阿郎的故事

昨天晚上到现在，发生好多事，按照我瞎叨逼式写作风格，就串在一起乱写一通吧。

先简单点题一下，今天早上我眼睛肿的跟两灯泡一样来上班，我这样的心大的人跟我家某男吵架闹成这样是完全没可能的，要哭也是他哭就是了，因为昨晚上看了《阿郎的故事》，真的是哭死；

第二是，因为看片太感慨，大半夜听《恋曲1990》，一遍流着眼泪看豆瓣此片的影评，然后过了午夜12点，有个许久不见的朋友，突然聊了几句，然后我说，你可以看看我最近的文，推荐的是一篇标题里有“离婚”二字的，他说好巧，我今天离婚，然后巴拉巴拉一堆，这个我们朋友圈活成人生赢家的小伙伴说，我从不敢看你们的朋友圈，因为对比太强烈了，我活的只剩下赚钱，现在钱也没有了，家也散了，我还能说什么呢？我说往前看吧；

第三，是我人生中永远的白月光，这个世界最接近完美男人，除了不够有异性吸引力之外零BUG的，我的老友FOX简单聊了几句，人间不值得呢，总有各种奇葩人和狗血事，但是也有FOX，有我们跨越时间空间和阶层和男女之事的纯洁友谊，即使几年不见，聊三句都能一秒钟后一点陌生感都没有，所以，我看话唠三部曲时，第一部看的是《爱在日落黄昏前》我一点没有违和感，有的人就是会一生只见一次，都毫无陌生感，因为或许真的冥冥之中，有种神秘力量，或者是我们都有一对隐形触角，三言两语，眼神对视都能发现这个星球上，最亲近的那个灵魂。可惜的是，当我现在半截入土，活的越来越佛系的时候，会计算一段关系的能量守恒，总觉得我更看重他多一些有点亏，所以对他聊天也没有多热衷了，就草草地终结了我们的话题，即使过程不得不说是一直很高兴的。

黑历史里的男孩们以及我们的愤怒青春

《阿郎的故事》豆瓣里很多影评都巴拉一堆一个男孩的成长史，或者一个男人的英雄情节，或者浪子的360°炫技。对不起，作为一个女权癌患者，才不耐烦去听什么浪子的故事，去做什么为了成全浪子的传奇愿意化为一个痴情女神活牌坊，或者是什么狗血的总有坏男孩像刀锋一样划过我们的青春，很抱歉，在我们的世界里，什么浪子，坏男孩，渣男都是B角，我们的人生永远，只会有一个A咖——就是本尊。

讲真的，关于异性审美我一直都是反主流的，才不爱什么主流好男人——刘德华，因为刘天王一脸假笑，却一眼看到底的一肚子苦逼，这是一个隐忍苦逼的凤凰男偶像，所以，我身边但凡有把刘天王当偶像的异性，都会被我简单粗暴地划分为无聊的男人。

我也不爱大哥周润发，一直GET不到他的帅气，觉得在这样的大男子主义面前，不管是程程女神还是艾嘉女孩，都会变成一个可悲的符号——大哥爱过的女子，啧啧啧，看扮相从头到尾哭哭啼啼没跑的。

不过，年纪渐长以后，开始get到这些主流帅男人的各种好。刘德华是从《金鸡》里面，开始觉得他这样这样从头到尾都把自己密封在完美男人人设里的人也挺不容易，也许对于一些没有能力爱人以及自爱的傻叉姑娘而言，这样十足符合正能量好嫁审美的偶像也是一种精神安慰吧。

Get到周润发的帅点，是从《姨妈的后现代》生活，虽然斯琴高娃在游泳池里几米飘红的连体泳衣给我留下深刻的心理阴影，但是，如果有个幽默、有情趣的帅老头像周润发这样，而且看那大长腿和高鼻梁应该也属于天赋异禀这一挂的，我也愿意猪油蒙了心，拿出棺材本天天给他煮小排骨吃吧。哈哈。

