双语阅读美文：失败的翻拍之作

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　　双语阅读美文：失败的翻拍之作

　　Baz Luhrmann's 'The Great Gatsby' is a tale told idiotically, full of noise and furor, signifying next to nothing.

　　兹·吕尔曼(Baz Luhrmann)导演的《了不起的盖茨比》(The Great Gatsby)是一个叙事手法愚蠢，充满喧嚣和狂躁，几乎没有任何意义的故事。

　　The production is not insipid, let's give it that. An exercise in absurdist excess, this fourth screen adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel, with Leonardo DiCaprio in the title role, means to dramatize the excesses of the Jazz Age, with hints of Weimar decadence thrown in for bad measure. But that's a banality by this late date, and it's as far as Mr. Luhrmann goes in making sense of the book. The film's only governing principle is maximalism -- everything has been made as big as possible, apart from conversational interludes, when big feelings are displayed, like bullet points, by actors striking static poses.

　　平心而论，这部电影并不平淡。它秉持荒诞夸张的风格，将F. 斯科特·菲茨杰拉德(F. Scott Fitzgerald)的这部同名小说第四次搬上银幕，莱昂纳多·迪卡普里奥(Leonardo DiCaprio)在片中担任男主角。作品意在戏剧化表现爵士时代的放纵无度，还画蛇添足地加入了一点点魏玛式的颓废。但现在看来这种手法未免太显老套，而吕尔曼对原书的理解也就到此为止。这部电影唯一的指导原则是极大主义──除了插入的对话以外，一切都被尽可能夸大，演员摆出的静态姿势表达出了强烈的感觉，就像提示要点一样。

　　For a while the sheer scale of the thing keeps you engaged, if not agog. (I watched through 3-D glasses that weren't worth the bother.) Gatsby's mansion is a cross between Neuschwanstein Castle and what San Simeon might have been if Hearst had been more gregarious; partygoers swarm like cicadas, and make as much of a racket. A road trip between Long Island and Manhattan takes on the thunderous intensity of a Grand Prix; the mere arrival of Gatsby's gorgeous yellow Duesenberg in Nick Carraway's driveway is enough to set teacups rattling on a kitchen shelf. (Nick, the novel's narrator and aspiring writer, is played by Tobey Maguire.) Fitzgerald's valley of ashes, a desolate strip half way between West Egg and New York City, has become an expressionist Hades where doomed workers slave away on giant slag heaps. (That's as close as the movie comes to the author's complex attitude toward American capitalism.)

　　这种夸大的表现手法即使不能让你兴奋，也会让你在一段时间内保持投入。(我是戴着3D眼镜看的，但其实不值得戴它看。)盖茨比的宅邸介于新天鹅堡(Neuschwanstein Castle)和圣西蒙(San Simeon)的赫式古堡(Hearst Castle，如果它的主人赫斯特(Hearst)将它打造得更适合举办派对的话就更为接近了)之间;派对客人像蝉一样簇拥成群，尽情享乐。长岛(Long Island)和曼哈顿(Manhattan)之间的公路上充斥着国际汽车大奖赛般的雷鸣轰响;盖茨比华丽的黄色杜森博格(Duesenberg)驶入尼克·卡拉韦(Nick Carraway)的车道的声音就足以让橱架上的茶杯喀喀作响。(尼克是这部小说的叙述者，他是一位有抱负的作家，由托比·马圭尔(Tobey Maguire)扮演。)菲茨杰拉德描绘的位于西卵(West Egg)和纽约中间的名为“灰烬谷”的荒凉地带，成了一个表现主义的地狱，命运悲惨的工人在那里的巨型矿渣堆上埋头苦干。(这是电影最贴近地反映出作者对美国资本主义的复杂态度的地方。)

　　The artistic elephantiasis takes many forms. When young James Gatz, who hasn't yet transformed himself into Jay Gatsby, first encounters his benefactor-to-be, Dan Cody, he doesn't just row a borrowed rowboat out to Cody's yacht on Lake Superior, as in the book; Gatz saves Cody and his vessel from incipient calamity during a storm of sufficient ferocity to scuttle the Titanic. And when the camera first catches sight of the fully formed Gatsby, presiding like a god over one of his parties, fireworks fill the summer sky behind him and a symphony orchestra summons up the majestic strains of 'Rhapsody in Blue.'

