哈德维希

Céline就是一块信仰的试金石，对于宗教人士和普通民众她都是格格不入的。

布鲁诺·杜蒙 Bruno Dumont希望用一个极端特例去探讨宗教与信仰的关系。

那个瘦骨嶙峋的男性角色的设置非常有意思，长相与身材都与世人所奉耶稣形象接近，而且他被设置成一名貌似被诬陷的罪犯。

       狂热的信仰追随者在寻找信仰中挣扎，仿佛信仰离自己很远。而最后的自杀式汽车炸弹却又震醒了观众。究竟是信仰初衷变了，还是信仰者的心思意念变了，很难去理清，但客观的一面却时刻提醒我们，这些问题对任何人来说，都不再是一个遥远的威胁。

In Bruno Dumont's Hadewijch, Céline (Julie Sokolowski, in a compelling first turn) has taken on the name of Hadewijch, the patron saint of the convent where she has been received as novice. At the convent her self-mortification in the name of Christ is disruptive to the rules of the nunnery; her behavior perceived as evidence of vanity. As penance, she is sent back into the world of her former life in hopes that she will gain a clearer understanding of how her spiritual calling might apply to the real world. Reluctant to re-enter the bourgeois world of her Parisian diplomat father, Céline struggles with finding a way to reconcile her passion for God with her social world. She befriends two Muslim brothers Yassine and Nassir who introduce her to the dangers of religious extremism and force her to make a life-determining choice.
Bruno Dumont's Hadewijch boasted its world premiere in the Special Presentations Program at this year's Toronto International, where it was awarded the FIPRESCI Prize. Here at The Auteurs Daily, David Hudson has gathered reviews from the film's screenings at both Toronto and the NYFF.
My thanks to Stephen Lan for facilitating this interview and to Robert Gray for his interpretive assistance.
MICHAEL GUILLÉN: Are you, by nature, a religious man? Or more a philosophic one?
BRUNO DUMONT: These days I am very interested in mysticism because it goes way beyond philosophy. Mysticism takes us to areas that are beyond questions of reason, beyond speech, and beyond our comprehension of the world. It takes us to an area that is very close to cinema, and I think that cinema is capable of exploring that area and expressing it. That's why, necessarily, I am attracted to mysticism. At the same time, it's a complex area. I'm not myself religious—I'm not a believer—but, I do believe in grace and the holy and the sacred. I'm interested in them as human values. I place The Bible alongside Shakespeare, for example; not as a religious work, but as a work of art. The Bible has the definite values of a work of art.
GUILLÉN: Hadewijch stages a failing of protagonist Céline's father to provide her spiritual solace. It becomes necessary for her to seek it elsewhere. After being sent back to the world by the nuns at the convent, she comes under the influence of Nassir, a devout Muslim who becomes something of a spiritual father to her.
DUMONT: Céline's father is a politician. He's unable to follow her. But I see Nassir as being more Céline's brother in spirit than a spiritual father.
GUILLÉN: In the scene where Nassir is counseling Céline, she asks him about innocence and he responds, "Can anyone be innocent in a world where people vote?" I'd never thought of democracy's culpability in quite that way before. I'd never wondered if democracy could afford innocence? Can you speak more to what you mean by Nassir's statement?
DUMONT: I believe in that statement. I agree with it completely. We are all responsible for everything that happens in the world. In our Western democracies, we appear to be responsible, we vote, and we completely don't care. We brush that off. Céline, however, is not like that; she's responsible. Today, our democratic societies are devoid of a sense of responsibility and that's something that has to be developed. That's why—when she goes to the Middle East with Nassir—Céline acknowledges and recognizes her responsibility and guilt.
GUILLÉN: She weeps.
DUMONT: [Nods his head yes.]
GUILLÉN: One of my favorite characters of Christian literature is Mary Magdalen, whose love for Jesus—and, later, the risen Christ—I've long read as the love of the Soul for Spirit, and the desire of the Soul to be wed to Spirit. Her story exemplifies for me the longing of the mystics to be—almost physically—connected with Spirit. That longing, that desire, that dalliance runs through all of your films to one degree or another; but, never as consciously as we find it here in Hadewijch. The corporeality of your films, the bodies of your actors, have inferred the incorporeal and the spiritual; but, in Hadewijch they are directly referenced.
DUMONT: What you speak of is present in so much of the writings of the mystics—the physical experience of the presence of God. It's what you find in so many accounts of the visions of mystics, this direct contact with God. Hadewijch in her writings also speaks of direct contact with the body of Christ and the pleasure she takes in his body. Mystics are able to experience the sense of infinity through their bodies. They refuse themselves food. They don't allow themselves to sleep. It's through their bodies that they're able to experience the sacred.
GUILLÉN: The pleasures of renunciation and abstinence are multifold.
DUMONT: Oui! Abstinence, chastity, yes, very much.
GUILLÉN: Why—at this juncture as a filmmaker—have you become specifically intrigued by the mystics? Though, admittedly, even your early films exhibit "the upward glance." At some point your characters always seem to look towards the sky for guidance or solace.
DUMONT: It's something I find enormously interesting. They're visionaries. They have access to the invisible through their gaze on externals—perhaps the sight of a pasture, a winding path, a small river—but, they access the invisible through the visible world. They know how to see. Because they know how to see, they can see what to others is invisible and interior.
