解構金球獎影片 特殊化和社會意義

Frank Bruni: You and I come into these conversations hoping to focus on new movies with special cultural and social relevance, and for much of the year we’re hard pressed. But December gave us plenty: “Selma,” “American Sniper” and more.

弗蘭克·布魯尼(Frank Bruni)：咱們二人之所以展開這些對話，是希望關注那些具有特殊的文化和社會意義的新電影。去年很多時間裏，我們的選擇都很有限。但12月出現了很多影片，如《塞爾瑪》(Selma)和《美國狙擊手》(American Sniper)等。

I wanted to begin, though, with a less obvious candidate for deconstruction, because it does, in a fashion, speak to some of the peculiarities of public life right now. I’m referring to the director Tim Burton’s “Big Eyes,” with Amy Adams as Margaret Keane, the painter whose husband (Christoph Waltz) took credit for her work.

我想先從一個不那麼明顯的選擇開始解構，因爲它在一定程度上和眼下公共生活的一些特殊之處有關。我說的是蒂姆·伯頓(Tim Burton)執導的《大眼睛》(Big Eyes)。在該片中，艾米·亞當斯(Amy Adams)飾演的畫家瑪格麗特·基恩(Margaret Keane)的作品，被丈夫（克里斯托弗·沃爾茲[Christoph Waltz]出演）署上了自己的名字。

Adams just picked up a Golden Globe for best actress in a musical or comedy, which was pretty odd because “Big Eyes” isn’t exactly a comedy. It’s a biopic, essentially, and the disappointment of it is that it never quite transcends the familiar, predictable rhythms of that genre. But “Big Eyes” raises a set of questions that seem to me especially germane to this era of Twitter and Instagram and indefatigable branding and unabashed self-promotion.

艾米·亞當斯獲得了金球獎(Golden Globe)音樂劇/喜劇類的最佳女主角這一點很奇怪，因爲《大眼睛》根本不是喜劇。從本質上來說，它是一部傳記片，但遺憾的是，它並未超越這類影片爲人熟悉、可預測的節奏。但《大眼睛》提出了一系列問題。在我看來，這些問題與這個有着Twitter、Instagram、堅持不懈的包裝和不加掩飾的自我推銷的時代密切相關。

Do the spoils go to the gifted, or do they go to the shameless? How completely can showmanship obscure the truth, and how far can a smooth and self-infatuated operator travel on swagger alone?

成果會落到才華橫溢的人，還是寡廉鮮恥的人手裏？作秀能力如何能徹底掩蓋真相，圓滑、自戀的人又能僅靠自己的趾高氣揚走多遠？

Waltz’s character goes quite a distance, and as I watched him, I kept thinking of political campaigns and of a central challenge in a country where, all too often, more energy goes into the marketing than into the product (or the policy). Voters have to figure out which of the many people stepping forward with a gaudy sales pitch is truly the author of something substantive. That’s not always easy.

沃爾茲的角色頗具深意。看着他時，我一直在想政治活動和這個國家面臨的一個重大挑戰。在這裏，在營銷上投入的精力超過了在產品（或政策）上投入的精力。站到前臺的人中，許多都有一套華而不實的推銷言辭，選民必須想清楚，他們中哪一個的話纔是真的。而這一點並不總是能輕易做到。

Ross Douthat: May I suggest that I detect a hint of a politician’s practiced evasion in your choice of movies to kick things off? An attempt, perhaps, to put off reckoning with the real substance of the Christmas movie season, which is that most of the meaty Big Movies just weren’t particularly good?

羅斯·多賽特(Ross Douthat)：我能說在你對電影的選擇中，我發現了一點兒政客逃避問題時的感覺嗎？你這麼做，或許是不願太早揭露聖誕電影季的實質：大部分有分量的大片都不是特別好，對嗎？

I think this was apparent at the Globes last night, where, apart from Adams’s “Big Eyes” win, the victors (and, for the most part, the nominees) were all movies and performances that came out before — long before, in the case of both best-picture winners — the official holiday rush. Not that they were all particularly bad; it’s just that they mostly called to mind better treatments of similar material. “American Sniper” had some gripping moments and a great performance by Bradley Cooper, but its themes were worked through much more creatively by Kathryn Bigelow in “The Hurt Locker” and “Zero Dark Thirty.” Angelina Jolie’s “Unbroken,” like Gary Ross’s “Seabiscuit” before it, was an intermittently impressive adaptation of Laura Hillenbrand that didn’t live up to the book’s standard, and it mostly made me want to go watch “The Bridge on the River Kwai” again. Only “Selma” left me genuinely impressed, and even there I couldn’t help comparing it somewhat unfavorably with last year’s “12 Years a Slave,” a race-and-history drama less constrained (save during Brad Pitt’s awful cameo) by the conventions of the genre.

