昆西四季

这部纪录片分四个部分，有两个主角。处在全片核心的这一位是作家、画家、有时还会出现在很多纪录片里当解说员的John Berger,另一位是近些年经常出现在国际电影节上的女演员Tilda Swinton，也是本片的四位导演之一。两人都来自于伦敦，生日在同一天，父亲都曾参军，却是年龄相差34岁的忘年好友。这部纪录片的标题，也就是两人对话的起点，就在阿尔卑斯山脚下的Quincy，John Berger大部分的时间都住在这里。Swinton从削苹果的方式共情到两人对父亲的回忆，然后在不同的素描画像中感受对方的心境，再到生活中的趣事。展现了一个脱离了艺术家身份的John Berger。跟如今的很多纪录片相比，这部纪录片的规模算是比较简陋，除了两位大名鼎鼎的当事人。但是里面的情感共振还是挺强的，他会说出一些看似平淡随意却让人感受到大量信息的话，例如：“劳动才能让你更好的融入土地。”Swinton读的那首诗很打动我，叫《第七个》，也是John Berger的著作：“如果你要来到这世界上，最好出生七次，……你自己必须是那第七个。也许意识到一切皆是轮回，这位老人才显得如此睿智，有力量。可惜的是，本片上映的第二年，他就去世了，也是在一个冬天，白雪覆盖了阿尔卑斯山。

再看《昆西四季》，被片中更多的片段打动。对最近一段时间的自己启发很大，记录于此。

·战争的沉默

I mean, there’s one specific kind of silence which I personally struggled with, which is the idea of not talking to one’s children about such... possibly the inability to hand this on. You know, we talk a lot about handing experience on, “standing on each other’s shoulders”, and so the idea of your experience kind of being cauterized, and not handing it on to your children, such as my father’s generation. That silence is what I’m talking about.… And I suppose that they would say, “well, we fought so that we wouldn’t have to talk to our children about it, we fought so that our children wouldn’t know. But, “history cannot have its tongue cut out.”It doesn’t really work, that silence, because the curiosity and the need to know is still there. And they need to learn. It is not the going into battle that I find most difficult to imagine, it is coming back from battle.

The resistance of the word “inconsequential”. “To protest is to refuse being reduced to a zero and to an enforced silence. Our protests by building a barricade, taking up arms, going on a hunger strike, linking arms, shouting ,and writing, in order to save the present moment, whatever the future holds.”

·叙事，信息，与现代性

And each lion was lion, each ox was ox.

For me, a storyteller is like a passer. I mean that’s very like somebody gets contraband across the frontier. I mean, stories come to you all the time, if you listen if you listen, if you listen.

One of the features of our time is that people worship ideas. And objects, but ideas particularly. Quite arbitrary, without really understanding their meaning. I mean, take modern art. The idea of modernity, this is the criteria by which people judge things without really enquiring what makes things modern, if the thing is really modern.

I think the idea of information is power, that just more information informs a public has been disproved, right? I mean that is to say that the war crimes of the Bush administration or whatever, are just there in plain sight. But it was kind of like when you have such of this excess of information that isn’t organized, it just all becomes a kind of noise... And people are bored like there is too much of it.

In the monopolistic religions, there is this notion of Heaven and Hell. Different interpretations but these two categories. And it’s worth asking the question are the following: It’s in Hell where solidarity is important, not in Heaven, isn’t it?

The two things about John’s work that will always make me think of him as a political artist that really matters now, is that While there is a commitment-an unwavering commitment to a recognition of the hell that surrounds us and the need for solidarity, there is also an openness and attention to the sensual world that never goes away. It isn’t just baleful, it isn’t just suffering or despairing that even though it can lead to more suffering in a certain way, there is a commitment, a total commitment to being alive to the possibility of contingency and experience in the moment. The other thing is , even though there’s a commitment to talking about, preserving or memorializing or at least having a memory of modes of life and experience that have passed away, there is no nostalgia. And that, to me, is a big difference between the possibility of a kind of left storytelling and the Tea Party dressing up with historically inaccurate Revolutionary costumes. So that there’s a commitment to the possibilities of the world before us, in a sensory, sensual, libidinal, neurotic way, ’cause those energies have to be harnessed for the political. And there’s a commitment to memory and having a relationship to the dead that never degenerates into the seduction of nostalgia.

·乡村

Just as with the Internet and web, people live in an endlessly extensive present moment, with collections of the present absolutely unimaginable a little while ago. I mean, enormous extension, positive and negative in this way. But it is of the instant, but it’s as if were geographic and spatial. In the contry, and in a village like Quincy, that extension is vertical, and it’s to do with time. And that’s where the dead take prop. And the idea of children is not only all the natural reasons, but also a question of that continuity, that vertical continuity.

Interesting that for a peasant, the way he reads the landscape is completely different than ours, in the sense that what we would find, like a beautiful landscape, he could find beautiful equally, but for other reasons. That’s to say, the beauty would come from the value of the work that has been put into that landscape, which has shaped that landscape. Detail reveals something of the work done of it.

