【S.H.→☆访谈】霍金斯在《莫蒂》里再现了刘易斯的艺术和生活

In Maudie, Sally Hawkins embraces the art and life of Nova Scotia artist Maud Lewis
NATHALIE ATKINSON Special to The Globe and Mail Published Wednesday, Apr. 12, 2017 3:46PM EDT
It took just one look to beguile Sally Hawkins.
When Irish director Aisling Walsh proposed the actress star in Maudie as Nova Scotia folk artist Maud Lewis, the Oscar-nominated Hawkins said yes almost immediately. The pair had worked together on the BBC adaptation of Sarah Waters's Victorian crime tale Fingersmith and, as Hawkins explains by phone from England, they remained close and hoped to collaborate again.
Initially, all Walsh sent Hawkins was one image: the iconic photograph of the diminutive Lewis from the series taken by the Star Weekly photographer Bob Brooks in 1964. The photo shows Lewis sitting at her portable desk by the window alongside her paintings and paints. "And surrounded by tulips! I saw this little hunched woman with this incredible smile and those twinkly little eyes and I knew," Hawkins recalls, "before I even read the script. Just this beautiful spirit shines out from this photo."
Next came a brief outline of Lewis's life and a couple of examples of her cheerful rural scenes, which cemented the deal.

The actress, herself the daughter of noted children's book illustrators Colin and Jacqui Hawkins, likens Lewis's penchant for repeating and reworking the same favourite subjects and designs "each time slightly changed and differing depending on the season or the light"to Claude Monet and his many iterations of water lilies.
From childhood, Lewis suffered from a painful degenerative rheumatic disease; her arthritis worsened with age and as it progressed, twisted her back and gnarled her hands and limbs so that she painted with great difficulty. Keeping track of how Lewis would have held herself differently from one year to the next added another dimension to the responsibility of Hawkins's portrayal. "I don't want to represent that in an ill-informed way or patronize people with that condition," the actress says. "I didn't want it to, also, be the only thing to take away from Maudie. It doesn't define her just as it doesn't define other people. It's not who she is, it's just part of something she had to deal with."

Lewis's life was not without darkness; besides the continual physical pain, she lived in poverty and hardship.
Maudie spans the late 1930s when Lewis meets and marries taciturn fish peddler Everett Lewis (Ethan Hawke) through their life together in Marshalltown, N.S., where they lived in a small cabin measuring 13.5 by 12.5-feet, with neither plumbing nor electricity, and up to her death, in 1970, from pneumonia.
Known for her rich dramatic work with director Mike Leigh, Hawkins delivers an absorbing performance as the fragile but determined artist.
She subtly uses her physicality to craft a personality, translating the cocked head and upturned gaze over a dropped shoulder (from Lewis's childhood arthritis) into a coy mannerism that suggests a wily spirit. There is also an ambiguity in the relationship between Hawkins's fragile and sweet-natured but gently obstinate Lewis and her misanthropic husband, who was the means to her artistic independence.
"You have to take some kind of imaginative leap, because we don't know her innermost thoughts," Hawkins suggests. "Her life [with her aunt Ida] was limited and she knew she had to get out and Everett, both in life and in our story, gave her a way out."
When she did, her creativity and art exploded, first using leftover fisherman's paint then with the first painting set he bought her. "It released something in her to be able to live the life she wanted to live, despite her di****lities. He encouraged and enabled her art."

