最近重新翻閱了七月份的《電影世界》，裏面有句話很對，香港人對香港電影的分析總是與這座城，密切相關，而從技術層面對其進行分析的文章很少。我們不是香港人，不可能複製他們的眼光與思想；無論逗留多久，都是註定的外來者。而香港電影之於我們，更是一個他族的文化現象。
談及香港的文化，在到達此地的初期，我對它總是很抗拒的。拒絕被同化，不想成為泡沫劇中那種冥冥中被註定又無力掙扎的角色。殊不知，我只是在看到了文化的表像的時候就對其反感，禁錮住自己不去深究這所謂 “無根”的文化生成的緣由。以至於，在最初接觸到HANDOVER一詞時，我並不以為然它對於這座城的人而言有多麼歷史性轉折性的意義。
某次讀到Tony Williams分析徐克的Once Upon A Time in China系列，說它講述的就是一個香港人身份尋找的事宜。他將這個系列的第六集Once Upon A Time in China and America與成龍的Who Am I一併進行了分析。兩位主人公都是在意外受傷後失憶，對於失憶後的生活不能完全接受，總是力求尋回以前的記憶，終於歷經辛苦他們成功地找回了記憶。
讀到此處，我不覺假設自己是逃往香港的一個內陸人。我有一個屬於PRC的記憶，一個被光輝的民族奮鬥史籠罩的中華民族的記憶，但當我離開後來到了香港，社會制度背景轉變了，我的身份也自然轉換了，而這兩種制度在意識形態上是互補不相容的，並且我也隨帶被打上了被殖民者的烙印。對於過去是保留還是遺忘，keep nostalgic or amnesic？慢慢地，根似過去已盡遙遠，而現世的繁榮讓人低頭向前。香港和港人總在尋找屬於香港人的一個集體記憶，用什麼定義香港定義香港人？回歸之前，他們無法說自己是英國人，因為作為殖民地的居民他們不能完全擁有與英國公民同等的權利；他們也無法說自己是中國人，因為當時中國對於這座城是無能為力的。這個haunting了港人幾十年前的問題，隨著1997的臨近再一次被強調。一面是1989的那個並不遙遠的記憶還透著血腥味，一面是長期享受到資本主義殖民地這個尷尬身份所帶來的相對富裕的生活，也許香港人對於到底生活在誰的統治下已失去了強烈的意識，也許他們看重的不是who而是what。但當handover到來時，他們被強化了who的概念，被提醒混亂的過去，且被承諾一個無法預知的未來。又一次，他們面臨著一個身份與意識形態的轉變。於是，所有的人又開始了選擇，nostalgia or amnesia。不少的人選擇了migration。難怪有一次一個加拿大的朋友說，在TORONTO的華人幾乎都是香港人。
記憶是可以選擇的，丟失與尋回，放棄或保留。但身份是無從選擇的，被給予，剝奪或是改變，似乎這座城就如海上浮木一般“忘卻來時路，不知歸途”。
97後，香港螢幕上湧現了許多探討香港面對handover的電影：《去年煙花特別多》，《甜蜜蜜》，《Who Am I》等等。
杜琪峰的PTU就是一個討論香港身份遺失的作品。影片圍繞肥沙尋槍以及PTU幫助肥沙尋槍而展開，故事發生在子夜交替之時。一個非典型警察肥沙在下個月就要升職的情況下丟失了警槍。警槍是一個警察的身份的證明物，丟失了警槍，就如一個城市丟失了身份。於是為了保住肥沙的promotion，又出於兄弟之間那份情誼，PTU隊長Lo答應幫助肥沙在換班之前尋回槍。諷刺的是，當肥沙不惜與黑幫合作為的就是給自己的警察身份找回個物證時，他卻與一個gangster無意中交換了身份：他誤拿了馬尾的手機，被電話的另一方誤認為時馬尾；同時也給調查馬尾謀殺案的警官Madam Zhang提供了懷疑他的線索。一次誤拿電話出賣了肥沙的身份，而那把比名譽還重要的槍仍舊不知所蹤。當然，更諷刺的是肥沙如何找回了那把槍。在片尾那場staged似的混亂火拼中，肥沙被避退到原來丟槍的那條小巷，眼看對手舉著槍就要出現了，他一頭撲進了垃圾堆。只聽一聲槍響，一個人的腦門心紅色的一點還在冒煙，而跪在地的肥沙卻傻笑了。原來他在那堆垃圾裏摸到了自己原以為是被小混混偷走的警槍。所有的曲折，饒了一圈都回到了原點！肥沙的身份不再受到質疑，所有的警察都同意編造一個故事來掩蓋這一夜的事實：警察的丟槍與失職以及一場因警察而起的槍戰。一夜風波之後世界仍然透顯著太平，升值的還是靜候著升值。
