Jiajun "Oscar" Zhang's All, or Nothing at AllMaking one debut feature is hard enough, and Zhang has crafted a two-part film with a playing order determined by the flip of a coin.
...Jiajun “Oscar” Zhang’s remarkably ambitious first feature is actually two movies in one. Each segment, titled “Nothing At All” and “All,” are about an hour long, and the director insists they can be played in any order. I saw the film’s A-side, which follows title order, at Lincoln Center in April, when it made its North American premiere as part of New Directors/New Films; the B-side played at MoMA the following night. Both parts star the same cast of over thirty performers in altered but analogous roles, and both films take place entirely within the premises of Shanghai’s Global Harbor shopping mall, a six-story monstrosity with seemingly endless corridors and annexes. Making one debut feature is hard enough, but Zhang has successfully enriched and deepened his themes—of performance, surveillance, sincerity, and exchange—by presenting these two parts in ambiguous relation to one another, with a playing order determined by the flip of a coin.
The Global Harbor shopping center is mostly subterranean, with two square towers of residences that loom above the faux-classical dome of the shopping center’s roof. Zhang, who grew up not far from where the neon-colored complex was built, spent several years in the United States before moving back to Shanghai to wait out the pandemic in 2020. He remembers going over to friends’ houses as a child in the working class neighborhood that was razed to make way for the mall. “The district was full of factories and collective-style workers’ housing and was proud of its workers’ culture,” Zhang informed me via email. “I witnessed the decline of state-owned factories and the arrival of mass redevelopment and consumerism when I grew up.” By the time he entered high school, in 2004, almost all the collective housing had been pushed aside to make way for high-rises. Global Harbor, which was constructed between 2008 and 2013, now serves as an informal monument to this era of class restructuring in China.
As Zhang and his partner, co-writer and production designer Hee Young Pyun, endured the pandemic, they began spending nearly every day at Global Harbor, filming the quotidian interactions between patrons and service workers from the odd angles afforded by the mall’s many floors. Hee was shocked to discover that many other people visited the complex at least as often as they did; instead of searching for things they wanted or needed, they seemed to “wander around aimlessly, like ghosts,” as Hee recalled in a post-premiere talkback. Meanwhile, store representatives waited interminably for someone to show interest in their wares. The resulting dance couldn’t really be called shopping or entrepreneurship. It was more like a sterile, commercialized version of everyday life.
Some of the footage Hee and Zhang shot makes it into “Nothing at All,” where a young man named Lan Tian (Yu An) has a similar pastime. A shy film geek, his desire to make a movie inside the mall leads him into an obsession with Yoyo (Chen Xiaoyi). She works at a makeup counter where most passersby won’t even take a free sample. Lan Tian finds constant opportunities to film her with his phone, and, while it seems as though she might like him back, Yoyo is conscientious of another presence watching her: the mall’s security system, which occasionally posts online pictures of workers behaving unprofessionally toward customers.
An and Chen likewise star across from one another in the “All” segment, playing characters with the same names who are nevertheless so different that it's difficult to imagine what kind of temporal leap has been made. In this version, Lan Tian now works the front desk of a hip-hop dance studio nestled somewhere within the mall’s many floors. He’s in love with Perry (Liang Cuishan, who previously played the manager of Yoyo’s makeup counter and here plays a rich woman who lives in one of the towers above), and scarcely seems to notice a girl named Yoyo, who takes every chance she can to bump into him. Across both segments, an imbalanced relationship persists between service employees who are required to spend time at the mall, and their prospective customers, who seem to have nothing better to do than obsess over them. Other than cups of coffee, no one buys anything.
The American mall movie is more or less obsolete now thanks to Amazon, with 2009’s Paul Blart: Mall Cop presaging the endangerment of physical retail. From Woody Allen and Bette Midler’s insipid squabbles in 1991’s Scenes From a Mall to Kevin Smith’s proudly mind-numbing Mallrats (1995), the subgenre largely existed as a staging ground for shallow satires of Western consumer culture and one’s spiritual emptiness in the face of its decadence. This sense of agency as anesthetized by abundance becomes more complicated when set in Shanghai, a city where behemoth malls abound. Zhang describes his experience growing up in a city where shopping centers represented the most accessible form of what sociologists refer to as third places, neither work nor home, “where the kids play hide and seek and old people rest.” Perhaps the sense of hide and seek (or cat and mouse) that persists throughout All, or Nothing At All was born from such childhood games. But by keeping the role of the seeker consistent between two versions of a film where nearly all else changes, Zhang has created a complex and unresolved metaphor for the act of shopping itself.
