《飢餓遊戲》從來就不是反戰片

There’s a clever bit in the latest “Hunger Games” in which Katniss Everdeen, the boundary-smashing butch goddess of dystopian cinema, acts in a propaganda video. The idea is for Katniss, who’s both the spark of a revolution and its flinty strength, to rouse the masses with a heroic scene. Slicked up in lipstick and a Joan of Arc breastplate, she delivers her lines — “with energy,” the video director hopefully instructs her — but the scene needs tweaks. Eventually, they get it right, and the video ends with a call to “join the fight,” an exhortation that’s clearly addressed to more than one audience. It’s a funny, self-aware moment, given how extreme the stakes have become in this fascinating and strange pop epic.

在反烏托邦電影《飢餓遊戲》(Hunger Games)的最新一部裏，有個很聰明的片段，片中打破邊界的男性氣質女神凱特尼斯·伊夫狄恩(Katniss Everdeen)出演一個政治宣傳錄像。凱特尼斯是革命的火種與發起革命的力量，宣傳錄像的創意是讓她用英雄氣概來激發民衆。她塗上口紅，穿上聖女貞德式的鎧甲，說出自己的臺詞——“帶點活力”，錄像的導演滿懷希望地提示她——但這一幕還需要稍作調整。最後，他們拍好了，錄像在結尾處號召大家“來戰鬥”，這番演講顯然針對的不止一個人。由於這部精彩奇異的流行史詩片中，情節已經變得非常激烈，這場戲就顯得更有趣，是個很有自我意識的時刻。

Each “Hunger Games” movie makes so much noise — it’s where the deafening clamor of commerce meets the roar of true fan love — that it’s a wonder you can detect the human heartbeat under the tumult. But it’s there, thumping and sometimes racing in a franchise that, more than most industrial movies and even putative indies, speaks to both its audience and its time. There’s heart in the vague yet stirring liberation story that comes to the fore in this chapter and that’s echoed in real-life struggles around the world. And it’s there, of course, in Katniss, the backwoods savior who, as played with guileless appeal by Jennifer Lawrence, is mounting an attack on the forces of oppression.

每一部《飢餓遊戲》上映時都很喧鬧——震耳欲聾的商業炒作再加上粉絲的狂熱真愛——然而在衆聲喧譁中，你還能捕捉到人類的心跳，這簡直就是個奇蹟。但它就在那兒，在這部商業大片裏砰砰跳動着，有時還很激烈，和大多數業內電影相比，甚至和所謂的獨立電影相比，這部影片向觀衆與時代同時發出自己的聲音。這個模糊卻令人不安的故事關乎自由，有着自己的核心。系列進行到這一部，這個核心開始浮現出來，與現實世界中的真實鬥爭相呼應。凱特尼斯由富於狡黠魅力的詹妮弗·勞倫斯(Jennifer Lawrence)飾演，這個來自邊遠地區的救世主自然也在這一部中開始同壓迫勢力作戰。

These forces include anyone who has ever doubted the appeal of female-driven stories, which, considering that 85 percent of the top-grossing movies from 2013 have male leads, means most of the people making films. But there’s more here than gender equality. Last year, the second installment, “The Hunger Games: Catching Fire,” topped the year’s box office. It’s easy to see why. “Mockingjay Part 1” returns to the series backdrop: a totalitarian country — Panem, a stand-in for any number of nations — that rose from the ashes of a postapocalyptic North America. Katniss has surmounted her station as a slave by emerging victorious from the annual gladiatorial games that pit (usually child) combatants against one another. Her very survival has made her an existential threat to Panem.

這些壓迫之中，也包括那些不相信女性爲主的故事可以吸引觀衆的人們。要知道，2013年，85%的賣座電影都是由男性主導的，也就是說，大多數電影都是以男性主導的。但還有比性別平等更重要的東西。去年，《飢餓遊戲》的第二部，《飢餓遊戲：星火燎原》(The Hunger Games: Catching Fire)奪得了年度票房冠軍。原因顯而易見。目前這部《飢餓遊戲：嘲笑鳥（上）》(Mockingjay Part 1)迴歸了這個系列的背景：從末日後的北美廢墟上建立起的集權國家施惠國(Panem)，它是很多國家的象徵。凱特尼斯戰勝了自己的奴隸身份，在一年一度的參賽者（通常是孩子）自相殘殺的遊戲中取勝。她的生還令她成爲對施惠國的重大威脅。

The “Hunger Games” books and movies have always invited different readings, including as an allegory for the agonies of adolescence, but on screen, those interpretations have receded as the series has unfolded, and the story’s focus has sharpened. When the curtain rises on the third movie (the full, unwieldy title is “The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1”), the games are over, and the subject of the series — war — has been revealed. Though, of course, it’s been there all along, as Amy Davidson wrote in The New Yorker on the eve of the first movie’s release in 2012: “America has been at war for a decade now; is it really a coincidence that the biggest movie of the year is the first in a trilogy in which torture, terror, asymmetric warfare and the manipulation of public opinion all play a role?”

