一诺千金

THE PROMISE is Dardenne Brothers’ third feature, which heralds their incredible rising into the stratosphere of cinematic auteur-land, and reaping coveted top-shelf international awards almost with every each feature henceforward.

Starring a 14-year-old Jérémie Renier in his breakthrough role as the young Belgian boy Igor, an apprentice mechanic often at beck and call of his single father Roger (Gourmet, also a bonanza due to the brothers’ discovery), THE PROMISE plays its realism trump card implacably through DP Alain Marcoen’s handheld camera, staying ultra-close to the involving incidents, mostly inside a mangy tenement house dwelled all sorts of immigrants in Belgium.

Setting the story in an unnamed city’s twilight zone with a subdued palette, Dardenne Brothers resolutely eschews any imagery that betrays a semblance of a developed Western country, Roger is a stony-faced backdoor organizer of illegal immigration, in a purely business manner, all he cares is the money (transportation fee and rent), meantime, employing several immigrants to refurbish his own house, also it is not above him to sell any of them down the river when situation demands.

During a police raiding, one of the African immigrants Amidou (Rasmane Ouedraogo) accidentally falls from the scaffold and is mortally wounded, naturally Roger will not allow him to be taken to the hospital, against Igor’s supplication, and before Amidou kicks up the bucket, he solicits a promise from Igor to look after his wife Assita (Assita Ouedraogo) and their infant boy, who have newly arrived on the premise. So how far Igor, ridden with cumulative guilt, will go to keep this promise, when his inchoate moral righteousness doesn’t see eye to eye with Roger’s high-handed, callous directives?

Dardenne brothers’ no-frill narrative seldom takes our attention away from their characters, and withholds a stamina of matter-of-factness so pertinacious that the story never slumps into mushiness, for instance, Assita’s hardened hostility towards the father-son duo hardly ever relents (she appears more bemused than touched when Igor impulsively embraces her), even in the film’s most emotive moment, a simple gesture of gratitude is more than enough. In a typically veiled case of mollifying a white person’s own guilt, that is as good as that person can expect.

Both Renier and Assita Ouedraogo exude an unalloyed rawness from a novice performer that befits their characters, from a street-smart, small-time crook to a brave adolescent rebelling against his violent, amoral father, Igor’s rite-of-passage is rendered with steely conviction and persuasion from Renier’s simmering, unshowy, tender presence. As for an unprepossessing Gourmet, combing an elemental savagery with a soupçon of canniness, he becomes a lodestone on the screen, and serves as a self-reflexive vector for some viewers to muse upon his outrageousness, which isn’t at all far from reality.

Also THE PROMISE has a killer ending, Dardenne brothers is judicious enough to bring down the curtain right after Igor finally makes a clean breast of that gnawing whopper (with both actors’ muted reaction and a final and finally static shot gazing at the duo walking back to grasp the nettle), and leave its aftermath merely to audience’s own imagination, yet what will happen is fairly clear, certainly no requirement of a justice-prevailing denouement to flog a feeling of satisfaction to death, since the story is hinged upon Igor, when his moral compass is set in the right direction, that is where it should end.

20-odd years after, one can feel a shade dispirited to see that THE PROMISE and its thematic refrain are still painfully topical today, but for Dardenne brothers’ unique stock-in-trade and immense humanity blossoming from their canon, we should all tip our hats to them with a this-world-doesn’t-deserve-you postscript.

referential entries: Dardenne Brothers’ THE SON (2002, 7.9/10); THE KID WITH A BIKE (2011, 8.0/10); TWO DAYS, ONE NIGHT (2014, 8.6/10).

承诺与失信，你会选择什么。一诺千金，在某些人嘴里，一字不值，但在一些人嘴里却千金难买。菊花之约的故事，更让人感慨，你绝做不到。故事最后说道;不久范生真的来了，二人相聚甚是欢悦，只是面对酒菜范生不食不语。张元伯问其缘由，范聚亲说，兄弟我其实是鬼。去年回到故乡，考试未成便做起生意，日日繁忙竟忘了约会之事，到了九月九想起菊花之约，已经迟了，听古人说，人不能日行千里而鬼可以，便拔剑抹了脖子，乘阴风前来赴约。为了赴约，竟不惜死去，令人敬佩。 天使的翅膀碎了，散落人间，成为我们的忧伤;诚信的背囊抛了，落到世上，成为撒旦的魔杖。建筑商人孙水林为兑现节前给农民工发放工钱的承诺，携26万元现金及全家连夜赶回武汉，不曾想在途中遭遇重大车祸，一家5口全部遇难。弟弟孙东林为替哥哥完成遗愿，忍着悲伤，再次上路，终于在除夕的前一天，把薪水全部发到60多名民工手中。这是一次让人心痛的诚信接力。于是“信义兄弟”的美名扬名天下，于是更多的工人愿意与他们携手并肩。

她摘下了头巾

露出许久没洗的头发

背上的孩子因为母亲驼背

掉到了腰间

她的丈夫死了

15岁的少年因为一句承诺

什么也做不了

除了掩埋真相

就是说出真相

面对父亲的毒打

他懂得敏捷地蜷缩

但是命运无法抗拒的丑恶

已成为闪着金光的戒指

在拳头上对弱者讥笑

谁能告诉他什么是长大

摩托车穿梭在风中

快感从未带他

找出生命的答案

只有

来自善良的恐惧

让剪断的戒指戳伤了皮肤

螺丝钻进神像断裂的头颅

少年悔过的泪水

洗刷干净女人

头顶洒落的尿液

现实主义的感人之处：永远无错的一方，所有的冲突都包含在物竞天择的世界真相里；一部电影的“挂件”：重复出现的符号，于电影表意似无联系但尤使人印象深刻，如同唇钉耳环；情绪光谱：一个场景的核心事件结束之后，仍要不遗余力地拓展人物的状态，如同红外到紫外的可见光谱，使人物尤其有共情力，使影片尤其有意境，侯孝贤即为一例，他甚至直接进入状态而彻底抛除事件，呈现一种鸟瞰的时空；导演在试图拉近观众的情感距离时，有两种方法，一是直白、宏大、强烈地铺陈情感如《两生花》，一是循循善诱带领观众在异世界丛林曲折穿行，而后者尤其需要清晰的叙事，本片因为环境语境较陌生，我数次尝试情感介入均受阻，但是我本身之责任，这一点启示不要试图描摹异文化陌生世界；达内的现实主义是一种极高明的艺术创造，在大众温饱的世界里描摹个人贫困有何意义？可以说他是导演个人的“道格玛95”，它洗涤着导演的创作态度，不断提醒创作者回溯自己原初的艺术使命，那本来是博爱而悲悯啊；看一个导演的片子，第一部喜欢，越看越享受，越看越洁净，不断抛除各种阅读限制，真是诗化的体验，达内兄弟的戛然式样片尾对我已成极深刻烙印。