富城

SARS的兄弟SARI来了，武汉封城，所有和武汉有过关联的人都成了“敌人”，全国上下一级警备，我们都躲在家里避难，憋气，等待。等待病毒像冬风一样快一点刮过，生活恢复如常。电影院关闭了，头条花了6.3亿买下了新春贺岁档“囧妈”的播映权，人们可以在头条app免费看电影，可是我们家没有一个人愿意看，宝贝们宁可看柯南，而我看了这部没有营养的“Fat city”。

Fat city原来是美国黑人中流传的一个俚语，be in fat city用来表示美好的生活，而本片反映的落魄拳击手的颓废的生活，它紧紧联系着辛苦的工作，昔日的梦想，醺酒，无奈，生活在悲哀地重复，女人疯狂叫喊，男人醉着承诺负责，经纪人在你危难中送来一根稻草，又在你艰难成功中攫取你的财富。

Verry说，别看这么疯狂的电影，看一些积极向上的吧，可是我觉得，正是我了解生活的苦难和无奈，才能一直坚持下来。二十年，第一次把全家福发上了微信，也是心中的第一次认可。困难总会过去的，只要我们够坚持，够强大。

新好莱坞运动电影，《愤怒的公牛》及《如此运动生涯》一样，悄悄坠落，命中注定又不知不觉。康拉德霍尔的摄影是相当出色。

对于所谓“一种疏离”式的表达，安东尼奥尼的《过客》结尾便是最佳范例，同样的，这种质感也出现在了休斯顿《富城》的开头，伴随着“help me make it through the night”，天涯沦落人的基奇出场。此片结尾在他和布里吉斯在咖啡厅同向而坐的无言中，又以克里斯托弗森的“help me make it through the night”结束。

这并不是关于拳击运动，而是关于70年代。新好莱坞那一时期的创作，总会用一个亚类型叙事包裹着70年代的意识形态，艺术家们的立场或是追怀或是批评或沉醉其中。《纳什维尔》是音乐片、《逍遥骑士》是公路片、《帮手》是西部片、《富城》是拳击片、《曾今沧海难为水》、《受骗》、《黛丝米勒》是复古片…还有一众源远流长的戏仿黑白电影，他们一道，成为了70年代带有类型片外壳的历史浮世绘。

休斯顿并不有愤世嫉俗的幽默、或者保守派认定世风日下的愤慨，抑或是黄金时代好莱坞的视差所造成的诧异。如休斯顿和津尼曼者，默默融入历史潮流，甘愿在格格不入中寻找支点，以发挥余热…看看此片拳台镜头，几乎比马克·罗布森这个专业户还要精彩呢。

Glancing with a documentary eye, John Huston’s FAT CITY opens withKris Kristofferson’s lugubrious HELP ME MAKE IT THROUGH THE NIGHT to accommodate to a downbeat tonality, and concomitantly fills the screen with montages of the story’s locale and denizens, a rundown California town calledStockton in the 50s, and then introduces Billy Tully (a cleft-lipped and hair-receding Keach), a divorced, childless peckerwood and former boxer on the brink of turning 30, doing odd jobs from hand to mouth, he aspires to return to the ring, but both physically and mentally he hasn’t been conditioned to reclaim his glory. Meantime, a young stud Ernie Munger (Bridges), recommended by Billy, starts his professional boxing days but is he really the“one in a million” material which Billy sees in him?

The script is penned by the author of its source novel,Leonard Gardner, which warrants fidelity to a large extent but also leans more on Billy than Ernie in the narrative. The boxing scenes, to the lights of a pugilism outsider, are less vicarious and impactful than its more famed cinematic cousins and sometimes one can discern they are playacting, both Keach and Bridges are not toned up in a pro’s shape, but that might be the case here, Billy is over the hill, and the allusive reason behind his hard-earned victory is more due to his opponent’s deteriorating health than his own prowess. As for Ernie, he loses both two matches presented on-screen and has a soft belly which both literally and metaphorically implies that he is a younger version of Billy, getting married out of onus rather than love, the road ahead of him looks glum, and it speaks volumes in the final close-up where the two boxers sitting sipping their coffee in concert but inside they are miles away from each other (Billy is a lush Ernie tries to avoid), without obvious effort of fumbling for words, that silent moment could be the only time they share before parting company for keeps, no matter how similar their trajectories will be, both Keach and Bridges (at a tender age of 23) are extraordinary players of conveying connotations and embodying nuances.

A boisterousSusan Tyrell snatches an Oscar nomination for her terrific turn as Oma, a barfly who strikes a romantic relationship with Billy, but she is a damaged goods through and through, married twice before, habitually drenched in the hard stuff, Billy might be merely a fling to her while her current lover is in the jug. The two-handers between them are coruscating with sheer communion (in the seedy bar where they engages themselves from small talk to wearing their affectionate hearts on their sleeves), or blistering intensity (in their equally mangy bedsit where Huston pulls off the most kitchen-sink spat in the American map),she is an attainable lure for a rough diamond like Billy, but she does him no good, and the vicious circle will never cease to repeat, time and again, because loneliness brings people together but it takes a helluva luck to be able to stick together.

In a word, FAT CITY is on the top rung of Huston’s corpus, a strangely disconsolate but whole-heartedly candid social critique of the stagnation and cul-de-sac facing by the have-nots, bestowed with a sublimely subdued texture with unobtrusive dexterity, but as a boxing drama, it still looks rough-hewn and conspicuously pulls its punches in terms of veracity.

referential points: John Huston’s THE DEAD (1987, 8.1/10), UNDER THE VOLCANO (1984, 5.2/10); Martin Scorsese’s RAGING BULL (1980, 8.1/10).