《飢餓遊戲》的小說與電影總會帶來不同解讀，有些人認爲它是青春期痛苦的寓言。但在電影銀幕上，隨着系列慢慢展開，故事的焦點日益清晰，其他解讀也就漸漸黯然失色了。當第三部電影的帷幕拉開時，“飢餓遊戲”已經告終，系列故事的真正主題——戰爭——浮現出來。當然，這個問題一直存在，正如艾米·戴維森(Amy Davidson)在該系列第一部於2012年上映前夕在《紐約客》上寫的那樣，“到如今美國已經打了十年的戰爭；今年最受歡迎的電影只是三部曲中的第一部，而整個三部曲恰巧是關於折磨、恐怖、不對等的戰爭與操縱民意的，這真的是一種巧合嗎？”

More than two years later, the off-screen battlegrounds have shifted, but Ms. Davidson’s take remains as valid as ever. And “Mockingjay Part 1” is indisputably a war movie, from tearful start to unsettling end. Its director is Francis Lawrence, who did the honors in the second one, and he does a serviceable job again of pulling the parts together. If you haven’t seen the earlier movies, you may get a little lost; it doesn’t matter. If you’ve watched them and forgotten certain details, it also doesn’t matter. “Mockingjay Part 1” is streamlined, blunt and easy. The Capitol, the base of Panem power, is after Katniss, who is squirreled away in a part of the country, District 13, once thought to have been destroyed. Led by President Alma Coin (Julianne Moore, equal parts iron and silk), District 13 is now leading the charge against the Capitol.

過了兩年多以後，屏幕之外的戰爭開始改變，但是戴維森的話仍然生效。毋庸置疑，《嘲笑鳥（上）》是一部戰爭電影，從悲哀的開頭到令人不安的結尾都是如此。導演弗朗西斯·勞倫斯(Francis Lawrence)也拍了該系列的第二部，在新片中，他再度盡職地把各個部分連在一起。如果你沒看過早先的兩部電影，看這部電影時可能會覺得有點糊塗，不過這沒關係。如果你看過，但是忘記了細節，這也沒有關係。《嘲笑鳥（上）》流暢、直率而輕鬆。施惠國的權力部門是“國會”，它正在追捕凱特尼斯，而凱特尼斯則逃到這個國家的另一個部分：13區，這裏曾經被認爲已遭摧毀，目前由艾爾瑪·科恩總統（茱莉安·摩爾[Julianne Moore]飾演，既鐵腕又溫柔）率領，是反抗國會的主要力量。

One of the pleasures of big-ticket blockbusters is that the smart ones (Harry Potter, most obviously) often come stuffed with the best acting talent money can buy. The script for “Mockingjay Part 1,” credited to Peter Craig and Danny Strong, gets the job done, but the performers matter far more than the words they deliver. When Ms. Moore sits around a table with Jeffrey Wright (as Beetee, a tech whiz) and Philip Seymour Hoffman (Plutarch, a strategist), you’re both watching a scene and seeing how great actors can give emotional and psychological specificity to blather about the art of war and the fate of a people. Hoffman, who looked so uncomfortable in “Catching Fire,” is here loose, funny and stingingly real.

觀看票房大片的樂趣之一在於，那些聰明的大片（最明顯的就是《哈利·波特》[Harry Potter]）當中，經常充滿高薪能夠聘請到的最傑出的演員。《嘲笑鳥（上）》的劇本由彼得·克萊格(Peter Craig)和丹尼·斯特朗(Danny Strong)撰寫，他們寫得不錯，但演員的發揮比臺詞更精彩。摩爾坐在桌邊，身邊是傑弗裏·懷特（Jeffrey Wright，飾演技術天才比提），以及菲利普·塞默·霍夫曼（Philip Seymour Hoffman，飾演戰略家普魯塔克），你既能看到一場精彩的戲，也能看到優秀的演員是怎樣爲那些關於戰爭藝術與人類命運的胡說八道賦予情感和心理上的特質。霍夫曼在上一部《星火燎原》(Catching Fire)中顯得很不自在，到了這裏就顯得放鬆、有趣而且極爲真實。

There are a fair number of those war room scenes, which makes the movie feel far more claustrophobic than its antecedents. To an extent, since the rebel leaders are strategizing from a bunker, the sense of entrapment works for the story, as do the physical limitations presented by District 13, which is underground and organized around a dimly lit, multilevel atrium that looks like a repurposed silo. Yet you grow antsy in District 13, both because it’s such a dreary militarized world — created for maximum defensiveness, and that’s it — and because it locks up Katniss, who was made to roam. It’s a relief when she steps outside, even to go hunting with her best friend, Gale (Liam Hemsworth), whose moony, lovesick shtick has become a drag.

