好英语网马丁·斯科塞斯：我为什么说漫威电影不是“电影”
When I was in England in early October, I gave an interview to Empire magazine. I was asked a question about Marvel movies. I answered it. I said that I’ve tried to watch a few of them and that they’re not for me, that they seem to me to be closer to theme parks than they are to movies as I’ve known and loved them throughout my life, and that in the end, I don’t think they’re cinema.
10月初在英格兰时，我接受了《帝国杂志》(Empire)的采访。我被问到一个关于漫威电影的问题。我回答了。我说，我试着看了其中几部，但它们不适合我，比起我一生所了解和热爱的那些电影，它们在我看来似乎更接近主题公园，到最后，我觉得它们不是电影(cinema)。
Some people seem to have seized on the last part of my answer as insulting, or as evidence of hatred for Marvel on my part. If anyone is intent on characterizing my words in that light, there’s nothing I can do to stand in the way.
一些人似乎抓住我的回答的最后部分不放，视之为侮辱，或是我本人憎恶漫威电影的证据。如果有人着意要从那样的角度描述我的话，那我也没有办法。
斯科塞斯说，“这是电影表演的艰难时期，独立影院比以往任何时候都少。”
Many franchise films are made by people of considerable talent and artistry. You can see it on the screen. The fact that the films themselves don’t interest me is a matter of personal taste and temperament. I know that if I were younger, if I’d come of age at a later time, I might have been excited by these pictures and maybe even wanted to make one myself. But I grew up when I did and I developed a sense of movies — of what they were and what they could be — that was as far from the Marvel universe as we on Earth are from Alpha Centauri.
许多系列电影是由有着相当才能和艺术技巧的人制作的。这个你能在银幕上看到。事实上，这些影片本身不吸引我，与个人口味和性情有关。我知道假如自己年轻一些，假如我成熟得晚一些，可能会对这些影片感到兴奋，甚至可能想自己也拍一部。但我已经长大，并且形成了对电影的理解——它们是什么以及它们可能成为什么，这个理解和漫威世界的距离，就像地球和半人马座阿尔法星系的距离一样遥远。
For me, for the filmmakers I came to love and respect, for my friends who started making movies around the same time that I did, cinema was about revelation — aesthetic, emotional and spiritual revelation. It was about characters — the complexity of people and their contradictory and sometimes paradoxical natures, the way they can hurt one another and love one another and suddenly come face to face with themselves.
对于我、对于我所喜爱和尊敬的电影人、对于大致和我同一时期开始拍电影的朋友们来说，电影是关于启示的——美学、情感和精神上的启示。它是关于人物的——人的复杂性和他们矛盾的、有时是悖谬的本质，他们可以彼此伤害、彼此相爱、突然面对自己的方式。
It was about confronting the unexpected on the screen and in the life it dramatized and interpreted, and enlarging the sense of what was possible in the art form.
它是关于在屏幕上、在它加以戏剧化和诠释的生活中，直面意料之外的事，并以艺术的形式扩大对可能性的感知。
And that was the key for us: it was an art form. There was some debate about that at the time, so we stood up for cinema as an equal to literature or music or dance. And we came to understand that the art could be found in many different places and in just as many forms — in “The Steel Helmet” by Sam Fuller and “Persona” by Ingmar Bergman, in “It’s Always Fair Weather” by Stanley Donen and Gene Kelly and “Scorpio Rising” by Kenneth Anger, in “Vivre Sa Vie” by Jean-Luc Godard and “The Killers” by Don Siegel.
而这对我们来说恰是关键之处：它是一种艺术形式。当时，对这一点存在一些争论，于是我们坚持电影与文学、音乐或舞蹈相当的观点。并且我们认识到，艺术可以在许多不同的地方以同样多的形式出现——在塞缪尔·富勒(Sam Fuller)的《钢盔》(The Steel Helmet) 和英格玛·伯格曼(Ingmar Bergman)的《假面》(Persona)里，在斯坦利·多南(Stanley Donen)和吉恩·凯利(Gene Kelly)的《美景良辰》(It’s Always Fair Weather)及肯尼斯·安格(Kenneth Anger)的《天蝎星升起》(Scorpio Rising)里，在让-吕克·戈达尔(Jean-Luc Godard)的《随心所欲》(Vivre Sa Vie)和唐·西格尔(Don Siegel)的《杀人者》(The Killers)里。
Or in the films of Alfred Hitchcock — I suppose you could say that Hitchcock was his own franchise. Or that he was our franchise. Every new Hitchcock picture was an event. To be in a packed house in one of the old theaters watching “Rear Window” was an extraordinary experience: It was an event created by the chemistry between the audience and the picture itself, and it was electrifying.