我覺得，在昨晚的金球獎頒獎典禮上，除了讓亞當斯摘得大獎的《大眼睛》外，獲獎影片（而且在很大程度上來說，算上提名影片）顯然都是在正式的假日季到來之前推出的。其中兩大最佳影片得主的發行時間，更是遠在此之前。它們並不是都特別差勁；只是大多讓人回想起了對類似題材更好的處理。《美國狙擊手》有一些扣人心絃的鏡頭，萊德利·庫珀(Bradley Cooper)表現出色，但對於該片涉及的主題，凱瑟琳·畢格羅(Kathryn Bigelow)在《拆彈部隊》(The Hurt Locker)和《刺殺本·拉登》(Zero Dark Thirty)中的處理要有創意得多。和此前加里·羅斯(Gary Ross)導演的《奔騰年代》(Seabiscuit)一樣，安吉麗娜·朱莉(Angelina Jolie)執導的《堅不可摧》(Unbroken)改編自勞拉·希倫布蘭德(Laura Hillenbrand)的著作。影片斷斷續續地會有一些出彩的地方，但總的來說沒有達到原著的水準。它常常讓我想再去看一遍《桂河大橋》(The Bridge on the River Kwai)。只有《塞爾瑪》讓我真的印象深刻，但即便是在看這部電影時，我也忍不住有些不滿地拿它和去年的《爲奴十二年》(12 Years a Slave)相比。作爲一部種族和歷史片，《爲奴十二年》受這類影片的傳統限制較少（布拉德·皮特[Brad Pitt]飾演配角的糟糕表現除外）。

And it wasn’t just the prestige movies: The holiday “crowd-pleasers” mostly felt like, if you will, imitation games, failing to live up to standards set by better blockbusters. I’m a conscientious objector from “The Hobbit: The Battle of Five Hours or So,” but I’m assured that it’s exactly the bloated desecration of the “Lord of the Rings” that it appears to be from afar. “Exodus: Gods and Kings,” like every historical epic Ridley Scott has made in the past decade, mostly just made me want to fire up “Gladiator.” And “The Interview,” which I did my patriotic duty and paid $5.99 to watch On Demand, doesn’t really offer anything — save a truly bizarre James Franco performance, an eyebrow-raiser even by his standards — that wasn’t delivered with much more gonzo flair and self-awareness in “Team America: World Police.”

不僅是那些爲了獲得榮譽的影片是這樣：假期裏“迎合觀衆的影片”大多也感覺像是模仿比賽，未能達到更棒的大片定下的水準。我從原則上拒絕看《霍比特人：大概其五小時之戰》(The Hobbit: The Battle of Five Hours or So)。相關信息讓我確信，它和從遠處給人的感覺一樣，完全是對《指環王》(Lord of the Rings)的冗長褻瀆。和雷利·斯科特(Ridley Scott)過去10年裏拍攝的所有歷史大片一樣，《法老與衆神》(Exodus: Gods and Kings)常常讓我想去看《角鬥士》(Gladiator)。我盡了愛國的義務，付了5.99美元，通過點播的方式觀看了《採訪》(The Interview)。但這部片子與《美國戰隊：世界警察》(Team America: World Police)相比，在瘋狂的天分及自我意識方面，處處都要甘拜下風。不過詹姆斯·弗蘭科(James Franco)的表現真的很怪異，即便是以他的標準來看，也令人意外。

To take off my curmudgeon’s hate for a moment, I did like “Wild” and “A Most Violent Year” (though the latter not as much as I’d hoped), and to put on my political pundit’s hat, I do think the controversy around how “Selma” portrays L.B.J. is genuinely interesting. But before getting into that debate, tell me I’m wrong about December — or just least tell me what you liked last month, and why.

暫時放下我這個脾氣不好的人的反感，我的確喜歡《走出荒野》(Wild)和《至暴之年》(A Most Violent Year)（儘管後者和我的期望還有差距），而且如果以政治時事評論員的身份來看，我的確覺得《塞爾瑪》對林登·約翰遜(L.B.J.)的描述引發的爭議很有意思。但在進行相關討論之前，你能指出我對12月影片的看法中哪裏錯了嗎，或者至少告訴我上月的影片中，你喜歡哪一部，爲什麼。