而《阿郎的故事》，当难以掩盖小肚腩，剃短了后白了一半的头发、难掩中年疲态，连哭泣都怂到只敢掩面小声哭，对生活充满无奈和妥协的老帅哥周润发，这样嘻嘻哈哈又尴尬的耍帅的时候，我突然理解，为什么周润发曾经是当年完全少女的梦中男神。

很多男同胞以为，真正打动姑娘的是自己特别爷们，最好如精神层面的父亲一样，永远强大，像个根基粗壮的大树，才能撩妹无数，说实在，那种层面的审美，只能撂到那种希望找个男人养自己、做一辈子米虫的漂亮皮囊罢了。真正打动，拥有与男性平等灵魂的姑娘，反而是完美情人人设之外的一点点露怯，例如20几岁的时候，我们会不小心看见酷帅吊炸天的校草也会幼稚的各种暗搓搓耍帅或者忍不住泪流满面，真正强悍的姑娘都会因为潜在的母性去喜欢一个异性吧，可惜，太多太多的蠢直男看不开，好在，这个星球，人类数量庞大，总有各种蠢萌的软妹子配他们就是了。

《阿郎的故事》里，令我崩溃大哭的是，饰演富家千金的张艾嘉被母亲扫地出门，她在家门口抱头痛哭，小情人阿郎说，不要哭啦，波波，我们走吧。这一刻，作为阿郎，他其实是无所谓的，觉得这样反而更好，可以光明正大堂而皇之地跟波波双宿双飞，很悲哀，这就是令我们深夜失眠、纠结到吃不下饭，拿自己未来去爱的男人，他们永远只会首先想到自己，他们很难看得见一个女人，为了爱情放弃家庭的悲伤，因为，如果身份对调，有几个男人会为了一个女人去跟家庭对决？看看现在的婆媳矛盾，就可见一二，人间不值得啊，男人这种浅薄生物更不值得。即使这样的场景，如果是男主角因为女方被逐出家门，估计完美女主立马就跪了，各种作践自己，求能帮助这个心坎上的人回归家庭，可惜，太多的影视作品，导演都是蠢直男呢，他们从来没真正看得见女人，一个女人真正的灵魂和思想。

第二，是怀孕的波波去找阿郎，去送饭的时候看见孩子他爸正在跟一个姑娘做活塞运动，于是，扔饭盒，回家闹着要走，然后男的回来懒洋洋哄了几句，就动手了，请一定注意周润发饰演的阿郎当时的话，“老子赚钱养家，你还敢打我”。看见了，这就是一个男人所能给予的爱的真相，虽然家暴男只是小概率事件，但是不管多么绅士、完美的男人，几乎没有一个不以赚钱养家为荣的，他们从未看见一个女人为了生育孩子放弃了怎样的生活，一个女人为了维持一个温馨的家付出了多大的劳动力，所以我总是规劝我现实世界里的女同事，一定要出门赚钱，因为，不管多难的时候，起码当你爱的男人，你孩子的爸爸说出“老子赚钱”这种话的时候，可以挺直腰板怼回去“老娘养得活自己”，当他不在珍惜你们的爱，在乎你们的家庭，可以潇洒离开，带着我们挚爱的苹果脸天使，一起体面过日子。

第三，是阿郎与因花心家暴辜负的前妻波波久别重逢，他心心念念想的都是破镜重圆。所以，他没有一点自责之心去当着波波体面绅士未婚夫的面，直接道出跟波波有过婚史，波仔是波波的亲生儿子。看见没，这就是男人的爱，首先考虑到从原始社会就留下的占有更多雌性的天性，很少有男人会思考，自己的配偶首先是一个独立的人，他们那些掩盖在甜言蜜语、霸道宠溺背后的，其实是不忍细思量的自己的占有之心——女人是自己的私有财产。

