伟大的阿莫罗狄蒂

影片以一支希腊剧团在露天剧场合唱，作为开场。观影尚未进入状态，进而即刻切换至纽约列克星敦的餐厅内，主人公海伦娜的第一句话便是：“兰尼，我想要个孩子。”显然这便是影片的核心。被领养的男孩，成为全片的线索。“我是她孩子的养父，她是我孩子的生母“，两个看似毫无交集的人，因领养这一事实，被绑定在一个时空，而双方却对此毫无所知。观看至此，颇有希腊神话的讽刺意味。而导演兼主演的伍迪·艾伦所饰演的兰尼——一位体育栏目的记者，是一个偏执狂。因为偏执，角色进行了合理的夸张，制造出许多妙趣横生的笑点，尽管，伍迪·艾伦在影片中，是极为严肃的。“在人类所有的弱点中，偏执是最危险的”，希腊合唱团的这句戏中戏台词，亦贯穿了影片的脉络。当兰尼纠结拧巴偏执的情绪占据上风使，总有一位希腊合唱队员，出现在画面中，旨在旁白兰尼的内心。这一看似无关联的融合，是为全剧的一大亮点，颇有趣味。在希腊歌剧中，命运的轨迹是剧情的中心，同时也是这部影片的寓意所在。命运是自我难以掌控的事物，兰尼以为自己可以掌控命运和主宰生活，掌控海伦娜的生活，甚至回答养子的提问：“谁是家里的老大”时，以为可以掌握自己的人生和家庭的轨迹，但事实却非如此。整部影片，亦是关于命运的反讽，尽管，对美国文化并不了解，影片距今时隔近三十年，而优秀的影片，本已跨越了时代的变迁，当下观影，仍旧能get到导演的用意及全片的主旨。

The habitus of Woody Allen’s MIGHTY APHRODITE couldn’t be more unsavory in the light of the current political and cultural ethos and the alleged accusation in which he is personally enmeshed, roughly taking its cue from PYGMALION, its story goes like this, after Lenny Weinrib (Allen), a middle-aged sportswriter, has found out that the biological mother of his adopted son Max (McQuaid), who is endowed with a higher IQ, is a bimbo prostitute and part-time porn star named Linda Ash (Sorvino), he tries every which way to persuade her to give up her profession and get settled down with an ideal man who loves her.

But Lenny’s action is anything but altruistic, he has his own face to save in case in future Max might want to know the truth of his parentage, a hairdresser of happy domesticity is what he aims for, although most of the fun derives from Lenny’s unresolved discombobulation about the genetic pedigree of Max’s genius, and gauging by Linda’s divulgence, the child might very likely be a “bad seed”, anyway, that is an excursus.

If Allen is often faulted for delusions of grandeur in his lesser works, MIGHT APHRODITE is guilty as charged, mostly for Lenny’s paternalistic attitude of playing God to save a ditzy sinful soul of the opposite sex, not to mention chiefly for his own sake, but courtesy to a corn-fed Sorvino’s zippy, down-to-earth unrestrainedness (an Oscar winner!, the Academy surely adores the stereotype of a call girl with a golden heart), Linda freshens up most comically and sympathetically for her unalloyed openness and genuineness in spite of being physically compromised in the morass of moral depravity, if Max does inherit any “good genes”, we can assure that is where they come from. In that regard, Allen’s homage to a woman’s incorruptible purity of immanent goodness is condescending, yes, but also amusingly touching.

Helena Bonham Carter, who plays Lenny’s two-timing curator wife Amanda, fares less agreeable in a mostly sidelined position, and it is rather difficult to dispel Allen’s prurient proclivity of the couple attaining a reconciliation only after both get their feet wet in adultery, a waters-muddying ploy that recoils on the movie’s intended feel-good aftertaste.

Surely one cannot finish the review without mentioning Allen’s hyperbolic conceit of orchestrating a Greek chorus to add some flourish, which bookends and punctuates the whole movie (often as a phantom manifestation), but the catch is, Lenny’s twee story is, to all intents and purposes, out of the proportion with such a majestic gesture. However, the movie's finale is a good one, instead of blowing the lid off the secret we audience is let on from the very start, appending a fresh one to counterpoint the quirk of fate is quite a cheery kicker.

referential entries: Allens’ HUSBANDS AND WIVES (1992, 7.3/10); George Cukor’s MY FAIRE LADY (1964, 7.8/10).

6月24日

阅读了埃斯库罗斯的《普罗米修斯》

希腊戏剧由正剧+合唱组成，合唱由歌队组成，歌队不参与正剧情节的表演

本电影亦是有此类似的结构

等我读到了《俄普迪斯王》之后，可以结合本剧做更多理解

本剧也采用了《俄普迪斯王》的相应情节

即主角担心自己领养的孩子具有弑父情节，从而威胁到自己

I don't like happy ending actually, but I really like this one. Especially the coincidence between Lenny and Linda, both have child from each other but they don't figure out. The funniest scene was Lenny wanna persuade Kevin to hang out with Linda. Making a lot of nonsense about Linda's background. At this part, Lenny must be the smart guy, and Kevin should be a dumb one. But when Lenny said Linda just have two simple relationships, one of them was a professor. They were all die at war. Kevin just figured it out this was not make any sense. I saw it at the bus station, people around me, but I still laugh like a crazy person. That's a little embarrassing.