1.我没看过电影
2.译得很烂
Lost Souls
by Anthony Lane
The new David Cronenberg movie, “Maps to the Stars,” takes place in Los Angeles. Some of it was filmed there, too—the first occasion on which the director, who seldom roams beyond his own back yard of Canada, has shot a movie in the United States. One scene unfolds on Rodeo Drive, outside a clothing store where a character has just spent eighteen thousand dollars. The sight of Cronenberg and his crew setting up there, in broad daylight, must have seemed not merely unsettling but, to any Hollywood residents who were passing by, downright unhealthy. I’m surprised they didn’t call the cops or, better yet, an epidemiologist. When the guy who made “Rabid” and “The Fly” turns up in town, there’s no accounting for the damage he might see, or show, or do.
大卫•柯南伯格新片《星图》的故事发生在洛杉矶,部分拍摄内容也在洛杉矶完成。作为一个几乎不会离开他加拿大后院的导演,这是他第一部在美国拍摄的电影。有一幕戏开始于罗迪欧大道的一家服装店外,而参加拍摄的一个演员刚在里面花了1万8千美元。柯南伯格和他的团队在清晨布置的这个场景,看起来必然像是未经布置的,但对于路过的好莱坞的居民来说,这个场景显然是奇怪的。我惊异于他们没有打电话给警察,亦或是,更好一些的,精神病学家。当拍摄了《狂犬病》和《苍蝇》的人出现在了城里,他可能看见、展示、制造的破坏就无可估量了。
The woman with the fancy clothes is Havana Segrand (Julianne Moore), an actress who, if not washed up, is drifting in with the tide. She had a famous mother named Clarice Taggart (Sarah Gadon), also an actress, who died in a conflagration and now keeps appearing, youthful and uncharred, before Havana’s eyes—in the bathtub, say, or on the massage table. This begs for therapy, which in Havana’s case means stripping to her underwear and submitting to Stafford Weiss (John Cusack), a shamanistic shrink who will rub away your painful memories as if they were spasms of lumbago. Havana’s sex life comprises a desultory threesome and a quickie in the back seat of a car. What she truly desires is a new personal assistant—or “chore whore,” to use her fragrant term. A contender arrives, in the shape of Agatha (Mia Wasikowska), who comes recommended by Carrie Fisher (“I met her on Twitter”). Agatha wears long black gloves, which conceal scars from a house fire. She gets the job.
穿着花哨衣服的女人是哈瓦娜•舍格兰德(朱莉安•摩尔饰),一名女演员,如果没能洗澡,她也会换上干净衣服。她有一个明星母亲,也是一名演员,叫克莱莉丝•塔格特(莎拉•加顿饰),死于一场火灾,现在却在哈瓦娜泡澡或是做按摩的时候时时出现在她眼前。她出现的时候外貌依然年轻,也未曾被火灾损毁。这需要治疗,对哈瓦娜来说,这意味着扒光了自己并服从于斯塔福德•韦斯(约翰•库萨克饰),一个萨满教精神治疗师,他会像消除腰部痉挛一样消除你的痛苦记忆。哈瓦娜的性生活充满了乱七八糟的3P和车震。她真正渴望的是一个新的私人助理——或是“家妓”来使用她的芳香术语。一个名为阿加莎(米娅•华希科沃斯饰)的女人通过凯丽•费舍的推荐(“我在Twitter上认识了她”)得到了这个职位,她穿着黑色长袍,掩盖了由于火灾而生的伤疤。
All this lies within scorching distance of parody: an occupational hazard, as Nathanael West realized, for anyone facing up to Hollywood. Overkill comes with the territory. That is why “Sunset Boulevard” begins with a corpse, bobbing in a pool, and proceeds to an old dame who keeps a stuffed ape in a casket, and that is why Cronenberg introduces us to the delightful Benjie (Evan Bird), the star of the hit comedy “Bad Babysitter,” who is fresh out of rehab and calls his agent a “Jew faggot.” Benjie is thirteen. “Three hundred thousand a week—I was nine years old. How psychotic is that?” he says. Cronenberg-watchers will twitch with anticipation; he has always been drawn to the smell of psychosis, like a wasp to a picnic.
