真爱一生

齐声之言并非真理

专制之行并非神意

一切都是人类自加的画地为牢行为，一种人类不健全的抱团心里。但这些都是纸老虎，若有一天当被排挤在外的人以一种势不可挡的坚定来进行反抗时，纸老虎们也就化为一地残屑。原著中写：……然而在这一片灰黑之中，却傲然挺立着一丛玫瑰……豁然深悟老子千年前之语：邻国相望,鸡犬之声相闻，民至老死不相往来。这是多大的悯生之情，多大的宽恤与自由。

早就有人说过，文字和电影是不同的表达方式。表达方式的不同也让内容发生了变化，有些时候，这种变化甚至发生在本质精神上和核心人物的性格上。
我觉得，一个好的电影改编。首先的要求这个导演驾驭大场面的能力。像名著，多数时候是波澜壮阔的篇章，错综复杂的情节和性格深沉的人物组成的。如果没有驾驭能力，就要顾此失彼。再者，他还要有很好的把握影像表达的素质。不过，最最重要的，是这个改编者的思想深度，也就说他可以和原作者达到什么样的精神沟通。
回过头来说《红字》。
如果不是因为我看了书，我觉得我实际上没有那么多的耐心看一部离自己很远，很多地方看不明白的一部长达两个多小时的阴沉电影。不过，说实话，现在的节奏这么快，人们追求的是速食的快乐。我能在上下班的地铁上阅读完这本书也是一件奇迹。就我本人来说，基本上是没享受到什么阅读的快乐。不过，名著的魅力并不是用你看了这本书能获得多少快乐的来体现的。
虽说我更喜欢电影，但是也不得不承认，电影和书基本上是南辕北辙了。
在小说中，海斯特白兰是在宗教和环境的压抑下生存不得不伪装起坚强来反击的，电影中的这个女人，从头到尾都很强。那种强，不但体现在体魄上还有精神上，甚至可以说，有很多女权意识的萌动在里面。在电影的最后，海斯特问：我为什么要留在这？为他们所接受，为他们所驯服？然后，这个女人毅然决然的要离开。事实上，根据我的理解，既然小说发生的背景是一个受压抑的阴暗年代，那么，那个时候的女人是根本不可能说走就走的。电影增加了海斯特独立意识觉醒的光辉，这是原作者内心隐隐的想要表达却囿于时代和思想的局限没有表达出来的。于是，海斯特的形象固然光辉了，可是却有些不现实。那种年代，如果女人生出了这种思想，我想，只有被钉在耻辱架上问吊的唯一结局。
电影给了黛米摩尔太多戏，让我觉得这就是一部女人的励志史诗。小说中的海斯特从始至终就认为自己是罪恶的，但是电影中她昂起了高傲的头，从没承认过自己的爱情是罪恶。
我更喜欢电影，是因为故事发生的年代太久远，故事发生的背景我不甚了解。我更愿意接受电影中有几个具有同情心的妇女在帮助海斯特，更愿意接受在海斯特受训的时候牧师走上前去，还有，最后，在海斯特生死攸关的时刻，他站出来说，我爱这个女子，我是这个孩子的父亲，在神的眼中我是这孩子的父亲。这其实已经颠覆了原著中丁梅斯代尔的全部人格。在原著中，他虚弱，他懦弱，他伪善，他冷酷甚至残忍。明明敢爱为何不敢承担责任？圣坛的光辉吸引着他使他不能放弃自己高洁的名声。说起他在肉里陷刻红字和鞭挞自己，与其说这是他对爱情的忏悔不如说这个宗教的腐朽毒液侵蚀后的必然结果。他对海斯特毫无怜悯，反而认为他们是或许诱惑堕落的一对，这一切都有悖他自认为圣洁的内心。这才是他痛苦的根源。
那些泯灭人性的清教教条，是霍桑想要控诉的，但最终他含而不露。也许是没勇气也许是自己也没有看到自己内心这种诉求。因为人性的纠结和深厚历史的纵贯，这部小说得以名垂青史。
或者可以说，电影改编不成功，因为内涵和精髓有些离题甚远。不过，我倒认为这更符合现在的人欣赏的视角。电影的最后，牧师和白兰以及珠儿一家三口走了，这是一个很美好的结局。总而言之，人们希望通过电影得到的，是美好的享受和期盼，而原著的精髓就是一个十足的悲剧。
推崇电影。可是，想要领略名著的魅力还是去看原著。

“我很敬重和爱这个孩子的父亲，而我不可能也不能说出任何给他带来伤害的话。”

