圣乔治

作者公众号：如果在澳门 小废话儿： Marco Martins的《Saint George》曾参加过2016年威尼斯电影节的竞赛单元，并且夺得最佳男主角。而在刚结束的第一届澳门影展，评审委员会打破每个电影只给一个奖项的管理，颁给了这部电影两个重要奖项——“最佳导演”和“最佳男演员”。

本文已以中英双语刊登于2017年1月《澳门特写》杂志。

这次您的电影在第一届澳门国际影展暨颁奖典礼上斩获两个大奖。请问您此时感想如何？

我们在做电影时，就没想过拿奖的事情，我们只关心电影的观众受众群。但的确，奖项也很重要，它会让更多的观众和媒体都注意到这部电影。像这部与政治相关的电影，媒体关注会有很好的效果──因为他们会同时讨论电影和电影讨论的主题，这其实很重要。 现在的新闻时效都很短，人们很快便忘记了发生过的事情。我认为在这是个非常特别的时间段，而且人们应该从中吸取教训。葡萄牙人居然并不知道自己一直在向欧洲偿还债务，这件事非常奇怪。而且欧债危机的真正当事人，比如说居住在Jamaica或Bela-Vista这种地方的穷人从没有机会出现在新闻里。你只能看见政治家们在讨论数字而已，不管是左派还是右派，他们都一样的在喝香槟。

《Saint George》其实是一部非常大胆的电影，内容是关于发生在葡萄牙的经济危机，这是个特别而敏感的时刻。你是从何时决定开始做这个选题的呢？

当我开始创作《Saint George》这部片子的时候，周围的人都跟我说拍一个关于当下正在发生事情的电影是很冒险的，因为我们不能有一个准确的观点，几年之后事情可能会发生变化，而你也可能会对其有不一样的看法。

我倾向同意他们的观点。但是，这是我们历史上近乎决定性的时刻，我们失去了很多社会福利，很多人失去了他们的工作，一切都在改变。我认为报纸上的新闻和电视总是在谈论政治和数字，没有人关注人民的感受和经济危机的真实的一面。所以我觉得冒这个险。我之前从未拍过社会议题的电影，这部电影与我之前的作品有很大的不同。对我们这代人来说，这件事非比寻常，它看起来像是人人都同意我们向欧洲支付债务。

这部影片的主演Nuno Lopes拿下了最佳男主角奖，他之前在威尼斯影展上也同样拿下了最佳男主角。你觉得他的表演有何特别之处，会如此打动人心？

我认为他在电影中的表演非常有特点。 Nuno是个情感充沛的演员，也是功力颇深的演员。他有着坚韧的个性，就像一个一直在出拳的拳击手。他不光身体壮硕，内心也很坚韧。人们因此会被他的性格所吸引。 同时，那就像是个对于我们当时所思考之事的隐喻──我们对于即将到来的事情一无所知，正如那个角色，正如身处暗室里与黑暗作斗争。很多人都问过，我是怎么让Nuno的演出可以不露一丝表演痕迹的。我的回答是，我也不知道。当我在导演时，我只想让演员找到所演出角色的强调。但是和Nuno我们已经合作了那么久，一起做调研，一起做采访 ，所以当表演那一刻来临时，他其实已经不用想太多了。 在澳门的观众和评委会不仅理解而且欣赏您的电影，这是否意味着您的作品本身传达更多的不分文化差异，大家都能理解的讯息在里面呢？

我觉得肯定是由这种讯息在里面的。有趣的是，越是本土的故事，其实越能引起普遍共鸣。我认为根本没有所谓的本土故事。美国文化试图以全球化、趋同性影响我们，但并不其然。我更希望看到一部讲述澳门或中国的被遗忘的社区的电影，胜于一部看起来像是美国大片的中国电影，因为那个没有普遍性，仅仅是中国或葡萄牙对于美国电影的简单重复而已。这种电影语言是可以引起普遍共鸣的，只要你知道自己的观众在哪里。毕竟我的这部电影讲述了一位父亲试图保护家庭完整性，不想失去妻子和儿子的故事，这就是我认为的普世价值。

您的电影已经卖给了中国片方。请问您知道它何时会在中国发行放映吗？

我其实不知道它什么时候会在中国发行。我希望它会在院线放映，因为很多时候买家只是买下它出版发行而已。 您的每两部作品之中都间隔了不短的时间。请问原因是？

我是花很长时间的人，平均每部电影之间间隔5年吧。于我而言，找到一个合适的题材真的很难。而且有时候在葡萄牙寻找拍片资金也并非易事，也需要花上时间。而当我有了最终的剧本后，在拍摄之前我还需要和演员进行大量的沟通工作。所以确实会花很长时间。而当拍摄结束时，比如这部电影，我花了六个月时间剪片，又花了六个月时间配音配乐，所以时间很长。我有一点点完美主义倾向。 您是否考虑过来澳门拍电影呢？

