《星際穿越》裏的宗教與政治

Ross Douthat: It’s a pleasure to be back with you, here in the fall movie season’s eye-of-the-storm moment, when we get a chance to take a breath and catch up on all the prestige movies released before Thanksgiving — or, you know, take the kids to “Penguins of Madagascar,” depending — before the Christmas hurricane arrives. And I’m going to start us off by talking about the biggest, most ambitious and in certain ways the most political of the fall releases that made landfall last month: Christopher Nolan’s “Interstellar.”

羅斯·多賽特：很高興回來，在這個秋季檔風平浪靜的風暴眼時刻，我們有機會趕在聖誕的電影颶風到來之前，深吸一口氣，把在感恩節前上映的所有佳片都給看了——或者你懂的，要是有孩子的話，恐怕就只得帶孩子去看《馬達加斯加的企鵝》(Penguins of Madagascar)了。我就從上個月上畫的秋季檔中最具影響力、最具企圖心、從某些方面來說也最爲政治的電影——克里斯托弗·諾蘭(Christopher Nolan)的《星際穿越》(Interstellar)說起吧。

By way of preamble: I am not a true believer in the Church of Nolan; I’m more like a churchgoer who appreciates the beauty of the liturgy but cocks his head skeptically during the sermon and dissents from several crucial doctrines. To me, he’s the master of the near-great film: I have never not been entertained by a Nolan movie, but I’ve also never come away thinking, “that was, at last, a masterpiece.” His closest-to-perfect film, “Memento,” is too much of a claustrophobic stunt to earn that title, and the movies that set his wildest fans to raving — “Inception” and above all “The Dark Knight” — are impressive blockbusters ill-served by the attempt to elevate them into the cinematic equivalent of Shakespeare. Watch “Inception” as a heist movie, and it’s great; watch it as an exploration of dreams and the unconscious, and … no. Likewise “The Dark Knight,” in which Heath Ledger’s performance as the Joker is several degrees more brilliant than the movie’s larger meditation on politics, leadership and terrorism. (I’m in the small camp that actually preferred “The Dark Knight Rises.”)

讓我先說明一點：我不是諾蘭教的信徒；我更多是那種會去教堂領略禮拜儀式之美，但在牧師佈道過程中會充滿狐疑地把頭歪向一側，對幾條關鍵性的教義還會持有異議的人。在我看來，他是拍攝近乎偉大之作的大師：諾蘭的電影總能帶給我娛樂，但我從來不會說，“終於，他拍出了一部傑作”。他最接近完美的作品《記憶碎片》(Memento)更多是一部幽閉恐怖症的噱頭之作，所以難以擔當傑作頭銜；而那些令他的瘋狂粉絲們讚不絕口的電影——《星際穿越》，尤其是《黑暗騎士》(The Dark Knight)——雖然是給人留下深刻印象的大片，但也不是大師之作。把《星際穿越》當成一部強盜片來看，它還是很不錯的；但如果把它視爲對夢境和潛意識世界的探索，那就……馬馬虎虎了。《黑暗騎士》也是這樣，扮演小丑的希斯·萊傑(Heath Ledger)的演技，要比這部電影對政治、領導力和恐怖主義的思考要來得更爲耀眼幾度。（我也屬於更偏愛《黑暗騎士崛起》[The Dark Knight Rises]的那個小陣營。）

I sometimes feel like I should be more of a believer, though, because Nolan is pretty clearly one of the more politically conservative A-list directors working in Hollywood today. This isn’t just my idiosyncratic opinion: There are obvious, true-to-the-script reasons his “Batman” movies were slammed as apologias for fascism and hailed as defenses of George W. Bush’s war on terror. But neither take was quite right: In reality, those films were apologias for an old-fashioned sort of Toryism, as British as Nolan himself, which defends basic civic order against corrupt, radical and nihilistic alternatives and lionizes to-the-manor-born aristocrats insofar as they take up for the common people’s interests.