其實在杜琪峰的銀河映像造就的警匪電影中，警察總是有種schizophrenia的趨向。首先是《暗花》裏梁朝偉塑造的那個“只要給我錢就行”的警察。他是一個遊弋在黑白之間的棋子。殘忍，狂妄，自負，最後又拜倒在命運之下。劉青雲在牢裏對著他一言不發的玩著一個橡皮球的情景也就是在告訴他：不是你被偶然選擇，而是你註定了無從選擇。接著是《暗戰》裏劉青雲與劉德華那種發生在兵與賊之間的惺惺相惜的複雜情感。他們因為一場復仇的遊戲開始，誰是兵誰是賊不重要，重要的是這是他們兩個人之間的遊戲，敵人變成了戰友。再到PTU裏，肥沙這個狼狽的警察丟失身份，又與匪徒交換身份，從一個警察變成了被員警懷疑的物件。儘管最後他巧合地找回了槍，掩蓋了丟失的事實，但他卻無法掩蓋這場鬧劇下身份危機這個事實。
這種種警察形象的塑造，似乎都是在映射香港這座城的曖昧身份。警察本應保證這座城的安危秩序，可現在連警察這個正義的代表都概念缺失，身份模糊，游走在正義的邊緣，那麼這座城到底又有什麼樣的身份，未來又怎樣呢？誰又能在每次轉折，選擇時給出一個承諾，說這座城由我守衛，在我的帶領之下它一定有一個美好的未來？也許，這座城的人不需要某個誰的允諾，他們需要的只是這個誰將允諾兌現的效率。
而換念想之，這樣長期的混雜本身就說明，其實對這個城市身份的疑問不需要一個確定的答案，因為這座城在如此的混雜之下依然生存著，繁榮著。
這就是屬於香港獨特的生存之道。
Starting from a poster
The day July 1, in 1997 marks the end of a century and a half of British colonial rule in Hong Kong and its return to mainland China. Years after 1997 are a period in which Hong Kong and local population alike have to adjust themselves to the new political and social situation, and most important to relocate their identity as a SAR of the PRC. Hong Kong cinema in the post-1997 era has witnessed a handful films which reflect various social crisis following the handover and a sense of anxiety and loss of faith towards the future experienced by the local residents.
In the post-handover Hong Kong cinema,. Johnnie To and the Milkyway Image has approached the social problems through his typical crime/triad films, such as Too Many Ways To Be Number One (1997) The Mission(1999), Running Out of Time (2001), in which he has depicted a jeopardized male society in response to Hong Kong’s transition. There are killings, disbeliefs, life-death games in these movies. They articulated the yet-to-be-crystallized anxiety of Hong Kong people towards the 1997 event (Esther Yau 1994).
Different from To’s other crime/gangster films, like The Mission, The Election, which depict a jeopardized masculine chaotic world, PTU focuses on a cop’s identity crisis, whose frantic search for a gun embodies the same mission facing Hong Kong as a city in transition.