Bruni: No evasion here! You have teed me up to talk about “American Sniper,” and I will gladly take my swing: I found it absurd. From a technical standpoint, it’s made with skill, but in all other regards, it’s dumbfounding. It gives us a protagonist who believes that just about anything is warranted in defense of what he bluntly states is the greatest country on earth, but what little glimpse we get of his back story tells us nothing about how he defines that greatness and about whether his patriotism is rooted in anything more than slogans, received wisdom and the dining-room-table sermons of his spookily intense father. He’s a one-dimensional killing machine in thrall to his own marksmanship, and when he winds up rattled by all the death that he’s seen and at times been the agent of, it’s unclear if this is because he’s come to doubt the war’s purpose or to question its justification. It’s unclear that he’s asked any big questions at all. Maybe that’s the point — that many warriors are simply swept up in the call to battle — but it makes for a thinly written lly frustrating is the way the movie draws a straight line from the attack on the Twin Towers to the war in Iraq. As David Edelstein wrote in his review of “American Sniper” in New York magazine, there’s “no indication that the two events — 9/11 and the Iraq invasion — have been yoked together by unscrupulous politicians who don’t have a clue what lies in store for American soldiers.” Edelstein actually went further, calling “American Sniper” “a Republican platform movie.” I’d love your reaction to that, Ross. Does it indeed veer toward propaganda, or are Eastwood’s critics now seeing his work through the prism of that moment at the 2012 Republican National Convention when he took the stage and talked to an empty chair that was meant to symbolize Obama?

布魯尼：我沒在逃避！既然你讓我談談《美國狙擊手》，我很樂意：我覺得這部片子很荒唐。從技術角度來說，它的製作很有技巧，但在所有其他方面，這部片子讓人完全傻眼。影片塑造的主人公直截了當地說美國是最偉大的國家，認爲爲了保衛這個國家，幾乎一切都是正當的，但他的背景故事幾乎完全沒告訴我們，他是如何定義這種偉大的，以及他的愛國主義的源頭，除了口號、傳統觀念和他那狂熱得令人毛骨悚然的父親在餐桌上的訓誡，還有什麼。他是一個膚淺的殺人機器，受控於自己的槍法。當他最後對自己親眼目睹、有時甚至是親手製造的死亡感到不安時，我們不清楚這是因爲他開始質疑戰爭的目的，還是因爲他質疑戰爭的理由。我們也不知道他到底有沒有提出重大的問題。或許這正是問題的關鍵，很多士兵不過是被捲入了戰爭的召喚，但這導致劇本中的這個角色很單薄。同樣令人失望的是，影片直接從雙子塔遇襲切換到了伊拉克戰爭。正如戴維·埃德爾斯坦(David Edelstein)在《紐約》雜誌(New York magazine)上的《美國狙擊手》影評中所寫的那樣，影片“沒有指出9·11襲擊和入侵伊拉克這兩件事情，是被一些寡廉鮮恥的政客強加在一起的，他們不知道美國大兵即將面臨什麼”。實際上，埃德爾斯坦更進一步，稱《美國狙擊手》是“共和黨的宣傳電影”。我想聽聽你對此的意見，羅斯。這部片子真的偏向於政宣片嗎，還是說現在批評伊斯特伍德的人，是在透過2012年共和黨全國代表大會(Republican National Convention)上發生的那件事，來看待他的作品？在那次大會上，伊斯特伍德走上臺，對着一把象徵奧巴馬的空椅子講話。

Douthat: O.K., you’ve provoked me: In spite of finding it middling as art, I’ll speak up in defense of the politics of “American Sniper” — or, more accurately, the conspicuous lack thereof. Edelstein’s a fine critic, but his line about “Sniper” being a “Republican platform movie” is ridiculous, as is the alleged stark contrast he draws between “Sniper” and Eastwood’s “Letters From Iwo Jima.” The reality is that all of Eastwood’s recent war movies — “Iwo Jima” and “Flags of Our Fathers” as well as “Sniper” — share the same basically apolitical quality: They’re interested in the warp and woof of war, the experience of comradeship and wartime stress, and so they take their characters’ official reason for fighting — be it rah-rah American patriotism or dutiful Japanese nationalism or something else — as a given and don’t spend a lot of time asking bigger questions about which side or strategy is right or wrong.

多賽特：好啊，你在挑釁：儘管我覺得作爲藝術作品，《美國狙擊手》很一般，但我要替影片中的政治說幾句，更準確地說是劇中明顯缺少的政治。埃德爾斯坦是一名優秀的評論家，但他說《美國狙擊手》是“共和黨的宣傳電影”那句話，以及他所謂的《美國狙擊手》與伊斯特伍德之前的《硫磺島家書》(Letters From Iwo Jima)有着天壤之別都很可笑。事實是，伊斯特伍德最近執導的所有戰爭片，如《硫磺島家書》、《父輩的旗幟》(Flags of Our Fathers)，以及《美國狙擊手》都有一個共同的特點，那就是基本不關心政治：它們感興趣的是戰爭的基本元素、戰友情誼和戰時壓力的體驗，所以它們認爲，片中角色作戰的官方理由——不管是激情澎湃的美國愛國主義，還是盡忠職守的日本民族主義，或是其他什麼——是認定了的，不會花很多時間提出更大的問題，質疑哪一方，或哪種戰略的對錯。

I’m not in love with this approach, but it’s a consistent one for Eastwood. He neither endorses Chris Kyle’s monologues about American greatness nor is he particularly interested in subjecting them to a scathing critique; mostly he just rushes through them in order to get back to the world he’s really interested in, the world of battle, where politics recedes and all the questions that matter are much more immediate than the W.M.D. debate. He’s no more making Bush administration propaganda than he was making imperial Japanese propaganda; he’s just trying to make movies about wartime experience, period, in its varied forms.