GUILLÉN: So when they look upwards, they see into the invisible world through the visible world?
DUMONT: Voila! Through their gaze, because of their gaze, because they know how to see, the visible becomes an evocation of the invisible. They are like spectators at movies.
GUILLÉN: From a very early age I've felt that the word "through" is one of the
most beautiful words in the human language. How one sees through physical or visible objects into the invisible fascinates me. Scrying. In my training as a Mayanist, I was fond of the Mayan term il bal, which basically means "seeing instrument", an appellation that could be applied to various objects—a rock crystal, water coursing in a stream, a leaf falling from a tree, a cloud, a book, a Mayan stelae—any number of things that can help you see into the invisible world. In your case, I would say your camera lens and the physically-projected films themselves are il bals.
What distinguishes Hadewijch from your earlier films, however, is—as I mentioned earlier—Céline 's consciousness. Though in your earlier films your characters may be visionaries who glimpse into the invisible, they don't seem as conscious; their longing is not as articulated. Would you agree?
DUMONT: Yes, you're absolutely right. In this film the protagonist is conscious for the first time. There is an element of light and clarity that's not in my previous films. Hadewijch/Céline is a lighter person—"light" in the sense of illumination—and her clear gaze is able to transform the world.
GUILLÉN: I hope to understand your film on its own terms and not read more into it than you would perhaps want me to; but, I wonder about Céline's statement that "the sweetest thing about love is its violence"? Is that a statement specifically taken from a spiritual text? What were you trying to say by that?
DUMONT: That's a literal quote from Hadewijch's writings.
GUILLÉN: It sets up a dissonant tension between love and violence, just as there is a tension between Céline's spiritual quest and her involvement with religious fanaticism. By contrast to the politicized martyrdom of Islamic fanatics, Céline's spiritual quest seems almost anachronistic and out of touch with contemporary events, or at least hazardously susceptible to them. I could fully understand why Yassine said to her—"You're nuts."
DUMONT: I needed Yassine because he's so real. He's the only character who's in touch with reality. I needed him as someone spectators could identify with and also because—through his gaze, through what he says—he puts Céline in a certain position. He sets her up in a certain way and I needed the audience to relate to Céline in a certain way. Yassine is the only person who's "normal" in the film. Everyone else is absolutely crazy.
GUILLÉN: [Laughs.] The character of Yassine—as well as the film itself—exhibits more humor than I've seen in your previous work. Yassine was clever. I laughed outloud when Céline clutched him and he said, "You're needing love or something?"
DUMONT: He is very funny.
GUILLÉN: Another distinction from your previous work is Hadewijch's aspect ratio. You've set 'Scope aside to create a more contained, intimate frame?
DUMONT: The 1-66 projection ratio is best suited to the subject. When I'm determining a film's technical aspects—when I'm choosing film stock, what microphone I'm going to use, what camera, what camera lenses—it's always in terms of what I'm trying to convey. Here, I was trying to use something as humble and as close to the character as possible. This almost square frame is simple and humble. Cinemascope is far more spectacular and conveys a force that I didn't need in trying to come close to Céline. I chose something much simpler which worked better for the film, I think.
That was the same reason, for example, that I chose to mix the film in mono-sound and not use stereo because the sound stays right in the picture; it doesn't go outside the frame.
GUILLÉN: the accordion band, the church ensemble, the sung Muslim prayer, and the use of Bach's "Passion of St. Matthew" as coda. Were you trying to show through such diverse music how it expresses the different voices of Spirit?
DUMONT: Yes. Mystics have always used music—Bach's cappella, for example—to express faith. Through music, one can obtain a glimpse of the hidden side of the soul that otherwise is difficult to express.
* * *
[The following is not for the spoiler-wary!!] I ran out of time before I could ask Dumont the burning question I was hesitant to ask, what actually happened at film's end? Was that scene after the explosion in the Paris subway? Was it a flashback before Céline was sent away from the convent? Was it some kind of dream? Is that withholding of information purposeful? This elision proves provocative and frustrating. At indieWIRE, Michael Koresky writes that "at film's end there remains a baffling opaqueness, both in terms of the director's and the characters' motivations." At Variety, Justin Chang concurs that the Parisian act of terrorism is "quickly called into question by a rain-soaked coda." At Not Coming To A Theatre Near You, Mike D'Angelo muses, "I've read at least three different interpretations of the film's perplexing coda, which makes no logical sense unless you conclude either (a) that it precedes certain other events chronologically (my initial assumption), or (b) that certain other events weren't real."
I have vacillated between these various possibilities and imagine I will do so for some time; but, today—conjuring the image of a raven hunched in the rain—I have decided it is a portent, an omen and that the scene is a flashback. What do you think? ■