但有時候，我覺得自己應該多給諾蘭捧捧場，因爲很顯然，他是當今在好萊塢打拼的頂級導演中政治立場偏保守的。這並非我的個人觀點：出於顯而易見的原因，有人批評他的蝙蝠俠系列是對法西斯主義的辯解，也有人認可它是對喬治布什發動的反恐戰爭的辯護。但這兩種看法都不完全正確：事實上，對於一個像諾蘭這麼英範兒的人，這些電影是對一種老式的保守主義的辯解，這種保守主義捍衛基本的公民秩序，反對腐敗、激進的和無政府主義的選擇，把站在普通大衆利益一邊的、莊園出生的貴族視作重要人物。

And this is part of what makes the politics of “Interstellar” quite interesting, because Nolan’s space-exploration movie is right-wing in a different, much more American key than the “peace, order and noblesse oblige” Toryism of the “Batman” trilogy. In my review for National Review, I suggested that this is the kind of movie that you might expect Peter Thiel, the libertarian tech mogul and frequent critic of what he sees as a loss of imagination and technological ambition in the West, to bankroll and support: “Interstellar” opens in a world where the textbooks have been rewritten to pretend that the moon landings were a Cold War propaganda stunt, and it ends in a world where … well, I don’t think it gives anything away to tell people that the title doubles as the movie’s vision of the human future. Which makes it basically a long brief for the proposition that human beings — and especially Americans, and especially Americans played by Matthew McConaughey — can do just about anything they set their minds to do, and that the biggest threat to our future isn’t overreach or arrogance or technological blowback (the atmospheric “blight” threatening the planet in the movie is very conspicuously not the same thing as man-made climate change, to some viewers’ great disappointment) but defeatism, declinism and self-doubt.

這是令《星際穿越》的政治立場顯得相當有趣的原因之一，因爲與蝙蝠俠三部曲“和平、秩序和貴族責任”的保守主義相比，諾蘭的這部宇宙探索電影，以一種截然不同的、更爲美國化的基調呈現出右翼色彩。在我給《國民評論》(National Review)寫的影評中提出，你很有可能會以爲該片是彼特·蒂爾(Peter Thiel)這種信奉自由主義、對於那些在他看來表明西方缺乏想象力和技術野心的事務時常提出批評的的技術大佬，會出錢出力的電影類型：《星際穿越》一片始於這樣一個世界——教科書被重寫，假裝登月是冷戰的宣傳噱頭；而結束於……好吧，我認爲指出片名錶明瞭該片對於人類未來的看法，應該也不能算是劇透之舉吧。這使得該片成了這樣一個議題的長篇簡報：人類，尤其是美國人、尤其是馬修·麥康納(Matthew McConaughey )扮演的那種美國人，可以去做任何他們在心裏下定決心要去完成的事情，對於人類未來的最大威脅，不是來自於不自量力、自以爲是或者技術所造成的出人意料之外的惡果（另一些觀衆大感失望的是，電影裏肆虐全球的、大氣引發的“枯死病”威脅與人爲的氣候變化顯然不是一回事），而是失敗主義、衰落主義和對自我的懷疑。

My fundamental sympathies are more Tory than libertarian, but I still liked Nolan’s foray into Apollo-era American optimism — not least because Thiel and others have a plausible case, I think, that a lot of contemporary sci-fi really has become dystopian to a fault. Especially at the movies, and especially where space exploration is concerned: Whether it’s the predators of the “Alien” franchise or just the cold, dark night of “Gravity” and “Apollo 13,” a lot of contemporary space-faring stories make the cosmos seem like something best left unexplored. So to me the long middle section of “Interstellar,” where McConaughey and Co. are hopscotching from one strange planet to another in search of a new home for the human race, was a welcome and, yes, even inspiring callback to golden-age sci-fi.

基本上我更支持保守主義，而非自由主義；但我仍然喜歡諾蘭對於阿波羅時代美國的樂觀主義的嘗試——尤其是因爲，蒂爾之流有一個在我看來不過貌似有理的論點，就是當代的許多科幻作品已經變得過於反烏托邦。尤其是在電影中，而且尤其是在關於宇宙探索相關的電影中：無論是《異形》(Alien)系列中的掠奪者，還是《地心引力(Gravity)和《阿波羅13號》(Apollo 13)裏的黑夜，許多當代的太空探索故事，令宇宙看來似乎是最好不要去侵擾的地方。所以在我看來，《星際穿越》中間很長一部分關於麥康納一行人從一個陌生的星球跑到另一個星球尋找適合人類居住的新家，是對黃金時代的科學作品的接受，是的，甚至是其鼓舞人心的迴歸。

I only wish I’d liked the ending better: Once again, Nolan’s pretensions got the better of his entertainer’s craft; he seems to have felt the need to imitate or outdo Stanley Kubrick’s “2001,” to deliver a big reveal that somehow marries the mystical and the material, when he would have been better off just sticking with his astronauts and their adventures. So once again, and perhaps predictably, my verdict on a Nolan movie is “near-great.” How about yours?