所以，我在，是怎样根深蒂固、内心缠满小脚的傻叉姑娘，才会爱上浪子，只爱坏男孩，如果只是如男人猎艳一样纯粹享受美好肉体也罢了，如果这也算爱的话，我宁愿自我精神阉割，做个无心的渣女。

所以《阿郎的故事》的结局虽然催泪，但是必死无疑。因为直男癌的男导演，希望成就一个陌路英（傻）雄（叉）的悲情背影，而觉醒的女观众们，也无法接收长大了的冷静波波，又重回老路，去为了苹果脸天使，去放弃跟自己旗鼓相当三观一致的未婚夫，去再找认为打老婆不算什么的糙爷们阿郎身边，而且人到中年的我，细思恐极的是，阿郎浪子回头，是因为生活太艰辛了，一个人带着孩子，没钱没时间去瞎JB搞，如果有了波波的经济加持，这男人还会一路睡各种路人甲女人没跑的。所以，死了也好，眼泪中的故人，起码永远不会幻灭，难道不是吗？

（太长了，分2-3篇写吧，未完待续）

现在的八点档国产家庭剧，好像都是一个套路出来的：出于某种原因（例如不孕不育、经济问题、七年之痒什么鬼的），丈夫出轨另寻新欢，妻子为了家庭的和谐，不仅不对丈夫辱骂殴打，还要忍气吞声包容渣男，还要用爱感化他，还要再与第三者谈个判，最后渣男备受感动，浪子回头，回归家庭，大家皆大欢喜。仿佛浪子这东西，是一件绝世稀有的珍珠宝石，不回头，那是要怪妻子没有经营好婚姻，一旦回了头，更是妻子十二万分的荣幸，需要忙不迭地包容他原谅他，与他重归于好，否则就是蛇蝎毒妇斤斤计较小肚鸡肠。似乎女人必须要“退一步海阔天空”、“家庭为重”，才是值得称赞的贤妻良母。 但是阿郎说过：人不能做错事，否则一辈子也翻不了身。 阿郎曾经是个浪得不能再浪的浪子，抽烟喝酒烫头，出轨滥交打老婆，飙摩托车撞死人，最后浪到大牢里头去了。老婆波波对他死了心，跟着爸妈移民去了美国。阿郎出狱之后痛改前非，干苦力开大车养活自己和儿子，没想到过了十年，又遇见了波波。阿郎想尽办法要跟波波重归于好，可惜对方已经有了新男友，并不愿意接受阿郎。阿郎为了证明自己已经脱胎换骨、可以承担起家庭的责任，重回摩托车赛场比赛，因为意外事故死在了终点线。

浪子没有得到原谅，反而不明不白地死在了赛车场上。这样的故事，才是人生的常态。 从前年纪还小的时候，看这部电影，总是心有不甘。为什么波波不愿意和改过自新的阿郎重修旧好？为什么阿郎执意不顾自己身体状况去赛场？后来长大一点仿佛隐约明白，阿郎是注定要死的。不单单因为当年的浪子需要一个壮烈的死亡。在奋斗中轰然死去，是十年后的阿郎唯一一个得到原谅和救赎的机会。阿郎在犯错十年后成为了一个多余的人：曾经的爱人事业有成，有了温文尔雅的绅士做新的伴侣；孩子需要完整的家庭与良好的教育——这部电影没有像许多俗套的片子一样刻意抹黑前任的新爱人是口蜜腹剑的伪君子，而是将波波的新爱人塑造成一个虽有一番犹豫和挣扎却依旧爱波波、并愿意接受波波儿子的好男人——孩子和母亲的新家庭彼此需要，阿郎的地位十分尴尬，他曾经只是波波年少时混乱记忆中的一根刺，现在却又成为了波波和儿子坦荡新生活中的一个路障。不管阿郎是渣土车司机还是老当益壮的赛车手，可以肯定的是，他都不会被波波所接受，她只会原谅死去的阿郎，却不会跟活着的阿郎在一起。阿郎最后的拼搏，总也带着必死的决心在里头：活着赢了，多少能向心爱的人证明自己；死去呢？死去也是赢了，赢在帮爱人拔掉了一根不合时宜的路障。

