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.
原文鍊接：https://brooklynrail.org/2024/06/film/Jiajun-Oscar-Zhangs-All-or-Nothing-at-All/
張家駿這部驚人而具野心的長片首作實際上是由兩部電影合二為一而成的。兩部分各一小時長，标題分别為“一無所有”（Nothing at All）和“所有”（All），按照導演提出的要求，它們可以按任意的先後順序放映。我于4月在林肯中心看到了這部電影的A版本，該版本按英文标題All, or Nothing at All的順序（所有—一無所有）放映，當時它作為“紐約新導演/新電影展”的入選作品在北美首映；B版（放映順序：一無所有—所有）于次日晚在MoMA現代美術館上映。兩個故事由同一組30多人出演，他們在兩個故事間變換出演的角色，每位演員分飾的兩個角色既不同，又有着某種内在聯系。兩個故事都完全發生在名為“環球港”的上海商場内——這是一座六層樓的龐然大物，似乎有着無窮無盡的走廊和裙樓。制作一部電影長片已經夠難的了，但張家駿通過呈現兩個故事間暧昧的關系，成功豐富并深化了電影的主題：表演、監控、真誠、交換。兩個故事的播放順序可以通過擲硬币來決定。
片中出現的環球港商場的大部分空間是在地下的，有兩座方形的高層住宅塔樓，赫然聳立于商場的人造古典穹頂上方。張家駿在離這外牆霓虹閃爍的建築群不遠的地方長大，2020年疫情爆發前他在美國待了一陣，疫情伊始搬回了上海。他記得童年時去那附近的朋友家玩，那時的工人社區在多年後被夷為平地，為建造商場讓路。他在郵件裡告訴我：“這裡曾經有許多工廠和工人社區，居民們為其工人文化感到自豪。長大後，我見證了國有工廠的衰落以及大規模商業地産開發和消費主義的到來。”2004年當他讀高中時，附近大部分集體時代的住宅都被拆除，為高層建築讓路。環球港建于2008年至2013年間，是一座中國社會階級重組時代的非正式紀念碑。
邊禧暎是張家駿這部電影的創作搭檔，擔任本片的聯合編劇以及美術指導。在疫情前後的幾年裡，他們幾乎每天都會到環球港商場裡，從商場衆多的不同樓層以各種不常見的視角拍攝顧客和服務人員之間的日常互動。邊禧暎在映後談中回憶起當時在商場裡發現有不少人同他們一樣，經常來到環球港商場裡：“這些人像幽靈一樣漫無目的地遊蕩，”而并不是來購物的。與此同時，店鋪銷售人員們陷入了漫長的等待，等待着有人對他們的商品感興趣。由此産生的互動似乎并不能被稱為購物或着營業，這更像是一種毫無生機的、商品化的日常生活。
邊禧暎和張家駿在這幾年裡積累的一些在商場裡拍攝的素材出現在了“一無所有”中，一位叫藍天（安雨飾）的年輕人有着和他們相似的愛好。藍天是個腼腆的電影狂，他想在這座商場裡拍一部電影的渴望讓他迷上了優優（陳曉依飾）。優優在一個連免費小樣都沒人領的化妝品櫃台工作。藍天一有機會就用手機拍攝紀錄優優，眼看着優優可能也會對藍天産生感情，但優優注意到另一個目光在注視着她——商場的監控系統——或者：員工摸魚、擺爛的行為有時會被公布在網上
安雨和陳曉依在标題為“所有”的故事裡同樣也演對手戲，他們仍舊是藍天和優優，但性格截然不同，不同到我們無法想象他們處于同一時間線。在這個故事中，藍天在一家不太起眼的嘻哈舞蹈工作室前台工作。他愛上了PERRY（梁翠珊飾，在另一個故事中飾演了優優化妝品櫃台的經理，在這個故事中她飾演一位住在雙子塔中一座的富太太），卻沒有注意到一個叫優優的女孩，而優優會抓住一切機會來與他偶遇。在這兩個故事中，在終日被困于商場的服務人員和迷戀他們但無所事事的顧客之間，都有着同一種不對等的關系。除了一杯又一杯咖啡之外，沒人買任何東西。
由于亞馬遜線上購物的存在，美國的商場電影現在或多或少已經過時了，2009年的《百貨戰警》（Paul Blart: Mall Cop）就預示了實體零售業的瀕臨滅絕。從伍迪·艾倫和貝特·米德勒在1991年的《愛情外一章》（Scenes from a Mall）中的無聊争吵，到凱文·史密斯令人窒息的《耍酷一族》（Mallrats, 1995年），商場電影這一子類型很大程度上為諷刺西方消費文化和人類面臨毀滅的精神空虛提供了舞台。
這種被“富足”麻痹的主體感在上海這個大型購物中心随處可見的城市中變得更加複雜。根據張家駿自己對成長經曆的描述，在這個城市，商場是社會學家所說的“第三空間”最直接的代表，它們既不是工作場所也不是家，“孩子們在那裡玩捉迷藏，老人在那裡休息。”也許在《所有憂傷的年輕人》中始終存在的捉迷藏（或貓鼠遊戲）的感覺就是從這種兒時遊戲中來的。但通過尋找者這統一的人物設定（而其他角色幾乎都發生了變化），張家駿為來商場購物這一行為本身創造了一個複雜且懸而未決的隐喻。
根據不同的放映順序，兩個故事之間的黑場表明時間上跨越了幾年，或者是倒帶了幾年，兩個故事遙相呼應的高潮段落支持了這一假設。雖然拼湊出一個連續性對于理解影片來說是很有趣味性的，但仍然有一些疑問沒有答案。優優和藍天似乎不記得彼此的前世。如果故事是連續的，藍天不知何故從一個幹瘦的電影迷變成了一個冷酷的嘻哈舞者，兩者之間似乎沒任何關聯。優優對這位不理不睬的舞蹈教練藍天的迷戀甚至比他那個書呆子、孩子氣的“世另我”對她的迷戀還要強烈，而且這種倒轉并沒有諷刺意味。這樣的整體效果打斷了連續性，尤其對于所謂的角色成長而說。相反，這給我們留下了一種打破和消散的感覺。我們知道這兩個故事可以随意颠倒，而且一個故事并不比另一個故事更重要，因此電影似乎也在說這個循環可以無限延續。由于本片中不僅是主要角色，所有次要的角色都會經曆他們所扮演角色的“乾坤大挪移”（唯一例外的是陳延企飾演的咖啡師，他會将心形拉花注入每位熱戀顧客的拿鐵中，隻有他在兩個世界中扮演了同一角色），影片所傳達的信息幾乎是反人文主義的（anti-humanist）——一個隻有“角色”沒有“人”的社會。
但也許這就是重點——商場本來就不是一個人性至上（humanist）的空間。它的龐大規模（上海的商場空間看起來與紐約白原市或丹佛的商場并沒有什麼不同）提醒着我們，這些空間與其說是個人自由選擇的聖地，不如說是維持全球資本體系運轉非人格化交易的聖地。這種分裂感來源于在主打消費的空間裡打發時間，并且逐漸意識到購買或銷售這些商品的人群本身隻是交易行為的體現，如果這一群人不出現，那另一群人就會取而代之。通過将這種快感缺失（anhedonia）嫁接在兩個漫無目的單相思故事上，張家駿的電影讓藍天和優優的内心情感變得像簡單的供需關系。觀看這一切是激動人心的，因為它促使我們反抗這樣接受世界的方式。
翻譯：黃悅