我只是希望結尾能再好一些就好了：又一次，諾蘭的抱負戰勝了他的娛樂技巧；他本可以專注於他的宇航員及他們的冒險，但他似乎覺得只有模仿或者戰勝斯坦利·庫布裏克(Stanley Kubrick)的《2001太空漫遊》(2001)，才能傳達出一個結合了神祕性和物質性的大啓示。所以，再一次的，或許應該說是果不其然，這是一部在我看來“幾乎偉大”的諾蘭電影。你的看法呢？

Frank Bruni: I’m glad you started with “Interstellar,” because, wow, that is one chewy movie. It’s about the (quantifiable!) power of love. It’s about the tug of family. It’s about parental guilt. It’s about filial rage. It’s about faith. It’s about doubt. It’s about human glory. It’s about human treachery.

弗蘭克·布魯尼：我很高興你從《星際穿越》開始，因爲，哇，這可是一部很有嚼頭的電影。它關乎愛的力量（而且是可以量化的！），關乎家庭的牽絆，關乎父親的自責，關乎子女的憤怒，關乎信仰，關於懷疑，關於人類榮耀，關於人類背叛。

Oh, yeah, and in the midst of all that, a whole lot of travel through space occurs.

哦，對了，貫穿這一切的，還有很多的太空旅行。

I’m astounded by Nolan’s ambition, and I’m struck by how his own drive, manifest in the fact and scope and spectacle of the movie, complements one of its principal arguments, which is that we can’t and shouldn’t turn our backs on the grandest of goals. Nolan, a director who dreams bigger than just about any other director out there, has made a movie about a band of would-be saviors who are dreaming bigger than everyone around them.

我被諾蘭的抱負震住了，打動我的是，他在電影的細節、電影眼界和壯觀場面中所展現出的推動力，完全對得起電影的一個主要論點，即：我們不能也不應該背棄那些最爲宏大的目標。諾蘭，一個比任何同行都更加勇於夢想的導演，拍攝了一部關於一羣想要成爲拯救者、一羣比周遭所有人都更敢於夢想的人的電影。

But I find its politics a bit more ambiguous or flexible or protean or noncommittal (choose your adjective) than you do. I’m amused by this zest to label it conservative, although I understand how hungry conservatives must be to claim a Hollywood A-list director (or, for that matter, star). Sure, Nolan’s “Batman” movies lend themselves to some of the interpretations you present. And, yes, “Interstellar” fudges on what’s causing the terrible weather that troubles the planet, declining to cast its lot with global warming.

但是我覺得它的政治傾向比你所認爲的更模糊，或者說更靈活、更多變、更不明說（你選一個形容詞吧）。這麼多人願意給它貼上保守主義的標籤，我覺得很有意思；雖然我能理解保守主義者一定會急於宣稱一位好萊塢一級大導演（甚至大明星）是他們這邊的。當然，諾蘭的《蝙蝠俠》系列讓人們有了你剛纔說的那些解讀。而且的確，《星際穿越》在地球氣候災難的根源問題上說得不明確，沒有在全球變暖問題上發表觀點。

But that strikes me as an artistic decision, and a prudent one at that, not a policy position. Nolan clearly didn’t set out to make a polemic about climate change, and I’m guessing that he understood that any digression in that direction might eclipse the movie’s other interests.

但我覺得這是一種藝術上的選擇，同時也是一個穩妥的選擇，而不代表政策立場。諾蘭顯然並沒打算大談特談氣候變化，我猜他知道，任何這方面的題外話都有可能遮蔽這部電影的其他亮點。

He did, however, make a movie that rues the dangers of ignoring and devaluing science and erudition. And while plenty of liberals ignore science — look at the alarmingly low vaccination rates for children of affluent parents in Hollywood enclaves that lean Democratic — there are more examples right now of conservatives committing that error and even suggesting that too much trust in science breeds too little respect for God. I’ll point you to Senator James Inhofe, an Oklahoma Republican soon to be the chairman of the Senate’s Committee on Environment and Public Works, who argues against man-made climate change by citing biblical verse and who said: “God’s still up there. The arrogance of people to think that we, human beings, would be able to change what He is doing in the climate is to me outrageous.”

