位成员都个性非凡，为了不使个性影响到共同的合作，townshend必须适当压抑一些自己，同时迁就一下其他三位成员。“tommy”的器乐风格对于the who以前的作品来说已经是个相当大的转变了，但从歌词上来说风格还是和以前的差不多，依然直白、锐利。所以可以说，townshend在创作中压抑了对自己痛苦的表达，以至于看起来他像是在讲别人的故事。
而在pink floyd乐队，roger waters是当仁不让的一把手、乐队的代言人。这使他可以随心所欲的按自己意愿进行创作，所以我们可以感觉到“the wall”听起来是那么私人化，一切情节、感受都只有一个视角，而不像“tommy”那样具有多个视角。同时，由于这种极端私人化，使得“the wall”的故事显得比“tommy”要隐晦的多，很多情节都不是直接讲述、而是通过上下文的对照看出来的。
“tommy”讲故事的手法中规中矩，而“the wall”由于上文所述原因，显得富于意识流。它在对人性深层次的挖掘上，要比“tommy”更为深入，因而也更为好看、更为震撼。毕竟，“the wall”离“tommy”发行已有十年，没有大的进步是说不过去的。
“the wall”幸运的地方还在于它的同名电影非常优秀，其视觉手法给人带来的震撼，远远冲破了音乐的束缚，让人感受到了新的思想、新的恐惧。比如“goodbye blue sky”中飞上蓝天的白鸽变成黑鹰、然后坐落在地上变成建筑，再如“don’t leave me”中用两朵花模拟男女性交……这些场面的构思都可以称得上是杰出，远非电影“tommy”可比。听过“the wall”专辑后再看同名电影，依然会被强烈吸引住。而“tommy”的电影相对于专辑而言，几乎没有带来什么有价值的新东西。
最后扯点别的。自恋型艺人一向是我的最爱，这当然包括此中的极端分子roger waters，但是这家伙的牢骚未免太多、太单一了点。从专辑“dark side of the moon”中的单曲“us and them”开始他就在反战，到了专辑“the wall”，他的反战呼声到达了最高。然而在随后的专辑“the final cut”中，这小样的还在举着胳膊苍白无力的号召和平，这就未免让人反胃了。在摇滚史上诸多伟大的艺术家中，我发现，其实roger waters的才能相当的平庸。
而pete townshend看起来就要比waters坚强的多。受了这么多磨难，townshend的发泄也没像waters那样没完没了，永无休止。事实上，作为他那个年代最出色的词曲作者之一，townshend的作品内容各式各样，远比waters的怨妇之作丰富的多。
节选自我的文章：amazing journey--the who乐队在“tommy”中的奇幻之旅 - 这样说虽然似乎有点力有不逮，但也并不十分过分。
影片最出彩的地方除了完整重现音乐剧的声响部分外，主演亦是The Who主唱的Roger Daltrey，表演出人意料地让人叹服。乐队其它几位成员也有串场。演员名单里还有Elton John和Eric Clapton，可惜我没有第一时间认出来，呵呵
另外，想不到在这里又看到了Jack Nicholson，呵呵，那标志性的一脸坏笑让人一望即识。在里面饰一走过场性质的医生，虽只短短数分钟，却立刻把旁人比了下去！ - 1969年，The Who专辑《Tommy》~影片由一个耐不住寂寞见一个爱一个、追求浮华物质享受的漂亮妈妈串联~一个目睹捉奸在床事件的孩子受刺激变成欧洲摇滚界的高桥名人~影片中无数老街机、弹珠台是我热爱的理由~当然还有解决Tommy初夜的吉普赛酸梅女皇~那变形金刚似的装备简直就是60s对性爱描写的终极杰作！
Title: Tommy
Year: 1975
Country: UK
Language: English
Genre: Musical, Drama
Director: Ken Russell
Writers:
Ken Russell
The Who
Music: The Who
Cinematography:
Dick Bush
Ronnie Taylor
Robin Lehman
Cast:
Roger Daltrey
Ann-Margret
Oliver Reed
Robert Powell
Tina Turner
Jack Nicholson
Paul Nicholas
Keith Moon
Elton John
Eric Clapton
Arthur Brown
Victoria Russell
Rating: 7.4/10
Ken Russell’s faithful transposition ofPeter Townshend’s rock opera, which stems from THE WHO’s 1969 titular 2 LP album. TOMMY, stars THE WHO’s frontman Roger Daltrey as the incarnation of the adult hero, is Russell’s coup de maître in regard to his visual abandon and ethos emancipation.
The narrative is constituent of miscellaneous episodes recounting the checkered story of Tommy in a chronological order, each goes hand in hand with a song from the album. The tale starts in 1945, a romantic honeymoon of newly-weds Nora (Ann-Margret) and Captain Walker (Powell), the parents of Tommy. But captain soon will be declared missing-in-action in the fizzling war (but materializing in a twist and a recurring motif). Tommy is born as a normal child, but a traumatic incident will render him blind, deaf and dumb, to the despair of Nora and his stepfather Frank (Reed, conspiratorially lubricious). After a series of antic snippets where name stars lend their cameos, from Eric Clapton’s absurd Marilyn Monroe worshiped cult, to Tina Turner’s fantastically operatic turn as the Acid Queen, who turns herself into a syringe-riddled machine trying to bring Tommy out of his catalepsy (the metaphor here is obviously two-fold, along with directer Russell’s talisman, snakes). Before soon, Tommy is called upon by his mirror-self and finds his forte, the pinball machine, something would have become nearly obsolete four decades later, and defeats the pinball wizard (Elton John) to gain worldly fame (how ironic is that? A blind pinball genius!).A come-hither Jack Nicholson also timely crops up as a specialist, almost hijacks the film (and Nora as well) into a different route.
Tommy’s life orbit reaches another catharsis when he finally sloughs off all the physical barriers and starts to see, speak and feel the world around him, and becomes a self-proclaimed Messiah to indoctrinate spiritual purity in a world assailed by a shortfall of faith, but eventually (after a digression of an avid teenager follower Sally Thompson, played by Russell’s own daughter Victoria), his noble calling reaches an anticlimactic drawback, after convening all his disciples to a Tommy’s Holiday Camp, the mob proves to be too fickle to please, riot arises, parents murdered, premises combusted, a bereft Tommy escapes and finally fetches up at the place where his parents ignite their affection in the beginning of the movie.
Tommy, his loftiness, his numen, is too good for the self-seeking, ungrateful, and insidious mankind, this is what Russell tries to hammer home to his stunned audience, executed with his trademark lavish, chromatically lurid modality, the resultant movie is a grand spectacle to knock dead fans and non-fans alike, plus Ann-Margret delivers one of her best performances here, so deeply invested in a role conceptually much confined to the platitude of a distressed mother, she even goes doolally to express a tangibly affecting intensity within Russell’s majestic close-ups and set pieces.
accompanying pieces: Jim Sharman's THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW (1975, 7.8/10); John Cameron Mitchell's HEDWIG AND THE ANGRY INCH (2001, 7.1/10); Julie Taymor's ACROSS THE UNIVERSE (2007, 7.7/10).