所有东西都存在于对火灾距离的拙劣模仿当中:正如纳撒尼尔•韦斯特所说的,这是一个在好莱坞人人都需要面对的职业性危害,这片土地伴随着极大的杀伤力。这是为什么《日落大道》故事开始于一具湖中浮尸,并进展到一个老妇人把一只吃撑了的猩猩放在棺材里,这也是为什么柯南伯格让我们看见快乐的本杰(伊文•伯德),热门喜剧《坏保姆》里的明星,他二次走红并称他的经纪人为“犹太同性恋”。本杰13岁,他说:“30万一周——在我9岁的时候,这是怎样的神经病啊!”关注柯南伯格的人怀着期待颤抖着,他也经常被刻画为带着神经病的味道,就像只盯着野餐的黄蜂。
The mood at the start is thick not with mystery, as in David Lynch’s “Mulholland Drive,” but with exasperation, as we struggle to work out who is related—or helplessly clamped—to whom. Hence the recurring theme of incest, which is another kind of parody: the heinous contortion of romantic love. Agatha announces that her parents were brother and sister, and she herself is reunited, under intense conditions, with a long-lost sibling. As for Havana, she pitches aggressively for a role first played by her late mother (who at one point appears naked in her bed). She loses the part and howls like Antigone, then gets it back—because her rival has suffered a death in the family—and skips around, chanting, like a little girl. Throughout this near-insanity, Cronenberg keeps his cool, to the brink of refrigeration. In terms of camera movements, he is the king of underkill. When Stafford, the self-help guru who cannot help himself, thumps a defenseless woman and slings her out of the house, we crawl stealthily in her wake, toward the open door.
影片一开头的气氛沉郁但并不神秘,正如大卫•林奇《穆赫兰道》,但当我们试图理清一个人与另一个人的联系——或是一个人对另一个人无助地依附时,则却愈发令人烦躁。另一种拙劣模仿是关于乱伦主题的再现:对罗曼蒂克之爱情十恶不赦的曲解。阿加莎声称,她的父母是兄妹,她自己是一对失散多年的血亲在热情之下重新结合的结果。对哈瓦娜来说,她强烈地争取饰演她去世的母亲演过的一个角色(在戏中曾有在床上裸露的镜头)。她放弃了这一部分,像安提歌涅那样哀嚎,她取得了这个角色(因为她的对手正好家中有人去世),然后她绕圈跳着,咏唱着,像小女孩一样。通过这近乎疯狂到冰封的边缘,柯南伯格保持了他的冷静。而在移动拍摄上,他是低量杀伤之王。当斯塔福德,这个自救宗教导师没办法自救的时候,他重击了一个缺乏抵抗力的妇女并把她扔出了房子,我们无情地看着她醒来,爬向开着的房门。
Why, then, does “Maps to the Stars” fail to compel as it should? In part, I think, because Viggo Mortensen has spoiled us. His great performances for Cronenberg, in “A History of Violence” and “Eastern Promises,” reminded us that the director is at his strongest when he has a hero to haul us through whatever nightmare has been laid on. That was true of James Woods in “Videodrome” and Jeremy Irons in “Dead Ringers,” both of them masterly figures who seemed nonetheless at the mercy of instinctual drives, whereas someone like Havana is less well poised; she is the dupe of her foolish appetites, and that’s that. Moore holds nothing back, and the result makes a splendidly noisy companion piece to her Oscar-winning turn in “Still Alice,” but Havana, on her own, can’t hold the story together. I wanted more both of Cusack, who is genuinely frightening, with his heavy tread, his black garb, and his clown-white face, and of Robert Pattinson, who plays a chauffeur named Jerome Fontana—a downgrade from his leading role in Cronenberg’s “Cosmopolis,” where he lounged in the back of a limo. Why not have Jerome, a ready-jaded hopeful, steer us into Hollywood’s dark vales?
