被神童拉塞尔找到的世界名著:拜伦、雪莱、王尔德,绝对是一种悲哀。以深层演绎为名去进行狂乱的发泄,似乎是满足自己的痛苦之身。以我对导演的了解,这绝对是一个宗教,变态用各种各样的文化母题,文艺设计,去宣泄被压抑的,去玷污说不出的,看看本片第75分钟剪回来的那些片子就知道了,完全是用电影镜头表现交媾,就是疯子变态去恐吓观众
所有的人空洞地喊着上帝,然而对于真相却不能说一语。10年前看过的拉塞尔,我现在已经忘得彻彻底底。你虽然不能说他毫无价值,因为他被很多cult电影制作者所崇拜,但是纵观整部电影,它的精神却如一个儿童一般胡闹。他幻想出来聒噪的管乐也没法听下去。就像一个深度抑郁的心理患者,失去了检验现实的能力。
很多人称赞他创造生动古怪、过度张狂的影像的能力——俗丽的色彩、壮丽的布景、旋转的摄影、狂野的姿态——特别是这部电影当中的张狂和暴乱,就像是一部地下的3G影片。但是在这种喧闹和平静的对比过后,因为和我们的现实毫无关系,也不会在我们心里烙下印记。天哪,这些圣厄修拉的修女。
美术是贾曼做的,味儿挺冲。这种片就挺没劲的但不知道他错在哪。猛一看明明是个政治片,像是误用超现实主义的语言。又一想,好像也没错,从人的基本欲望解读政治也没跑偏超现的大方向。艺术家总是有真有假,他的意图跟语言哪怕稍有一点儿错位的时候就值得怀疑了。
特别是超现实主义这块,大骗子还是挺多的。有的人就没琢磨超现实主义的事,就利用这个主义赚了名与利。他是自内而外的“诚”,还是由外而内的“伪”,总会有些蛛丝马迹。
THE DEVILS, Ken Russell’s grandiose and provocatively scandalous adaptation of the notorious witchcraft trial in 17th Century France, has its own indisputable artistic flourish albeit its thinly veiled obloquy and ridicule of the insidious backscratching between religion and politics, actualized in the most wanton style which can be both riveting and endurance-testing.
Father Urban Grandier (Reed), a Catholic priest in the city of Loudun, is as liberal in his attitude towards Protestants as in his views on sex, woman and marriage, which makes him a fair game in the eyes of Cardinal Richelieu (Logue), who is spoiling for a theocratic regime by ingratiating himself with a flamboyantly attired Louis XIII (Armitage), who opens the film with a ludicrous playacting. So the actual persecution is carried off by Richelieu's minions, the Baron de Laubardemont (Sutton, an exemplar of dastardly evil-doer) and an adept inquisitor Father Pierre Barre (Gothard, hard to take him seriously with his jarringly out-of-context hippie hairdo and histrionic enthusiasm). Distinctly and blatantly, Russell plays the anachronistic card to accentuate the whole scenario’s fulsome scale of delusion and sleaze: the town’s cubistic buildings, the prison-like, cemented interior of the church and low-ceiling convent. It marks a big leap from other more detail-revered period films, that is where Russell pushes the envelope of his unorthodox vision and constructs something so bombastically lavish, idiosyncratic, sacrilegious and explicit to make great play of the harrowing witch-hunt and jeer at the religious brainwashing.
Oliver Reed’s macho bravado is not everyone’s cuppa, but tellingly he is riveting to behold in the show trial and on the stake, operatic but counterpoising the sadistic atrocity with his own stamina and compassion. Vanessa Redgrave’sSister Jeanne des Anges, a twisted character subjugated to her repressed sexuality, is both a victim and an inexplicable indictor, her tour-de-force is staggeringly perverse and utterly stirring, a deformed figure imprisoned by her warped faith, mouthing the ugly truth of nun’s ill-fated destiny, from this regard, the orgiastic sequence (much is cut from the original version but re-added in shoddy quality in this DVD version) in the heat of the exorcism, evokes a ghost of misogyny and misgivings that Russell’s abandon seems to be beyond the pale in his unrestrained demonization, not of the Establishment, but of the powerless and downtrodden. Last but not the least,a dazzling Gemma Jones debuts as Madeleine De Brou, Grandier’s wife, who could have been put to good use (or at least a chance to give her own voice, however it would be inconsequential for the preordained judgement) in the fray if Russell’s modernist take doesn’t opt to kept her entirely off-screen during the show trial of her husband.
All things considered, THE DEVILS substantiates itself as a cultish eye-opener for the liberal-minded audience, but definitely a bugbear among devout God-botherers, a monumental artifact only can be conceived and manufactured in the age of liberation.
referential point: Russell’s TOMMY (1975, 7.4/10)