This poster of PTU successfully includes some most important elements useful for decoding the film. The background figure is dressed in PTU uniform. Although occupying an overwhelming proportion of the poster, it is reduced to a black outline without a clear face, which signifies a protective paternal, masculine but rather ambiguous figure, Mike Ho (Simon Yam). The screaming man in the shadow is the main character, Lo Sa (Suet Lam) who loses his gun. During the search for the gun, he has undergone a series of identity crisis. Although he tries to pretend as if in normal state, his screaming in the climax reveals his paranoia and splitting identities. Below him are the only two female figures, Kate (Maggie Siu) and Madam Cheung (Ruby Wong) in the film, both of whom work in a male’s field, police system, but are excluded outside of the male world to a certain extent. It is said there is a decline of masculinity in the post-handover Hong Kong cinema, especially those films produced by Johnnie To’s Milkyway Image. Although, in PTU, there still is anxiety in the male society, the dominant patriarchic figure is reinforced judging from the evitable failure of the femininity representatives, Madam Cheung, and Kate.
Searching For Identity
One crucial change in Hong Kong’s handover is the handover in police system, from troops named as British Royal Army to Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Police. They serve as an important force to keep stable situation in society. The movie begins after the handover of PTU patrol at midnight when the new crew are sitting in a police bus listening to news broadcast reporting that four Chinese men have robbed a bank and a police officer was shot dead. Some younger crew are making fun of the dead officer when Mike Ho, head of the crew, stops them and says: “Anyone wearing this uniform is one of our own.” He attempts to reinforce the sense of a hegemonic identity and unity among them, which is signified by the uniform. The remarkable change in police system is the change of their external symbol of policemen, the uniform. Here, Mike proclaims that once they’re wearing this uniform they own same identity as policemen and they are supposed to sacrifice for each other just as what he dose later for Lo Sa.
While Mike is trying to maintain a united identity for the whole crew, another representative of the police system, Lo Sa, a sergeant in the anti-crime division, is undergoing an identity crisis: he lost his gun when trying to attack a hgangster Ponytail’s boys. In the police system, guns are the signifiers of polices’ identities. Every cop is assigned with a particular gun with his series number registered in the system. “This cop” should be responsible for and report every bullet coming out of his own gun. Thus, the gun is no longer just a tool to suppress criminals, but rather a signifier of this cop’s unique identity in the justice system. Once losing the gun, Sergeant Lo’s recognized identity is lost and his integrity is confronting a crisis of being set up into murders. As Lo is going to be promoted next month, Mike decides to cover for him and help him find the gun. Instantly, Lo himself goes on a frantic journey to recover his identity and integrity. He dashes to buy a fake gun but has to cut it short and paint it as to make it to look like the police gun as a temporary substitute for his lost identity. The first thing he is concerned about of Ponytail’s death is whether there is any gun wound on him and after knowing there isn’t, he reaches for the fake gun on his waist to reassure his successful pretension as an integrate cop.
However, just as Lo assumes his identity has been temporarily secured, it is actually being challenged again by one modern commodity: cell phones, which plays a dramatic role in shaping people’s identities. In one scene, Lo steals the ringing cell phone of Ponytail and asks: “Who are you?” Then, the person on the other end asks the same question. They keep on repeating this question and one question only without offering any answer. As Gina Marchetti analyzes the function of Tsai Qin’s “Forgotten Time” in Infernal AffairsⅡ, she points out that “The lyrics ask the key question ‘who?’ echoing the trilogy’s reoccupation with questions of identity.” (Gina, 2007) So is true with PTU that such repetition reveals the key question is how to relocate one’s identity once lost or facing a change. A cop and a crook are speaking on the phone, both of whom are eager to find out each other’s identity, but don’t actually give a thought of who he is himself, or rather they even don’t know who they are because their identity signifiers are lost. They try to relocate their identities by constantly consulting the other on the cell phone, but refuse to expose themselves before the other one does.