　　该片表现出了多种形式的艺术夸大症。在年轻的詹姆斯·盖茨(James Gatz)还没有变身为杰伊·盖茨比(Jay Gatsby)时，当他第一次遇到了他未来的恩人丹·科迪(Dan Cody)时，他没有像书中那样，只是划着一艘借来的船赶往苏必利尔湖(Lake Superior)上科迪的游艇，而是在一场足以掀翻“泰坦尼克号”的风暴中，将科迪和他的船从危难边缘救了回来。当镜头第一次捕捉到完全成形的盖茨比的样子时，他正像一位备受推崇的偶像一般主持着一个派对，烟花绽满他身后的夏夜天空，一个交响乐团演奏着《蓝色狂想曲》(Rhapsody in Blue)的宏伟乐章。

　　It's a moment that makes you smile, even if you recall that Woody Allen used Gershwin's anthem, and fireworks, to far greater effect in the preface of 'Manhattan.' There's something touching -- again, for a while -- in the filmmaker's desire to please, in his fevered efforts to define a time in American history by the way it looks. (He's so eager to cram in pieces of period detail that one camera pullback reveals high-steel workers constructing a skyscraper, even though it's the middle of the night.) But many of the borrowings -- from Busby Berkeley, from 'The Crowd, ' from 'Citizen Kane' -- begin to ring hollow, especially because Mr. Luhrmann borrows, well beyond the point of self-parody, from the same bag of tricks he opened up more than a decade ago in 'Moulin Rouge!'

　　这是一个让人莞尔的时刻，即使你想起了伍迪·艾伦(Woody Allen)曾在《曼哈顿》(Manhattan)的序幕中用格什温(Gershwin)的这首曲子和焰火制造出了宏大得多的效果。同样，偶尔也有令人感动的时刻──在导演希望取悦观众的时候，在他竭尽全力原汁原味地呈现美国历史中某个时刻的时候。(他是如此渴望在片中填入某个历史时期特有的细节，片中有一个镜头拉回显露出了正在建造摩天大楼的高架钢铁工人，尽管那时已是午夜时分。)但许多借鉴──从巴斯比·伯克利(Busby Berkeley)那里、从《群众》(The Crowd)那里、从《公民凯恩》(Citizen Kane)那里──开始显得空洞，尤其是因为吕尔曼的借鉴远远超出了自我谐拟的范围，他运用的技巧和10多年前他在《红磨坊》(Moulin Rouge)中所用的一模一样!

　　The problem isn't those tricks per se. When the camera swoops and darts ecstatically, or in this case plummets into Manhattan's stone canyons, the effect can be impressive, never mind that Spider-Man has claimed such aerobatics for his own. One fleeting but striking image is that of an apartment building, with each window expanding or contracting, like a window on the screen of a giant computer, as it frames a half-seen life.

　　问题不在于这些技巧本身。当镜头令人心醉神迷地俯冲和急驰时，或者在这个情景中骤降至曼哈顿的石头峡谷中时，特效是可以令人印象深刻的，即便蜘蛛侠已经将这种特技飞行当作了自己的招牌动作。影片中有一幅短暂但富有冲击力的景象：一栋公寓楼的每扇窗户都在扩大或缩小，就像一台巨型电脑屏幕上的窗口一样，勾勒出若隐若现的生活百态。

　　Nor is the music problematic, notwithstanding the film's much-hyped use of hip-hop, or the presence of the rapper Jay-Z as one of the producers. In fact, the hip-hop is used judiciously; it kicks in mainly during party scenes, when there's monstrous pounding from other sources, and it's no more intrusive than all the other efforts to heighten the story's reality. (The screenplay is credited to Mr. Luhrmann and Craig Pearce. Catherine Martin designed the lustrous production and the stunning costumes. Simon Duggan did the cinematography, which seemed of variable quality at the studio screening I attended.)

　　音乐也没有问题，尽管电影大肆宣传对说唱音乐的运用，而且说唱歌手Jay-Z出现在了制片人名单上。事实上，说唱音乐使用得很明智。它主要出现在派对场景中，那里原本就有震耳欲聋的噪音，因此它并不比其他旨在强化故事现实性的努力更突兀。(本片编剧是吕尔曼和克雷格·皮尔斯(Craig Pearce)。凯瑟琳·马丁(Catherine Martin)设计了辉煌的场景和令人惊艳的服装。西蒙·达根(Simon Duggan)负责摄影，在我参加的制片厂试映中，摄影质量似乎不太稳定。)

　　What's intractably wrong with the film is that there's no reality to heighten; it's a spectacle in search of a soul. For all of its glittery fragmentation, 'Moulin Rouge!' came around to moments of genuine passion. None of these new trappings means a thing because the people who populate them are stylish sticks, unsinged by the spark of life.

