好英语网《别告诉她》走红，中国“奶奶”成奥斯卡热门
What would you do if everyone was talking about a movie you hadn’t seen?
假如人人都在谈论一部你没看过的电影，你会怎么做？
Let’s say that movie was “The Farewell,” an indie smash from this summer about the members of a Chinese family who try to keep their beloved grandma from learning about her terminal-cancer diagnosis.
我们假设这部电影是《别告诉她》(The Farewell)，这是今年夏天上映的一部独立制作大热门，讲述的是一个中国家庭设法向他们心爱的奶奶隐瞒她患了晚期癌症的消息。
And now, let’s say you’re the actress who played the grandma.
现在，假设你是其中扮演奶奶的女演员。
王璐璐、赵淑珍和奥卡菲娜本月在洛杉矶。
Yes, Zhao Shuzhen may be earning Oscar buzz for her work as the matriarch Nai Nai in “The Farewell,” but that doesn’t mean she’s actually been able to watch the movie she stars in. “I didn’t know it was such a phenomenon!” the 76-year-old Chinese actress told me one night in early November, after she had reunited with her director, Lulu Wang, and co-star Awkwafina to introduce the film at an awards-season screening in Beverly Hills.
是的，赵淑珍可能因在《别告诉她》中饰演女家长“奶奶”而成为奥斯卡奖热门人选，但这并不意味着她真的能看她主演的电影。“我不知道电影如此轰动！”11月初的一个晚上，这位76岁的中国女演员告诉我说，此前她与导演王璐璐以及联袂主演奥卡菲娜(Awkwafina)在比弗利山的颁奖季放映会上重聚，为影片做推广。
It was Shuzhen’s first-ever trip to the United States, and she’d been caught off guard when people at the screening recognized her. Many were on their second viewing of “The Farewell,” which is two more times than Shuzhen herself had been able to see it. “The attention, the praise, it’s inconceivable to me,” she said through a translator. But at least Shuzhen had a good excuse for being late to the party: “It hasn’t come out in China yet,” she told me, “and I’ve been so busy filming.”
这是淑珍头一回前往美国，在放映会上被人认出时，她有些措手不及。很多人是第二次看《别告诉她》，这比淑珍自己看的次数还多两次。“这种关注和赞扬，对我来说是不可思议的，”她通过翻译说。但至少淑珍有一个晚点看到的好借口：“它还没有在中国上映，”她对我说，“我也一直在忙于拍摄。”
Though “The Farewell” was Shuzhen’s American debut, she is well-known and oft-booked in China, where she appears in several television dramas a year. “Some dramas require the grandma to have a bigger part, and other dramas don’t use the grandma as much,” she said. But in her 70s, she was happy to be so prolific. “To have started at 16 and now be at an old age and still be acting, I’m just grateful for it.”
尽管《别告诉她》是淑珍在美国的处子秀，她在中国家喻户晓而且经常有片约，她每年都出现在几部电视剧中。她说：“有些电视剧需要比较多祖母的戏份，有些电视剧则不太需要。”她现在70多岁了，她为自己的多产而感到高兴。“从16岁开始，到晚年仍在演戏，我对此充满感恩。”
That night in Beverly Hills was the first time Awkwafina had seen Shuzhen since they finished filming last year. As the older woman spoke, Awkwafina gazed at her reverently. “I’m getting a little emotional just sitting with her right now,” Awkwafina said. “After what’s happened with this movie, I want her to know that she’s loved here.”
自从去年完成拍摄以来，在比佛利山庄的这一晚是奥卡菲娜首次再见淑珍。老人说话时，奥卡菲娜虔诚地注视着她。“现在和她坐在一起，我会有些激动，”奥卡菲娜说。“自从拍了这个电影之后，我希望她知道，她在这里很受爱戴。”
It was a dynamic not unlike the one shared by their characters in “The Farewell,” where Awkwafina plays Billi, a New Yorker who returns to Changchun upon learning of her grandmother’s diagnosis. Billi’s parents ask her to keep Nai Nai in the dark about the state of her cancer — they believe that if she’s told she has mere months to live, she will lose all hope and succumb — but Billi struggles to deceive the matriarch she so adores.
