罗斯·多赛特：很高兴回来，在这个秋季档风平浪静的风暴眼时刻，我们有机会赶在圣诞的电影飓风到来之前，深吸一口气，把在感恩节前上映的所有佳片都给看了——或者你懂的，要是有孩子的话，恐怕就只得带孩子去看《马达加斯加的企鹅》(Penguins of Madagascar)了。我就从上个月上画的秋季档中最具影响力、最具企图心、从某些方面来说也最为政治的电影——克里斯托弗·诺兰(Christopher Nolan)的《星际穿越》(Interstellar)说起吧。
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.”
让我先说明一点：我不是诺兰教的信徒；我更多是那种会去教堂领略礼拜仪式之美，但在牧师布道过程中会充满狐疑地把头歪向一侧，对几条关键性的教义还会持有异议的人。在我看来，他是拍摄近乎伟大之作的大师：诺兰的电影总能带给我娱乐，但我从来不会说，“终于，他拍出了一部杰作”。他最接近完美的作品《记忆碎片》(Memento)更多是一部幽闭恐怖症的噱头之作，所以难以担当杰作头衔；而那些令他的疯狂粉丝们赞不绝口的电影——《星际穿越》，尤其是《黑暗骑士》(The Dark Knight)——虽然是给人留下深刻印象的大片，但也不是大师之作。把《星际穿越》当成一部强盗片来看，它还是很不错的；但如果把它视为对梦境和潜意识世界的探索，那就……马马虎虎了。《黑暗骑士》也是这样，扮演小丑的希斯·莱杰(Heath Ledger)的演技，要比这部电影对政治、领导力和恐怖主义的思考要来得更为耀眼几度。（我也属于更偏爱《黑暗骑士崛起》[The Dark Knight Rises]的那个小阵营。）
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.”)
但有时候，我觉得自己应该多给诺兰捧捧场，因为很显然，他是当今在好莱坞打拼的顶级导演中政治立场偏保守的。这并非我的个人观点：出于显而易见的原因，有人批评他的蝙蝠侠系列是对法西斯主义的辩解，也有人认可它是对乔治布什发动的反恐战争的辩护。但这两种看法都不完全正确：事实上，对于一个像诺兰这么英范儿的人，这些电影是对一种老式的保守主义的辩解，这种保守主义捍卫基本的公民秩序，反对腐败、激进的和无政府主义的选择，把站在普通大众利益一边的、庄园出生的贵族视作重要人物。
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.
这是令《星际穿越》的政治立场显得相当有趣的原因之一，因为与蝙蝠侠三部曲“和平、秩序和贵族责任”的保守主义相比，诺兰的这部宇宙探索电影，以一种截然不同的、更为美国化的基调呈现出右翼色彩。在我给《国民评论》(National Review)写的影评中提出，你很有可能会以为该片是彼特·蒂尔(Peter Thiel)这种信奉自由主义、对于那些在他看来表明西方缺乏想象力和技术野心的事务时常提出批评的的技术大佬，会出钱出力的电影类型：《星际穿越》一片始于这样一个世界——教科书被重写，假装登月是冷战的宣传噱头；而结束于……好吧，我认为指出片名表明了该片对于人类未来的看法，应该也不能算是剧透之举吧。这使得该片成了这样一个议题的长篇简报：人类，尤其是美国人、尤其是马修·麦康纳(Matthew McConaughey )扮演的那种美国人，可以去做任何他们在心里下定决心要去完成的事情，对于人类未来的最大威胁，不是来自于不自量力、自以为是或者技术所造成的出人意料之外的恶果（另一些观众大感失望的是，电影里肆虐全球的、大气引发的“枯死病”威胁与人为的气候变化显然不是一回事），而是失败主义、衰落主义和对自我的怀疑。
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.
