本片淡化叙事却起到了反作用，显得有些无聊。超验风格最重要的就是最后一幕，它起到的心理现象学，应当是让观众在种种焦虑中最终得以在静态画面中沉思。施拉德说的一句话是，What do you think about when nothing happens ?You think about something when nothing happens.
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? ■
电影用了反-叙事原则，故意淡化情节和戏剧性。这种是慢电影的一个分支，可以称为监控录像（surveillance camera），使电影看上去更纪实性且贴近生活。导演们相信，人的大脑可以自动拼贴故事情节，而剪辑主导的电影会干扰观众思考更深远的东西。
超验风格的特征，正如保罗•施拉德的书《电影中的超验风格》中写道的，电影有诸多日常生活的场景并延迟剪辑(delayed edit)。其次，静态（stasis）画面的出现。比如人物的特写，建筑的静态场景。第三，出乎意料的结尾。引导观众脱离日常现实，预备进入超验状态。
电影主要讲述了一个灵魂虚空的姑娘渴望与上帝同在，而她经常感受不到心之所慕。她主动受苦，寻求在受难刺激中来获得存在时，发现上帝并没有按她所想惊心动魄地出现，于是她进入了伊斯兰教的路径，以自我行动和自我毁灭的倾向加入组织。最终，组织毁灭的行动招致她的精神崩溃，她决心抛弃上帝和自己的生命，在她投水自杀的关键时刻，全然他者（wholly other）以一个卑贱的泥工匠形象救赎了她。以肉身可见的超乎想象的方式来完成最后的关键行动。
本片作为慢电影的分支，带着超验风格的痕迹出现。但是并非特别优秀。第一，慢电影的静态(stasis)各有美学风格，前有布列松的东正教美学和德莱叶的肖像浅焦，德莱叶是带有强烈的表现主义色彩，后有导演借用黑色电影的形式，多以光线的不同运用来呈现，这是美学形式。而本片不具备影像的美学，在真实与无聊的界限中来回游荡，更多的是无聊。如果是慢运动(slow motion)，也会呈现无聊之感，比如塔可夫斯基的推拉摇移，节奏之慢令人发指，但是最终观众看到的却是诗意。画面和静态帧随便一截就是美轮美奂，光线明暗和场面调度更不用说了。
本片淡化叙事却起到了反作用，显得有些无聊。超验风格最重要的就是最后一幕，它起到的心理现象学，应当是让观众在种种焦虑中最终得以在静态画面中沉思。施拉德说的一句话是，What do you think about when nothing happens ?You think about something when nothing happens.
而这部电影最后的静态画面并没有作用到观众。有些莫名其妙，甚至怀疑导演是不是倒叙，实际上没有倒叙。导演并没有在前期做够铺垫。让观众产生了一种，前面一个小时的等候是不值得的念头。
至于最后拯救少女的泥工匠，导演选角的时候会考虑到要让观众猜不到，但必须在意料之内。因此，泥工匠这个角色身上的精神气必须要有静默的气质，然而这个演员身上体现不出拯救的意味，只有犯人的质感，让观众产生了一种悬疑片观感，怀疑是不是马上又有一颗炸弹埋在修道院，产生了随时会引爆的猜想。这是选角的失败。
最后，在读到宝琳•凯尔的影评，发现她评论布鲁诺•杜蒙的作品，说到他的电影犹如ppt，或静态的照片影集，观众被迫坐在那里观看，也不能随时翻页。言外之意，当导演没有了解观众的心理活动，或没有调度好电影节奏和心理时间，那么本来应该解放思想的慢电影，就会变成另一种和叙事电影本质一样的——消极操纵的电影。
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。
虽然布鲁诺•杜蒙此片的用意是探讨信仰的现代形态，这是男孩的形象展示出来的：泥瓦匠，救其自溺却蒙入狱，俨然是基督的现代化身。然而，试图从中引申出对宗教恐怖主义的探讨不是没有意义的。
一方面是发生在这片大陆上的信仰缺失，使得人的行为带上了更大的冒险性。片中的女孩因为在基督教信仰中寻找不到终极的意义（那是已经变质的替代品），从而被男孩蛊惑入伊斯兰的信仰团伙（作为一种更为激进的信仰形态），走上了恐怖主义行径。
我们是否需要去考察伊斯兰极端信仰在欧洲大陆上的蔓延。此次巴黎的恐怖袭击已经证明了恐怖主义扎根于欧洲土壤的现状。据调查结果显示，实施爆炸行为的数名恐怖分子系巴黎土生土长的移民后代，而不是据很多人推测的随着叙利亚难民而涌入欧洲的极端分子。说明恐怖主义已经内化，而紧接着的下一步便是对欧洲人的驯化。
我们如何防止电影中恐怖行径的发生？布鲁诺•杜蒙没有给我们答案，这是欧洲人自己，以及作为命运共同体的我们需要思考的。
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? ■