我的电影，要么是关于我所熟知的事物，要么是关于我想进一步了解的事物。我更容易选择那些自己熟悉的题材，所以我基本上都在葡萄牙拍摄。而纪录片的话，我则更多在国外拍摄，日本，印度或者巴西。我将来一定也会来澳门拍摄。对于我们葡萄牙人而言，澳门充满了魅力，它就像是一片丢失在历史长河之中的时间，待你去探索要如何去处理这样一个题材。而当你觉得一件事物充满魅力之时，正是你以之为电影的时刻。 转载请注明出处、微信号(@如果在澳门)以及添加原文链接。

Q&A with "Best Director" Marco Martins *This article is firstly appeared on the 2017 January issue of Macau CLOSER magazine

How do you feel about receiving these two awards at the first edition of the International Film Festival & Awards Macao?

When we do films, we don’t think about awards, you think about the public and who are you addressing the film to. But actually awards can be important, to make your film more visible to a bigger audience, to have media attention. In a film like this, such a political film, media attention is good both ways, because it talks about the film and it talks about the subject of the film, which is really important.

Nowadays news is so fast that people tend to forget very easily. And I think this was a very particular time and there’s a lesson there. This thing about Portuguese having to pay a debt to Europe, that nobody knew existed, is really strange. And then the real faces of the crisis, the poor people from places like Jamaica, Bela-Vista - those faces are never in the news. You see politicians talking about numbers. They’re left wing, right wing, but they all drink champagne.

Saint George is a risky film in the sense that it's a film about the crisis in Portugal, a very specific and sensitive moment. When did you decide to work with such a topic?

When I started writingSaint George, people kept telling me that there’s nothing more dangerous than to write a film about the present, because we don't have perspective, things will seem different in a few years and when you look back you have a different perspective about it.

I tend to agree with this, but then for us it was a very decisive moment in our recent history, we lost a lot of social privileges, a lot of people were losing their jobs and everything was changing. I think that news and newspapers and TV tend to talk more about politics and numbers, but they don't see the real faces of the people, the real faces of the crisis. So I took the risk. I never did a social film before; all my films are very different from this one. For our generation, this was something different. It seemed that we had to pay our debt to Europe and everybody was accepting that.

One of the awards is for the actor, Nuno Lopes, who also won the same prize in Venice. Why do you think his performance seems to touch everyone so much?

I think it’s very unique what he achieved in the film. Nuno is a very emotional actor, a very profound actor, and here he has this tough personality, he’s a boxer who is struggling. You see this big body but with a big heart as well. People are very touched by the character.

At the same time it’s like a metaphor of what all of us were thinking at that time – we didn't know exactly what was going on, it was just like a character, it was like a dark room in some way, like fighting with the dark. A lot of people asked me how I got to a point with Nuno where it seems that he is not acting at all. The answer to that is that I really don't know, because when you’re directing you just try for the actors to achieve what you think is the right tuning for that character. And with Nuno, we worked so much together, also in the research period, doing interviews in the neighborhoods, that when it came to the time when he had to act, he really didn’t need to think that much. The fact that audiences and a jury on the other side of the world, Macau, can understand and appreciate your film also shows that there's a more universal message in it, correct?

I think there is a universal message, that’s for sure. Ironically, the more local a story is, the more universal it gets. I think there are no local stories. American culture tries to sell us this thing about globalization, and about everything being the same, but it isn’t. I’m more interested in seeing a film about the forgotten society here in Macau or in China, than a Chinese film that looks like an American film, because then it’s not universal, it’s just like a Chinese copy or a Portuguese copy of an American movie. So, this kind of language can be very universal if you find your audience for it. Most of all, the center of the story is a father who wants to keep his family together, he doesn’t want to lose his son and wife, that’s universal I think

The rights of your film were sold to China. Do you have any idea of how it is going to be distributed here in China?

I don’t know when it’s going to be released in China. I hope it will have a theatrical release, because sometimes they buy it and just distribute it directly on video or something.

It seems you take quite a long time between each of your films. Why is that?

I takes a very long, it’s basically a film every five years. For me, to find the right subject is very difficult. Then, sometimes in Portugal to finance your projects it’s not easy, you lose a bit of time on that. And then when I have the final script, and before we start shooting, I have to do a lot of work with the actors. So it’s really a long way. And when the shooting finishes, like in this film, I’ve spent six months editing image and six months editing sound, so it’s a long process for me. In that sense I’m a little bit of a perfectionist.

Would you ever consider shooting in Macau?

My films are always about something that I know very well or that I want to know more about. I tend to choose subjects that are very close to me, that’s why I usually shoot my fictions in Portugal. As far as documentaries, I’ve shot a lot of them abroad, in Japan, in India, in Brazil. And I will shoot in Macau for sure. For us Portuguese, Macau has a bit of a fascination, it’s a bit of history lost in time that you recover, that you don’t know exactly what to do with. It’s really amazing, when you have a fascination for something, it’s great to make a film about it.