基本上我更支持保守主义，而非自由主义；但我仍然喜欢诺兰对于阿波罗时代美国的乐观主义的尝试——尤其是因为，蒂尔之流有一个在我看来不过貌似有理的论点，就是当代的许多科幻作品已经变得过于反乌托邦。尤其是在电影中，而且尤其是在关于宇宙探索相关的电影中：无论是《异形》(Alien)系列中的掠夺者，还是《地心引力(Gravity)和《阿波罗13号》(Apollo 13)里的黑夜，许多当代的太空探索故事，令宇宙看来似乎是最好不要去侵扰的地方。所以在我看来，《星际穿越》中间很长一部分关于麦康纳一行人从一个陌生的星球跑到另一个星球寻找适合人类居住的新家，是对黄金时代的科学作品的接受，是的，甚至是其鼓舞人心的回归。
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.
我只是希望结尾能再好一些就好了：又一次，诺兰的抱负战胜了他的娱乐技巧；他本可以专注于他的宇航员及他们的冒险，但他似乎觉得只有模仿或者战胜斯坦利·库布里克(Stanley Kubrick)的《2001太空漫游》(2001)，才能传达出一个结合了神秘性和物质性的大启示。所以，再一次的，或许应该说是果不其然，这是一部在我看来“几乎伟大”的诺兰电影。你的看法呢？
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?
弗兰克·布鲁尼：我很高兴你从《星际穿越》开始，因为，哇，这可是一部很有嚼头的电影。它关乎爱的力量（而且是可以量化的！），关乎家庭的牵绊，关乎父亲的自责，关乎子女的愤怒，关乎信仰，关于怀疑，关于人类荣耀，关于人类背叛。
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.
哦，对了，贯穿这一切的，还有很多的太空旅行。
Oh, yeah, and in the midst of all that, a whole lot of travel through space occurs.
我被诺兰的抱负震住了，打动我的是，他在电影的细节、电影眼界和壮观场面中所展现出的推动力，完全对得起电影的一个主要论点，即：我们不能也不应该背弃那些最为宏大的目标。诺兰，一个比任何同行都更加勇于梦想的导演，拍摄了一部关于一群想要成为拯救者、一群比周遭所有人都更敢于梦想的人的电影。
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.
但是我觉得它的政治倾向比你所认为的更模糊，或者说更灵活、更多变、更不明说（你选一个形容词吧）。这么多人愿意给它贴上保守主义的标签，我觉得很有意思；虽然我能理解保守主义者一定会急于宣称一位好莱坞一级大导演（甚至大明星）是他们这边的。当然，诺兰的《蝙蝠侠》系列让人们有了你刚才说的那些解读。而且的确，《星际穿越》在地球气候灾难的根源问题上说得不明确，没有在全球变暖问题上发表观点。
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.
但我觉得这是一种艺术上的选择，同时也是一个稳妥的选择，而不代表政策立场。诺兰显然并没打算大谈特谈气候变化，我猜他知道，任何这方面的题外话都有可能遮蔽这部电影的其他亮点。
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.
不过，他的确拍了一部对忽视和贬低科学与学术知识的危害表示遗憾的影片。虽然很多自由派人士漠视科学——看看在推崇民主党的好莱坞圈子里，富有的明星有多不爱给自己的子女接种疫苗就知道了——但目前有更多例子可以证明，保守派人士犯了同样的错误，他们甚至提出，对科学的太过信任导致了对上帝的大不敬。比方说，很快就会当上参议院环境与公共事务委员会(Senate’s Committee on Environment and Public Works)主席的俄克拉何马州共和党参议员詹姆斯·英霍夫(James Inhofe)，曾援引圣经经文来反驳气候变化人为论，他还说过：“上帝依然存在。有人认为我们人类可以改变上帝对气候的安排，这种傲慢的想法在我看来非常离谱。”
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.”
《星际穿越》在另外一些方面似乎没有很强的保守派色彩，或者说，至少很难在政治上加以界定。我是在一个月前看的这部片子，对一些细节的记忆已经有些模糊了，但我认为，它关于人类如何迁徙到一个遥远的星球上去，并在那里繁衍的设想，无法得到重视生育的清教徒们的认同。此种复杂的情况必然要涉及到太多的实验设备和脱离身体的体液，这种做法可以说与天主教的教义并不相符。此外，我们又一次看到，科学并未被描述成向上帝或者万物之“自然”秩序发起挑战的角色，而是人类的救赎。
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.
