Accidentally Sent: Epistolary Silence in Cape No.7

本文以《海角七號》（2008）電影中的書信旁白和結構，來分析導演魏德聖如何細膩的處理以及重新書寫台灣的殖民歷史。電影中無意間被發掘並寄出的情書，既是日籍教師的見證日治生活的側寫，而書信消失的六十年，也可以作為那段歷史沈默的象徵。借重心理分析以及後殖民理論的研究，我希望能夠深入探討電影是如何處理「書信沈默」的主題，並提出以下幾項問題：為何電影中的情書無法被寄出？我們要如何看待沈默所衍生出的倫理面向？而電影中的書信傳遞又是如何轉化成為具有顛覆性的元素？進一步而言，《海角七號》除了書信的旁白之外，電影的情節本身也是圍繞著書信結構而設立，也因此導演處理影片的書信體例，便與十八世紀書信體小說中有許多不謀而合之處，諸如電影裡頭原本競爭卻又相互諧擬的平行敘述即為一例。更重要的是，就如同書信體小說中所一再上演的劇碼，這些六十幾年前無法投遞的信件突然有了令人神魂顛倒的轉折：往昔的無法投遞的信件有了新的收信人，過去無法圓滿的愛有了選項，而原本的殖民歷史也在一場意外的音樂會中有了新的願景。以此觀之，《海角七號》裡頭的書信旁白不再只是電影裡頭表現書信內容的手法；實際上，導演對於書信旁白以及書信結構多層次的探究，呼應了現下對於挖掘殖民歷史細膩的要求。

關鍵字

《海角七號》；台灣；沈默；書信體小說；十八世紀；後殖民

並列摘要

The paper proposes to look at the epistolary voice-over in the movie Cape No.7 (2008) as a cinematic arrangement for the director to analyze and potentially rewrite the memory of Taiwan's colonized past. Accidentally sent, the letter parcel is at once the record of a quasi-native informant during the Japanese Occupation and a sign of silence-an erased history due to political and cultural reasons. Borrowing the languages of psychoanalysis and postcolonial theory, I want to answer the questions of silence inherent in Cape No.7: Why is it that the letters in the movie are never sent or perhaps can never be sent? What does this lack mean? What is the ethical dimension of silence? What is it about the epistolary genre that serves to bring out the kind of subversive elements in the movie? Careful examinations of the movie suggest that a connection between the cinematic arrangements and the epistolary qualities shared by the eighteenth century epistolary novels can be established. For one thing, the parallel plots continue to resemble each other, making it difficult to tell one from the other-a quintessential move employed by epistolary fiction writers in the eighteenth century to blur the boundaries between the letter correspondences. But more importantly, what seems to be lacking in the letters some sixty years ago would soon turn topsy-turvy: the old letters have new addressees, the unfulfilled love has a new ending, the unresolved history now has new twists, and etc. In this way, the epistolary voice-over is no longer just a narrative and cinematic ploy; it in fact speaks to a kind of cultural sensitivity in the present that longs to uncover the many faces of its repressed past with sophistication.