通俗的说，当你恋爱的时候你也会困惑对方是否爱你
可是爱飘忽不定，你永远无法确定
你会去寻找对方爱你的迹象。

少女对神的虔诚毋庸置疑，它贯穿全片，甚至不能容忍另外一个神的存在。
开篇的铺垫在结尾相互辉映，开篇少女主动挨饿，主动去寒冷，而在结尾的时候主动去淋雨，主动去自杀，这就是表现了少女的困惑，困惑神是否存在，如果存在神是否会像她爱神那样爱她，她知道神无处不在，而事实表明神是存在的，即使挨饿会有人叫她吃饭，淋雨会有人叫她避雨，自杀都会有人把她救上来，冥冥中神在看着她，不想让她死，当然她愿意为神付出生命，而这样的设计又说明中段离开修道院的那时间，少女并没有领悟到任何，或者说没有什么值得领悟，再或者神以外的种种都是浮云。
     这时候你会觉得影片是沉闷的，其实思路却是无比清晰，而导演想讲述的是少女内心的心里活动，情节的推进只是平常的速度，而需要强调内心的时候速率又会放慢，比如教堂的音乐，比如进门前的挣扎，刻意的拖延这时间，而这些镜头的应用，无非是让每一个观众进行自己的思考。
    
中段少女的心理历程看的一知半解。

这部电影恐怕不是基督徒很难会看懂，影片最后是之前的倒叙，女主角在地铁中已经被恐怖分子炸死。一个清新的人、一个处女、一个对财富并不贪恋的在圣经说：“她是有福的”。而那位被判入狱的男人不能说是耶稣的缩影，但他的经历隐喻了耶稣当时的经历，工匠、被世人误会、用爱去救人...
总之看这部影片一定要用单纯的心去看，而那位工匠最后大家看到了，其实是那个修女误会了他，而女主角想自杀的时候却是那个男的拉了他一把，其实他们什么都没有去做，而很多人认为女主角也渴望被爱，这样的说法至少对了一半，具体来说是她渴望被耶稣去爱。
影片最后女主角死在了地铁里，这说明了两点：1 女主角已经没有什么可做的了，他已经成了义人，就像彼得、保罗、施洗约翰一样，他们都去了天国。2 往往恐怖分子都是阿拉伯信伊斯兰的圣战者，而这种举动并不代表他忠诚于信仰，而是完全违背了神对人爱的初衷。虽然伊斯兰和基督教都信一个神，但他们完全是做两个事情。这样也更加说明真正的爱和口头的宗教信仰之间的区别性。

我希望基督徒都要看看这部电影，非常的不错，意义深刻。