向这样的女人致敬。

所有的宗教禁忌都是人们凭空想象出来的，有宗教信仰不代表就有崇高信仰，有一时的信仰不代表能坚守一生。真正的崇高信仰是严于律己、宽于律人。

所有的信仰之争、主义之争都是权力之争和利益之争。只有为人类和广大人民的终极幸福而追求的才是值得称道的。

人类从最初原始社会的夭折、饥饿、寒冷、病痛、乱伦到现代社会的长寿、美食、温暖、舒适、爱情，每经历过一次王朝的更替和帝国的消逝和民众的觉醒、民主和独立，人类的文明都在螺旋式的上升。

我坚信人类会因为文明而永恒。

        Retelling a novel in a film adaption can be challenging. One needs to consider casting, as well as the context and setting of the story and more. Most important, the main theme should be faithfully represented. Nathaniel Hawthorne’s novel The scarlet letter (1850) and Roland Joffe’s film (1995) of the same title have certain things in common: both feature the hardened life of Hester Prynne, who commits adultery in Puritan Boston in the mid-seventeenth century. However, the differences between the novel and the film are so prominent that the film can be a problematic retelling. The novel reveals the tragic lives of the characters – Hester and Pearl Prynne, Arthur Dimmesdale and Roger Chillingworth – as the inevitable result of the narrow and relentless Puritan society in the mid-seventeenth century. The film, in contrast, gives its leading roles unrestricted liberty, both physically and spiritually, rather than being subjected to the Puritan morality in the original story. This mismatch between the traits of main characters and their setting in the Puritan town compromises the integrity of the story.
        Joffe presents The Scarlet Letter as an overtly sensual retelling of the novel. The alterations he made in both the plot of the story and the nature of its leading characters are a total distortion of the novel. The film portrays Hester Prynne, starred by Demi Moore, who leaves her husband in Europe and comes to live in puritan Boston in the mid-seventeenth century. Her unconventional behavior and opinions draw attention from the repressed Puritans in town. She then meets the passionate young minister Arthur Dimmesdale, starred by Gary Oldman, whose sermons deeply touch her. The minister is also attracted by her charm and they soon secretly fall in love. After receiving the news that Virginian Indians have killed Hester’s husband, she gets pregnant, bearing the minister’s child. She is nonetheless accused of adultery even if it is not known whether her husband is alive then. In order to protect the respectable minister, she refuses to tell the name of the father and is condemned to wear the scarlet letter A as a badge of ignominy. She is not repentant and continues to challenge the principles of the Puritan society openly. Meanwhile, Dimmesdale also suffers great pain from his secrete guilt. Hester’s husband then appears in town and becomes a killer to take vicious revenge on Dimmesdale. With the help of Indians, Hester and Dimmesdale leave the town finally and enjoy a happy ending.
        Hawthorne’s novel, The Scarlet Letter, allows Hester Prynne to have a freedom of mind, undisciplined by the prejudice and principle of the society. “The world’s law was no law for her mind”. However, she keeps her “freedom of speculation” all within herself. She does not want to irritate the authorities and lose the right to raise her Pearl. Conversely, Joffé apparently attempts to give Demi Moore complete freedom of mind and speech that seem totally unrealistic for a woman in the given setting and time. He glorifies the character of Hester Prynne by making her unbelievably strong, out-spoken and full of righteous justice. He portrays her as a rather wealthy heroine who buys indentured labor to farm the land instead of doing needlework. He even allegorizes Hester as a feminist by making her to confront the male dominated authorities several times in the film. When Demi Moore is accused of heresy because of disregarding “the law of men,” she questions the magistrates that “If the discourse of woman is ‘untutored chattering,’ then why does the Bible tell us that women shall be the teachers of women?” It seems rather bizarre her argument is beyond the magistrates’s power of refutation. More peculiar, Joffe describes her as a true friend to Mistress Hibbins, standing up for her when she is suspected to be a witch at the judicial hearing. Hester says bravely that “Mistress Hibbins is no witch. And she committed no crime beyond speaking her mind.” This overt battle with the public contradicts entirely with the image of Hester in the book as she “interferes neither with public nor individual interests and convenience” (209). Instead of showing Hester as a female character in a setting parallel to Hawthornes’s depiction of Puritan town in 1642, Joffe makes her too avant-garde and aggressive for her period of time.