不過，他的確拍了一部對忽視和貶低科學與學術知識的危害表示遺憾的影片。雖然很多自由派人士漠視科學——看看在推崇民主黨的好萊塢圈子裏，富有的明星有多不愛給自己的子女接種疫苗就知道了——但目前有更多例子可以證明，保守派人士犯了同樣的錯誤，他們甚至提出，對科學的太過信任導致了對上帝的大不敬。比方說，很快就會當上參議院環境與公共事務委員會(Senate’s Committee on Environment and Public Works)主席的俄克拉何馬州共和黨參議員詹姆斯·英霍夫(James Inhofe)，曾援引聖經經文來反駁氣候變化人爲論，他還說過：“上帝依然存在。有人認爲我們人類可以改變上帝對氣候的安排，這種傲慢的想法在我看來非常離譜。”

There are additional aspects of “Interstellar” that don’t seem to be particularly conservative or at least easily politically defined. Although I saw the movie more than a month ago and have grown a bit fuzzy on details, I believe that its vision of how the human race will wind up transplanted to, and replicating on, a distant planet is not one that reproductive puritans would endorse. There’s certainly more lab equipment and disembodied fluid in the equation than, say, Catholic doctrine smiles upon. And here again, we have a portrait of science not as a challenge to God or the “natural” order of things but as our salvation.

《星際穿越》在另外一些方面似乎沒有很強的保守派色彩，或者說，至少很難在政治上加以界定。我是在一個月前看的這部片子，對一些細節的記憶已經有些模糊了，但我認爲，它關於人類如何遷徙到一個遙遠的星球上去，並在那裏繁衍的設想，無法得到重視生育的清教徒們的認同。此種複雜的情況必然要涉及到太多的實驗設備和脫離身體的體液，這種做法可以說與天主教的教義並不相符。此外，我們又一次看到，科學並未被描述成向上帝或者萬物之“自然”秩序發起挑戰的角色，而是人類的救贖。

Beyond which, “Interstellar” is very much about the profound sacrifices that an individual must make for the sake of a larger community. (Several spoilers are about to come. Beware!) The greater good trumps even the nuclear family, and so McConaughey must tuck himself into a spaceship and lose himself in the cosmos even if the passage-of-time physics of this means that he leaves the earth before he gets to see his daughter turn into Jessica Chastain — a thrill that no parent should be denied! — and doesn’t return until she’s already become Ellen Burstyn.

除了這些，《星際穿越》還着重闡述了個人爲了集體的利益而做出的極大犧牲。（接下來會有一些劇透，當心！）大集體的利益甚至重於小家庭，因此麥康納(McConaughey)必須登上宇宙飛船，進而迷失在宇宙之中，儘管關於時間流逝的物理理論意味着他在女兒變成傑西卡·查斯坦(Jessica Chastain)之前就要離開地球——任何家長都有權見證這激動人心的轉變——而等到他回來的時候，她已經變成艾倫·伯斯汀(Ellen Burstyn)了。

Yes, “Interstellar” says that a person’s greatness should never be underestimated, belittled, shackled. But I’m not sure Ayn Rand would have grooved to Nolan’s vision. This is ultimately a movie about our shared investments, our overlapping and entwined destinies. It’s about the triumph of Matthew McConaughey’s quivering munificence over Matt Damon’s clenched selfishness. Out there on the surrealistic tundra of that distant planet where they grapple, it isn’t just two of cinema’s foremost hunks doing battle. It’s a contest of different impulses, different ideologies, and I don’t think they fit as neatly into any political scheme as some of the movie’s analysts would like.

沒錯，《星際穿越》要傳達的信息是，一個人的偉大永遠也不應該被低估、被無視、被束縛。但我不確定安·蘭德(Ayn Rand)是否會同意諾蘭的觀點。說到底，這部電影講的是我們共同的付出，以及我們相互重疊與交織的命運。它講的是馬修·麥康納(Matthew McConaughey)令人感動的寬宏大量戰勝了馬特·達蒙(Matt Damon)死抓着不放的自私自利。他們倆在那遙遠星球的超現實主義凍原上的搏鬥，可不僅僅是兩個影壇大猛男之間的較量。這同時也是不同追求、不同意識形態之間的較量，而且我認爲它們並不像有些影評人所樂見的那樣，與任何政治圖謀相契合。

Douthat: I’ll cop to always being a little overeager to discover political kindred spirits in an industry that isn’t exactly thick with them, but I don’t think I’m reaching that far with my read on Nolan’s politics. Put it this way: If a filmmaker made a movie that put Tea Party rhetoric in the mouth of its villain, I think it would be fair to read that as a liberal message (and, indeed, most conservative pop culture critics would). So it’s reasonable to read the class-war, Occupy Wall Street rhetoric that Bane spews in “The Dark Knight Rises” the same way — as a right-leaning filmmaker’s none-too-subtle dig at certain of-the-moment left-wing ideas. Again, I think a lot of the left-wing critiques of the “Batman” movies were overdrawn or off the mark, but I don’t think folks at Salon or Jacobin were wrong to recognize a kind of ideological adversary in the man behind the trilogy.