In the country where you are so open, and some kind of horizon is always there, you’re never shut in. Because you are open, every season has its particularities, some of which you like. In other words, a season isn’t something that befalls you, it is something that you inhabit.

第一段是Tilda和伯格的老友记，说到了同天生日和同为军人子女，借由自己家庭经历讲人类经验传递“历史从不自断舌根”。致敬Ways of Seeing

第二段讲人类与动物的观照（恰遇伯格妻子逝世），其中有名与实、语言与存在的问题，一头狮子曾是狮子，引德里达说“我所是的动物”，对它者的探讨，语言（不通）是人与动物之间的一道深渊，海德格尔说语言是存在之屋人通过语言预知死亡然后向死而生，伯格说别闹啦我们作为会死的动物去说动物不理解死亡不是很可笑么。

第三段讲政治与叙事，自由主义经济失败但是意识形态输出成功，以至于毫无alternative，左翼要集合力量，资深老左伯格发问：well在地狱里我们才需要团结，天堂里，不存在的，不是吗？大家尬笑。红色歌曲蒙太奇。

第四段回归昆西乡野，用镜头语言讲人如何生活在自然中，伯格说在乡野你总是有一个horizon，四季不是降临在你身上，而是与你共生inhabit。钢琴配乐new age风。

总结：相约昆西，伯格的哲学课。

片子是关于John Berger的(《观看之道》的作者)。看完之后，忽然想起了西方式的知识分子的感觉，大家会坐在一起认真讨论“现代性”，人们在当代失去了什么。他用一字一顿的方式用语言描述着他想要描述之物，开始我会觉得这是“理性”的（而摒弃了感性的觉知），但看到后面，觉得他是在用一种传统的“英国式”的笨拙的理性方式在达致他认知的深处。那种欧洲式的相互尊重，讨论的感觉真好啊。

最后一幕是他教一个来自英国城市的女孩骑摩托车，女孩依然带着某种腔调，尽管她对学机车这一经历显得很期待，但她和John Berger试图通过这一方式传达乡村physical生活之体验的意图不在一个层面上。John Berger是从城市来，想要在乡村寻找自己的lost hometown的一代，他在乡村找到了他hometown的一部分（尽管那也许有些基于知识分子对于乡村生活的想象），但这一感悟/经验依然无法传至下一代，如同他父亲对于战争的经历无法传递给他。

想起来，欧洲从几百年前便已脱离了乡村生活开始工业化，人们大多是lost hometown的状态的吧，只是有的人会找寻有的人只是活着。那样的乡村的感觉，我在想，和中国的乡村的感觉有什么不同吗？也许本质上没有，但基于不同的语境/想象。

在纪录片《昆西四季：约翰·伯格的肖像》里，蒂达尔与约翰·伯格有一段饭桌前的对话。他们讲到了父辈对待子辈的态度。蒂达尔重复了约翰·伯格书里的观点：父辈总担心让孩子们了解过去的真相，怕他们会被伤害、污染；然而孩子们需要历史，只有了解历史，他们才能正常认知世界。蒂达尔又讲到了战争。她认为，人们不清楚的，并非战场上那些事，而是从战场归来之后的事。

当然，这不是全部。这部纪录片还谈到了人与动物的关联、政治对生活的影响以及城镇与农村之间的互相围城。以上一切主题，统统浸泡在时光里，由优美的摄影机记录在案，不容反悔。

大雨的上午，时间缓慢悠长。约翰·伯格的影像与遐思被定格。想到这位睿智的哲学家去年已经去世，我在邯郸非常伤感。

在群里种草的传记片，不同的拍摄班底用散文诗般的短片桥接John Berger的生命片段。

冬天的木屋内，他与同日出生的Tilda在昏暗的吊灯下削着苹果聊起各自的父亲，战争和历史的沉默。想起之前看《四个春天》，过场间穿插着的也是枯枝和鸟，屋檐和猫，远山未融的雪和雾。乡下的农场里，年轻人向他问起政治和暴动，他说，十岁的牛已经年老，二十年寿命的马也已经高龄，可对于农民而言，死去的总被新生的不断替代，十年寿命的羊总是生生不息，所以羊群的寿命总比牧羊犬长久。九十分钟的电影定格在驾驶摩托逐渐远去的背影里。

大概生命总是轮回，“如果你将来到这个世界，那你最好出生七次。一次在着火的房子，一次在结冰的洪水，一次在疯狂的精神病院，一次在成熟的麦田，一次在荒无人烟的修道院，一次置身于猪圈的猪群间。六个婴儿都在啼哭，可你必须成为第七人。当你为生存而战时，让你的敌人看到这七个人。一个周日远离工作，一个周一开始工作，一个无偿教书，一个通过溺水学会游泳，一个做森林的种子，一个受自然先祖的庇护，但仅有这些手段还不够，你必须是那第七个人…。”

btw，认识他的时候才知道，某个冬天里他已经动身去了方舟，希望仍路上的我们在生活里也能保持炙热和真实，一起庆祝每个值得坦荡的日子。