这种情感互动就像她们在《别告诉她》中扮演的角色一样，奥卡菲娜扮演的纽约人比利(Billi)在得知祖母的病情后回到长春。比利的父母要求她不要向奶奶透露她的癌症病情——他们相信，如果祖母知道她只有几个月的生命，她将失去所有的希望并屈服于现实——但比利难以忍受去欺骗祖母，一个她深爱的长辈。
淑珍和奥卡菲娜（中）在《别告诉她》中的一幕。
Regal in an aubergine coat and pearl necklace, Shuzhen beamed as Awkwafina and Wang caught her up on the film’s success: Since its July release in the United States, “The Farewell” had become one of the year’s highest-grossing indies. “Having her here is a reminder that the film became so much bigger than we thought,” Wang said. “I’ve been all over the world talking about it and it’s been released in multiple languages,” she added, saying she was tickled by Shuzhen’s surprise. “She’s like, ‘I haven’t seen the film yet. I hope it’s good!”
穿着茄紫色外套、佩戴珍珠项链的淑珍仪态端庄，当奥卡菲娜和王璐璐告诉她电影有多么成功时，她喜出望外：自从七月在美国上映以来，《别告诉她》已成为本年票房最高的独立电影之一。“淑珍到这里，对我们是个提醒，这部电影的影响比我们想象的要大得多，”王璐璐说。“我在世界各地宣传它，并且已用多种语言发行了。”她还说，看到淑珍的惊讶让她很开心。“她说，‘我还没看到电影呢。我希望是好的！’”
The women all laughed, but Wang was sincere. “It’s all really validating,” she said. “We know what it took to make this movie. It might look effortless and natural, but when I watch the film, I see every single battle that went into it.”
三个女人都笑了，不过王璐璐说的是真心话。“这真的很有成就感。”她说，“我们知道制作这部电影需要付出很多。它看起来好像轻松自然，但当我观看影片的时候，我看到了为其经历的每一场战斗。”
When Wang first tried to mount “The Farewell,” financiers balked at the all-Asian cast, tricky mix of tones and potential language barrier — 80 percent of the dialogue would be Mandarin — and recommended that Wang add more romance and English. Still, Wang had based the film on her own family’s true story, and she was determined to hold fast to what had really happened.
当王璐璐最初为《别告诉她》融资时，全亚裔的演员阵容、复杂难明的基调和潜在的语言壁垒——80%的对话是普通话——让投资者感到踌躇，他们建议王璐璐多加一些浪漫情节和英语。尽管如此，王璐璐还是根据自己家的真事拍摄了电影，并决心要紧贴真实。
“It was something else that was driving me, something intangible,” she said. “But it can be really hard to listen to that voice and trust yourself.”
“驱动我的，是无形的一个东西，”她说。“但听从那个声音并相信自己是很难的。”
Many of those same conflicts will come up again now that “The Farewell” is being positioned for an award-season run. Should the movie be categorized as a comedy or drama? And with its mixture of Mandarin and English, should it be defined as a foreign-language film or an American indie?
如今《别告诉她》已准备好进入这一季的评奖，许多类似的冲突再次浮出水面。影片应归类为喜剧还是故事片？混合了普通话和英语，那算不算是外语片，或是美国独立影片？
For the Golden Globes, “The Farewell” has been ruled a contender for the foreign-language film award, and the arcane rules of that competition restrict such movies from vying for the top comedy and drama trophies. The Oscars have no such stipulation, but the academy doesn’t classify Wang’s film as an international-feature contender, since it was produced in the United States.
参选金球奖时，《别告诉她》被认定为外语片，并且神秘晦涩的规则限制了影片去争取最佳喜剧和故事片奖。奥斯卡奖没有这方面的规定，但是由于电影是在美国制作，学院没有将王璐璐的影片归为国际长片竞逐者。
These rules can feel arbitrary and out of step with the realities of an increasingly global film landscape, and Wang noted that the academy had recently come under fire for rejecting Nigeria’s submission for the international-film Oscar because it contained too much English. Pointing these things out sometimes made Wang feel self-conscious: “You go, ‘Oh no, I don’t fit in!’” Still, she was happy to be part of the complicated conversation about what constitutes a foreign film, and through whose eyes.