浪子回头金不换的剧情都是假的，只能放在八点档的剧情里骗骗无聊的主妇。然而当我们看见不得不死的阿郎决绝地跨上摩托车时，也会不由自主地流下眼泪，好像那个不管不顾走上赎罪的绝路的人，就是我们自己似的。我们在这种时候想起自己，想起我们或多或少做过的错事，我们也需要一个从没得到过的原谅，只不过，我们没有办法做到像阿郎一样从容赴死，只能在心里把自己代入电影，哭得泪流满面。

Chow’s fate is determined as much by chance as by any action of his own. There’s always a sense of randomness in To’s tragedies, a kind of contingency that denies any simple moral reading.

After an auspicious, if commercially unsuccessful, debut with the New Wave wuxiaThe Enigmatic Case in 1980, To spent the early 80s working in Hong Kong television. In 1986 he returned to film working under Raymond Wong Bak-ming at the Cinema City studio, he he made the popular, if not especially distinguished comediesHappy Ghost 3 andSeven Years Itch. These were followed in 1988 by a pair of films, the smash hit farceThe Eighth Happiness and the contemporary crime pictureThe Big Heat. He followed that up in 1989 withAll About Ah-Long,a domestic melodrama that becamethe number one film of the year at the Hong Kong box office, the second year in a row a To film had accomplished that feat.The film reunited To withEighth Happiness star Chow Yun-fat andSeven Years Itchstar Sylvia Chang. Like all of To’s previous four films it was produced by Raymond Wong for Cinema City, but it is a much more dramatically ambitious work. Cinema City at their best was a freewheeling, anarchic studio where anything was possible. The loose atmosphere was responsible for some of the greatest films of the decade (in Hong Kong or otherwise), but also a whole lot of just bizarrely silly nonsense (the Yuen-Woo-ping directedMismatched Couples, for example, in which Yuen tried to make Donnie Yen a star with a breakdancing comedy).The Eighth Happinessexemplified the lunatic side of the studio, an improvisational, tasteless and often hilarious comedy that helped establish the template for a certain type of all-star Lunar New Year comedy (a tradition that continues to this day).

All About Ah-Long, though, is a real movie. Written by stars Chow and Chang (an unusual credit for Chow (his only other story credit is on the 1995 Wai Ka-fai film Peace Hotel), while Chang had already begun the move from movie and pop star to accomplished writer/director), it takes Oscar winnerKramer vs. Kramer as a starting point. Chow plays a construction worker raising his ten year old son, Porky. A former motorcycle racer and drunk, Chow is loud and crude but cares deeply for his kid. When his friend Ng Man-tat (in one of his early dramatic roles, before he became Stephen Chow’s favorite comic foil) gets Porky an audition for a kids’ fashion commercial, they discover that the commercial’s director is Chang, the boy’s mother, returned from America for the first time in a decade. Brief flashbacks fill out the story (Chow was philanderingand abusive and ended up briefly in jail after a motorcycle accident; Chang’s mother hated him and told Chang her son had died after she moved with her to the US), while Chang tries to build a relationship with her son and Chow tries to rekindle his romance with Chang.