多賽特：我不得不承認，我常常有點過於急切地想要在一個政治知音並不多見的行當裏發掘知音，但我覺得自己對於諾蘭的看法不算太離譜。這麼說吧：如果一個導演拍了一部電影，並借片中反派之口說出茶黨(Tea Party)的辭令，我覺得據此解讀出自由派的意味還算公平（事實上，很多保守派流行文化評論人士是會這樣做的）。因此，我們似乎也可以用同樣的方式來解讀貝恩(Bane)在《黑暗騎士崛起》(The Dark Knight Rises)中滔滔不絕地說出的與階級鬥爭和佔領華爾街(Occupy Wall Street)有關的辭令——把它們當成一個偏右翼電影人對當下某些左翼觀點的明顯挖苦。同樣，我認爲許多來自左翼的對《蝙蝠俠》系列電影的評論有過於誇張之嫌，或者說有些離題，但我並不認爲在《蝙蝠俠》三部曲背後的男人身上看到意識形態衝突的《Jacobin》雜誌以及新聞網站Salon的那些左翼人士人是錯誤的。

But I also agree with your emendation to my point about “Interstellar”: Nolan’s sci-fi vision, despite occasional spiritual-ish elements, is basically right-wing in a libertarian rather than a religious or socially conservative key. I don’t know if I’d quite describe the film as a proof that its director is a “die-hard materialist,” as this Dissolve essay does — there’s too much gooey stuff in there about the cosmic power of Love — but at the very least he’s at pains to try to keep his biggest mysteries somehow natural rather than divine, even when doing so requires a kind of jerry-rigging that I thought made the ending less perfect than it could have been. And yes, part of the movie’s optimistic vision, especially at the end, is also plainly transhumanist in a way that libertarians tend to appreciate but most religious conservatives consider, well, suspect to say the least. (Which is another reason I name-checked Peter Thiel’s ideas in discussing the film, since some of his anti-stagnationist seed money has gone to transhumanist projects — though, to bring things full circle, he’s also some sort of religious believer as well.

但我也同意你對我的《星際穿越》觀點做出的修正：諾蘭的科幻構想雖然偶有帶宗教色彩的元素，但基本上是自由意志主義的右翼，而不是宗教或社會保守主義的調子。我不知道自己能否像Dissolve網站上的一篇文章那樣，把該片說成是一個證據，證明了導演是個“鐵桿唯物主義”——片中有太多黏糊糊的、關於愛的宇宙能量的東西了——但是最起碼，他煞費苦心，試圖把片中最大的謎團解釋爲一種自然力量，而非神蹟，即使這樣做需要進行一些牽強附會，致使我覺得片子的結尾本來可以很完美，現在就沒有那麼完美了。是的，該片的部分樂觀幻像，尤其是最後階段，明顯也是超人類主義的，自由意志主義者往往會讚賞它，但大多數的宗教保守派至少可以說是懷疑它。（我之所以在討論這部電影時談到彼得·蒂爾[Peter Thiel]想法，這也是另一個原因，因爲他把一些用來反停滯論的種子資金投入到了超人類主義的項目裏——雖然，話又說回來，他也算是某種宗教信徒。）

I’ll save further rambling about science and society for a future column (that’s what they’re for, right?) and pivot to a different kind of transhumanism — the kind on display in two of the best-reviewed movies of the last month, “Birdman” and “Nightcrawler,” whose contrasting titles nail their differences quite neatly. The former has a “Batman” link, since it’s about a movie star played by Michael Keaton who used to play Bat — sorry, Birdman in the 1990s, and who gave the superhero thing up in search of more self-serious work, a choice that’s led him to the theater (he’s doing a self-scripted, self-starring Raymond Carver adaptation on Broadway) and to the brink of what seems like a nervous breakdown … unless, of course, the telekinetic powers he thinks he’s developing (while the voice of Birdman growls in his head) are actually somehow real, a possibility that the movie does not at all exclude. I’m still trying to figure out what I thought about it (besides the wish that Michael Keaton, Ed Norton and Naomi Watts could appear together in about 60 more movies), but my provisional capsule summary is that this is “Black Swan” for relative optimists, which I’m pretty sure counts as praise. (At the very least it’s the best — and least ponderous — work that the director, Alejandro González Iñárritu, has done in English.)