话说回来,为什么《星图》没有取得它应有的效果呢?一方面,我认为,因为维果•莫特森把我们宠坏了。他在柯南伯格《暴力史》和《巨塔危机》中的伟大表演让我们忆起,当这名导演拥有一个英雄帮忙走出他安放的任何梦魇时,他才是最强的。詹姆斯•伍德在《录像带谋杀案》和杰瑞米•艾恩斯在《孽扣》中也同样如此,这两位精湛地表演了看似在慈悲的冲动驱使下的人,然而哈瓦娜这样的演员却没能很好地抓住人物特征,她被她愚蠢的嗜好所欺骗,那就只是那样。摩尔没有作任何保留,结果就是和她在折桂之作《依然爱莉丝》中的表现相比,这真是一个非常聒噪的对比。哈瓦娜自己也不能一起掌控这个故事。我想从库萨克和罗伯特•帕丁森那里得到更多,前者通过他沉重的步伐、黑色的衣服和小丑妆扮营造了真正的恐惧,后者从领衔主演柯南伯格《大都市》时还懒洋洋地躺在在豪华轿车后座上,在本片中就屈尊饰演了一位司机。为什么不是杰罗姆(罗伯特•帕丁森),一个对“怀有希望”这件事情已经完全疲倦了的人,带领我们进入好莱坞黑暗的溪谷呢?
There is another issue here. According to Cronenberg, the script for “Maps to the Stars,” by Bruce Wagner, began life more than twenty years ago, and it shows. When Jerome says to Agatha that he’s thinking of converting to Scientology, “just as a career move,” it’s a nice line, but it’s also a reboot of a joke in Robert Altman’s “The Player,” where a studio executive goes to A.A. not because he has a drink problem but because “that’s where all the deals are being made these days.” Doubtless, Wagner’s work has been through many morphings and refinements, yet there remains a nagging sense that the finished film lags behind the times. The truth is that, in 2015, Havana would be lucky to play a second-string intergalactic queen for Marvel, and Benjie’s agent would already be positioning him as the Spider-Man of 2020.
还有另一个争议。柯南伯格说,由布鲁斯•瓦格纳撰写的《星图》剧本,故事发生在20多年以前,而他也是这么进行拍摄的。当杰罗姆对阿加莎说,他打算转信山达基教,“就像是职业生涯的前行”。这是一个很好的线路,但这也是对罗伯特•奥特曼《玩家》中一个笑话的重现。《玩家》中有一个执行制片打算AA,不是因为他不能喝,而是因为“这些天这里每天都有很多交易发生”。无疑,瓦格纳的工作经过了许多的改变和提炼,因此残余了一些觉得电影落后于真实时间的烦人感觉。事实上,2015年的时候,哈瓦娜已经幸运地成为《奇迹》中星际女王的替补演员,而本杰的经纪人已经让他在2020年饰演《蜘蛛侠》。
As a portrait of the movie industry, “Maps to the Stars” pales beside the fire of a film like Robert Aldrich’s “The Big Knife,” from sixty years ago, which had everything: a Clifford Odets screenplay you could sear yourself on, Jack Palance in his tortured prime, and, as the studio boss, Rod Steiger, with his silk-soft croon and a startling thatch of bright hair. (So that’s where Javier Bardem sprang from in “Skyfall.”) Cronenberg, bereft of Aldrich’s will to attack, is more surgeon than satirist. We go to his work not for digs and jibes but for steady incisions into the ills of the flesh, or the pains of the spirit, and “Maps to the Stars” is at its most potent and beautiful by far when it becomes a ghost story—when the departed, not just Havana’s mother, return to quiz the living. That makes an ideal twist for Hollywood, a place both besotted with and dismissive of its past. More important, these spectral scenes suggest new ground for Cronenberg. He went there, fleetingly, in “The Dead Zone.” Time for another visit.
作为对电影业的一个描述,《星图》在罗伯特•阿尔德里奇60年前的电影《大刀》面前稍显逊色,后者包含了所有的内容:克利福德•奥德茨那能让你燃烧起来的剧本,杰克•帕兰斯最受折磨的全盛时期,还有作为工作室老板的罗德•斯泰格尔,他那蚕丝般柔软的轻吟浅唱和那惊人的乱蓬蓬的头发(这也是哈维尔•巴登在《007:大破天幕杀机》里模仿的对象)。柯南伯格剥离了阿尔德里奇的目的去抨击,更像是一个外科医生而非讽刺作家。我们欣赏他的作品更多是从对病灶的切除或是对精神上的痛苦的感悟,而不是挖掘与讽刺。目前为止,《星图》作为一部幽灵故事,是强大而美好的——当故去的人,不仅仅是哈瓦娜的母亲,试着回到世间生活的时候。这是对好莱坞理想化的扭曲,这里是一个同时包含了对过去的沉醉和轻蔑的地方。更重要的是,这些鬼魅的场景暗示了格南伯格的另一部电影。他飞快地走到那里,那是《死亡区域》,另一位访客的时间到了。