It’s an against-type performance from Chow, as arguably the coolest man in cinema in the late-80s dresses down with patched-together clothes and a hideous mop of hair. He’s a deeply flawed man who is completely aware of his faults. Chang is the class opposite: intelligent and reserved, she is the wealth of America, trying to win Porky’s affection with all the things and opportunities she can muster. This is one of the things that distinguishesAh-Long from its American progenitor: whileKramer vs. Kramer paints a complicated picture of 1970s feminism (the breakdown of the home as the wife seeks a life in the workforce),Ah-Longis moreof a class allegory. There’s no expectation that Chang should abandoned her career to be Chow’s housewife, such a thing is unthinkable. However there’s a deep undercurrent of unease with Chang’s cosmopolitan wealth. Both parents want Porky to have all the advantages wealth can confer (education, nutrition, culture, adventure), but there’s an inauthenticity to her world. The film opens with shots of Hong Kong streets, notably not the skyscrapers and businessmen and other conspicuous symbols of the capitalist paradise that was the colony in the late 1980s, but rather of narrow, crowded alleys, packed with shops and debris. It isn’t the gangland slum of the Kowloon Walled City that Johnnie To grew up in, instead it’s a less hyperbolic, more imaginable kind of everyday poverty. Throughout, To will contrast realist images of working class Hong Kong with the glossier sheen of its upper class, mixing aclass-conscious New Wave aesthetic with the pop song montages ofcommercial cinema. When Porky first visits his mother in her hotel (the “Oriental”) he gazes in wonder at the shiny white surfaces, and especially the glass elevator rising infinitely upward at the lobby’s core. Elevators will become a recurring image and location throughout To’s career, a symbol of fear, of entrapment, of the unknown. The image is built upon in a later section ofAh-Long, when Porky and Chang goes to an amusement park and she can’t handle the vertiginous ups and downs of the rides. Porky loves it of course, ping-ponging between highs and lows, but Chang needs to stay on one level: she can’t go back down.

In many ways, Johnnie To’s most recent film is a kind of spiritual sequel toAll About Ah-Long. Reunited with Chow and Chang for the first time in over 20 years, and adapting a play written by Chang,Office is about a pair of young office workers who learn that life at the top of the corporate elevator is more corrupt than they could imagine. Chow and Chang play the oldest couple, the company’s CEO and Owner, long engaged in an amoral struggle for power over each other. A middle couple forms the heart of the film, played by Tang Wei and Eason Chan: Chan is already corrupted, Tang is on her way there. The two share a duet (the film is a musical, with songs by Lo Ta-yu, who also did the music forAll About Ah-Long) where they sing of their hometowns, paradises where there was no ambition. All the corruption of the corporate world is the result of aspiration, of the drive to rise up, to bend and break the rules of conscience in the name of things. Chan is haunted by a recurring nightmare of an elevator: not of falling down an empty shaft, but pointedly being crushed on the ground floor. Porky inAh-Long watches with hope as an elevator rises, Chan cowers in fear as one falls.

I can’t write aboutAll About Ah-Long without addressing it’s ending, so here’s where you can check out if you haven’t seen the film and care about spoilers. Unless I can track down a copy of his two-part TV movieThe Iron Butterfly, the next film in the series with be a New Years comedy reunion with Chow and Chang,The Fun, The Luck and the Tycoon, to be followed by To’s first collaboration with screenwriter Wai-Ka-fai,TheStory of My Son.

Like many a Hong Kong film,All About Ah-Long has a doubleending. David Bordwell writes about the end of the 1987 Chow Yun-fat melodramaAn Autumn’s Tale (directed by Mabel Cheung), where the romantic couple separates at the end, with Chow’s deadbeat failing to win the more upwardly-mobile woman. This is followed by a brief epilogue, set sometime in the future, where the lovers meet again with Chow having miraculously cleaned up his act and become a financial success. Bordwell notes that the multiple, tonally opposite endings work to give the audience a range of ways to react to the film: they get both the happy and tragic endings and therefore a more total experience of melodrama.All About Ah-Long takes the experience to another, emotionally pummeling, level. After a long decline into sadness, where Porky leaves with Chang (with Chow delivering a heart-breakingHarry and the Hendersonsdriving-the-boy-away scene),and then changes his mind and returns to his dad. Chow then decides to race again and gets a haircut and a motorcycle. Father and son head to the Macao Grand Prix, where Chang shows up just as the race is about to start: the family at last will be reunited, with a newly cleaned-up Chow finally worthy of being a husband and father. He races, he’s about to win, and then he crashes. But he gets back on his bike (because that’s what we do), despitea significant head injury (a chance blow from another motorcycle). Summoning all his strength, with intercut shots of his wildly supportivefamily, Chow comes back and wins the race. Porky and Chang leap with joy as Chow, in excruciating slow motion, loses control of his bike and crashes into a wall. He watches his family rush toward him as the motorcycle explodes and he is engulfed in flames. The credits roll over documentary-style slo-mo footage of the wreckage, the horror in the crowd, the anguished faces of mother and son. It’s an astonishing, flabbergasting ending. Such a finale would be unthinkable in a Hollywood movie (can you imagine a film with equivalent-level stars, say Leonardo DiCaprio and Charlize Theron, where the family is just about to get back together but instead Leo dies right at the end? There would be riots in the streets.)

