与魔鬼共骑

《与魔鬼共骑》是我记忆中第一部不做事后诸葛亮的美国南北战争电影。影片中的人物似乎很奇怪：他们不知道北方最终会赢得战争，却也不怎么在乎。有一种说法是，所有的政治都是局部的，本片则认为一些战争也是局部的。故事发生在密苏里州——唯一支持邦联政府的奴隶州，主人公是一小群游击队员，其中包括一位黑人，他们为南方而战，却各怀心思。

本片由李安执导，一位出生于台湾，并于伊利诺伊州进修的天才导演（《理智与情感》，《冰风暴》），他以一个局外人的角度洞悉了美国内战的本质。基于丹尼尔·伍德里尔的历史小说，《与魔鬼共骑》的故事以密苏里州西南地区为中心。当地的游击队发动了一场反抗邦联军队（也称唳鹰）的游击战。这基本上就是一场关于邻里私仇的局部战争，而与意识形态无关。

故事的着眼点主要在于四个游击队员身上：Jake Roedel（托比·马奎尔），Jack Bull Chiles（斯基特·乌尔里奇），George Clyde（唐·山克斯）以及被解放的黑奴Daniel Holt（杰弗里·怀特）。影片以一桩农场婚礼作为开始，四人皆出席。后来农场被唳鹰突袭，其主人被杀害，四人目睹了整个过程。

Roedel and Chiles想要复仇。Clyde是南方人，一直信奉南方的传统价值观，却以各种复杂的理由给了Holt自由身。Holt的动机是最令人费解的，为什么一个曾经是奴隶的黑人会为南方而战？他表示，这是出于对Clyde的个人忠诚，因为后者解放了他，并说“我每天都信任他。”也可能是因为和同伴的友谊。但是Holt对此所言甚少，只有他的眼睛，似乎对所见所闻做着无声的评价。整部影片我们都在期待，期待他能吐露内心最深处的想法。

历史是由胜利者书写的。而南方也有自己的历史记录者，但是在本片之前，我还从来没有见过这样的内战故事：着眼于当地个人的感受，着眼于自己也说不清的个人动机，哪怕他们本质上是一群年轻人，只不过被迫拿起武器在自己的家园战斗。某种程度上而言，他们仅仅是在练习自我防卫。影片显然对他们的个性更感兴趣，而不是他们的冒险活动——却也没有明确指出他们的行为动机。角色们并不真正了解自己的情感，却要表现出与之相应的行为，没有什么比这更难的了。

影片显得缓慢而从容——或许太慢了些。它以神秘主角的亮相作为开始，然后让他们把大部分时间花在山上的藏匿点（他们从来没有想到过，如果他们把木头间的缝隙堵上，屋内可能会暖和些）。他们进行了大段的对话，却更像是说教而非日常交谈。

他们的藏匿点处在一户密苏里人家的土地上，后者支持的是邦联政府。不久，Chiles爱上了村里的寡妇Sue Lee（珠儿）。出于影片艺术性的考量，故事没有拘于传统的爱情片套路，而是安排绝望的Chiles和Sue Lee逃离不堪忍受的局面。影片颇有一些残酷的段落，诸如累累的伤口，截肢以及绝望的武装袭击……

参与本片的演职人员是第一流的。Frederick Elmes（摄影师，代表作有《冰风暴》）的镜头擅于表现寒冷和潮湿。演员们很好的融入于他们的角色之中——没有暴露作为一个现代人的全知神态。杰弗里·怀特（《轻狂岁月》主演）饰演的黑奴别有一番魅力，他始终守口如瓶，从不标榜自己。珠儿值得夸赞，很简单，因为她那令人信服而不做作的表演方式。在此，她是一位真正的演员，而不是一个尝试新爱好的流行歌手。乌尔里奇也很好，尽管托比·马奎尔的音调——紧张，内向，克制——开始让我有点烦了，尤其是在随后的那部《苹果酒屋法则》里，我觉得是时候让他去演一个哑巴少年了（不是我想看到它，而是为了清除蜘蛛网）。

看得出来，李安和他的老搭档詹姆斯·夏慕斯试图寻找某种严肃的东西。《与魔鬼共骑》没有获得传统电影奖项的认可，没有简化复杂的局面，也没有向商业妥协。但遗憾的是，它并不是一部非常有趣的电影。它是一场漫长的煎熬，除非你能发现它暗藏的玄机。它是那种能在历史课上激起有益讨论的电影，但是对普通的电影观众而言，它是沉闷而冷峻的。

原文：

"Ride With the Devil" is the first Civil War film I can recall that is not told with the benefit of hindsight. It's about characters who don't know the North will win--and sometimes don't much seem to care. It's said that all politics are local; this movie argues that some wars are local, too. In Missouri, the only slave-holding state that sided with the Union, it tells the story of a small group of guerrillas with such complex personal motives that it even includes a black man who fights for the South.