或者在阿尔弗雷德·希区柯克(Alfred Hitchcock)的电影里——我想你可以说希区柯克自成一个系列。或者说他是我们的系列。每一部新的希区柯克电影都是一个事件。在最老的影院之一、在满满当当的影厅里观看《后窗》(Rear Window) 是一次非凡的体验：那是观众和影片自身之间的化学反应制造出的事件，令人兴奋不已。
And in a way, certain Hitchcock films were also like theme parks. I’m thinking of “Strangers on a Train,” in which the climax takes place on a merry-go-round at a real amusement park, and “Psycho,” which I saw at a midnight show on its opening day, an experience I will never forget. People went to be surprised and thrilled, and they weren’t disappointed.
从某种程度上，某些希区柯克电影也像主题公园。我在想《火车怪客》(Strangers on a Train)，其中的高潮部分发生在一个真实游乐园的旋转木马上；还有《惊魂记》(Psycho)，我是在首映当天看的午夜场，那次经历我永远难忘。人们前去感受意外和惊悚，他们没有失望。
Sixty or 70 years later, we’re still watching those pictures and marveling at them. But is it the thrills and the shocks that we keep going back to? I don’t think so. The set pieces in “North by Northwest” are stunning, but they would be nothing more than a succession of dynamic and elegant compositions and cuts without the painful emotions at the center of the story or the absolute lostness of Cary Grant’s character.
六七十年后的今天，我们仍在看这些片子，并对它们赞叹不已。但我们一再回顾的是那些惊悚和震惊吗？我不这么看。《西北偏北》(North by Northwest)里程式化的场景固然出色，但没有故事核心的痛苦情感，或加里·格兰特(Cary Grant)所饰角色绝然的迷失，它们不过是一系列不断变化、优美的构图和剪裁。
The climax of “Strangers on a Train” is a feat, but it’s the interplay between the two principal characters and Robert Walker’s profoundly unsettling performance that resonate now.
《火车怪客》的高潮部分是一项惊人的成就，但如今引发共鸣的，是两个主要角色之间的互动，以及罗伯特·沃克(Robert Walker)着实令人不安的表演。
Some say that Hitchcock’s pictures had a sameness to them, and perhaps that’s true — Hitchcock himself wondered about it. But the sameness of today’s franchise pictures is something else again. Many of the elements that define cinema as I know it are there in Marvel pictures. What’s not there is revelation, mystery or genuine emotional danger. Nothing is at risk. The pictures are made to satisfy a specific set of demands, and they are designed as variations on a finite number of themes.
有人说希区柯克的影片有一种雷同，或许这是对的——希区柯克本人也想过这个问题。但当今系列电影的雷同又是另外一回事。我所知道的定义电影的许多元素，漫威系列里都有。它所没有的是启示、神秘或真正的情感危险。没有什么面临风险。这些影片是为满足一套特定的需求而制作，并被设计成数量有限的主题的变体。
They are sequels in name but they are remakes in spirit, and everything in them is officially sanctioned because it can’t really be any other way. That’s the nature of modern film franchises: market-researched, audience-tested, vetted, modified, revetted and remodified until they’re ready for consumption.
它们名义上是续集，但在精神上是重复的，其中一切都经官方认可，因为不可能有其他形式。这就是现代系列大片的本质：市场调查、观众测试、审查、修改、翻新和再加工，直至可供消费。
Another way of putting it would be that they are everything that the films of Paul Thomas Anderson or Claire Denis or Spike Lee or Ari Aster or Kathryn Bigelow or Wes Anderson are not. When I watch a movie by any of those filmmakers, I know I’m going to see something absolutely new and be taken to unexpected and maybe even unnameable areas of experience. My sense of what is possible in telling stories with moving images and sounds is going to be expanded.
换言之，它们和保罗·托马斯·安德森(Paul Thomas Anderson)、克莱尔·丹尼斯(Claire Denis)、斯派克·李(Spike Lee)、阿里·艾斯特(Ari Aster)、凯瑟琳·毕格罗(Kathryn Bigelow)或韦斯·安德森(Wes Anderson)的电影大相径庭。当我看那些电影人的影片时，我知道自己可以看到全新的东西，进入意想不到、乃至无以名状的体验领域。用移动的画面和声音讲故事还有着什么样的可能性？他们的影片会扩展我对此的感受。
So, you might ask, what’s my problem? Why not just let superhero films and other franchise films be? The reason is simple. In many places around this country and around the world, franchise films are now your primary choice if you want to see something on the big screen. It’s a perilous time in film exhibition, and there are fewer independent theaters than ever. The equation has flipped and streaming has become the primary delivery system. Still, I don’t know a single filmmaker who doesn’t want to design films for the big screen, to be projected before audiences in theaters.