我打算把科學和社會方面的討論放在以後的專欄文章裏（專欄就是用來做這個的，對吧？），現在轉到另外一種超人類主義上——它出現在上個月評價最好的電影《鳥人》(Birdman)和《夜行者》(Nightcrawler)裏，這兩個對比感強烈的片名一目瞭然地體現了它們的差異。前者有《蝙蝠俠》(Batman)的元素，因爲它的主角是一個電影明星，由邁克爾·基頓(Michael Keaton)扮演，他曾經在上世紀90年代扮演蝙——對不起，扮演鳥人，後來放棄了拍超級英雄電影，尋找自己認爲更加嚴肅的工作，這個選擇把他帶到了劇院（他以雷蒙德·卡佛[Raymond Carver]的一部作品爲藍本，自編自演了一部百老匯戲劇），也把他帶到了精神崩潰的邊緣......當然，除非他覺得自己正在獲得的隔空取物能力（鳥人的咆哮在他的腦海裏迴響）是真有其事，電影並沒有完全排除這種可能性。我仍在試圖釐清我對這個問題的想法（除了希望邁克爾·基頓，愛德華·諾頓和娜奧米·沃茨一起出演另外60部電影之外），但我暫時得出的結論是，這是給相對樂觀者看的《黑天鵝》(Black Swan)，這麼說肯定是在稱讚它。（至少，這是導演亞利桑德羅·岡薩雷斯·伊納裏多[Alejandro González Iñárritu]迄今最好的——也是最沉悶的——英語電影。）

In “Nightcrawler,” meanwhile, what’s being transcended are a different kind of human limits — not physical but moral, when Jake Gyllenhaal’s creepy, bug-eyed revenant makes a devil’s bargain with a City of Angels cable-news producer (Rene Russo) to supply the bleeds-and-leads footage that her limping newscast desperately needs. If “Birdman” sometimes felt a little too opaque and artsy, “Nightcrawler” sometimes feels too on-the-nose, and also a bit dated in the targets of its moral outrage. (That local-TV news is exploitative was a big insight 20 years ago; now it feels a bit like attacking tape decks or VHS.) But Russo is really fantastic, and reason enough to see the film. (As an aside: I’m saving my thoughts on the “Hunger Games” cycle for a future Moviegoers, but I wholeheartedly endorse this argument, from Vulture’s Kyle Buchanan, that an “unboring” Oscars would see both Russo and Jennifer Lawrence nominated for their “Nightcrawler” and “Mockingjay” work.)

而在《夜行者》中，是另外一種人類極限被超越了——不是身體上的，而是精神上的。傑克·吉倫哈爾(Jake Gyllenhaal)有着可怕的凸眼造型，他與“天使之城”(City of Angels)的有線新聞製片人（蕾妮·羅素[Rene Russo]扮演）做成一筆魔鬼交易，爲她處於困境的新聞節目提供亟需的熱點素材。如果說《鳥人》有時讓人感覺捉摸不透，顯得撲朔迷離，那麼《夜行者》有時就感覺太直白了，而且在其道德義憤的目標定位上有點陳舊。（地方電視新聞節目利用別人的遭遇來生財，這個觀點在20年前很引人注目，現在感覺有點像是在攻擊磁帶錄音機或家用錄像機）。但羅素真的演得很棒，就算是隻爲了看她，這部電影都值得一看。（順便說一句：我爲《飢餓遊戲》[Hunger Games]最新一集寫的影評會放在Moviegoers專欄上，但我完全贊同Vulture網站上凱爾·布坎南[Kyle Buchanan]的說法，即只有羅素和詹妮弗·勞倫斯[Jennifer Lawrence]憑藉《夜行者》和《飢餓遊戲：嘲笑鳥》獲得提名，這屆奧斯卡纔會“不無聊”）

Gyllenhaal is all-in but pretty much one note — he’s a sociopath from the moment we meet him till the end — while his older co-star offers something much more recognizably, well, human: a mix of desperation and corruption, and a portrayal of how easily the two can feed each other.

吉倫哈爾很投入，但缺乏變化——從我們第一眼看到他，直到最後一刻，他都是個反社會者——而羅素展現的人性遠遠更加明顯：絕望混合着墮落，而且還向我們展示了二者可以怎樣彼此助長。

I think you’ve seen both. What say you about them? Oscar, Oscar, or thumbs down?

我想你已經看過這兩部電影呢。你對它們有何看法呢？奧斯卡，奧斯卡，還是很差勁呢？

Bruni: Ross, you’re going to be shocked, but, well, I disagree with you.

