【2024佳片選（其三）】關於《末日小隊請登入》的一些隨筆

文／壁虎先生

（本文為〈壁虎先生2024年度佳片選〉之其三）

（kind of）

1. 《登入無盡島》（又名《末日小隊請登入》）（Knit's Island）（2023）
艾齊·巴比耶（Ekiem Barbier）、吉廉·寇斯（Guilhem Causse）、康坦·雷古許（Quentin L'Helgouac'h）

似乎有可能是《末日小隊請登入》（Knit's Island）（原名：《登入無盡島》）大部分戲院上映的最後一個禮拜，本來也沒有要特別寫一篇評論。其實這種被我選到年度佳片第一的影片，我都會想說放到第一就好，然後就假裝沒看到。但其實後來都會有點遺憾，《殺戮荒村》（Bacurau）有人代理的那一年應該多叫幾個人去看。一開始看到入座人數好像不是很好的時候感覺好像也可以寫一下，後來口碑發酵似乎又不太需要了。其實我想大部分我能接觸到的讀者群想看的應該都已經去看了，但不知道為什麼覺得還是乾脆把它寫完好了。以下與讀者分享一些關於這部片的隨筆（亦同時因為對這部片現有的討論還有些不滿足，儘管幾乎都是好評。但我本來想說這會是一篇比較短的文章....）：

一、


雖然「遊戲」總是《末日小隊請登入》大部分的宣傳焦點，但首先你需要意識到的是，大部分的「遊戲」其實不是「長這樣的」，這其實是一個「特例」。雖然我自己沒玩過《DayZ》，但大概知道那個概念，曾經有幾年有一陣多人hardcore生存zombie survivor的風潮，但即便當時乃至推到今天，這部紀錄片去紀錄的都是一個非常「特別的」遊戲。它是一個hardcore的「沙盒」（sandbox），它基本上是蓋出一個巨大視覺擬真而物理連續的地圖，然後設計一些非常苛刻的生存系統機制，讓你有辦法去「模擬某種真實嚴峻環境中的生存」，並且不強制告訴你「應該去幹什麼」而是「看你想幹嘛就幹嘛」因此而存在角色扮演的空間。光是這兩點其實就是「主流遊戲」中的「例外」。那些真正最多人玩的「遊戲」其實是會更往在乎玩家方便度（即便是「視覺上」擬真的遊戲）的方向發展，而一些當代更受歡迎的線上遊戲（甚至跟這個有親緣關係的）基本上更多是回合制遊戲（甚至越來越手遊化或直接做手遊移植）。這種hardcore的擬真生存沙盒雖然有一群固定的死忠和一些當代變體（例如rogue like extraction shooter），但在整體玩家圖譜而言也是一個比較偏門、for專屬TA的類型（可能除了《Minecraft》，但那就不是視覺寫實的路線了）。

換言之，這部片之所以能紀錄到一群泡在裡面這麼久的、用這種像是生活在其中並「自行角色扮演自己發明出來的角色」並一起建立一個社群的玩家，首先是因為它選了一個特別而且極端以模擬真實生存且並不強制你有什麼遊戲目標為賣點的「遊戲」。而遊戲中拍到的這樣能產生感情的社群又是一個特例中的特例，換言之，這是hardcore中的hardcore（這或許是為什麼他們主要訪到成年人）。

所以當我們談虛擬與真實時，首先你要意識到的是，大部分的人泡在的虛擬不是「長這樣的虛擬」，這個直觀上模擬真實的虛擬其實反而是一個「特例的虛擬」（真正有在玩這個類型遊戲的朋友可以告訴你更準確的這個遊戲類型的系譜，這個就要請教真的有在玩這個類型的玩家了）。

Tsai Ming-liang's Where: A Reunion in a Dream

Tsai Ming-liang's Where: A Reunion in a Dream

By MrGeckoBiHu(壁虎先生)
 (This review was originally published in the 62nd issue of Taipei Documentary Filmmakers' Union Newsletters(紀工報) on February 7, 2024)

(This English version of the article you’re now reading is translated by myself, on February 2, 2025)

Before discussing Tsai Ming-liang's new work Where (2022), it’s hard not to first reveal that I think Where is secretly a fiction film. However, not only do I not mind its nomination for the Best Documentary Feature at the Golden Horse Awards, I also believe that this is ultimately not very important. What I mean is that the Golden Horse Awards and the categorization of a film’s genres exist separately, outside of this film, if not all films’ existence. I will also mention later how Where can also be entirely read as a documentary in the most conservative sense. So maybe I should put it this way, that the most moving reading of this film for me, is when it’s interpreted as a fiction, and there’s nothing wrong about the Golden Horse Awards considering it as a documentary. In fact, I don’t feel like it affects my legitimacy to comment on such a film in the Taipei Documentary Filmmakers' Union Newsletters at all, even if I consider it as a fiction or write about a reading that reads it as a fiction in this article. My subject is, after all, a film “that’s nominated for the Best Documentary Feature at the Golden Horse Awards.” On the contrary, it actually becomes meaningful for this very reason. I want to make this point clear at the start.