        Joffe misinterprets Hester’s morality under the Puritan setting by making noticeable change to her sense of sin in the film version. In the novel, Hester firmly believes she has sinned by the liaison with the minister though she never regrets their sincere love. She, therefore, throughout the book, does penance by living an ascetic life in an abandoned cottage at the outskirt of Boston. She is totally deprived of social interactions, with no friends and seeking none; she makes a living doing needlework and raises Pearl alone; she even gives out charity to the even more miserable beings. By doing so, she hopes that atonement can be made for “a union that is unrecognized on earth”. Hawthorne portrays her anguished by the public bitterness and conscious of the shame brought by the scarlet letter, but remains uncomplaining. In the film, however, Hester has no contrition or guilt nor does she think she has sinned at all. Right after Demi Moore is imprisoned because of adultery, she questions Dimmesdale that “Do you believe we’ve sinned? What happened between us has a consecration of its own!” Later in the scaffold scene, she challenges the Governor again on her understanding of sin: “I believe I have sinned in your eyes, but who is to know that God shares your views.” Whereas Hawthorne portrays Hester as a victim of Puritanism principles by presenting her sufferings and defenselessness to the notion of sin, Joffe makes her more like a victor over the “law of men.” Due to the absent conscious of sin in Demi Moore, Joffe is unable to bring to light the transfiguring and ascendant effects taken place in Hester in the novel, which is driven by her sense of sin. Therefore, he fails to underscore her transformation as Hawthorne does, which results from the inhuman nature of Puritan society – the main issue that Hawthorne criticizes.
        As Hester’s guilt-wracked lover, Arthur Dimmesdale, is not only too powerful a character in the film, but he has too much flexibility in expressing his love. In the movie, he does not reveal bravely to be the child’s father only because Hester pleads with him. However, “everything in [his] nature cries out for it.” Joffe’s Dimmesdale no longer has the nature of cowardice and hypocrisy, but is almost as brave and honest as Hester is. He even defends her innocence as he accuses her confinement as “an abomination.” Joffe manages to set up excessive interviews between Dimmesdale and Hester, only to demonstrate that he has true love for her and desperately wants to help her out by risking himself. Even more at the end of the movie, when Hester is about to be executed for witchcraft, Dimmesdale confesses his love and secret to the public: “I love this woman. I am the father of her child. And in God’s eyes, I am her husband.” He then puts the string on his own neck, wiling to die for Hester. By openly challenging the rules of the town, Joffe’s Dimmesdale seems to have a negative view on Puritanism as well. Joffe reverses the role of Dimmesdale to an emotive and courageous man who has a voice for his love and a respect for human nature. This revision is problematic because such qualities are deprived in this repressed “Puritan divine” as decribed in the novel, whose puritanical morality is so deep-rooted.
        Joffe overly emphasizes the emotional appeals to the audience by producing a Hollywoodized happy-ending. In the novel, Hawthorne creates a single powerful climax: all the other human voices and music subdue, left with only the majestic voice of Dimmesdale’s confession and the revelation of the scarlet letter on his breast. At this point, Hawthorne pushes all the tension and suppressed emotions – anguish, sin and repentance – to an extreme that they can bear no more but to be released into the final lyric paragraphs. The peaceful dialogue between Hester and Dimmesdale before his death serves as a powerful form of salvation for the previous vehement narrative as well as the burdened tragic lives of Hester and Dimmesdale. Joffe, however, creates different tension points in his ending. He depicts Hester, as a champion of justice, asks to be hanged together with Mistress Hibbins; then Dimmisdale heroically declares his love for Hester and is willing to dye for her; finally and most absurd, a rebellion by the Indians saves them all, turning the film into an action movie. Joffe introduces digression to release the main tension in the story. Though the ending that Hester and Dimmesdale live happily afterwards might be more comfortable for the audience, it is much less powerful than the one in the novel.
        Joffe portrays both Hester and Dimmesdale as the brave and passionate warriors against the Puritan society’s inhumanity, rather than being victims. Of course, it is good that Joffe believes that Hester and Dimmesdale eventually triumph over the repressed Puritan doctrines, but by giving them much more undisciplined freedom in their nature than Hawthorne does, he seems to deny the fact that they are ever repressed or affected by Puritanism. Assuming that both Hester and Dimmesdale have emancipated spirits almost equivalent to modern-day people, Joffe manages to cross out the imprint left on them by Puritanism in the mid-seventeenth century in Puritan Boston. By depriving those characters of the tragic consequences from the Puritan principles, he undermines the intention of Hawthorne in reforming Puritanism in the novel.

    这部电影是原著的改编版，结局比原著好太多，使得看客也多满足了几分，个人而言如果这样一种环境下发展下来的故事又变为了悲剧，那实在没有看下去的勇气，毕竟生活是为了愉悦自己，还是喜欢一些具有正能量和幸福感的片子。
    刚开始发展得比较慢，可能是因为我被剧透了的原因，所以前部分看得有点急躁，但故事发展到了后半部分，情感纠葛和情节曲折还是十分引人入胜，看得胆战心惊不敢放过任何一幕，英文版字幕虽然有些词生涩难懂，但有一些英语诗歌常识的人应该不会觉得理解意思很困难。喜欢剧中的男主角，尊重爱的人又不缺乏勇气，相比起来原著中就没有如此完美了，这部电影如此让我喜欢还有一个原因是里面不缺乏善良的人儿，被认为是巫师的邻居一家增添了不少温情的色彩，还有萌萌哒的女儿让人不禁心生喜爱。
    片子中景色的选取也很美好，浪漫自然原始，总归是一部成功的电影。