The HBO miniseries, directed by Jean-Marc Vallée and adapted from Gillian Flynn’s thriller, probes the dark heart of small-town America.

Sharp Object 是由Jean-Marc Vallée导演根据Gillian Flynn的惊悚悬疑小说改变而来，试图探讨美国某个小镇上的黑暗故事   

 The eeriest part of watching Sharp Objects is when you begin noticing all the things that shouldn’t be there. Maybe it’s a little girl dressed in white, sitting on a sofa that was empty seconds ago, or a spider hanging over a gauzy canopy bed in a bright-purple room. But mostly it’s words, carved in big block letters, that keep surfacing. DIRTY, written in dust on the trunk of a car. BAD, scratched into the surface of a wooden desk. CURLS, on the stump of an old tree. HARMFUL, on the interior of a Jeep door, visible for only a second. VANISH, in raised white scar tissue on human skin.

看 Sharp object 最诡异的感觉就是当你开始注意到原本应该不存在那里的部分。有可能是一个身穿白色裙子的小女孩坐在原来空无一人的沙发上，或者是一个蜘蛛挂在亮紫房间的床帘上。还有很多的词都被工整的刻在物体的表面。像 DIRTY 被写在挤满灰尘的车上，BAD  被刻在木桌上，CURLS 被刻在老树干上，HARMFUL 被刻在吉普车门的内侧。VANISH  以疤痕的形状出现在人的皮肤上

 

 Like 2017’s Big Little Lies, Sharp Objects is directed in its entirety by the Canadian filmmaker Jean-Marc Vallée and adapted from a book—in this case, from the debut novel of the same name by Gillian Flynn, the author of Gone Girl. But if Big Little Lies was soapy melodrama elevated by superb performances and Vallée’s extraordinary visual eye, Sharp Objects is Southern Gothic for the 21st century, probing the grim heritage and often squalid reality of small-town America. In the hands of its showrunner, Marti Noxon, and Flynn, who wrote several episodes, the eight-part series is told with literary invention. It contains so many fascinating, grotesque details—children clutching pistols, floors inlaid with elephant tusks, a detective carrying a pig’s head in a paper bag—that you almost forget the central mystery: Someone in the fictional town of Wind Gap, Missouri, is killing teenage girls and extracting the teeth from their corpses using pliers.

像2017年的大小谎言，Sharp Object 同样是由加拿大导演Jean-Marc Vallée执导，改编自消失的女孩的作者 Gillian Flynn 的第一本小说。如果说大小谎言是被演员的精彩表演和导演的非凡的视角提升的肥皂剧，那么Sharp Object则像是21世纪的南方的哥特文学，试图探讨美国小镇曾经血腥的历史 和残酷的现实。在演员Marti Noxon和写了几集剧本的Flynn的手中，这部八集的限定剧被用literary invention（这个真滴不知道怎么翻）的方式讲述。它包含许多让美国人沮丧和奇怪的东西-拿着手枪的小孩，镶着象牙的地板，带着用纸袋装着猪头的警探，这几乎让你忘记最重要的谜团：Missouri 一个虚构的风车镇上，一个十几岁小女孩被谋杀并且牙齿被凶手用钳子拔光。

 

 Camille, a St. Louis journalist sent home to Wind Gap to report on the murders, marks the first starring television role for Amy Adams. Tortured, toxic, and self-loathing, Camille is the primary lens through which viewers see the events of Sharp Objects unfold. Vallée uses fragments of memories, dreamlike sequences, and trigger points to hint at her history, flashing back and forth through time. His technique is reminiscent of how Season 2 of Westworld played out, only Sharp Objects offers more immediate gratification, solving its puzzles quickly and with precision. Still, the overall effect can be uncanny and disturbing. Camille’s wounded psyche isn’t an easy place to be, and Adams’s quiet, sullen presence somehow conveys Camille’s frantic unease both in Wind Gap and in her own body.

