靡菲斯特1981

老电影看久了就开始习惯那种氛围，胶片的质感和戏剧化的色彩灯光造型还有表演。

故事说起来简单，其中起起伏伏也花了不少心思，松弛有度。不惜用十余分钟表现霍夫根与情人的相处，却吝啬地用三个镜头表现他与劝他离开德国的女人的关系，随后用一场看似和谐的酒会暂时舒缓情绪，牢牢抓住观众的好奇，不断推进剧情。霍夫根出场是一个不得志的三流演员，时时刻刻表现出的aggresive的确招人厌烦，但他悲惨的经历和卑微的内心又令人同情，同时影片以他的视点为主，使人逐渐代入他的立场。尤其在他做剧院院长后，在同事面前的自嘲，对同事的保护，秘密见情人妻子，都丰富了他既勇敢又懦弱，既深情又无情的维。在他做出屈服于纳粹决定时，我们并不十分厌恶唾弃他，反而十分同情，甚至会在心里喊“不，不要！”这个扮演“梅菲斯特”，被总理称为“梅菲斯特”的人，最终真的成了“梅菲斯特”。在故事的结尾或者说高潮时，我们内心逐渐生出悲凉，他不只是一个演员，他是很多演员，是当时的很多人。坚守自己的立场固然值得敬佩，但那些随风飘摇的人不见得就应该被万世唾弃。归根结底，那不是他一个人的错。

构建人物关系的视听语言值得琢磨。霍夫根第一次被邀请参与总理的聚会时，两人的特写虽然占据画面大小基本一致，但总理用仰拍，霍夫根用俯拍。二人谈话的镜头中，一个只有总理的正脸和霍夫根的侧脸，一个总理脸上有光，霍夫根则隐藏在黑暗中。俯仰在两人关系镜头中频频使用，如办公室谈话片段，还有大光圈虚化的使用都表现了总理的控制地位。霍夫根和其他人物的关系也有类似的运用。

结尾的两极镜头和强烈的光线配上bgm给人不适的感觉，最终特写的定格不免让人想到《四百击》。

政治和艺术，一直都“剪不清，理还乱”🌚

Hungary’s Oscar BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM winner, directed by István Szabó, one of the country’s most eminent filmmakers, unlike most pictures depicting a pre-WWII Germany from the standpoint of the dreaded persecuted, like Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s DESPAIR (1978), MEPHISTO skews it to an squeaky-clean Caucasian German specimen, Hendrik Hoefgen (Brandauer), an apolitical theater actor in Hamburg, who is first seen yowling hysterically in his dressing room in the wake of prima donna Dora Martin (Kishonti)’s triumphant curtain call, handling peer pressure is a tricky business.

Contending for a successful career, Hendrik creates a Bolshevik theater to gain more work, marries Barbara Bruckner (Janda), a production designer hailed from a posh family, and finally makes his mark by playing Mephisto in a Faustus play, the incarnation of demon. A role is also much to the liking of the General of the Third Reich (Hoppe) - a role modeled on Hermann Göring -, when Nazi party comes to power. Barbara and many of his friends and colleagues flee from Germany, but Hendrik returns after being given amnesty for his flirtation with avant-gardism, thanks to actress Lotte Lindenthal (Harbort), who happens to the lover of the General.

Step by step, Hendrik is promoted to be the head manger of the National Theater in Berlin under the auspice of the General, who simply calls him “my dear Mephisto”, yet his apparent rising-through-the-ranks cannot save his black mistress Juliette Martens (Boyd) from being deported to Paris (although it is to his credit that she is delivered from annihilation), or the life of his friend Otto Ulrichs (Andorai), his marriage with Barbara is naturally dissolved, actress Nicoletta von Niebuhr (Bánsági), the best friend of the latter, comes as a low hanging fruit as a rightful wife, with the blessing of the General.

First and foremost, MEPHISTO’s wow factor primarily rides on Klaus Maria Brandauer’s profound proteanism, who deliriously basks in Hendrik’s time-serving complexity as well as his theatrical antics, alternately haughty, histrionic, spontaneous, heartfelt, childish or earnest, it is a career-defining tour-de-force that among the best ever. Veteran actor Rolf Hoppe (who just passed away a little more than one month earlier) also laudably impresses us with the General’s acrimonious mutability, and a plucky Karin Boyd defies any exploitation (both of her skin color and rangy body) to hold it on her own, her pas-de-deux with Brandauer in the buff demonstrates the fleeting but coruscating outburst of free spirit, soon will be submersed under the pall of smothering foreboding.

Art vs. reality, the metaphor of Mephisto can be fairly alluded to the Nazi party itself, a demonic force luring its devotees to unleash the most heinous vice onto the world, as a cog in this wicked wheel, no one, however apolitical, can come out of it unscathed, apprehending his tenuous rapport with the party, in Szabó’s glaring surreal final shots, Hendrik is running scared for his precarious future, a resounding kicker to expose evil from within, MEPHISTO, sometime running away with its high theatrics and unruly caprice, is a spine-tingling reminder of what it is like to live when perpetuating fear and injustice is hovering overhead.

referential entries: Szabó’s BEING JULIA (2004, 7.1/10); Ildikó Enyedi’s MY TWENTIETH CENTURY (1989, 7.2/10); Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s DESPAIR (1978, 7.8/10).