影片是一个老人讲述自己人生经历。雅格生在一个小康之间，一次车祸带走了他父母的生命，适逢美国经济大萧条时期，本应成为一名兽医的他成了无家可归的流浪者。一次扒火车的经历让他成了马戏团的一员，在这里他不仅遇到了一只名叫罗西的大象，还遇到了改变他一生的女人——马连娜。

    马戏团是一个真正弱肉强食的地方，艺人如果对马戏团没用了可能被扔出飞驰的火车或是被卖掉；老板如果没法发给大家工钱，会被艺人们吃到一根骨头都不剩。在这个小社会里，有本事的人永远受人敬重，没本事的根本连存在的必要都没有。

    罗西是为了解决马戏团的财政危机才被买回来的，老板奥古斯特为了赚钱，急功近利的他用象钩狠狠地戳向罗西。总觉得大象是过于温顺了，不然一只脚就完全可以把奥古斯特踩扁。在奥古斯特眼中，无论是妻子还是大象，还是马戏团里的所有人，他都是用这种近乎残暴的方式把他们管束起来，只要能赚到钱，他就永远是他们的老大。

    我觉得马连娜是爱奥古斯特的，不然不会用那样的神情讲述他们的初次相遇，不会在遇到雅格的时候如此的隐忍。但奥古斯特不信任她，而是把她当做自己的财产一般牢牢地攥在手心里，如果得不到就马上毁掉。飞驰的火车上，雅格承诺，只是为了给她更好的生活，如果她不爱他，随时可以离开。不是有句名言是“生命诚可贵，爱情价更高，若为自由故，二者皆可抛”吗？森林里的风餐露宿，金丝鸟笼里的锦衣玉食，鸟儿更爱哪一个？因为森林给了鸟儿尊重，于是无论多么精致的鸟食都无法消磨鸟儿回归森林的心。

    人毕竟不是赚钱的机器，动物也不是印钞机，钞票只是能让我们更好生存的一种手段。无论是马连娜还是罗西，都义无反顾地跟雅格走了。虽然马戏团由于罗西马上就可以赚大钱了，但艺人们还是亲手毁了这个收纳他们很久的家园，当然，由于大家长奥古斯特的原因，人们已经不愿再承认这个家了。

    雅格的个人魅力其实是比不上奥古斯特的，但他比奥古斯特更加懂得什么是尊重，什么是爱，于是便比奥古斯特更值得拥有如此美好的生活。

整部电影都没啥表现力 没什么演员比较出彩 尤其那头象 略丑 还没啥灵性 看完就觉得是把小说的情节堆积起来 唯一庆幸的是没让我看睡着

       大象的眼泪是看完战马之后才看的第二个有关动物的电影。我一直以为自己把动物看成是有生命的东西，而和人类一样，如果你和他不亲的话没法跟她交流或产生感情，我不会像其他人似的人家抱自己的孩子的时候觉得可爱而去摸摸那个孩子，也不会像其他人似的看到流浪狗就把她带回家，我会觉得流浪这就是他的天命。
    但是最近看这些电影，真的不得不佩服这些导演，是这些导演能够唤起我对动物的爱，或许在未来我不会因为觉得可爱而去养他们、宠他们，但是我以后看到他们就会尊重，我会认同有些动物骄傲的有些人没有资格把它像宠物似的对待。
    就像《大象的眼泪》的大象的骄傲是天生的、并不是像有些人类似的当他拥有物质财富之前在他人面前什么都做什么都抛弃，当有一天他有了一定的财富之后突然意识到高贵这个问题，之后才以高贵来伪装自己。这就像是马戏团的总监奥古斯丁（August），虽然他是这些动物的主人，但当大象抬脚的时候他还是说了“请你抬腿”。
   有些动物的骄傲、高贵就在这里，而这些东西是天生的，有些人有些物就不值得拥有这些，他们伪装的高贵面对真正的高贵的时候显得可笑而又卑鄙。。
   

没有看过原著的我，对电影叙述的故事，少了很多感动。Water for Elephant 为什么会被译成大象的眼泪，在看完影片后十分不解，既不符合原意，也不代表意义。仅就影片而言，寥寥数语即可严尽。基本的故事框架，发生在大萧条时代的美国，三方纠葛的感情故事以团圆结尾。电影确实在效果上重现了过去那个年代，各色的动物也给观众展现了一个活生生的巡游马戏团。在表演上，最出色的是马戏团的主人，而我们的男女主角都表现平平。还有，就是我们题目的主角：大象。这是一头个子不大，已经五十多岁的大象，叫萝西。身上有着深浅不一的斑点，非常的漂亮。不知道在原著中是如何描述萝西的，但是影片里的大象在我看来，很适合这个名字。