布魯尼：羅斯，這可能會讓你很震驚，但是，唉，我不同意你的看法。

About Rene Russo, that is. Now I want to be clear: I love me some Rene Russo. I have seen the remake of “The Thomas Crown Affair” several times — and mostly because of her. From the moment she appears until the final seconds, you can’t take your eyes off her. And it isn’t simply because she never looked more gorgeous. It’s because she thrums with life: with hunger for her quarry, with anger about his elusiveness, with anticipatory sorrow for how he is probably going to break her heart. And yet the performance never becomes showy.

就是關於蕾妮·羅素的看法。我先聲明：我愛她的一些作品。她主演的翻拍版《偷天遊戲》(The Thomas Crown Affair)我看過好幾遍——主要就是爲了看她。從她一出場，直到最後幾秒鐘，你的目光就是無法離開她。這不僅是因爲她從未像那樣美麗奪目，也是因爲她把角色演活了：她調查事情時的專注，他的飄忽不定讓她產生的憤怒，感到他可能會讓她心碎時的悲傷。而且，她永遠不會演得過分花哨。

In “Nightcrawler” she’s never showy enough, at least not for me. I kept wondering what an actress with more acid in her could have done with the part. I kept thinking of Faye Dunaway. It’s funny: Dunaway is the point of reference for Russo’s performance in “Crown,” having played Russo’s role in the original. And Dunaway is again the point of reference for Russo’s performance in “Nightcrawler,” which is, in its way, “Network” Lite. Or, rather, “Network”-meets-“Taxi Driver” Lite.

在《夜行者》中，她一直都不夠花哨，至少對我來說不夠。我一直好奇，讓一個更尖酸的女演員來演這個角色會怎樣。我老是想到菲·唐納薇(Faye Dunaway)。有意思的是，唐納薇是羅素在《偷天遊戲》中的表現的參照對象，因爲在最初的版本中， 羅素的那個角色是由唐納薇扮演的。而在《夜行者》中，這一幕再次上演。《夜行者》其實是口味較輕的《網絡》(Network)，或者說是《網絡》和《出租車司機》加起來的輕口味版本。

Now to a point of agreement: I found “Nightcrawler” dated as well. That’s the perfect word. (See, Ross, I can praise you, too! Just don’t get used to it.) The movie is a hell of a ride, executed with style, and my interest never flagged, but it’s all about local TV news and one man’s view of it as the pinnacle of all excitement and glamour. And I hardly know anyone who watches those newscasts anymore! The movie might have made more sense with Gyllenhaal as a blogger. Or a guy who Tweets. Or an addict for Instagram.

現在來說說我們兩個的共識。我發現《夜行者》也有些過時。這個詞恰到好處。（看到了吧，羅斯，我也會誇你的！不過可別習以爲常）。電影非常棒，處理的很得體，但它所有的激越和魅力都來自地方電視新聞，以及一個男性對這些新聞的看法。我基本上不知道誰會看這些新聞節目！如果把吉倫哈爾設定成一個博客用戶，或是一個Twitter用戶，再或是一個對Instagram上癮的人，電影可能會更有意思。

“Birdman” for me had a similarly dislocating, disruptive element, and it was those disembodied voice-overs from, well, the Keaton character’s dark alter ego? His “Birdman” past? His father-in-law in Wichita? They didn’t work for me.

對我來說，《鳥人》也有同樣定位不當、混亂的元素。此外，那些飄忽的旁白，是基頓扮演的那個角色的某個陰暗的第二自我嗎？還是過去當鳥人時的他？抑或是他身在威奇托的岳父？這些設定都沒法打動我。

But, wow, the rest of the movie worked, and for the same reason that a previous movie of Iñárritu’s, “21 Grams,” did. He gives amazing actors juicy parts and then carves out the right space and enough time for those actors and those parts to breathe. He has a special kind of patience.

不過，電影的其他部分可真不錯啊，就像伊納裏圖之前的電影《21克》(21 Grams)一樣。他賦予了優秀的演員以飽滿的角色，然後又給了這些演員和角色適當的空間和足夠的時間，讓他們變得鮮活起來。他有一種特殊的耐心。

I thought Norton was astonishing and I thought Emma Stone was a revelation and Watts is always fantastic. And of course I took special interest in the bits with Lindsay Duncan as the theater critic of The New York Times. Her interactions with Keaton’s character are preposterous, but Duncan has the right amount of poisonous fun with them. She should have traded places with Russo in “Nightcrawler.”