The identity question is repeated over and over again until it has become an unsolved problem and kept haunting Lo, driving him paranoid in the climaxing moment. More ironically, the identity crisis is enhanced by the fact that how readily a person’s identity as a cop or a crook can be exchanged when Lo takes Ponytail’s cell phone as his own by mistake. He constantly receives wrong call, and constantly be regarded as Ponytail. He indeed has taken on the position of a crook, and further associates with gangsters. As “people carefully craft their identities through commodities in the modern society” (Gina, 2007), the uncertainty of communication through cell phones indeed make people’s identities more flexible and fluid.
Concerning the interchange of identities of cops and crooks, who should be at two extreme opposite, Gina Marchetti describes Lau and Chan in the Infernal Affairs as “a criminal pretending to be a cop and the cop pretending to be a criminal…After 1997 and Hong Kong’s intermediate status as an SAR under PRC sovereignty, their identities become even less certain, and their missions less clear.” (Gina, 2007) Who are they? Are they the integrate cops in the political system with stable position or rootless illegal cops in the triad society? The traditional moral is confused and no longer stands in an absolute position.
Such a sense of an uncertain identity and unclear mission actually arise from the prevailing sense of loss among the Hong Kong residents at large. Even before the handover, their sentiments with both British and Chinese governments are ambivalent. For these Hong Kong residents, they have lived without a proper nationality, being neither Chinese nor British.
After the trauma brought by PRC’s cruel suppression of 4 June Massacre, and the 1998 Asian financial turmoil, for the Hong Kong residents, it seems the liberation from a colonized state to a SAR in China does not necessarily anticipate a certain future. Their new identity does not promise them a bright life. Even these policies, like the “no change in fifty years” and the “one country, two systems” implemented by PRC in an effort to retain, or rather to achieve a stable situation in the post-handover Hong Kong may not answer questions like what do Hong Kong people need in order to relocate themselves? In response, the contemporary Hong Kong film expresses a local yearning for its own orientation, a search for an identity which belongs to Hong Kong itself.
Interesting, in PTU, which is produced in 2003 and set in the year 2000, Johnnie To has assigned the search-for-identity mission to Sergeant Lo, a representative of the police system, which ironically raises a question that other than local residents, how the authority should adjust themselves to meet the challenge imposed by the handover? What’s their role in leading the city and people to relocate themselves? And To has pushed the question further in PTU by making Lo identity more flexible and fluid as Lo exchanges his identity with Ponytail through cell phones. Namely, in Hong Kong, the search for identity has been perplexed by the postmodern characteristics in Hong Kong.
In the film, he has given special focus to modern commodities like cell phone, cars, and guns, and closely related them to the fates of the characters. Consequently, he reveals a fact that in Hong Kong, a modern city, people’s life has actually been turned into a postmodern mode. Since they have heavily relied on the modern commodity and advanced technology, which are ever-changing and can be easily exchanged, people’s lives have been imposed the same uncertainty and insecurity. The fact that people are in a constant search for the certainty endowed by the possession of changeable modern signs is an revelation of insecurity; on the other hand, such search will be dangerous and an inevitable failure due to the nature of the ever-changing technology.
A Way Out
In the whole film, Lo is always trying to pretend to be an integrate cop before he could recover the certain recognized legal identity. However, in the climaxing moment of the film when the open fire begins between the gangsters and the PTU crew, he instantly screams. His attempt to mediate between the gangsters and the cops fails. He is supposed to possess one certain identity in the crucial moment, a cop or a gangster? Unfortunately, he is unable to stand for any one of the groups. The fierce battle endangers his identity pretension, and eventually forces him to outlet his inner insecurity and paranoia brought by the identity crisis.
In PTU, Lo can be seemed as the representative of a male world afflicted by the insecurity and fear toward the unknown future (Pang, 2002), which is in response to the social transition.
“In an interview, director Johnnie To reveals that entrapment and powerlessness are two crucial themes in the early Milkyway Image films, which reflected the gloomy economic environment Hong Kong people were experiencing in 1997 and 1998 (Johnnie To 2000). Many people felt despair about the future because of the rapid deterioration of the city’s economic performance, as either their multi-million-dollar apartment turned into a negative asset overnight, or their secure job suddenly became jeopardized. (Pang, 2002)
However, it dose not necessarily speak pessimistically about the anxiety in society. He is rather trying to suggest a possible solution to the relocation problem by reinforcing the masculinity. He portrays a strong masculine and patriarchic figure, Mike Ho as the positive image of masculinity.