Camille（女主）是 St. Louis 的一名记者，被派到风车镇报道这宗谋杀案（这个角色也是 Amy Adams第一次出演电视剧的角色）。挣扎，痛苦，有自残倾向是 Camille 这个角色给观众的首要的印象。Vallée用了残缺记忆，梦境记忆不断闪回的方式一点点的拼凑出 Camllie 过去的历史。这很容易让人想起西部世界第二季的叙事方式，只不过Shape Objects短暂的情感输出，然后快速精确地解决了小的谜团，整体上依旧给了观众不安紧张的悬念。Camille 的精神创伤并不容易去展现出来，Adam 内敛阴沉的表演 某种程度上表现了她的疯狂不仅是在身体和风车镇的生活上。

The de facto queen of Wind Gap is Camille’s mother, Adora (played by Patricia Clarkson), the heiress to a fortune made from a pig-slaughtering plant, and a ball of nervous, vicious Southern-belle energy in the mold of a Tennessee Williams character. Clarkson, like Adams, barely raises her voice above a whisper, but Adora’s power vibrates through the atmosphere like sonar. Half the men in Wind Gap, including Adora’s husband, Alan (Henry Czerny), and the police chief, Vickery (Matt Craven), yield unquestioningly to her authority; the other half are on her payroll. But Sharp Objects is more interested in Adora’s relationship with her daughters: Camille, who escaped the town; Marian (Lulu Wilson), who died in childhood and haunts Camille’s memories; and Amma (Eliza Scanlen), a disturbingly precocious 15-year-old who’s also learned how heady having power over others can be.

风车镇的女王，Camille的妈妈，Adora（由Patricia Clarkson扮演），风车镇一个大型猪类屠宰场的拥有者，是一个典型脸上不言苟笑，心中有很多故事的 Tennessee Williams 式的角色。Clarkson跟Adam一样轻言细语，声音并不比口哨大，但是言语异常犀利。半个镇的男人，包括她的丈夫 Alan (由 Henry Czerny 饰演)，警长 Vickery (Matt Craven)都不敢质疑她的权威，而另外一半都是她的员工。但是 Sharp Objects 更有意思的地方是 Adora 和她女儿们的关系：逃离小镇的 Camille，在童年去世并且不断在Camllie闪回的记忆出现 的Marian (Lulu Wilson)，以及 Amma (Eliza Scanlen)，一个让人讨厌的喜欢操控别人的15岁小女孩

Vallée is attuned to detail, to touch, to sensation. In a flashback, a teenage Camille (Sophia Lillis) gently scrapes one of Adora’s eyelashes down her cheek. Later, an adult Camille does the same thing to her own skin with a sewing needle. Adora likes to run her fingers gently over Camille’s curls in a gesture so weighted that it feels like a slap. Vallée lets his camera linger on certain sharp objects (a serrated knife, a metal screw) in Camille’s vicinity to convey how obsessively she’s thinking about them. But other things, the series argues, can be sharper and more damaging. There are the words that get attached to women in Wind Gap who don’t fit into certain archetypes, as Camille tells the Kansas City detective (Chris Messina) investigating the murders. There are the stultifying limitations of the town itself, which offers three career paths: pig slaughtering, domestic work, or raising children.

 

Vallée 试图去解析，触碰，展现这些复杂的关系。在闪回中，青年的 Camille（Sophia Lillis 小丑回魂的女主）轻轻的抚摸Adore睫毛下的脸颊，马上，一个成年的 Camille正在用一根细针做着同样的事情。Adora 喜欢把手指搭在卡米尔的卷发上，这个姿势看起来像是一个重重的巴掌。Vallée 把镜头停留在 Camille 身边的利器 （一个锯齿刀或者是金属螺丝）上以此来展现 Camille 是怎么看待这些东西的。但是剧里又会让你发现，有些东西比这些利器更加锋利和有伤害性。当调查凶杀案的时候，Camille 告诉 kansa的警探，如果风车镇的女孩不符合小镇的上的期望，那么大家就会用一些特定词来形容他们。这钟愚蠢的小镇思维也限制了小镇上的人的职业选择：屠夫，佣人，或者是养育孩子

 

Sharp Objects is also preoccupied with legacy and how pernicious it can be. Back in Wind Gap, Camille finds constant triggers that remind her of things she worked to forget. When she walks into a wake for one of the murdered girls, the repeated whispering of her name hangs in the air. Adora’s honeyed, poisonous passive aggression stings Camille more acutely than anything else; her mother’s words brand her psyche. The legacy of Wind Gap itself is also a loaded one, as the series reveals in an episode dedicated to Calhoun Day, the festival commemorating the town’s founding. As Confederate flags litter the lawn, Amma stars in a theatrical performance observing local history and celebrating how Wind Gap was built on racism and rape. (If the show has a weakness, it’s that alarmingly few characters of color appear in it, and that none get to explore how the town’s heritage has affected them.)

