红字

        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.

《红字》，是美国小说家霍桑最著名的作品之一。这里要和小说进行比较的，是1995年黛米摩尔主演的电影版本。
    
    同样是《红字》，故事框架似乎差不多，但是就像我以前提到的《活着》的电影和小说一样，《红字》的电影表现的是现代得多的东西。不仅如此，为了影片的票房考虑，电影中还增加了许多商业元素。借用我同学的话来说，就是以为买错碟了；简直面目全非……小说原著的文笔流畅，但是由于作者的时代局限性，也就是其个人对于未来发展的迷茫，所以看起来十分压抑。电影就要酣畅许多。明显的一点就是，影片中的牧师，比我想象中要狂野许多，看开头的时候，我还以为这是一个“红字”和“皮袜子”的混合体呢。


    从表现出来的思想上看，原著主要讨论的是人的罪，即人皆有罪。而通过赎罪和将罪行袒露出来，可以使灵魂得到升华。这和作者本身是清教徒身份以及对家族以前犯下的罪过产生的宿命感分不开的。而且，作者虽然觉得当时对人思想的禁锢是不对的，但是，他对变革也抱有怀疑态度。但是电影就不一样了。时代向前推进了不是一点半点，现在思想解放已被公认，所以在影片中，海斯特的言行就更加坚定。霍桑只是向未来窥探，而导演却是回望，自然占了很大便宜。因此，再在电影中单纯的表现人皆有罪的思想便会显得不合时宜甚至怪异晦涩了。是以海斯特的丈夫的戏份被明显减少了。那么用什么来填补思想的空白呢？电影中表现海斯特和牧师间的爱情的戏份增加了，印第安人的戏份也明显增加了。特别是后者，甚至带来了影片结尾的大规模战斗场面，也许导演想为沉闷的全局制造一个高潮吧。恐怕用心白费了，因为后来强安上去的大团圆结尾实在突兀。


    小说中海斯特是迷茫的，她为了爱人而拒绝说出情夫的名字，又因为愧疚和恐惧发誓不向他人透露自己丈夫的身份。电影中海斯特是坚定的，从不认为自己有罪，也完全站在爱人的一边。在影片中她去警告了牧师约瑟，而影片刚开始海斯特乘马车去找房子的时候，镇上的人都在看她，说明到镇上的人不多，每个新人都很受关注，约瑟不可能不知道海斯特的丈夫的身份。事实上，从后面的情节中可以知道，他知道的。海斯特的不同表现表明，霍桑对爱情和教义本身就存在迷茫，他既肯定两人之间的爱是伟大的，是上天的赐予，又认定通奸是罪。电影导演明显是将“爱情”这种人性需求放至第一位。他在为两个人的行为辩护。


    电影对“女巫案”的映射部分还是保留的很好，也算是忠于原著了。但是小说中描写红字被海斯特装饰的异常美丽在电影中几乎没表现出来，更别提原著结尾海斯特是又回到这里，自愿带上红字，度过余生；而海斯特因为善良能干逐渐被众人接受也丝毫没有提及，这恐怕是因为要为引出影片结尾的战斗而不得不舍弃了吧。基于以上两点，我认为，电影在表现海斯特的坚韧善良方面比原著差远了。商业和思想似乎从来都是跷跷板的两端，我个人认为本片在这两端的平衡上处理的不好。


    影片中还有一个意象分担了红字的重量，那就是一只红色的小鸟。红色的小鸟出现过两次，后来在女奴的描述中又出现过一次。都是在影片的前半部分。第一次是在海斯特劳作时，小红鸟引她看到了牧师裸泳的情景。这无疑是给海斯特心湖投下了一块巨石。按现在的话说，大概是：哎呀妈呀，太震撼了！第二次则是海斯特终于和牧师在一起的时候，小红鸟飞进了海斯特的房子里，女奴看着红鸟忘情地沐浴。第一次海斯特想捕捉红鸟却终没有抓到，第二次红鸟自动飞到她的房间里但最终又飞走。红鸟可以说既是海斯特的媒人又是她和牧师间幸福爱情本身的象征。又因为它是鸟，也象征着海斯特甚至可以说众多妇女的精神解放。说道它的人性解放含义，它在影片中还间接地出现了一次，即海斯特的女奴被骗去审问时，女奴表达出来的。对于这个我将其理解为，人性一旦尝到了解放的滋味，就会给人深刻的影响，再想将其束缚起来，是很难的。个人不太赞成小红鸟的出现，首先，它抢了红字“A”的戏；其次，它的出现有始无终，在影片大团圆结局中也没露个脸，反倒使人觉得它指代不明。
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  The film “The Scarlet Letter” tells a story of a brave woman. We call her “Hide”. She had married, but her husband was older than her and she didn't love him. One day, she came to a town of the USA and met a young priest. The priest's sermons lecture touched her heart deeply. And that, Hide's charm also moved the priest, they were fallen in love. Hide was pregnant. For this reason, she was accused of “adultery” and forced to wear clothes with “The Scarlet Letter”. But she was brave and unrepentant. She borne the baby, and lived hardened. With the help of the Indians, she got the happiness finally.

   Hide is touched my heart deeply. The woman is so brave and loyalty. She always conviction the love of the priest and full of virtue, even under the harsh realities. The letter “A” stands for shame first, but Hide makes it stand for “able”、“angle” by her brave. She strives for true love. She is a soldier who struggling with the feudal tradition!

  In the end of this film, the “Scarlet Letter” was throwing away. it is stand for the beginning of Hide's new happy live.

   May be in her heart, the “Scarlet Letter” was stand for "Amour"...

Gary是我看《红字》的唯一原因。

忘了哪个大导演说了，导演死在影片上，演员死在角色上。而gary总是那种，能死在角色上的演员。看到的是，坏警察，吸血鬼，甚至是sid，而不是Gary Oldman

电影《红字》的结局是对原著一次大胆的改革。让那个懦弱的躲在坚毅女人身后的男人摆脱了原著给我的不良感觉。

我必须说，露点露的有些浪费，就像章子仪那个裸替，根本没有存在的必要。而且，两个人丝毫没有什么化学反应。但是，并不妨碍gary眼神中的深情。

Demi Moore的眼睛很漂亮，给我一种结霜的葡萄的感觉，可是，嘴型过于刚毅，脸型也是，身材总给我一种壮壮的感觉。Hester应该是那种外型柔弱，内心刚强的女人。可是，Demi Moore却是那种外形和内心都很strong的。

影片刚开始时，表现出Hester的与众不同，比如独立。倒是很到位。同样，露点，毫无意义。不知道导演安的什么心，但是，《红字》几乎是Demi Moore一个人的电影，所以，她在影片中强大的有些让人害怕。无论是面对宗教、面对丈夫、还是面对情人，都过于强势。

最后，不知道为什么要找一个形象如此，如此@#$%^&*的人来演Hester的丈夫。处理的有些妖魔化了。莫名其妙。

gary承认在1995年和Demi Moore一起主演《The Scarlet Letter》时他曾醉得厉害。“我知道我在那部电影里，因为我看见了，”他说，“但是关于如何拍摄的，我真是一丁点儿印象都没有。”这是最令我惊讶的，一丁点儿印象没有，却能那么精准的表现出，深情和压抑。让我怎么能不爱他！