In PTU, Hong Kong can be a paranoid cop without a recognized identity, a permanent tattoo on a punk’s neck, a life-long asthma for a thief. Johnnie To has entrust Mike the mission to restore the faith and stability of the male world. For Lo, he acts as a powerful protective figure, promising to help Lo recover the gun as if to recover the city’s lost identity. As a patriarchic figure, Mike Ho constantly maneuvers to keep a stable brotherhood in the male society. In the beginning scene, he reinforces the significance of the uniform and the hegemonic identity among police group; then when disagreements arose among PTU members about whether it is worthwhile to help Lo, he gently persuades them to try their best for the last since they are wearing the same uniform. Nevertheless, he can also be rather tough toward gangster.. In the game-playing station, he orders an aggressive punk to erase the tattoo on his neck; he dose the CPR to a thief, who turns out to have suffered from the “asthma” for all his life. For the punk and the thief, Mike acts as if he is forcefully exerting the patriarchic power to get rid of the previous taboo-like identity imposed by the British colonist to Hong Kong. It seems only through a strong patriarchic and masculine character who understands well of the particular rules of their own situation that the problem of the male world, of the city itself can be resolved.
Compared to Mike, two female figures, Kate and Madam Zhang, are excluded from the male world. Though dressed like a man and doing man’s job, Kate is unable to understand the unspoken rules based on the male brotherhood. She is rather a righteous cop but unqualified for Lo to search relief from. Madam Cheung is more aggressive and intrusive. She acts as a straightforward feminine authority intending to overthrow the male world’s rules. However, when the open fire begins, she even couldn’t manage one shoot, drops the gun and has to hide in the car, crying. The inner vulnerability and weakness of a woman overwhelms her. She will never get an answer to the Lo’s gun problem nor will get into the male world.
What Hong Kong needs may neither be the entirely righteous power nor an intrusive and aggressive suppression, which are embodies by the final failure of the only two female figures: Kate and Madam Zhang. There is no one straightforward and once-for-all solution to Hong Kong’s identity problems concerning the handover owing to the complexity of the city itself. Concerning the shift of Hong Kong’s identity from a thriving colony to a future-uncertain SAR, what Hong Kong and local people need may be a kind of power embodied by Mike, who with a sense of being united but also knows the indigenous specialty of their particular world, just like the policy “Hong Kong people to govern Hong Kong”.
In the end of PTU, it expresses a nostalgia feeling. There are many clues in the film developing separately at the same time: four Chinese men robbing a bank, Lo’s searching for lost gun, conflict between two triad societies. However, they all end up together at the same place in the last minute’s open fire. Just before the open fire, Johnnie To intentionally moves camera along to capture a huge post at a street corner on which is Taiwan pop singer Chow Jay’s new album: “ Return To The Past”. This may not imply the director’s wish to return to the former colony control under British, but certainly a wish to regain a peaceful and stable situation after all the turbulence of handover, Asian Finance Turmoil and the SARS. In such a hope that in the end of the film, Johnnie To makes all the cops involved in the battle tell one same lie to cover the truth up, and they still remain as integrate, legal and brave police. And Lo will be successfully promoted next month. It may seem that the truth is not important. What is important is nobody and nothing gets harmed after all the changes.
Notes:
Gina, Marchtti. “Infernal Affairs- The Trilogy” Hong Kong University:
Hong Kong University Press, 2007.
Pang, Laikwan. “Masculinity in Crisis: Films of Milkyway Image and Post-1997 Hong Kong Cinema”, Feminist Media Studies, Vol. 2, No. 3, 2002
Yau, C.M.Esther. “Introduction: Hong Kong Cinema In A Bordless World” At Full Speed: Hong Kong Cinema In A Borderless World, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2001,
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