除了这些，《星际穿越》还着重阐述了个人为了集体的利益而做出的极大牺牲。（接下来会有一些剧透，当心！）大集体的利益甚至重于小家庭，因此麦康纳(McConaughey)必须登上宇宙飞船，进而迷失在宇宙之中，尽管关于时间流逝的物理理论意味着他在女儿变成杰西卡·查斯坦(Jessica Chastain)之前就要离开地球——任何家长都有权见证这激动人心的转变——而等到他回来的时候，她已经变成艾伦·伯斯汀(Ellen Burstyn)了。
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.
没错，《星际穿越》要传达的信息是，一个人的伟大永远也不应该被低估、被无视、被束缚。但我不确定安·兰德(Ayn Rand)是否会同意诺兰的观点。说到底，这部电影讲的是我们共同的付出，以及我们相互重叠与交织的命运。它讲的是马修·麦康纳(Matthew McConaughey)令人感动的宽宏大量战胜了马特·达蒙(Matt Damon)死抓着不放的自私自利。他们俩在那遥远星球的超现实主义冻原上的搏斗，可不仅仅是两个影坛大猛男之间的较量。这同时也是不同追求、不同意识形态之间的较量，而且我认为它们并不像有些影评人所乐见的那样，与任何政治图谋相契合。
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.
多赛特：我不得不承认，我常常有点过于急切地想要在一个政治知音并不多见的行当里发掘知音，但我觉得自己对于诺兰的看法不算太离谱。这么说吧：如果一个导演拍了一部电影，并借片中反派之口说出茶党(Tea Party)的辞令，我觉得据此解读出自由派的意味还算公平（事实上，很多保守派流行文化评论人士是会这样做的）。因此，我们似乎也可以用同样的方式来解读贝恩(Bane)在《黑暗骑士崛起》(The Dark Knight Rises)中滔滔不绝地说出的与阶级斗争和占领华尔街(Occupy Wall Street)有关的辞令——把它们当成一个偏右翼电影人对当下某些左翼观点的明显挖苦。同样，我认为许多来自左翼的对《蝙蝠侠》系列电影的评论有过于夸张之嫌，或者说有些离题，但我并不认为在《蝙蝠侠》三部曲背后的男人身上看到意识形态冲突的《Jacobin》杂志以及新闻网站Salon的那些左翼人士人是错误的。
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.
但我也同意你对我的《星际穿越》观点做出的修正：诺兰的科幻构想虽然偶有带宗教色彩的元素，但基本上是自由意志主义的右翼，而不是宗教或社会保守主义的调子。我不知道自己能否像Dissolve网站上的一篇文章那样，把该片说成是一个证据，证明了导演是个“铁杆唯物主义”——片中有太多黏糊糊的、关于爱的宇宙能量的东西了——但是最起码，他煞费苦心，试图把片中最大的谜团解释为一种自然力量，而非神迹，即使这样做需要进行一些牵强附会，致使我觉得片子的结尾本来可以很完美，现在就没有那么完美了。是的，该片的部分乐观幻像，尤其是最后阶段，明显也是超人类主义的，自由意志主义者往往会赞赏它，但大多数的宗教保守派至少可以说是怀疑它。（我之所以在讨论这部电影时谈到彼得·蒂尔[Peter Thiel]想法，这也是另一个原因，因为他把一些用来反停滞论的种子资金投入到了超人类主义的项目里——虽然，话又说回来，他也算是某种宗教信徒。）
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.