The film has been made by Ang Lee, the gifted Taiwan-born, Illinois-educated director ("Sense And Sensibility," "The Ice Storm") who is able to see the Civil War from the outside. Based on a historical novel by Daniel Woodrell, the story of "Ride With the Devil" centers on southwestern Missouri, where the Missouri Irregulars, known as Bushwhackers, waged a hit-and-run fight against the Union troops, called Jayhawkers. This is basically a local war among neighbors with personal animosities and little interest in the war's ideological underpinnings.

We follow four Bushwhackers in particular: Jake Roedel (Tobey Maguire), Jack Bull Chiles (Skeet Ulrich), George Clyde (Simon Baker-Denny) and the freed black slave Daniel Holt (Jeffrey Wright). The film opens with a farm wedding they attend; later they see the farm burned and its owners murdered in a Jayhawker raid.

Roedel and Chiles want revenge. Clyde, a Southerner, believes in Dixie values and traditions, but is complex enough to have freed Holt, once his slave. Holt's motives are the most impenetrable. Why would a former slave fight for the South? He indicates it is out of personal loyalty to Clyde, who freed him and says he "trusts him with my life every day." Also perhaps because of a bond with his comrades. But Holt says little and his eyes often make a silent commentary on what he sees and hears; we wait through the film for a revelation of his deepest feelings.

History, it is said, is written by the victors. The Southern side has had its share of historians, too, but before this movie I had not seen a Civil War story about characters whose feelings are local and personal, whose motives were unclear even to themselves, who were essentially young men with guns forced to fight by the time and place they lived in. To some degree, they are only practicing self-defense. The movie is more interested in their personalities than their adventures--but not so interested that it makes their motives very clear. There is nothing quite so baffling as a character who acts from psychological reasons but possesses little insight into those buried feelings.

The movie is slow and deliberate--too slow. It begins with the enigma of heroes whose cause we do not share, and then has them spend much of their time hunched inside a hideout they have built into a hillside (where it never occurs to them that if they'd fill the chinks between the logs it might be warmer inside). They have long conversations, delivered in language that seems more suited to sermons and editorials than to everyday speech.

Their hideout is on the land of a Missouri family who supports the Confederacy, and soon Chiles is falling in love with Sue Lee (Jewel), a war widow. To give the film credit, it doesn't degenerate into a conventional romance, but plays both Chiles and Sue Lee as desperate in their own ways for an escape from an intolerable situation. There are also grim passages involving wounds, amputations and desperate armed raids.

The technical and acting credits are first rate. Frederick Elmes, who also shot "The Ice Storm," has an uncanny ability to evoke cold and damp. The actors do a good job of being contained by their characters--by not letting modern insights peek through. Jeffrey Wright, who starred in "Basquiat," is especially intriguing as the freed slave, who keeps his own counsel throughout the movie without sending out signals about what he's doing. Jewel deserves praise for, quite simply, performing her character in a convincing and unmannered way. She is an actress here, not a pop star trying out a new hobby. Ulrich is good, too, although Tobey Maguire's tone--tight, inward, controlled--is beginning to wear on me after this and "The Cider House Rules." It's time for him to make a dumb teenage comedy (not because I want to see it, but more to clear the cobwebs).

Watching the film, I could see that Ang Lee and his frequent collaborator, screenwriter James Schamus, were in search of something serious. "Ride With the Devil" does not have conventional rewards or payoffs, does not simplify a complex situation, doesn't punch up the action or the romance simply to entertain. But it is, sad to say, not a very entertaining movie; it's a long slog unless you're fascinated by the undercurrents. It's a film that would inspire useful discussion in a history class, but for ordinary moviegoers, it's slow and forbidding.

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李安的敏感在于总能发现大时代下的边缘人，《色戒》里王佳芝，是个进步学生，但人性尚未被革命性完全泯灭，她还能体会爱，体会虚荣，从而对毫无人味儿的钢铁意志感到若即若离，甚至一丝丝厌恶（例如全家死完了的革命者老吴），这人性里的软弱害了她也让她突出出来，成为大时代下一个真正有血有肉的正常灵魂。李安从张爱玲的小说里得到的是这种在风暴中心的边缘人的故事，这种故事充满张力，大时代中的矛盾冲突在这种小人物身上具体而微，让我们普通人窥见宏大叙事下的真正人性。

