《逃避者》是一部纪录片电影，讲述了一个令人神秘的故事。在1992年，少年谭珊蒂和她的朋友索菲和茉莉一起拍摄了新加坡的第一部独立影戏，名为《偷懒者》。他们的导师是来自美国的乔治·卡多纳。桑迪不仅写了剧本，还扮演了主角S，一个杀手。
然而，拍摄结束后，乔治和所有的镜头都消失了。直到20年后，一罐16毫米胶片在新奥尔良被找到。现在已经是洛杉矶的小说家的桑迪开始了一场跨越两大洲和多种媒体的奇幻之旅。她使用了16毫米胶片、数码、Hi8、Super8、幻灯片、动画和手写信件等各种形式，展现了一个万花筒般的朋克摇滚鬼故事。
《逃避者》通过多种媒体的拼贴，呈现了一个扑朔迷离的故事。观众将跟随桑迪的脚步，一起解开这个谜团。影片的叙事手法独特，将真实和虚构相结合，给人以强烈的视觉冲击和情感共鸣。
这部纪录片不仅仅是一部关于电影制作的故事，更是一次关于寻找失落的记忆和自我认同的旅程。桑迪的努力和坚持让人钦佩，她不仅找回了失散的胶片，更找回了自己的内心。影片通过桑迪的个人经历，探讨了电影艺术的力量和影响。
《逃避者》是一部令人着迷的影片，它将观众带入一个充满奇幻和探险的世界。无论是对电影制作感兴趣的观众，还是对个人成长和自我探索感兴趣的观众，都会在这部影片中找到共鸣。它不仅仅是一部记录历史的纪录片，更是一次关于人性和梦想的探索。
Singapore-born filmmaker Sandi Tan could have been a wunderkind in the cinema sphere when she makes an indie road-movie called SHIRKERS in 1992, aged only 19, yet the finished film never enters post-production, 26 years later, to purging herself of this ever-haunting memory after an unexpected turn of event, she has made an eponymous documentary tells the incredible story about SHIRKERS.
Starting like a teenager’s fanciful dream, tapping into the original footage of the film, old photos and sundry memorabilia, undergirded by Iris Ng’s distinctively ambient score, Tan walks down memory lane and recounts her life story, a misfit kid, she finds the kindred spirit in Jasmine Ng, both wallow in alternative cultural, artistic aesthetics of its time and feed on art cinema (Nouveau Vague) and western literature, fortuitously, they manage to actualize shooting a feature film, guided by their film school teacher Georges Cardona from USA, Tan writes the script and stars as the main protagonist, Georges is the director, Jasmine is the editor and fellow student Sophia Siddique Harvey as the producer.
It is surely ironic to shoot a road movie in an itsy-bitsy country known as Singapore, and the footage shows how jejunely idiosyncratic the original film would be, felicitously captures the teen spirit and flight of fancy, that now looks akin to a time capsule of a bygone era. Still the lingering mystery is, what actually happened to the finished film?
Buoyantly, SHIRKERS veers into a semi-detective story when, Georges abruptly absconds and evaporates from Singapore with all the film footage, when Sandi, Jasmine and Sophia all go abroad to continue their education, they never hear about him and the film ever since, until 2011, 4 year after Georges’ death, his ex-wife sends back the footage, bar its audio tracks, to Sandi.
Henceforth, audience’s curiosity is sizably whetted, and Tan’s ensuing quest of “who is Georges Cardona” spirits us away to Cardona’s hometown, interviewing his acquaintances and ex-wife (whose image is gingerly pixelated and only referred as “the widow”), and discloses a vague picture what a man he was, Nosferatu is the ostensible consensus: a fabulist who is envious of the achievement of his protégés, which he is not above to undermine at his convenience. Georges makes for such a fascinating case of mental complexity, the first impression he makes on others: emitting congeniality that incongruent with the cold glint in his eyes, might be the best encapsulation, however, SHIRKERS seem to pull punches in burrowing deeper into the truth (a half measure in our post-truth paranoia), whether it is from Tan’s own equivocal interrelation with Georges, or the widow’s conspicuous “I don’t know anything about it” disclaimer.
Among the interviewees, Jasmine and Sophia take the lion’s share of the screen-time, what feels real is the spontaneous exchange between Jasmine and Tan, the interviewer, their closeness isn’t dented in the elapse of time, but that barely conceals a wound left by the earlier misfortune, Jasmine stillthinks Tan, is partially answerable for Georges’ wanton action and Tan finally owns up in front of the camera “I am an a—hole!”. In the event, SHIRKERS is a classic lesson from the school of hard knocks, and an overdue exorcism that feels salutary to everyone who was duped for their youthful naiveté.
referential entries: Sarah Polley’s STORIES WE TELL (2012, 8.2/10); Malik Bendjelloul’s SEARCHING FOR SUGAR MAN (2012, 7.3/10).