　　这部电影的痼疾在于，其实没有什么地方需要强化现实性的;所以它成了一具寻找灵魂的华丽躯壳。《红磨坊》所有的闪光片段都围绕着真情迸发的时刻。而本片中所有这些新服饰都没有意义，因为穿戴者就像时尚木偶一样，丝毫没有烙上生命的火花。

　　That's almost surely not the fault of the actors, for the director turns them into lifelike props. Mr. DiCaprio, who's no more comfortable with the phrase 'old sport' than Robert Redford was in the previous version, is elaborately sincere when he isn't frowning like Jack Nicholson; being charming like, well, Leonardo DiCaprio, or being mysterious, except that people who are genuinely mysterious don't look mysterious. Carey Mulligan's Daisy is either languorous or amorous, not a lot in between. Mr. Maguire's Nick is cheerlessly impressionable. Joel Edgerton's Tom is charmlessly brutish. Elizabeth Debicki's Jordan Baker is a flouncing cipher. And Mr. Luhrmann uses Amitabh Bachchan, a legendary star in his native India, to make the Jewish gangster Meyer Wolfshiem a leering Fagin.

　　几乎可以肯定，这不是演员的错，因为是导演把他们变成了有生命的道具。迪卡普里奥说“老兄”这个词时并不比之前版本中的罗伯特·雷德福(Robert Redford)说得更顺嘴，当他不像杰克·尼科尔森(Jack Nicholson)一样皱眉，而是像──呃──莱昂纳多·迪卡普里奥一样迷人，或者显得神秘时，他是在努力表现得真诚，只可惜真正神秘的人看上去并不神秘。凯丽·马利根(Carey Mulligan)扮演的黛西(Daisy)要么无精打采，要么极度热情，很少能拿捏适中。马圭尔扮演的尼克敏感而无趣。乔尔·埃杰顿(Joel Edgerton)扮演的汤姆(Tom)残酷而毫无魅力。伊丽莎白·德比齐(Elizabeth Debick)扮演的乔丹·贝克(Jordan Baker)是个可有可无的花瓶。吕尔曼还起用了印度的传奇明星阿米塔布·巴沙坎(Amitabh Bachchan)，他将犹太黑帮分子迈耶·沃尔夫山姆(Meyer Wolfshiem)塑造成了一个色迷迷的教唆犯。

　　Given the lifelessness of the enterprise, there's little point in belaboring its failure to convey the novel's themes, let alone the emotional and social resonance of what has come to be considered a masterpiece of world literature. Although the hero created himself out of the whole cloth of romantic yearning, we see almost nothing of that self-creation, only the conflicted result. Although the Nick of the novel arrives at a new and tragic understanding of the American Dream, the Nick on screen can't be more than an earnest observer, since any vestige of the story's tragic sense has been replaced by melodramatic sadness.

　　鉴于这部电影的创意如此缺乏活力，抨击它没能传达小说的主题没有什么意义，更不用说传达被誉为世界文学杰作的原作引起的情感与社会共鸣了。尽管主人公因为思慕之情而创造出了一个全新的自我，但我们看不到这种自我创造，只有矛盾的结果。尽管小说中的尼克对美国梦有了新的悲剧性理解，但银幕上的尼克不过是一个认真的观察者，因为故事中任何残留的悲剧感已经被夸张的悲伤所取代。

　　This dreadful film even derogates the artistry of Fitzgerald, who wrote 'The Great Gatsby' while living on Long Island and in Europe. In a deviation from the book that amounts to a calumny against literary history, Nick, the author's surrogate, is discovered in a psychiatric hospital where, as an aging alcoholic, he struggles to comprehend the vanished figure at the center of the long-ago story, and finally completes his treatment by writing the novel. It's literature as therapy, and Gatsby as Rosebud.

　　这部可怕的电影甚至歪曲了菲茨杰拉德的艺术创作生涯。菲茨杰拉德是住在长岛和欧洲时写成了《了不起的盖茨比》。而在影片当中，在一处对原书的偏离中──这相当于对文学史的污蔑──作者的代言人尼克成了一个住在精神病院中的老酒鬼，他努力去理解那个已然逝去的很久以前的故事中的主人公，最后通过写小说完成了治疗。文学成了药方，而盖茨比成了“玫瑰花蕾”。