我打算把科学和社会方面的讨论放在以后的专栏文章里（专栏就是用来做这个的，对吧？），现在转到另外一种超人类主义上——它出现在上个月评价最好的电影《鸟人》(Birdman)和《夜行者》(Nightcrawler)里，这两个对比感强烈的片名一目了然地体现了它们的差异。前者有《蝙蝠侠》(Batman)的元素，因为它的主角是一个电影明星，由迈克尔·基顿(Michael Keaton)扮演，他曾经在上世纪90年代扮演蝙——对不起，扮演鸟人，后来放弃了拍超级英雄电影，寻找自己认为更加严肃的工作，这个选择把他带到了剧院（他以雷蒙德·卡佛[Raymond Carver]的一部作品为蓝本，自编自演了一部百老汇戏剧），也把他带到了精神崩溃的边缘......当然，除非他觉得自己正在获得的隔空取物能力（鸟人的咆哮在他的脑海里回响）是真有其事，电影并没有完全排除这种可能性。我仍在试图厘清我对这个问题的想法（除了希望迈克尔·基顿，爱德华·诺顿和娜奥米·沃茨一起出演另外60部电影之外），但我暂时得出的结论是，这是给相对乐观者看的《黑天鹅》(Black Swan)，这么说肯定是在称赞它。（至少，这是导演亚利桑德罗·冈萨雷斯·伊纳里多[Alejandro González Iñárritu]迄今最好的——也是最沉闷的——英语电影。）
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.)
而在《夜行者》中，是另外一种人类极限被超越了——不是身体上的，而是精神上的。杰克·吉伦哈尔(Jake Gyllenhaal)有着可怕的凸眼造型，他与“天使之城”(City of Angels)的有线新闻制片人（蕾妮·罗素[Rene Russo]扮演）做成一笔魔鬼交易，为她处于困境的新闻节目提供亟需的热点素材。如果说《鸟人》有时让人感觉捉摸不透，显得扑朔迷离，那么《夜行者》有时就感觉太直白了，而且在其道德义愤的目标定位上有点陈旧。（地方电视新闻节目利用别人的遭遇来生财，这个观点在20年前很引人注目，现在感觉有点像是在攻击磁带录音机或家用录像机）。但罗素真的演得很棒，就算是只为了看她，这部电影都值得一看。（顺便说一句：我为《饥饿游戏》[Hunger Games]最新一集写的影评会放在Moviegoers专栏上，但我完全赞同Vulture网站上凯尔·布坎南[Kyle Buchanan]的说法，即只有罗素和詹妮弗·劳伦斯[Jennifer Lawrence]凭借《夜行者》和《饥饿游戏：嘲笑鸟》获得提名，这届奥斯卡才会“不无聊”）
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.)
吉伦哈尔很投入，但缺乏变化——从我们第一眼看到他，直到最后一刻，他都是个反社会者——而罗素展现的人性远远更加明显：绝望混合着堕落，而且还向我们展示了二者可以怎样彼此助长。
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.
我想你已经看过这两部电影呢。你对它们有何看法呢？奥斯卡，奥斯卡，还是很差劲呢？
I think you’ve seen both. What say you about them? Oscar, Oscar, or thumbs down?
布鲁尼：罗斯，这可能会让你很震惊，但是，唉，我不同意你的看法。
Bruni: Ross, you’re going to be shocked, but, well, I disagree with you.
就是关于蕾妮·罗素的看法。我先声明：我爱她的一些作品。她主演的翻拍版《偷天游戏》(The Thomas Crown Affair)我看过好几遍——主要就是为了看她。从她一出场，直到最后几秒钟，你的目光就是无法离开她。这不仅是因为她从未像那样美丽夺目，也是因为她把角色演活了：她调查事情时的专注，他的飘忽不定让她产生的愤怒，感到他可能会让她心碎时的悲伤。而且，她永远不会演得过分花哨。
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.
在《夜行者》中，她一直都不够花哨，至少对我来说不够。我一直好奇，让一个更尖酸的女演员来演这个角色会怎样。我老是想到菲·唐纳薇(Faye Dunaway)。有意思的是，唐纳薇是罗素在《偷天游戏》中的表现的参照对象，因为在最初的版本中， 罗素的那个角色是由唐纳薇扮演的。而在《夜行者》中，这一幕再次上演。《夜行者》其实是口味较轻的《网络》(Network)，或者说是《网络》和《出租车司机》加起来的轻口味版本。
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.