Much of the movie was shot on location in a painstaking scale replica of the original Lewis shack built by the film's production team on a dirt road outside of St. John's. The exposure to the elements, isolation and a sense of cramped confinement in that intimate space contribute to the tangible physical rapport with co-star Hawke, and the often silent on-screen bond between the misfit couple.
"Like in the best of relationships, and the worst, there is so much that is said through body language and things that you pick up. Ethan was just a godsend," Hawkins says. "We had this almost telepathic understanding, able to pick up on the subtlest of signals. It was like a dance."
To help Hawkins's performance – out of necessity for a set recreating the evolving house as Lewis's art progressively covers more of the house over the years – Walsh filmed in loosely chronological order. "It gives it a richness and a rawness," Hawkins says.
The actress may not have known Lewis and her art before, but once she did, her goal was to do her life justice. "Maudie was so extraordinary. I was scared to take that on, like any real-life figure," she admits. "Whether they're known by millions or whether their work is out there in the world or they're just somebody who exists within a family, for example with [the mother in] X+Y or Rita O'Grady [in Made in Dagenham] who is an amalgamation of many, you want to make the people you're representing proud. And the family and the friends around them proud."
"More than anything, whether people agree with our interpretation or not, it hopefully will make more people in the world aware of the genius of Maud Lewis and her incredible art," Hawkins says. "That alone was a good enough reason."
Maudie opens April 14 in Toronto, Vancouver, Ottawa and Halifax; April 21 in Montreal, Winnipeg, Edmonton, Victoria and Calgary; and throughout the spring in other cities.

莎莉·霍金斯在《莫蒂》里再现了新斯科舍省艺术家莫德·刘易斯的艺术和生活
娜塔莉·阿特金森 环球邮报特别报道 发布于2017年4月12日 星期三 3:46 PM
只一眼，莎莉·霍金斯就被迷住了。
当爱尔兰导演艾斯琳·沃什提出让霍金斯出演《莫蒂》里的主角——新斯科舍省民间艺术家莫德·刘易斯时，这位奥斯卡提名女演员立刻欣然应允。这对搭档曾经合作过BBC改编自萨拉·沃特斯维多利亚时期犯罪小说的同名电视剧《指匠情挑》，并且，就像霍金斯从英国那边打来电话中说的，她们仍然保持密切的联系并一直希望能够再次合作。

最初，沃什给霍金斯的只有一张照片：1964年由《明星周刊》摄影师鲍勃·布鲁克斯拍摄的瘦小的刘易斯系列里最具标志性的照片。这张照片上的刘易斯坐在窗边便携式办公桌旁，身边是自己的画和颜料。“她整个人被郁金香包围着！我看到了这个小小的女人，有着令人难以置信的微笑和炯炯有神的小眼睛，我就知道（自己要演她）了，”霍金斯回忆说，“那是在我读剧本以前。那张照片里的灵魂仿佛在闪耀。”
接下来是对刘易斯生活的一个简要概述，以及她的几张反映田园生活的作品，最终促成了这部电影的敲定。
“这是一种能够使你微笑、每次看都会有所感悟的艺术，”霍金斯说：“而且会反复玩味。”

为了在荧屏上表现出这位喜欢在自家墙上慢慢描绘蝴蝶、鸟跟花的艺术家的创作过程，霍金斯向同样具有“天真”风格的伦敦艺术家安妮·柯里学习以刘易斯的独特方式绘画。
“她的风格是非常独特的，”霍金斯如此评论刘易斯通常无阴影的风景画和画中看似简单的组合。“这是非常复杂的。我认为越简单的东西看起来越困难——这可能就是她的作品如此成功的原因，它有着一种熟悉的魅力和充满童心的审美。但其实很复杂。”
霍金斯补充说：“我之前对莫德的内心世界不甚了解，但随着我研究的越多，发现的就越多，我试图把它们悉数拼起来。我认为她的作品会讲话。”
例如，刘易斯对猫、大雪中上学的孩子、三足公牛等的描绘就能让大家洞察这位艺术家的个性和幽默。“她很机智，”霍金斯说。“她有颗赤子之心。她的用色有着天真、安慰以及对看到生活中的快乐的期待。”
霍金斯自己是著名儿童图书插画家科林和杰奎·霍金斯的女儿，将刘易斯喜欢重复和修改自己喜爱的作品的倾向概括为“每次会根据季节或光线的不同进行稍微的改变”，并表示这颇像莫奈和他画的诸多迭代的睡莲。