在电影业日益全球化的背景下，这样的规定会显得随意且与现实格格不入。王璐璐说，学院最近因拒绝了尼日利亚参选奥斯卡的外语片而受到抨击，理由是它的英语内容过多。讲出这些事情有时让王璐璐感到不自在：“你会说，‘糟了，我不符合！’”尽管如此，关于外语片是由什么构成、是通过谁的眼睛来看，这样一场复杂的讨论，是她乐于去参与的。
“Until you have a real film that challenges the traditional categories and the ways of looking at things, you’re not having those conversations in a specific way,” she said.
“直到你拍了一部真正挑战传统类别和传统观念的电影之前，你不会以特定的方式进行那些对话。”她说。
A WEEK LATER, I caught up with Wang and Shuzhen at another award-season event, this one held at a trendy West Hollywood hotel. As people rushed Shuzhen for hugs and selfies, Wang gave me an important update: “Zhao,” she said, “has seen the movie.”
一周之后，我在另一个颁奖季的活动中遇到了王璐璐和淑珍，这次是在一家时髦的西好莱坞酒店。当人们涌上去和淑珍拥抱及自拍时，王璐璐给了我一个重要信息：“赵看过电影了，”她说。
Across the room, Shuzhen confirmed the news. The distributor A24 had set an intimate screening of “The Farewell” for her and her daughter, and “I was very moved,” Shuzhen said.
面对整个房间的人，淑珍证实了这件事。发行方A24为她和她女儿安排了一场《别告诉她》的私人放映，“我很感动，”淑珍说。
Her translator, Eugene Suen, leaned over to me. “She didn’t say this, but I can tell you, because I sat very close to them: They were all wiping away tears,” he said. “When I saw that, I was like, ‘O.K., I think she likes it.’”
她的翻译尤金·孙(Eugene Suen)向我靠过来。“虽然她没有说出来，但我可以告诉你，因为我坐地离她们很近：她们一直在擦眼泪，”他说。“当我看到的时候，我想，‘嗯，我觉得她是喜欢的。’”
Over the last several days, Shuzhen had taken to the awards circuit with gusto, doing countless interviews and turning up at several important soirees: At an event held by the group that votes for the Golden Globes, she had even met Robert Pattinson. Her first American trip was about to end, but now that she had fully come to understand what “The Farewell” meant to audiences, she wasn’t quite ready to say goodbye.
在过去的几天中，淑珍饶有兴趣地参与了评奖活动，接受不计其数的采访，出现在几个重要的晚宴上：在一个由金球奖投票员群体组织的活动中，她甚至遇到了罗伯特·帕丁森(Robert Pattinson)。虽然她的第一次美国之旅接近尾声，但现在她已经完全了解了《别告诉她》对于观众的意义，她还没有准备好告别。
“Honestly, I don’t want to leave,” Shuzhen said. “People here are so nice, I’m going to miss everyone.” Nearby, a man cradling a champagne glass and a Chihuahua discreetly took her picture.
“说实话，我不想离开，”淑珍说。“这里的人真的太好了，我会想念大家的。”就在附近，一个把香槟杯和一只吉娃娃揣在怀里的男人悄悄拍下一张她的照片。
What if the Oscars give Shuzhen a reason to return to this crazy city in the form of a supporting-actress nomination? I asked her if she’d be willing to make some more room in her schedule, and she blushed.
如果被提名奥斯卡最佳女配角，是否会令淑珍再次回到这座疯狂的城市？我问她会不会为此在自己的日程中预留个位置，她脸红了。
“I guess I would say I’m hoping for it, I’m longing for it,” Shuzhen said. “And if it doesn’t happen, I can just dream about it.”
“我会想说我希望有，我渴望有，”淑珍说。“如果没有，我也可以在梦里想想它。”