This ending is vital for To’s idea of the film, the sharp, unexpected swerve into tragedy is something he’ll return to again and again in his career. In his interview with Stephen Teo, he says thatAll About Ah-Long was “the first film in which I could line everything up in one go; as the film that was made really from my own thoughts. I am grateful to Chow Yun-fat, who gave me many of his own insights, and also to Sylvia Chang, who actually wrote the treatment and was involved in the production, She disagreed with my ending but I told her I was making the film because of the ending. It may be flawed but I insisted upon it.” The ending is crushing not so much because of its shockingness, although that is certainly a factor, but also because the happier ending that preceded it made so much sense: everything about the surface of the film tells us that this is the kind of movie that will end happily, the two beautiful stars will get back together and their family will be whole. But the ending brings out the darkness, the fear and paranoia that underlies so many of the preceding images, the class contrasts, the vertiginous heights and grimy lows of pre-Handover Hong Kong.The Big Heat too is motivated by an apocalyptic fear of the Handover, as Britain and China agreed that the colony would be handed back to the Mainland, the child’s fate determined by the whims of its parent nations. This strain of paranoia is so present in the Hong Kong cinema of the period that it’s become a critical cliche to remark upon it, like the Cold War dread of 1950s American sci-fi films. Butthere’s an even deeper,more universal fearinAll About Ah-Long, where the paranoia is motivated by diaspora, the promise of wonder in life outside China, but is rooted in a more basic class anxiety: the fear that moving up means becoming inauthentic.

For To and Chow, who grew up relatively impoverished and were now at the pinnacle of their professions, that must have been a very real concern. Chang had a different childhood, born in Taiwan she also spent time in Hong Kong and New York growing up, before dropping out of school to pursue singing and acting at age 16. The film is thus a recreation of the real-life dynamics between the two male auteurs and the female one. It has been pointed out that contrary to expectations in this melodrama the male character is far more emotionally expressive than the female one, with Chow giving a loud, dynamic performance where Chang is cool and internalized (there is a lifelong relationship in a nutshell in a simple eyeroll Chang gives as she sits on the back of Chow’s moped). This is less agender matter though than a class one I think: Chow’s manners are boorish where Chang is refined. The tension between the three artists is vital to the push-pull nature of the melodrama: neither parent is demonized or lionized as the film goes on, both characters are warm and loving to their son, both are full of regrets for their actions a decade earlier (though Chow has more to regret), both want to be forgiving to each other, both know that that is impossible. But ultimately it’s To’s vision that wins out, and it’s a deeply pessimistic one: Ah-Long, a poor but happy man for the first time in his life aspiring to greatness, seeing his dream within reach and then literally exploding. It isn’t a tragic ending, in the sense that it is totally unpredictable: Chow’s fate is determined as much by chance as by any action of his own. There’s always a sense of randomness in To’s tragedies, a kind of contingency that denies any simplemoral reading. Just as inOffice,aspiration ultimately leads to self-destruction, but that destruction can manifest itself in wildly unexpected ways. This black strain, the doom of a universe governed by fate that operates through chance, will surface again and again through To’s career, mixed as it is with farces and romances and stories of brotherhood, moments of liberation and freedom and darkest despair.All About Ah-Long, his first truly great film,is the first to fully express this multiplicity of moods.