我不喜歡這種方式，但這是伊斯特伍德一貫的套路。他既不認可克里斯·凱爾(Chris Kyle)用獨白的方式陳述美國的偉大，對於用一篇嚴厲的評論文章來抨擊那些獨白也不感興趣。他主要是想快速處理完這些獨白，以便回到他真正感興趣的那個世界去。在那個戰爭的世界裏，政治退去了，所有要緊的事情都比有關大規模殺傷性武器的辯論更加直接。他在片中對布什政府宣傳的關注，並不比對日本帝國宣傳的關注多。他不過是試圖拍攝各種形式的電影，來講述戰時的經歷。

And then since I am interested in political arguments, I’ll also offer a brief word in defense of Kyle’s own attitudes, at least as expressed on-screen. There was no straight line from 9/11 plot to Saddam Hussein’s regime, I agree, but one can regard the invasion as a misbegotten folly and still acknowledge that by the time we arrived at the specific in-theater events the movie narrates — particularly the hunt for Abu Musab al-Zarqawi — United States troops really were fighting adherents of the ideology that inspired the 9/11 attacks (or a variant thereof). Again, that doesn’t make the case for the war itself, but it means that from the ordinary soldier’s perspective, the connection wasn’t just smoke and mirrors, and there’s nothing inherently deluded about invoking it as an argument for staying in the fight.

同時，既然我對政治辯論感興趣，我也要簡單地爲凱爾自己的態度，至少是銀幕上表現出來的他的態度說幾句。我同意，9·11陰謀與薩達姆·侯賽因(Saddam Hussein)政權沒有直接聯繫，但人們能夠在認爲入侵是卑劣的愚蠢之舉的同時，也承認在電影裏描述的那些特定事件——特別是追捕阿布·穆薩卜·扎卡維(Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi)——發生時，美國軍隊的確在與激勵了9·11襲擊的那種意識形態的追隨者作戰。是的，這並不能成爲戰爭本身的理由，但它意味着從普通士兵的角度來看，這種聯繫並不是霧裏花、鏡中月，使用這個說法來解釋爲什麼繼續戰鬥本身並非胡思亂想。

Bruni: The problem that I have with the odd vacuum in which “American Sniper” tells its story is that there’s been, and almost immediately was, such a furious swirl of questions about why we went into Iraq, about whether it was the right target at the right time and about how the war was marketed, that you simply can’t watch the movie without feeling that a crucial bit of context is being steadfastly avoided. It’s a voice in your head that intrudes on and distracts from what’s happening on-screen. Like you, I wouldn’t go so far as to call “American Sniper” a “Republican platform movie,” but I would call it disconcertingly simplistic and off key.

布魯尼：《美國狙擊手》是在一個奇怪的真空裏講述自己的故事。我對這個真空的不滿是，一直且幾乎一開始就有鋪天蓋地的問題，針對的是我們爲何要入侵伊拉克、伊拉克是不是在正確的時間裏選擇的正確目標，以及這場戰爭是如何進行宣傳的，所以在觀看該片時，你不可能感覺不到電影決絕地迴避了一些關鍵背景。你腦海裏會出現一個聲音干擾屏幕上的情節，轉移你的注意力。和你一樣，我也不至於說《美國狙擊手》是“共和黨的宣傳電影”，但我會說它的簡單化和跑題令人不安。

“American Sniper” has a plot that could easily have accommodated big questions about America, and it chooses not to ask them. “Foxcatcher,” another somber awards-season movie, is the opposite. It insinuates that the story of the spectacularly wealthy industrialist John du Pont’s ill-fated patronage of working-class wrestlers is some sort of mirror of the country’s dysfunctions: Flags, eagles and references to national pride abound. But really it’s about a singularly creepy social misfit, and it buckles under the weight of the larger meanings piled onto it. It’s also strangely dull, and I say “strangely” because its director, Bennett Miller, previously made “Moneyball,” turning a tale of statistics into a riveting, moving drama: the best movie of its year, IMHO. In “Foxcatcher,” he has a kook, half-naked men pinning each other to the ground and a bizarre true crime to work with, and he presses them into a hushed, stately, stale epic.