我覺得諾頓令人驚歎，艾瑪·斯通(Emma Stone)讓人大開眼界，瓦茨也總是那麼出色。當然，我對林賽·鄧肯(Lindsay Duncan)飾演的《紐約時報》戲劇評論人有着特殊的興趣。她和基頓的角色之間的互動很荒唐，但她從中找到了不多不少的惡毒樂趣。她應該願意交換羅素在《夜行者》中的角色。

Is there an Oscar in that group of “Birdman” performers? I wouldn’t bet against it. I’d give Norton Best Supporting Actor in a flash, and I noticed that the National Board of Review did precisely that on Tuesday. The board decreed a tie for Best Actor between Oscar Isaac, for “A Most Violent Year,” and Keaton, for “Birdman.” Keaton also won best actor this week at the Gotham Awards, for independent films.

《鳥人》的演員中會有人獲奧斯卡獎嗎？我不會打賭說沒有。要讓我決定的話，我會不假思索把最佳男配角給諾頓，而且我注意到，國家評論協會(National Board of Review)在週二的確這麼做了。在國家評論協會的評比中，出演《至暴之年》(A Most Violent Year)的奧斯卡·伊薩克(Oscar Isaac)和《鳥人》中的基頓共享最佳男演員獎項。本週，在面向獨立影片的哥譚獎(Gotham Awards)上，基頓也收穫了最佳男演員獎。

But I’m less wowed by Keaton than by Benedict Cumberbatch in “The Imitation Game.” He’s absolutely terrific, though the movie is otherwise a tad too neat and clean for my tastes. I craved something messier, something that got under the skin and elicited more than a genteel sigh or the littlest rumor of a tear.

但和基頓相比，我更欣賞《模仿遊戲》(The Imitation Game)中的本尼迪克特·康伯巴奇(Benedict Cumberbatch)。他簡直太棒了，不過在其他方面，對我的品味來說，這部電影有些太小清新了。我渴望那種更雜亂，更現實的東西，它們引發的不僅僅是優雅的嘆息或是一滴微不足道的眼淚。

“The Imitation Game” did get me to thinking about two issues that both of us have written about and that get addressed in The Times frequently: diversity and education. In the movie, which depicts the life of Alan Turing, he’s something of a grouch and a bit of a snob and a through-and-through oddball. He’s also furtively gay in an era when that was broadly seen as a perversion and an affliction. He doesn’t fit in; he’s more easily ignored than embraced. And there are indeed plenty of people poised to ostracize and exile him.

《模仿遊戲》並未讓我思考我們兩人經常寫文章論述、《紐約時報》也頻頻提及的兩個問題：多樣性和教育。電影描述了艾倫·圖靈(Alan Turing)的一生。在影片中，他有些忿忿不平，也有些勢利，還是一個徹頭徹尾的怪人。在那個同性戀被廣泛視爲一種變態和疾病的年代，他暗地裏還是一名男同性戀。他和其他人合不來，更容易被忽略，而非被接納。同時，的確有很多人準備排擠他，驅逐他。

But he just so happens to be integral to the end of a devastating, epically bloody, unimaginably costly war. He’s someone with knowledge and gifts that the world can’t do without. And I wondered, as I watched the movie, how close we came to not getting that knowledge or those gifts. I wondered how many visionaries and geniuses we’ve been denied — and how many we continue to deny ourselves — because of our talent for putting people in boxes, because of an insufficient effort to free people from those boxes, and because we’re not dedicated and smart about letting as many people as possible reach their potential.

但他恰巧對結束那場毀滅性的、傷亡慘烈、代價昂貴到超乎想象的戰爭不可或缺。世界離不開他的知識和天賦。而在看電影的時候我心想，我們已經落到這步田地，就快不能理解那種知識或那種天賦了。我想，有多少具有遠見和天賦的人被我們拒絕——至今還在繼續拒絕——全因爲我們桎梏起他人來才華橫溢，因爲我們不夠細緻和聰明，不能讓儘可能多的人發揮自己的潛能。

So maybe “Imitation Game,” like “Interstellar,” is in one sense about the need to unshackle excellence. And I think that’s an imperative that people of all political persuasions endorse, no?

所以，或許就像《星際穿越》一樣，《模仿遊戲》在一定程度上說的是我們需要解除對才能的禁錮。而且我覺得，各個政治派別都會同意這是必須的吧。

Let’s pick this up later this month or early next, when there’ll be yet more Oscar talk and we may even be able to weigh in on “Unbroken.” Angelina, here we come!

我們本月晚些時候或是下月初再繼續聊這個話題吧。到時候關於奧斯卡的討論會更多，我們甚至可能會討論《堅不可摧》(Unbroken)。安吉莉娜(Angelina)，我們來了！