《与魔鬼共骑》是我看的最后一部李安电影，现在集齐了，关于这部电影李安说的也不多，它是一部票房惨败的佳作（投资数千万，票房数十万那种惨败）。Roger Ebert评论说它是部好电影，给了我们新的看待南北战争的视角，但对普通观众而言，节奏太慢了。

的确这部电影让人看到了一个鲜为人知的南北战争，这个切面我以前是完全不知道的，《冷山》和《飘》里，我从来没看到《与魔鬼共骑》里的一些事实：许多南方白人是文盲，在南北势力的边界上的普通人最倒霉，南方人来了冲进来把男人全杀死，房子农场烧了，北方军队来了也如是。

电影从一个德裔美国人Jake和一个黑人Daniel Holt的视角来看这场战争，在南方人眼里，他们一个是德国佬（dutchy）一个是黑奴（nigger），但鬼使神差，他们竟然在南方游击队作战对抗北军。Jake是因为目睹北军的暴行加入南方游击队的（碰巧他出生长大在南方阵营），Holt的经历更复杂，南方白人George买下他（同时卖了他妈妈）给他自由，把他当伙伴而不是奴隶看待，他于是跟着George加入了抗击北军的行列--而北军打仗的目的是解放黑人奴隶。所以一路上这两个“边缘人”自然的越走越近，他们都是被歧视的边缘人，也都为了尊重和理解他们的南方白人而卷入了这场对他们而言有些“滑稽”的战争一方。

这部电影赤裸裸的展示战争的残酷，人在战争中的冷血，残暴，无论南方北方。拍了很多具体的杀人场景，男人无处可逃被骑兵扑杀，然而双方军队都出奇的尊重妇女儿童，这大概是内战最特别的地方之一吧。但是你会看到，一队人冲进家把丈夫父亲拖出去一枪打死，把妇女儿童赶出来站在庭院，一把火烧了房子，妈妈和孩子看着熊熊烈火中的家，倒在庭前流血毙命的父亲，会是什么感觉？大概只有仇恨。另一个场景里，目睹这一切的一个小孩儿，趁着游击队员酒醉，拿他的枪杀了他。

这就是战争，南方游击队竞赛割头皮，烧杀抢掠。在这个队伍里的Jake和Holt，越来越厌恶这种莫名的仇恨，复仇，你死我活。后来Holt的主人在一次战争中（为了保护Holt）死去，Jake的好友则更早就因为被打断手臂破伤风死去，他们觉得自己完成了这场战争里的“使命”，Jake娶了好友遗孀，剪去游击队员标志性长发，带着老婆孩子打算到加州生活，Holt则打算去找回他的妈妈，过自由人的生活。特别值得一提的是Jake这个德国佬是这堆游击队里唯一一个识字的，他们缴获北军的物品里有一书包的信，晚上停战后，大家吃饱喝足坐在篝火旁，Pitt，一个残忍的南方游击队员，非常粗鲁的让他读信，他读了几封：有妈妈写给儿子的，有妻子写给丈夫的，这些信里是那些年头里少有的温情和人性，尽管内容无非是：今天北军来了，杀了XXX。今天南军来了，烧了XXX，你的伙伴XXX参加了XX战役，战死了。他刚和XXX结婚。摇曳的篝火下，Jake读的这些信让这些杀红了眼的游击队员们有了一段短暂的平静，温暖的时光，第二天起来又是你死我活的战争。Jake受伤后寄住在一个南方农场主家里，男主人对他说，我是支持南方的，但我觉得北方会胜利，我们会输，因为北方军队每到一处就建立学校，让白人黑人都读书识字，我们只会空谈自由平等，而读书识字了才能真正明白自由平等。

电影里少有的温柔在一个女角色Sue Lee身上，她刚结婚丈夫就参军（被征兵）战死了，游击队员，Jake的好友 Jack Bull Chile爱上她，在游击战的间隙和她约会欢好，很快Jack也死了，她怀着他的孩子寄住在前夫家的农场，后来在前公公的主持下，她嫁给Jake（其实她之前对这个知书达理的小男孩儿印象就不错），带着孩子一起踏上新生活。

电影最后，Jake和Holt放过了因为种族歧视（德国佬，黑人）对他们打冷枪的极端游击队员Pitt，他们完全可以打死他，但举起的枪又放下了，Pit很快会在单枪匹马进攻被北军占领的城市中死去，不劳他们费心。他和Holt放下枪，都长长的出了口气--他们终于从身体和心灵上，都告别了这场该死的战争。黎明到来了，他们在平静美丽的湖边话别，走向各自的新生。

另：我觉得票房失败完全是宣发的问题。再烂的电影只要发行做的好都不会赔本。大公司Universal可能赚钱赚到手软了，无暇顾及这部电影，这部电影上画时发行做的很差。（难道几千万投资不是钱？）