《美國狙擊手》的情節很容易融入一些和美國有關的宏大問題，但影片選擇不這麼做。另一部低沉的影片《狐狸獵手》(Foxcatcher)則截然相反。該片旁敲側擊的暗示，富得驚人的實業家約翰·杜邦(John du Pont)贊助工人階級摔跤手卻沒帶來好結果的故事，在一定程度上反映了這個國家的癥結所在：片中有大量國旗、老鷹和提到民族自豪感的地方。但實際上，它講述的是一個與社會特別格格不入的人的故事，影片所承載的更大意義令其不堪重負。這部片子奇怪地無趣，我說“奇怪”是因爲它的導演貝尼特·米勒(Bennett Miller)曾在《點球成金》(Moneyball)中，把一個統計學故事，變成了一部引人入勝、令人動容的電影，個人認爲那是當年的年度最佳電影。在《狐狸獵手》中，他要應對的是一個怪人、兩個要將對方壓倒在地的半裸男子和一樁真實的奇案。他卻把這些東西一股腦兒塞進了一部節奏沉悶、推進緩慢、題材陳舊的大片裏。

More engrossing than anything in “Foxcatcher” were the recent real-life Twitter tantrums of Mark Schultz, the wrestler at the center of du Pont’s obsessions, played by Channing Tatum in the movie. He’s apparently outraged about scenes that suggest homoerotic currents between him and du Pont. I mention that partly to pivot to the following question, Ross, since it applies not just to “Foxcatcher” but also to “American Sniper” and perhaps to “Selma” most of all: What obligation, if any, do movies have to hew to the historical record and the known truth? I’m curious if you think there are any firm dos and don’ts, any inventions or suppositions that should be out of bounds.

《狐狸獵手》最引人入勝的是最近發生在現實中的情節，杜邦十分關注的摔跤手馬克·舒爾茨（Mark Schultz，在劇中由查寧·塔圖姆[Channing Tatum]扮演）在Twitter上發飆了。讓他憤怒的顯然是劇中暗示他跟杜邦之間，有同性曖昧情緒的場景。羅斯，我提這個，部分目的是想把話題轉到下一個問題，這個問題不僅適用於《狐狸獵手》，也適用於《美國狙擊手》，可能最適用於《塞爾瑪》：電影有怎樣的義務去遵從歷史記載和已知的事實，甚至有沒有這樣的義務？我好奇的是，你會不會覺得有某些確定的“什麼可以做什麼不可以做”的規則，有沒有哪些編造或者臆測是不可接受的？

Douthat: Well, it’s complicated. The obligation to historical fidelity clearly can’t be absolute, or no filmmaker could pass it, and there has to be ample room for movies to play with real-life events to get at particular points and argument and ideas. To pick an apolitical recent example, I loved “The Social Network,” a movie that I thought captured the culture of meritocracy (or at least its Harvardian iteration) brilliantly, even though its “Mark Zuckerberg” bore little relationship to the real-life man. In that case and many others, I tend to agree with Jamelle Bouie’s argument — made last week in the context of the “Selma” debate — that viewers should be generally “less concerned with fact-checking and more interested in understanding” why, exactly, directors and screenwriters wrestling with history make the compressing/eliding/inventing choices that they make.

多賽特：實際上挺複雜的。忠於歷史的義務顯然不能是絕對的，否則沒有哪個電影人能及格，電影中應該有充裕的空間對現實事件進行演繹，從而表達某些特定的觀點、論調和思想。我可以從最近的電影裏挑一個不涉及政治的例子，我很喜歡《社交網絡》(The Social Network)，我認爲這部電影出色地反映了崇尚精英的文化（至少可以說是哈佛風格的這種文化），儘管劇中的“馬克·扎克伯格”(Mark Zuckerberg)與現實生活中的那個人沒有多少關係。在這部片中，以及其他例子裏，我傾向於認同賈梅爾·鮑伊(Jamelle Bouie)的觀點——他說這話的背景是上週《塞爾瑪》引發的爭論——觀衆總體上應該“別那麼操心事實覈查，更應該感興趣的是理解”那些與歷史掰腕子的導演和編劇，爲什麼選擇做出這樣的壓縮/省略/虛構？

That means, in turn, that I’m inclined to reject comprehensive indictments of the historical liberties taken by “Selma” — say — as a historian’s version of the tedious, commonplace “why didn’t the filmmaker make the movie I wanted her to make?” critique. But at the same time, I remain a little uncomfortable with the specific way that Ava DuVernay’s movie portrays Lyndon Johnson (which is the key problem the historian-critics raise), because in addition to being untrue to the record it has the effect of flattening his character and making the tangled relationship between activists and politicians — one of the movie’s key themes — less interesting and more unsubtle and thus less artistically satisfying than it could have been. I can see what the movie gained dramatically by making the president more of a stumbling block to the movement than he actually was, and I respect DuVernay’s professed desire to avoid anything resembling the “white savior” cliché. But I think that all this could have been accomplished without (spoiler alert) having Johnson actually sic J. Edgar Hoover on King, a black-hat moment that just seemed crude and unlikely in the context of the film, setting aside its lack of grounding in the facts.