Depending on which order you watch, the gap between the two narratives suggests either a few years’ leap in time or an extended flashback, and the intertwined climaxes of both support this assumption. But while a theory of continuity between the narratives is rich and exciting when it comes to drawing meaning from the film, it also leaves several questions unanswered. Yoyo and Lan Tian don’t seem to remember much of each other’s past lives. If the story is contiguous, Lan Tian has somehow transitioned from a scrawny film geek to an aloof hip-hop dancer, with seemingly no affinity between the two men. Yoyo is even more enamored by this coolly evasive dance instructor than his nerdy, boyish alter ego ever was by her, and there’s no sense of irony about such a reversal. The overall effect disrupts continuity, especially in the realm of what might be called character growth. Instead, we are left with a sense of rupture and dispersal. With the knowledge that the two events could just as easily be reordered, and the fact that neither narrative “side” is privileged over the other, the film implies that its cycle could go on into infinity. And because this same night-and-day switch is made by even the most minor characters (other than the barista, who pours latte-art hearts into each lovestruck shopper’s coffee) the message it suggests is almost anti-humanist—a society of people entirely reduced to their roles.
But perhaps that’s the point—the mall is not exactly a humanist space. Its sheer size (plus the fact that the ones in Shanghai look not unlike the ones in White Plains or Denver) remind us that these spaces are less shrines to the individual’s freedom of choice than to the impersonal transactions that keep global systems of capital churning. There’s a sense of dissociation that comes from spending time in a space dedicated to the consumption of goods and realizing that the people who buy and sell these products are merely manifestations of the transaction itself, that others would replace them if they didn’t show up. By grafting this sense of anhedonia onto two directionless stories of unrequited love, Zhang’s movie makes Lan Tian and Yoyo’s deepest feelings seem impersonal from the serene perspective of supply and demand. It’s thrilling to watch, if only because it catalyzes us to reject its perspective.
Nolan Kelly is a writer and filmmaker based in Brooklyn, NY.
原文链接：https://brooklynrail.org/2024/06/film/Jiajun-Oscar-Zhangs-All-or-Nothing-at-All/