這種戰略室裏的戲有好幾場，使得這部電影和前作比起來多了幾分幽閉恐怖的氣息。在某種程度上，這也是由於叛軍領袖是從一個燃料庫開始推行戰略的，在故事中有陷阱的感覺；而13區又位於地下，圍繞着光線昏暗的多層天井，看上去很像核武器的發射井，使人覺得身體受到限制。置身13區，你會感到愈來愈不安，因爲它是一個陰沉的軍事化世界——有嚴密的防禦——而且也因爲它困住了天生自由自在的凱特尼斯。當她走出這個世界，甚至只是和她最好的朋友蓋爾（利亞姆·海姆斯沃斯[Liam Hemsworth]飾）去打獵，都會令人鬆一口氣。另外，蓋爾憂鬱、害相思病的氣質已經成了累贅。

The war scenes are more of a relief — stuff blows up, etc. — which is complicated. François Truffaut is said to have observed that there’s no such thing as an antiwar movie because all war movies make combat look fun, which isn’t true, even if many turn death into easy-to-consume spectacles. “The Hunger Games” has never been antiwar, and while some object to a fiction in which adults send children to slaughter one another, what’s truly appalling is that this isn’t a grotesque fantasy but a bitter truth of human civilization. The scene in the first movie of combatants racing into the start of the games to kill and die is shocking only because it acknowledges that truth.

戰爭場面更是讓人鬆了一口氣——充滿爆炸等場面——它很複雜。據說弗朗索瓦·特呂弗(François Truffaut)曾經說過，根本就沒有“反戰電影”這種東西，因爲任何戰爭片都會讓打鬥看起來很有意思，但這不是真的，甚至有很多電影會把死亡變成可以輕鬆消費的奇觀。《飢餓遊戲》從來就不是反戰的，儘管有人討厭一部講述成年人讓孩子自相殘殺的小說，但令人震驚的是，它並不是一個怪誕的幻想，更像是人類文明的苦澀真相。第一部電影中，參賽者從遊戲一開始就自相殘殺，有人殺戮，有人死去，這一幕非常驚人，只是因爲它說出了真相。

That shock lingered, but the ugliness of those deaths was mitigated by Katniss, whose very individuality, her grit, roughness and decency, serve as a rebuke to the Capitol. In her struggle to keep herself alive along with her other love interest, the insufferably dull Peeta (Josh Hutcherson, still miscast!), Katniss personalizes — humanizes — the fight. That humanity is crucial to her evolution as a classic charismatic revolutionary hero. She’s the one who embodies, articulates and justifies the battle and breaks collective chains, even as she’s being folded into District 13’s militaristic operation. Plutarch and the rest of the rebel leaders understand that, but when they make that first propaganda video, they get it wrong because, by writing the script for her, they also silence her.

這種震驚縈繞不去，但死亡的醜陋被凱特尼斯的個人氣質緩解了，她堅毅、強悍，正直，就像是對國會的一種斥責。她和另一個喜歡她的人，乏味至極的皮塔（喬什·哈切森[Josh Hutcheerson]飾演，他到現在還沒適應角色！）一起，爲生存而戰鬥，在這個過程中，她令鬥爭變得個人化——變得人性化了。她漸漸成長爲一個富於古典個人魅力的革命英雄，在這個過程中，人性非常關鍵。她是這場戰鬥的象徵，闡明瞭它的意義，令它正當化，她打破了集體主義的枷鎖，甚至當她被困在13區的軍國主義制度中時也是如此。普魯塔克和其他叛軍領袖都能理解她，但當他們拍攝第一部宣傳錄像時，他們就錯了，因爲他們要給她寫臺詞，這同時也是在壓制她的聲音。

“Mockingjay Part 1” doesn’t silence Katniss, but in some respects, it sidelines her. She still has plenty to say and do, though not enough, partly because, in chopping the last book into two movies (“Part 2” lands next year) and by embracing the blockbuster imperative — big bangs and action — the filmmakers lose sight of her. That’s most evident with a rescue that Katniss doesn’t physically participate in. The rescue happens midway through the final book, but it’s been turned into the movie’s culminating set piece, one that Katniss — like you — witnesses unfold on screen. It’s perfectly watchable in a generic, action-flick way. Yet as Katniss Everdeen stands gaping at the rescue, with widening and watering eyes, it’s hard not to feel that for the first time in this series, the filmmakers are treating her just like, well, the girl.

《嘲笑鳥（上）》並沒有壓制凱特尼斯的聲音，但在某些方面令她有些弱化。她仍然有很多東西可以說、可以做，但還不夠充分，部分是因爲，電影把小說系列的最後一本書拆成了兩部影片（《嘲笑鳥（下）》將在明年上映），而且片中還有不少流行大片元素，比如大爆炸和動作戲——拍片人沒有重點關注她。特別是一段凱特尼斯沒有親身參與的營救戲。在小說中，這場營救發生在中段，但它卻成了這部電影的高潮，凱特尼斯和你一樣，旁觀着這場戲在銀幕上展開。如果你把影片當成動作類型片，那麼這一幕很精彩，但當凱特尼斯·伊夫狄恩站在一邊，眼淚汪汪地看着這場營救的時候，人們不禁會感覺拍片人只是把她當做一個普通女孩，這種感覺在這個系列中還是第一次出現。

“The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1” is rated PG-13 (Parents strongly cautioned). War violence and torture.

《飢餓遊戲：嘲笑鳥（上）》被標記爲PG-13級（強烈建議家長指導觀看）。有戰爭暴力和折磨。