现在来说说我们两个的共识。我发现《夜行者》也有些过时。这个词恰到好处。（看到了吧，罗斯，我也会夸你的！不过可别习以为常）。电影非常棒，处理的很得体，但它所有的激越和魅力都来自地方电视新闻，以及一个男性对这些新闻的看法。我基本上不知道谁会看这些新闻节目！如果把吉伦哈尔设定成一个博客用户，或是一个Twitter用户，再或是一个对Instagram上瘾的人，电影可能会更有意思。
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.
对我来说，《鸟人》也有同样定位不当、混乱的元素。此外，那些飘忽的旁白，是基顿扮演的那个角色的某个阴暗的第二自我吗？还是过去当鸟人时的他？抑或是他身在威奇托的岳父？这些设定都没法打动我。
“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.
不过，电影的其他部分可真不错啊，就像伊纳里图之前的电影《21克》(21 Grams)一样。他赋予了优秀的演员以饱满的角色，然后又给了这些演员和角色适当的空间和足够的时间，让他们变得鲜活起来。他有一种特殊的耐心。
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.
我觉得诺顿令人惊叹，艾玛·斯通(Emma Stone)让人大开眼界，瓦茨也总是那么出色。当然，我对林赛·邓肯(Lindsay Duncan)饰演的《纽约时报》戏剧评论人有着特殊的兴趣。她和基顿的角色之间的互动很荒唐，但她从中找到了不多不少的恶毒乐趣。她应该愿意交换罗素在《夜行者》中的角色。
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.”
《鸟人》的演员中会有人获奥斯卡奖吗？我不会打赌说没有。要让我决定的话，我会不假思索把最佳男配角给诺顿，而且我注意到，国家评论协会(National Board of Review)在周二的确这么做了。在国家评论协会的评比中，出演《至暴之年》(A Most Violent Year)的奥斯卡·伊萨克(Oscar Isaac)和《鸟人》中的基顿共享最佳男演员奖项。本周，在面向独立影片的哥谭奖(Gotham Awards)上，基顿也收获了最佳男演员奖。
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.
但和基顿相比，我更欣赏《模仿游戏》(The Imitation Game)中的本尼迪克特·康伯巴奇(Benedict Cumberbatch)。他简直太棒了，不过在其他方面，对我的品味来说，这部电影有些太小清新了。我渴望那种更杂乱，更现实的东西，它们引发的不仅仅是优雅的叹息或是一滴微不足道的眼泪。
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.
《模仿游戏》并未让我思考我们两人经常写文章论述、《纽约时报》也频频提及的两个问题：多样性和教育。电影描述了艾伦·图灵(Alan Turing)的一生。在影片中，他有些忿忿不平，也有些势利，还是一个彻头彻尾的怪人。在那个同性恋被广泛视为一种变态和疾病的年代，他暗地里还是一名男同性恋。他和其他人合不来，更容易被忽略，而非被接纳。同时，的确有很多人准备排挤他，驱逐他。
“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.
但他恰巧对结束那场毁灭性的、伤亡惨烈、代价昂贵到超乎想象的战争不可或缺。世界离不开他的知识和天赋。而在看电影的时候我心想，我们已经落到这步田地，就快不能理解那种知识或那种天赋了。我想，有多少具有远见和天赋的人被我们拒绝——至今还在继续拒绝——全因为我们桎梏起他人来才华横溢，因为我们不够细致和聪明，不能让尽可能多的人发挥自己的潜能。
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.
所以，或许就像《星际穿越》一样，《模仿游戏》在一定程度上说的是我们需要解除对才能的禁锢。而且我觉得，各个政治派别都会同意这是必须的吧。
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?
我们本月晚些时候或是下月初再继续聊这个话题吧。到时候关于奥斯卡的讨论会更多，我们甚至可能会讨论《坚不可摧》(Unbroken)。安吉莉娜(Angelina)，我们来了！
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!