新片上映：《为奴十二年》

新片上映：《为奴十二年》 外刊时文--New film: "12 Years A Slave" 新片 上映:《为奴十二年》 New film: "12 Years A Slave" 新片上映:《为奴十二年》 Jan 9th 2014 / the Economist EARLY in Steve McQueen’s “12 Years A Slave”, a Louisiana plantation-owner returns home with the two slaves he’s just bought, a man and a woman. Waiting on the veranda, his genteel wife notices that the woman is crying, and asks why. “Separated from her children,” sighs the husband, not unsympathetically. “Can’t be helped.” 在史蒂夫•麦奎因执导的电影《为奴十二年》开头,有位路易斯安那的种植园主 带着他刚买的一男一女两个黑奴回家。他温文尔雅的妻子等在阳台上,看到那个 女奴在哭泣,就问为什么。“她和孩子分开了,”做丈夫的叹了口气,不无同情地 说,“没办法。” Those last three words are the key to Mr McQueen’s devastating film, in that they, like so many other sequences, present slavery as the norm: long-established, legal and legitimized by scripture. To its mid-19th-century characters, there’s nothing unusual about keeping human beings as property, and no way that the institution can be changed. In the preceding scene, a jovial slave-trader (Paul Giamatti) is showing customers his wares. “This is a nigger of considerable talent,” he remarks, but there’s nothing in the way the line is spoken to suggest that anyone in the shop might be shocked. The trader sees his terrified, naked merchandise as no different from any other commodity. 这三个字成为麦奎因这部令人震惊的电影的关键词,像许多镜头表现的那样,人 们把奴隶制视为常态,由来已久、合乎法律、天经地义。对于本片19世纪中期 的角色来说,把人作为财产是很平常的事,没有办法改变这种 制度 关于办公室下班关闭电源制度矿山事故隐患举报和奖励制度制度下载人事管理制度doc盘点制度下载 。在前面的场 景中,有个快活的奴隶贩子,保罗•吉亚玛提饰演,向主顾展示他的货品。他说, “这是个很有才华的黑鬼,”可是这里没有台词暗示店里的人可能受到惊吓。在奴 隶贩子看来,赤裸受惊的黑奴和其他货色没什么不同。 In another astonishing scene, the hero, Solomon Northup (Chiwetel Ejiofor, pictured), is hanged from a tree by a noose. For an agonizingly long time, he gulps for air, his feet only just touching the muddy ground. But Mr. McQueen doesn’t ratchet up the tension with dramatic music or exploitative close-ups. He simply lets the ordeal carry on and on, while in the background, servants go about their business and children play. It’s not until the film is almost over that a Canadian laborer articulates the notion that slavery might be wrong. In the meantime, even Northup accepts that it’s a fact of life. His only complaint is that it shouldn’t be a fact of his life. 在另一幕惊人的场景中,主人公所罗门•诺瑟普,切瓦特•埃加福特饰演,如图, 被绞索吊在树上。在令人痛苦的漫长折磨中,他大口喘着粗气,脚尖刚刚碰到泥 泞的地面。但是麦奎因并没有用激动人心的音乐或突出的特写镜头加剧紧张的气 氛。他只是让这种残酷的折磨继续下去,在镜头的背景中,仆人干着自己的活儿, 孩子们嬉戏玩耍。这种情形持续到影片即将结束,加拿大工人阐述奴隶制可能是 错误的概念。与此同时,就连诺瑟普都认为,这是生活的现实。他唯一的抱怨是, 这不该是他生活的现实。 Northup, upon whose memoir the film is based, begins the narrative as a free man. In 1841, he’s living as a respected, middle-class violinist with his wife and two children in Saratoga, New York. But after an elegant evening’s dining in Washington DC, he is kidnapped. He wakes to find himself chained up in a cell and informed that he’s a “runaway nigger” from Georgia. When he objects, his jailer whips him viciously. Another prisoner then advises him that his only chance of survival is to keep quiet about his true identity. 在这本根据同名回忆录改编的电影中,诺瑟普作为自由人开始了他的讲述。1841 年,他是位受人尊敬的中产阶级小提琴家,与他的妻子和两个孩子生活在纽约州 萨拉托加。但是在华盛顿特区享用了精美的晚餐后,他遭到了绑架。当他醒来时, 发现自己锁在囚室里,被告知他是从佐治亚州“逃跑的黑鬼”。他竭力反抗,却遭 到了狱卒的狠毒鞭打。另一名囚犯劝告他,他唯一生存的机会就是对自己的真实 身份保持沉默。 And so Northup is transported beyond the Mason-Dixon Line to a nightmarish new existence where he has no choice but to pick cotton, cut sugar cane and bide his time. His first owner treats him kindly—but he still treats him as a possession. His next owner seems to have some cloudy comprehension of the insanity of slavery, but he would rather blot out that comprehension with alcohol and fevered sadism than face it. 因此,诺瑟普被运往梅森 - 狄克逊线以南,到达噩梦般的新世界,他别无选择, 只能摘棉花、砍甘蔗和等待时机。他的第一个主人待他态度和蔼——尽管他依然 把诺瑟普当做自己的财产。他的下一个主人似乎对奴隶制的残暴有模糊的意识, 但是他宁愿用酒精和狂热的虐待来遮掩这种意识,而不是直接面对。 Mr McQueen, the black British director of “Hunger” and “Shame”, and John Ridley, his African-American screenwriter, tell an extraordinary story of endurance, guile and hope, a story which could easily have inspired a conventional Hollywood melodrama. But they avoid all the shortcuts and clichés which a typical, issue-based film might have employed. There are no grandiloquent speeches to hammer home the message, and no captions or voice-overs to fill in the historical context. The performances are breathtaking, but they’re subtle and complex enough not to demand the viewer’s love or hatred. And, as horrific as the gory violence is, Mr McQueen doesn’t revel in it. 执导过电影《饥饿》和《羞耻》的英国黑人导演麦奎因和非洲裔美国编剧约翰• 雷利讲述了忍耐、狡猾和希望的精彩故事,这个故事原本很容易落入传统好莱坞 通俗剧的俗套。但是他们没有走捷径,也没有效仿典型事件电影可能采用的陈词 滥调。本片没有用慷慨激昂的演说向观众传递信息,没有用字幕或配音代替历史 背景。演员的演技令人惊叹,但是他们的表演含蓄丰富,并不想唤起观众的爱或 仇恨。血腥的暴力镜头极为可怕,但是麦奎因并不沉浸于这种场景。 Despite having won the Turner prize for his work as a video artist, he never lets the cinematography or editing draw attention to itself. Perhaps inspired by Hannah Arendt’s concept of “the banality of evil”, he prefers to take the viewer back in time to a period when slavery was mundane; he recreates its day-to-day practicalities and its offhand brutalities; and he leaves it to us to decide how to react. It’s unlikely that a more accomplished, mature or crushingly powerful film will be released in 2014. 作为影像艺术家,麦奎因凭借他的作品荣获过特纳奖,然而他从来没有通过电影 艺术或镜头剪辑来吸引观众注意本片。也许他的创作灵感来自汉娜•阿伦特“平庸 之恶”的概念,他更喜欢让观众重新回顾奴隶制平淡无奇的那个年代,他再现了 奴隶制的日常实际和残酷暴行,他让我们自己决定如何反应。在2014年即将上 映的电影中,不可能有比《为奴十二年》更出色、更成熟、更打动人心的影片。