這又意味着，儘管有人因爲《塞爾瑪》中對歷史事件的演繹，提出了全面的指責，但是我傾向於排斥這種指責——比如，歷史學者喋喋不休、陳詞濫調地批評：“爲什麼電影主創沒有拍一部像我想象的那種電影？”但與此同時，阿娃·杜威內(Ava DuVernay)的這部電影裏刻畫林登·約翰遜(Lyndon Johnson)的某些具體方式，還是讓我有點不舒服，這也正是持批評態度的歷史學者提出的關鍵問題。之所以不舒服是因爲，它不僅沒有忠實於歷史記載，還導致人物平面化，讓活動人士與政客之間本來可以顯得有趣、微妙，在藝術上很完滿的糾結關係（這是劇中關鍵主題之一），變得沒那麼有意思、沒那麼微妙，在藝術上也沒那麼令人滿意。電影對林登·約翰遜的描繪，比他實際扮演的角色更像是一個絆腳石，我明白這樣做在戲劇上對電影有怎樣的幫助，我也尊重杜威內明確表達過的，免得像是落入“白人救世主”套路的願望。不過我想，（有劇透）所有這些，即使不讓約翰遜實際上差遣J·埃德加·胡佛(J. Edgar Hoover)對付馬丁·路德·金，也是可以達成的。這個卑劣的情節在這部電影的語境裏，簡直有些粗糙、格格不入，且不說它缺乏確鑿的事實依據。

Bruni: I’d say that movies don’t have any absolute duty to history. Even historians pick and choose what to focus on and come up with a perspective or argument that doesn’t do full justice to all of the small facts and subtleties in the unedited, messy record of real life. When you shape events into a particular form with finite parameters, be it a movie or a tome, some distortion occurs. It’s built into the process. But is there a rationale for the distortion? Does it serve a clear purpose without undermining your credibility and thus your impact? Some of the tweaks made by “Selma” seem unnecessary, and I think that may well be hurting the film in the awards season: Neither it nor its star, David Oyelowo, got Bafta nominations, which were announced after the controversy over the movie had grown in volume, and at the Golden Globes, the movie won only in the category of best original song.

布魯尼：我想說電影對於歷史沒有絕對的義務，就連歷史學者都會挑揀要關注的問題，提出一些觀點和論斷，而不會面面俱到地顧及對於現實生活未經編輯、混亂的紀錄中，所有細微的事實和微妙細節。在有限的參數內將事件塑造爲特定的形式，無論是電影還是大部頭的著作，總會發生一些扭曲。這是過程中的內在特點。不過這種扭曲有理由嗎？它能否達成清晰的目的，而又不影響你的可信度，於是也不破壞你的影響力？《塞爾瑪》做的一些改動似乎沒有必要，而且我覺得可能是這些因素，在頒獎季影響了這部電影的成績：無論是這部片子還是其中的主角戴維·奧伊羅(David Oyelowo)都沒有得到英國電影學院獎(Bafta)的提名，這個獎項公佈之前，關於這部電影已經產生了極大爭議，而在金球獎(Golden Globes)的頒獎中，這部電影只在最佳原創歌曲這一個門類裏獲獎。

But not all of its digressions from truth are as wildly cavalier and irresponsible as their harshest critics suggest. I talked about this with the Princeton historian Julian Zelizer, whose new book on L.B.J., “The Fierce Urgency of Now,” was the grist for my Tuesday column. He agreed with you, Ross, that the L.B.J.-Hoover emphasis was both wrong and needless; as for L.B.J. and voting rights, he wrote this interesting piece explaining precisely where and how “Selma” and fact diverge.

然而並非劇中所有脫離史實的情節都像最嚴厲的批評人士所說的，過於漫不經心、嚴重不負責任。我與普林斯頓大學的歷史學者朱利安·傑裏哲(Julian Zelizer)討論過這個問題，他關於約翰遜的書《當下的緊迫性》(The Fierce Urgency of Now)爲我週二的專欄文章提供了素材。羅斯，他也同意你的看法，強調約翰遜和胡佛的情節不僅是錯的，而且是沒有必要的。至於約翰遜和投票權的話題，他寫了篇有趣的文章，準確地解釋了《塞爾瑪》是在哪裏以怎樣的方式脫離了現實。

“Selma” is saddled by the ease with which it can be fact-checked (an ease that the moviemakers perhaps should have kept in mind). I’m sure if we had similar documentation against which to measure “Unbroken” and “Wild,” two other real-life narratives, we’d find inconsistencies, hyperbole, a tidying-up of things. The events of each occurred long before they were molded into the best sellers on which the movies are based, and memory has its biases and limits. I took both movies at face value, finding “Unbroken” tedious and disconcertingly old-fashioned but enjoying “Wild” largely for its soulful mood, achieved through music, imagery and Reese Witherspoon.