张家骏这部惊人而具野心的长片首作实际上是由两部电影合二为一而成的。两部分各一小时长，标题分别为“一无所有”（Nothing at All）和“所有”（All），按照导演提出的要求，它们可以按任意的先后顺序放映。我于4月在林肯中心看到了这部电影的A版本，该版本按英文标题All, or Nothing at All的顺序（所有—一无所有）放映，当时它作为“纽约新导演/新电影展”的入选作品在北美首映；B版（放映顺序：一无所有—所有）于次日晚在MoMA现代美术馆上映。两个故事由同一组30多人出演，他们在两个故事间变换出演的角色，每位演员分饰的两个角色既不同，又有着某种内在联系。两个故事都完全发生在名为“环球港”的上海商场内——这是一座六层楼的庞然大物，似乎有着无穷无尽的走廊和裙楼。制作一部电影长片已经够难的了，但张家骏通过呈现两个故事间暧昧的关系，成功丰富并深化了电影的主题：表演、监控、真诚、交换。两个故事的播放顺序可以通过掷硬币来决定。
片中出现的环球港商场的大部分空间是在地下的，有两座方形的高层住宅塔楼，赫然耸立于商场的人造古典穹顶上方。张家骏在离这外墙霓虹闪烁的建筑群不远的地方长大，2020年疫情爆发前他在美国待了一阵，疫情伊始搬回了上海。他记得童年时去那附近的朋友家玩，那时的工人社区在多年后被夷为平地，为建造商场让路。他在邮件里告诉我：“这里曾经有许多工厂和工人社区，居民们为其工人文化感到自豪。长大后，我见证了国有工厂的衰落以及大规模商业地产开发和消费主义的到来。”2004年当他读高中时，附近大部分集体时代的住宅都被拆除，为高层建筑让路。环球港建于2008年至2013年间，是一座中国社会阶级重组时代的非正式纪念碑。
边禧暎是张家骏这部电影的创作搭档，担任本片的联合编剧以及美术指导。在疫情前后的几年里，他们几乎每天都会到环球港商场里，从商场众多的不同楼层以各种不常见的视角拍摄顾客和服务人员之间的日常互动。边禧暎在映后谈中回忆起当时在商场里发现有不少人同他们一样，经常来到环球港商场里：“这些人像幽灵一样漫无目的地游荡，”而并不是来购物的。与此同时，店铺销售人员们陷入了漫长的等待，等待着有人对他们的商品感兴趣。由此产生的互动似乎并不能被称为购物或着营业，这更像是一种毫无生机的、商品化的日常生活。
边禧暎和张家骏在这几年里积累的一些在商场里拍摄的素材出现在了“一无所有”中，一位叫蓝天（安雨饰）的年轻人有着和他们相似的爱好。蓝天是个腼腆的电影狂，他想在这座商场里拍一部电影的渴望让他迷上了优优（陈晓依饰）。优优在一个连免费小样都没人领的化妆品柜台工作。蓝天一有机会就用手机拍摄纪录优优，眼看着优优可能也会对蓝天产生感情，但优优注意到另一个目光在注视着她——商场的监控系统——或者：员工摸鱼、摆烂的行为有时会被公布在网上
安雨和陈晓依在标题为“所有”的故事里同样也演对手戏，他们仍旧是蓝天和优优，但性格截然不同，不同到我们无法想象他们处于同一时间线。在这个故事中，蓝天在一家不太起眼的嘻哈舞蹈工作室前台工作。他爱上了PERRY（梁翠珊饰，在另一个故事中饰演了优优化妆品柜台的经理，在这个故事中她饰演一位住在双子塔中一座的富太太），却没有注意到一个叫优优的女孩，而优优会抓住一切机会来与他偶遇。在这两个故事中，在终日被困于商场的服务人员和迷恋他们但无所事事的顾客之间，都有着同一种不对等的关系。除了一杯又一杯咖啡之外，没人买任何东西。
由于亚马逊线上购物的存在，美国的商场电影现在或多或少已经过时了，2009年的《百货战警》（Paul Blart: Mall Cop）就预示了实体零售业的濒临灭绝。从伍迪·艾伦和贝特·米德勒在1991年的《爱情外一章》（Scenes from a Mall）中的无聊争吵，到凯文·史密斯令人窒息的《耍酷一族》（Mallrats, 1995年），商场电影这一子类型很大程度上为讽刺西方消费文化和人类面临毁灭的精神空虚提供了舞台。
这种被“富足”麻痹的主体感在上海这个大型购物中心随处可见的城市中变得更加复杂。根据张家骏自己对成长经历的描述，在这个城市，商场是社会学家所说的“第三空间”最直接的代表，它们既不是工作场所也不是家，“孩子们在那里玩捉迷藏，老人在那里休息。”也许在《所有忧伤的年轻人》中始终存在的捉迷藏（或猫鼠游戏）的感觉就是从这种儿时游戏中来的。但通过寻找者这统一的人物设定（而其他角色几乎都发生了变化），张家骏为来商场购物这一行为本身创造了一个复杂且悬而未决的隐喻。
根据不同的放映顺序，两个故事之间的黑场表明时间上跨越了几年，或者是倒带了几年，两个故事遥相呼应的高潮段落支持了这一假设。虽然拼凑出一个连续性对于理解影片来说是很有趣味性的，但仍然有一些疑问没有答案。优优和蓝天似乎不记得彼此的前世。如果故事是连续的，蓝天不知何故从一个干瘦的电影迷变成了一个冷酷的嘻哈舞者，两者之间似乎没任何关联。优优对这位不理不睬的舞蹈教练蓝天的迷恋甚至比他那个书呆子、孩子气的“世另我”对她的迷恋还要强烈，而且这种倒转并没有讽刺意味。这样的整体效果打断了连续性，尤其对于所谓的角色成长而说。相反，这给我们留下了一种打破和消散的感觉。我们知道这两个故事可以随意颠倒，而且一个故事并不比另一个故事更重要，因此电影似乎也在说这个循环可以无限延续。由于本片中不仅是主要角色，所有次要的角色都会经历他们所扮演角色的“乾坤大挪移”（唯一例外的是陈延企饰演的咖啡师，他会将心形拉花注入每位热恋顾客的拿铁中，只有他在两个世界中扮演了同一角色），影片所传达的信息几乎是反人文主义的（anti-humanist）——一个只有“角色”没有“人”的社会。
但也许这就是重点——商场本来就不是一个人性至上（humanist）的空间。它的庞大规模（上海的商场空间看起来与纽约白原市或丹佛的商场并没有什么不同）提醒着我们，这些空间与其说是个人自由选择的圣地，不如说是维持全球资本体系运转非人格化交易的圣地。这种分裂感来源于在主打消费的空间里打发时间，并且逐渐意识到购买或销售这些商品的人群本身只是交易行为的体现，如果这一群人不出现，那另一群人就会取而代之。通过将这种快感缺失（anhedonia）嫁接在两个漫无目的单相思故事上，张家骏的电影让蓝天和优优的内心情感变得像简单的供需关系。观看这一切是激动人心的，因为它促使我们反抗这样接受世界的方式。
翻译：黄悦