从童年起，刘易斯便遭受了痛苦的退行性风湿病；她的关节炎随着年龄的增长而恶化，随着时间的推移，她的背部严重扭曲，后来影响了手和四肢，使她很难继续作画。霍金斯还通过表现刘易斯随年龄增长而不断变化而体现对她的准确刻画。“我不想以某种不知情的方式去表达，也不愿意让人们因此疑惑，”女演员说。“我也不想这是人们能从《莫蒂》里看到的唯一的东西。这部电影没有定义她，没有定义任何人。我要表现的不是她是谁，只是她必须面对的生活的一部分。”
刘易斯的生活并非没有黑暗；除了持续的身体痛苦之外，她还生活在贫穷和艰辛之中。
《莫蒂》跨越了莫德1930年代之后的时光，刘易斯遇到并与沉默的鱼贩埃弗雷特·刘易斯（伊桑·霍克饰）结婚，他们一起住在新斯科舍省马歇尔敦的一个没电没水管、13.5×12.5英尺大的小房子里，1970年她死于肺炎。

作为凭借与导演迈克·李三度合作有丰富的表演经验而闻名的女演员，霍金斯成功塑造了一个脆弱却意志坚定的艺术家。
霍金斯巧妙地利用莫德的身体特点表现她的性格，将她时常不自觉昂起陷在肩膀里的头（这是刘易斯自打童年起就有的关节炎造成的）凝视这个动作变成了带点狡黠的神情。而霍金斯演的既脆弱又甜美、顽固的莫德与她那悭吝却促成她艺术发展的丈夫之间的关系也存在模棱两可的部分。
“我有时得想象，因为我不知道她内心最深处的想法。”霍金斯说。“她的生活（在与艾达姑妈同住时）受到了限制，她知道自己不得不离开，而埃弗雷特在这个电影还有现实生活中都给了她一条出路。”
当莫德做到后，她的创意和艺术爆发了。一开始，她在用埃弗雷特用剩的油漆，后来，他专门给她买了画具。“尽管有残疾但能过自己想要的生活，这释放了她的一些天赋。他激发跟鼓励了她的艺术创作。”
这部电影的大部分是在当地位于圣约翰外的一条土路上的一间由影制作团队制作的原始版刘易斯小屋里拍摄的。直接暴露在狭小空间中带来的隔离和约束感反而促成了霍金斯与搭档霍克对这对有趣夫妻建立感情过程的表现，成为这对经常沉默的失配夫妇之间的有力纽带。

“在最亲密的关系里最难表现的是很多交流都是通过肢体语言进行的。伊桑是个天才演员，”霍金斯说。“我们之间有很好的心灵感应，能捕捉到彼此间最微小的信号。就像一场舞蹈一般。”
为了帮助霍金斯表演——出于必要他们重新再造了莫德的房子，因为多年来刘易斯的作品逐渐覆盖了房子的各个部分——而且沃什以松散的时间线顺序拍摄。霍金斯说：“这在增加了故事丰富性的同时也让故事显得有点粗糙了。”
霍金斯以前可能不了解刘易斯和作品，但一旦知道了，她的目标就是要公平演出角色的人生。“莫德是如此的非凡。我其实挺怕扮演她的，她就像现实中的人一样，”她承认。“不管他们是广为人知，还是他们的作品赫然出现在世界每个角落，或是他们是一个家庭里的一份子，例如《X + Y》里的母亲或是许多人综合的丽塔·奥格雷迪（电影《达格南制造》女主角），我想坐的是让我所演的角色能够感到自豪。也希望他们的家人和周围的朋友们可以因他们而自豪。”
“最重要的是，无论人们是否同意我们的诠释，我希望这部电影能让更多的人了解莫德·刘易斯的天分和她那些难以置信的艺术作品，”霍金斯说：“这就足够了。”
《莫蒂》4月14日将在多伦多、温哥华、渥太华和哈利**斯开映；于4月21日在蒙特利尔、温尼伯、埃德蒙顿、维多利亚和卡尔加里上映； 并在今春在其他城市上映。