《塞爾瑪》的一個負擔是，事實覈查做起來很容易（這一點電影主創本應該注意的）。我敢肯定如果我們有相似的文獻記載，用來對另外兩個講述現實事件的電影《堅不可摧》(Unbroken)和《走出荒野》(Wild)做事實覈查，也會發現前後不一致、誇張、裝扮事實的情況。兩部電影中的事件，過了很久才成爲暢銷書，之後纔在此基礎上拍成電影，而記憶也有自身的傾向和侷限。我選擇不去質疑這兩部電影，不過感覺《堅不可摧》很枯燥，而且老派到令人難堪的地步，但我很喜歡《走出荒野》，主要是因爲它通過音樂烘托出的真摯感情、映像，以及瑞茜·威瑟斯彭(Reese Witherspoon)。

While this has been a better year for actors than for actresses, which is to say it’s been depressingly like every other year, we were treated to some great and surprising performances by women over the last month. I think of Julianne Moore’s in “Still Alice.” I mentioned that movie in a recent column, and I was happy to see Moore win a richly deserved Golden Globe, for best actress in a drama. I also think of “Cake” and Jennifer Aniston, whom I wrote about for last weekend’s Arts & Leisure section. Have you seen either, Ross? If not, do you have any actors or actresses to whom you’d like to give shout-outs before we wrap up this latest session?

這一年男演員的日子過得比女演員好，其實每年都是如此，真令人沮喪；不過上個月我們有幸看到一些女性有着偉大而令人吃驚的表現。我想到了《我想念我自己》(Still Alice)裏的茱麗安·摩爾(Julianne Moore)。我在最近的一篇專欄裏提到過這部電影，很高興看到摩爾能實至名歸地拿到一座金球獎劇情類電影最佳女主角。我還想到了《蛋糕》(Cake)和詹妮弗·安妮斯頓(Jennifer Aniston)，上週末我給“藝術與休閒”(Arts & Leisure)版塊寫的文章寫了她。你也看到了吧，羅斯？如果沒有，在我們結束最後這個環節之前，你有哪些男女演員想特別拿出來誇一誇的呢？

Douthat: Wait — has this really been a better year for actors? We talked about this during our first go-round, at the end of the summer, and I think it all depends on where you set the baseline. I’m not going to join Russell Crowe and dismiss industry sexism: The persistent male advantages and endless May-November romantic pairings are real enough, and in the age of presold genre franchises, the business arguably caters more than ever to adolescent (and adultescent) males.

多塞特：等一下——這一年真的是男演員過得更好麼？我們在夏末的第一次討論時談過這個，我認爲這完全取決於你的標準。我不打算跟羅素·克勞(Russell Crowe)手拉手去否認業內的性別歧視：男性一直以來佔據的優勢，還有沒完沒了的男長女幼戀人配對，都是真實存在的，在這個預售類型系列片的時代，這一行無疑在更多地迎合青少年（和人老心不老的）男性。

But at the same time, even though the action-driven culture of blockbusters provides permanent employment opportunities for younger actors who know their way around a weight room, it also seems to make them more interchangeable (how many moviegoers recognize the name Henry Cavill? how many can tell the Hemsworth brothers apart?), disposable (blink, and somebody else is playing Spiderman and Superman and Batman) and forgettable (quick, who played the male lead in “Godzilla”?) than the male stars of 20 years ago. Put it this way: If I had to pick the younger stars who had the best year in 2015, I’d put Jennifer Lawrence, Shailene Woodley (who had not one but two $100-million-plus movies) and Scarlett Johansson (who single-handedly propelled the lousy “Lucy” to big business while also racking up deserved art-house plaudits for “Under the Skin”) above any younger male of the species not named Chris Pratt. Or again: I don’t think any famous male star carried a major blockbuster as completely as Angelina Jolie did “Maleficent.” Or yet again: We haven’t talked about “Into the Woods,” but it’s the Christmas season’s second-biggest earner after Peter Jackson’s 17-hour Middle Earth cash-in, it’s thick with female stars, and it has Meryl Streep looming on its poster, not Johnny Depp or Chris Pine. (Again, how many moviegoers have even heard of Chris Pine?)Even the land of Seth Rogen and Co., long a bit of a wasteland for female co-stars, delivered us Rose Byrne’s terrific turn in “Neighbors.” And the likely best-actress contest, in which the terrific Witherspoon will probably still lose out to either Moore or Aniston, is dominated by women in roles that suggest — like Streep’s box office clout, and Sandra Bullock’s, and even Melissa McCarthy’s — that there’s some life (if, again, not as much as Crowe believes) in Hollywood for women near and over 40.