你可能会问，我这是怎么了？为什么就不肯放过超级英雄电影和其他系列大片呢？原因很简单。如今，在美国和世界各地许多地方，如果你想在大银幕上看到些什么，系列大片是你的首选。这是电影表演的艰难时期，独立影院比以往任何时候都少。规则遭到颠覆，流媒体成为主要传播系统。不过，我认识的电影人里，没有谁不愿为大银幕拍电影，没有谁不愿在影院面向观众放映电影。
That includes me, and I’m speaking as someone who just completed a picture for Netflix. It, and it alone, allowed us to make “The Irishman” the way we needed to, and for that I’ll always be thankful. We have a theatrical window, which is great. Would I like the picture to play on more big screens for longer periods of time? Of course I would. But no matter whom you make your movie with, the fact is that the screens in most multiplexes are crowded with franchise pictures.
虽然刚刚为Netflix拍完一部影片，但我也是如此。Netflix，也只有Netflix，允许我们以我们所需的方式拍出了《爱尔兰人》(The Irishman)，为此我永远心怀感激。我们有了一扇通往影院的窗口，这非常好。我可想让这部电影在更大的银幕上播放更长时间？当然如此。然而，不管你同谁合作拍电影，事实是，大多数多厅影院的银幕上还是充斥着那些系列大片。
And if you’re going to tell me that it’s simply a matter of supply and demand and giving the people what they want, I’m going to disagree. It’s a chicken-and-egg issue. If people are given only one kind of thing and endlessly sold only one kind of thing, of course they’re going to want more of that one kind of thing.
如果你告诉我，这只是供求关系而已，无非是将人们想要的提供给他们，恕难苟同。这是一个先有蛋还是先有鸡的问题。如果只向人们提供一种东西，没完没了地只卖这种东西，人们当然就想要更多这种东西。
But, you might argue, can’t they just go home and watch anything else they want on Netflix or iTunes or Hulu? Sure — anywhere but on the big screen, where the filmmaker intended her or his picture to be seen.
但是，你可能会说，他们就不能回家去，在Netflix、iTunes或者Hulu看他们想看的东西吗？当然可以——在任何地方都可以，但不是在大银幕上，而电影人还是最想让自己的作品在大银幕上被世人所见。
In the past 20 years, as we all know, the movie business has changed on all fronts. But the most ominous change has happened stealthily and under cover of night: the gradual but steady elimination of risk. Many films today are perfect products manufactured for immediate consumption. Many of them are well made by teams of talented individuals. All the same, they lack something essential to cinema: the unifying vision of an individual artist. Because, of course, the individual artist is the riskiest factor of all.
我们都知道，在过去20年里，电影行业在各个方面都发生了变化。然而最有威胁性的变化是在黑夜掩盖下悄悄发生：风险在逐渐稳步消失。今天的许多电影都是为即时消费而生产的完美产品。其中很多亦是由才华横溢的团队所创作。尽管如此，它们缺少电影艺术所必需的东西：艺术家个体一致的愿景。理应如此，因为艺术家个体正是最危险的因素。
I’m certainly not implying that movies should be a subsidized art form, or that they ever were. When the Hollywood studio system was still alive and well, the tension between the artists and the people who ran the business was constant and intense, but it was a productive tension that gave us some of the greatest films ever made — in the words of Bob Dylan, the best of them were “heroic and visionary.”
我当然不是说，电影应该是一种受到额外资助的艺术形式，或者它曾经受此优待。当好莱坞片厂制度还存在，并且运转良好的时候，艺术家与商业经营者之间的张力频繁而激烈，但这是一种充满创造性的张力，为我们带来一些有史以来最伟大的电影——用鲍勃·迪伦(Bob Dylan)的话说，其中最好的影片“充满英雄气概和远见卓识”。
Today, that tension is gone, and there are some in the business with absolute indifference to the very question of art and an attitude toward the history of cinema that is both dismissive and proprietary — a lethal combination. The situation, sadly, is that we now have two separate fields: There’s worldwide audiovisual entertainment, and there’s cinema. They still overlap from time to time, but that’s becoming increasingly rare. And I fear that the financial dominance of one is being used to marginalize and even belittle the existence of the other.
如今，这种紧张关系已经消失，电影行业里的一些人对艺术问题全然漠不关心，对待电影史的态度轻蔑专横——这两样加起来真是要命。可悲的是，我们现在有两个互相独立的领域：一个是全球范围内的视听娱乐，另一个是电影艺术。它们仍然不时重叠，但这种情况越来越少见。我担心其中一方的经济优势会将另一方边缘化，甚至缩小另一方的生存空间。
For anyone who dreams of making movies or who is just starting out, the situation at this moment is brutal and inhospitable to art. And the act of simply writing those words fills me with terrible sadness.
对于那些梦想拍电影的人，或者那些刚刚起步的人来说，现在的情况很残酷，对艺术来说很不友好。只是写下这些话已令我心中充满哀伤。