即便是影片本身平平，但是这应该是一个多么不一样的故事啊！每个人小的时候都一定会看过马戏团的表演，每个小小的脑袋里都一定幻想着自己可以成为马戏团的一员，可以身怀绝技，跟动物交流，浪迹世界，不是吗？当我们的主人公在心灰意冷，走在生活尽头的时候，他跳上一趟疾驰而过的火车，就跳上了一个不一样的人生剧场。所以我决定要看一看原著，看一看Sara Gruen笔下的马戏团的人生，去认识一个不一样的萝西，去看一下文字里的马戏表演。

距离看完小说到这部电影竟然过去两年时间了...不由得我不感慨一句 @#%&*# 啊！！
根据我尚存于记忆中的残念，改编后的电影和小说基本一致（就是没有突破的意思啦），好像比较符合我当初看书时脑子里所想的画面，也算是给了我一个比较完整的交待。
关于选角，比较满意，唯一想吐槽的就是 Reese...这年龄，这身段，唉，实在有点对不上号

Tony promised a surprise to me if I was able to apply for 20 new jobs within two days. While I failed to hit the goal at the end of the day, with the submission of only 15 new jobs, my sweet Mr. Hairball decided to deliver the surprise as he was convinced that I have been making a real effort in order to accomplish that difficult task.

The prize came out to be a beautiful movie called "Water for Elephants" at Scotiabank Theater, starred by Robert Pattinson, Reese Witherspoon and Christoph Waltz. It was not among the movies that could give you an easy and amusing time on a Sunday night, but belonged to the category of movies that would truly help you think and feel. The story was about a veterinary student, Jacob, abandoned his studies after his parents were killed and joined a traveling circus as their vet. There he met the girl of his dream, Marlena, who was also the wife of his boss August. They fell in love while taking care of the new star attraction of the circus: a smart baby elephant. With overwhelming love for each other and inconceivable courage toward better future, they were able to defeat the brutality of August and the cruelty of the times.

I think the movie has chosen a very good perspective to tell the story, for the reason that a circus is always a place full of ironies. It supposed to be a place that brings out the most amounts of true joys, but it was actually with tremendous hardship and tragedies underneath. It looks like a place full of intra-species love and communication, but it was actually dominated by wildness and manipulations. After all, a circus show was just another lucrative delusion of joys, a typical bloody business as many of the others in the historical period of Mid-20-century America. While Jacob, on the other hand, who served as a representative of the scarcely existed humanities during that era, has made every effort to struggle for true love and true cares. The reward for him was a girl of his dream and an immortal life story to be shared with his deeply touched audience.

I was very happy to find Tony loved the movie all the same, although I am pretty sure that he could have some unshared feelings about it from a different angle due to his previous experiences. For that, I would like to respect and protect. “What if there was a happy ending for our past tragedies?” This is always a sentimental and magical question to think about. The singularity of the chance to live and the unrepeatableness of time have left us with a limited extent of choices as well as a great legacy of many unfinished yet unable-to-be-finished stories. In my eyes, it never harms to let the stories and pities finished with the help of movies and imagine for the moment about other possibilities of our own lives.

And I have my unleashed thoughts too. “Where were you when I was seventeen?”When Marlena asked Jacob, helplessly yet hopefully, at that dancing party, I could clearly remember similar words coming out of my own mouth in the far-away past. The answer to that question was nothing about where were you exactly when I was seventeen; it was everything about what I am going to do with my already changed demand and feelings for life now. However, a big problem in the real world about that is: the true courage in striving for better future could be looking very similar to the ungrateful boldness to screw up a pretty good life. People need wisdom to tell the difference between the two, otherwise there could be a costly price to pay for simply being romantic. For example, in the movie I totally understood Jacob’s affections for Marlena and I completely caught Marlena’s internal unsatisfaction in her marriage with August, yet I pretty doubt about how would Marlena immediately feel after August’s death. August was her husband. He was the right person for her to meet when she was seventeen. He was a super evil for everyone else in the world except for her. As an audience, I feel delighted for Marlena and Jacob’s living happily ever after. But did August deserve such an applauded betrayal and demise as that?

Love is truly beautiful, but love is also selfish. There is hardly right-or-wrong answer in any love story. It is touchy as long as it is real. - Once again ironically, these words came from someone who was somehow hurt by the love story that I am enjoying right now. I am always trying to feel, what exactly did Jacob see in that 1939 picture of the Winnie Brothers’ Circus Show at the very beginning of the movie? Cherished memory of his passed wife, grateful appreciation toward his own life, mixed feelings for his long-dead friend and enemy August? Despite all the complexity and ambiguity in his feelings, interestingly, that feeling reaches the bottom of our hearts and became something that we are all yearning for at the end of the day. When Tony and I, hand-in-hand, came off as the last two persons who walked out of the cinema that night, I could not help thinking about one simple question: if there is ever any audience for our own life, would they enjoy the show as much as we just did?

Jessica
May 16 2011