Next, I would like to summarize my general understanding of the background of the “Walker” series: In 2011, Tsai Ming-liang directed a stage play Only You (which I didn’t have the chance to see), in which choreographer Cheng Tsung-lung devised a movement for Lee Kang-sheng to walk across the stage at a very slow pace. This deeply moved Tsai Ming-liang, and this became the prototype of the “Walker.”[1] In 2012, Tsai Ming-liang designed the image of Xuanzang in a red robe for Lee Kang-sheng, and let him walk at an extremely slow pace, hands sustaining the lotus gesture, bowing his head, as he walked in various locations. That year, he directed four short films on this theme all at once. Among these four films from 2012, the first seems to be No Form (2012), but the only one I have had the opportunity to see is Walker, which is a segment in the four-part feature film Beautiful 2012 (2012) commissioned by the Hong Kong International Film Festival. This seems to be the second film piece in the series. (In Walker, Lee Kang-sheng slowly struggles through the streets of Hong Kong from daylight till the night falls, but there is one aspect that differs from other works in the series: a bag of takeout food hung on one of Xuanzang’s hand and a hamburger was held by the other, and the film ends with Lee Kang-sheng slowly starting to eat the hamburger.)

Joker: Folie À Deux: The Name of the Plague

 Joker: Folie À Deux: The Name of the Plague

★★★★（4/5）

By MrGeckoBiHu (壁虎先生)

(This review was originally published in Traditional Chinese on October 7, 2024 on MrGeckoBiHu’s Blogger, Medium and Facebook page simultaneously)

(This English version of the article you’re now reading is translated by myself, on February 2, 2025)

(This review includes spoilers and the ending of the film)

What we are witnessing in real-time right now to Joker: Folie À Deux, is probably the closest thing our generation will ever see to what Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me was and the criticisms it faced back then. As a sequel that’s meticulously designed to confront and deconstruct the success of its predecessor——Twin Peaks/ Joker: The former became a phenomenal ratings success in American television history, with David Lynch winning the Palme d'Or in the same year for Wild at Heart; the latter, after being award the Golden Lion, achieved widespread audience acclaim, with global box office earnings exceeding one billion dollars—— in the most unflinching way, Todd Phillips is attempting with Joker: Folie à Deux what Lynch once did with Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me, and as a result, has garnered an equivalent amount of attack and ridicule(Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me became a laughingstock amidst boos after its Cannes notorious premiere, and Lynch was treated like a pariah): In the collision of negative matter, the appealing facade of the predecessor is dismantled, in an effort to illuminate their works’ original tragedies and within, the unsettling, uncomfortable restlessness, fragmentation, and instability that disturb the audience. They tear apart their previous work in an attempt to rescue their protagonists—— Laura Palmer in Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me, and Arthur Fleck in Joker: Folie à Deux——from their own catastrophic success.

And just as its character who tragically misrecognized his own identity, Arthur Fleck's face is gradually replaced and forgotten in the mythologizing process (through countless reproductions of decontextualized memes), by the makeup he originally wore. Joker: Folie à Deux thus serves as a traumatic de-mythologizing ritual, brutally and uncomfortably exposing the mythologizing process itself, reminding the audience that Joker is a tragedy—Arthur Fleck's tragedy—where he is like Pvt. Pyle from Full Metal Jacket, and the “Joker” is not the protagonist but the “name of a plague” that descended upon its protagonist. Henceforth, when audiences furiously spit on and accuse Todd of ruining everything that was good about his previous film, Todd responds “No, no, no, it's you who forgot what happened in the previous movie. You did not realize who Arthur was.’’

Joker: The Myth of Arthur Fleck

Joker: The Myth of Arthur Fleck

The final shot of Joker (2019)

The final shot of Monsieur Verdoux (1947)

The final shot of Modern Times (1936)

By MrGeckoBiHu(壁虎先生)

(This review was originally published in Traditional Chinese on November 10, 2019 in a printed Taiwanese Newspaper The Affairs(The Affairs 週刊編集) Issue No. 29, and later published on their official websites)(You may find the full original texts here)

(This English version of the article you’re now reading is translated by myself, on February 2, 2025)

The inclusion of "Smile", sung by Jimmy Durante, during the dating scene between Arthur Fleck and his neighbor Sophie is particularly cruel. This song is adapted from a score that Charlie Chaplin personally composed for Modern Times (1936). In the film, when Chaplin's Tramp and Paulette Goddard's character dream about escaping their miserable fate and living a middle-class life during the Great Depression, the score evokes their innocence while gently reminding the audience that they still have each other. In this scene, Sophie refers to the Joker from the subway murder as a “hero,” while Fleck happily tries to squeeze out his own grin, seeing his reflection in a speeding taxi. Smile becomes an obvious omen, and we later discover that this seemingly too-good relationship is just a bubble occurring in Fleck's mind.

However, while the presence of the Tramp in Joker is self-evident, the even more significant presence of Chaplin's Monsieur Verdoux (1947) has been completely forgotten by American critics, to the point that, over seventy years later, they almost unconsciously repeat the same hysteria that surrounded the film at the time. Yet, as André Bazin brilliantly tells us in “The Myth of Monsieur Verdoux,”[1] it is through the image of this former bank clerk who continuously murders wealthy women for profit that the myth of the Tramp reaches its logical conclusion by presenting his opposite. Therefore, if you are surprised that Todd Phillips merges Chaplin's Tramp with a socially provocative murderer, it's worth noting that Chaplin himself had already done so. Is not Monsieur Verdoux's Raskolnikov-like cynicism precisely what society “deserves?”[2]