Sharp Objects 同时也探讨了被过去生活桎梏可以有多有害。刚回到风车镇，Camille 马上就可以看到一些能够让她想起那些她想忘记的东西。当她走进其中一个小女孩遇害的树林，她马上就能听见她妈妈的闺蜜用带有攻击性的语调在呼唤她的名字。Camille的桎梏是她妈妈的名字。风车镇本身的过去也是一种桎梏，剧里用了一集讲 镇上最盛大的节日 Calhoun Day来讲述这个小镇曾经的故事。联邦的旗帜屹立在草坪中央， Amma在剧场上扮演角色去演绎小镇的历史，庆祝风车镇是怎么建立在种族歧视和掠夺上的（如果说这部剧有 什么缺点的话，应该是剧中有几个角色没有去深入探讨小镇是怎么影响他们的）

 

Vallée offers image after image that emphasizes a kind of corruption in the American dream. Camille always seems to be driving around Wind Gap, allowing the camera to focus on the giant golden M next to the town’s picturesque candy store and barber, or on the Dairy Queen adjacent to the liquor store. The sweet tea is spiked with vodka. A little boy at home with his meth-addicted mother shows Camille his pistol to prove that he’s safe. A hunting cabin is decorated with images of hard-core pornography as well as strips of drying animal flesh. Showing Messina’s Detective Willis the spot she used to hang out in high school, Camille describes it as “party central, like a Midwest Lord of the Flies.”

Vallée 展现了一帧又一帧的画面强调了美国梦是怎么陨落的。观众跟随 Camille 的视角开车看见小镇的全貌，巨大的 M 记矗立在风景如下的糖果店和理发店旁，奶皮甜点小店旁开着酒类贩卖的店，甜茶是用 vodka 沏泡，一个跟有毒瘾的妈妈在家的小男孩举着手里的手枪给 Camille 看证明他很安全。一个猎人小屋挂满了动物的尸肉，墙上还贴着各种色情暴露的图片。

The show is Southern Gothic by way of Eugene O’Neill, indicting a culture and its myths without exoticizing them in the same way as, say, True Detective. But it’s also a tightly written thriller centered on women—on the damage they can do whether they redirect their trauma outward onto others, or inward onto themselves. Alcoholic women can be something of a cultural cliché, but Adams makes Camille’s drinking seem protective rather than destructive—she’s muting her own impulses as much as she’s overindulging. Sharp Objects also matches Camille’s drinking with Detective Willis’s, perhaps leading viewers to question why hers might seem pathetic but his is more natural, even macho.

剧集是典型的 Eugene O’Neill 式的南方哥特文学，像HBO另外一部剧集 真探 一样 深入的展现了一种文化和世界观。不同的是 Sharp Objects 是以女性视角展现了哥特的式的怪诞以及女性们怎么去治愈内心的精神创伤和处理与外部世界的联系。嗜酒的女性可以说是文化上的陈词滥调了，但是 Adam的表演 让 Camille看起来 喝醉更像是保护性的而不是毁灭性的--她想通过喝醉来抑制自己的胡思乱想。Sharp Objects 还把 Camille的嗜酒 和 警探 William的做了对比，让观众觉得为什么 她的看起来这么可悲而警探就比较正常即便他有点大男子主义。

 

Vallée’s use of music, showcased in Big Little Lies, is even more evocative in Sharp Objects. Songs are almost always diegetic in scenes, meaning they end abruptly when a character turns off a car ignition or yanks out an earbud. Many scenes are notably silent, or set to the sounds of cicadas in the woods or conversation fragments nearby. The effect is a spooky kind of realism that balances Sharp Objects’ more extravagant tendencies. The grisliness of the imagery, the aching damage in Camille, the delicate theatricality of Adora, the lovely danger of Wind Gap—all meld to make a series whose darkness is as alarming as it is undeniably enticing.

比起 大小谎言，Vallée在 Sharp Objects 音乐上的使用更加出彩。背景音乐几乎都是场景声，这意味着当角色打开车门或者走出户外的时候音乐会突然中断。剧里许多镜头都是没有音乐的，或者是树林里的蝉叫声，或者是附近人群对话的声音。这倒是让 Sharp Object 诡异地保持了现实和迷幻的平衡。诡异的画面，Camille的精神创伤，Adora的虚伪的性格，充满流言蜚语的风车镇，所有的这一切都让这部暗黑的剧集变的如此的迷人和让人回味。

          

    Source: sharp-objects-review-hbo