但同時，雖然動作導向的大片文化給那些會舉幾下槓鈴的年輕男性演員帶去了鐵飯碗，卻也讓他們比20年前的男星更容易被取代（有多少電影迷知道亨利·卡維爾[Henry Cavill]這名字？有誰分得清海姆斯沃斯兄弟[Hemsworth]誰是誰？）、拋棄（一眨眼蜘蛛俠超人蝙蝠俠就換人了）和遺忘（我問你，《哥斯拉》[Godzilla]男主角是誰？）。這麼說吧：如果非要我選出2015年最風光的年輕明星，我選詹妮弗·勞倫斯(Jennifer Lawrence)、謝琳·伍德利(Shailene Woodley)和斯嘉麗·約翰遜(Scarlett Johansson)，伍德利有過億票房的片子，兩部；約翰遜憑一己之力把《超體》(Lucy)這個爛片弄成大熱，同時還能撐起《皮囊之下》(Under the Skin)這種受好評的藝術片，她們比任何一個年輕男星都強，克里斯·普瑞特(Chris Pratt)除外。還有：我覺得沒有哪個男性明星能像《沉睡魔咒》(Maleficent)裏的安吉麗娜·朱莉(Angelina Jolie)那樣，在一部一線大製作影片裏有那麼重的分量。還有：我們還沒說《魔法黑森林》(Into the Woods)呢，它是聖誕季票房第二，只輸給彼得·傑克遜(Peter Jackson)那個17小時的中土賺錢機器，影片的女星陣容強大，海報上是梅爾·斯特里普(Meryl Streep)的臉，不是約翰尼·德普(Johnny Depp)或克里斯·潘恩(Chris Pine)。（再問一句，有多少影迷認得克里斯·潘恩？）連賽斯·羅根(Seth Roge)這類一向忽視女性角色的人物，也推出了蘿絲·拜恩(Rose Byrne)在《鄰居大戰》(Neighbors)裏的精彩轉型。而從最佳女主角的主要競爭者來看——大放異彩的威瑟斯彭可能還是會輸給摩爾或安妮斯頓——接近或超過40歲的女性在好萊塢還是有生命力的（雖說可能不像克勞想的那麼好），比如斯特里普的票房號召力，還有桑德拉·布魯克(Sandra Bullock)，甚至梅麗莎·麥卡錫(Melissa McCarthy)。

With all that said, maybe I’ll prove your point by offering my own parting shout-out to two men, J.C. Chandor and Oscar Isaac, respectively the writer-director and star of “A Most Violent Year,” about a heating-oil industry rivalry (it’s more interesting than it sounds) in the grim, crime-haunted Gotham of 1981. I’m offering it even though, as I noted above, the movie disappointed me in the end: It’s ridiculously good for two-thirds of its running time, but then it sort of peters out, leaving too many subplots unresolved instead of making them successfully converge. But Chandor has earned the right to disappoint just a little: He’s made three movies, “Margin Call” and “All Is Lost” and now this one, and they’ve all been more ambitious and effective and interesting than the work of — well, a long list of better-known directors, let’s just say. And Isaac (who’s also in the next “Star Wars,” for good or ill) is just phenomenal, as he was in a completely different sort of part last year in “Inside Llewyn Davis.”

話雖如此，我還是要在最後特別提一下的兩個男性，這也許驗證了你的看法，他們是J·C·陳多爾(J.C. Chandor)和奧斯卡·伊薩克(Oscar Isaac)，分別是《至暴之年》(A Most Violent Year)的編導和主演，影片講的是1981年發生在陰森恐怖、犯罪叢生的紐約的一場燃料油行業廝鬥（片子並非聽上去那麼無聊）。我以前寫過，影片到最後是讓我失望的，但我還是把它拿出來：在全片三分之二的時間裏，它好的不可思議，然後就慢慢走下坡路，太多的情節支線懸而未決，沒能交匯到一起。但是陳多爾有權留下一點不如意的地方：他拍了三部電影，《利益風暴》(Margin Call)和《一切盡失》(All Is Lost)，還有就是這部，它們都比——呃，就說是一長串更出名的導演吧——有更多的抱負、更精彩、更有趣味。伊薩克（他會出演下一部《星球大戰》，不知是好事還壞事）的演出驚世駭俗，跟去年在《醉鄉民謠》(Inside Llewyn Davis)裏那個角色完全不是一回事。

Neither man is any kind of household name; neither earned even a nomination at the Globes. (Jessica Chastain, yet another female star enjoying a steady run of meaty parts, had the movie’s only Globe nod.) I’ll be interested to see if either one gets Oscar recognition this year. But whether they do or don’t, I’m sure something interesting will happen once Oscar season overwhelms us … and hopefully, we’ll be right back here to talk about it.

兩個人都不算家喻戶曉；連金球獎提名都沒拿過。（傑西卡·查斯坦[Jessica Chastain]，又一個不斷出現在重量級製作裏的女性明星，是整部影片裏唯一得到金球認可的。）我倒是很想看看他們兩個在今年會不會得到奧斯卡的賞識。不管有沒有，我相信等到奧斯卡季向我們涌來那一刻，一定會發生點有意思的事……希望到時候我們能回到這裏來聊聊。