《裝腔指南》P206-P208：維多利亞，逼格，荷馬

我的譯文：《維多利亞》

一個女孩在柏林的夜總會跳著舞。她是西班牙人，20來歲，美得足夠亮瞎周邊破敗的環境(她的笑靨引人微笑)。她很開心，或特別想開心。但形單影隻難免寂寞，她試著跟那個時髦的酒吧招待搭訕，可惜他不感冒。因為第二天她還要去上班，不得不離開酒吧，這時她遇到了一群可愛的柏林底層人物，領頭的是個彬彬有禮的索內人。這是《維多利亞》(2015年)的開場幾分鍾，其情節最終導致同名女主角被卷入一場武裝搶劫，並帶來毀滅性的後果。
 
敘述是狄更斯式的。就如同是《霧都孤兒》(Oliver Twist)中那個場景的延伸版，天真的主人公在倫敦遊蕩，發現他的新朋友們不是隻會玩遊戲。這般說來，這部電影似乎看沒什麽大不了。但是，當你知道它是用一個完整的鏡頭拍攝完成的——在148分鍾的拍攝時間裏，攝影師一直跟隨演員們在柏林溜達——你便會相信這裏有一些特別的東西。近來，這類“一鏡到底”的電影流行起來，在電腦成像花樣百出的時代給人一種真實的感受。但在維多利亞的故事中，它很適合正在講述的故事，並非隻是一個噱頭：試想一個女孩發現自己陷入了一段無法下車的旅程，令人眩暈的恐懼不斷疊加，直到幾乎無法忍受。這很適合導演塞巴斯蒂安·席佩爾(Sebastian Schipper)和劇組要求拍攝出的角色的冒險精神。據席佩爾說，他隻能負擔得起三次嚐試。前兩個都失敗了。“沒有備退路”，他在演員們第三次嚐試之前告訴他們必須全心投入，他催促道：“去感受，去恐懼！”這番話發揮了作用。
 
《維多利亞》是一個關於浪漫和暴力的故事，但讓它效果顯著的原因之一是，這些元素都沒有一個是明確的。被克製的浪漫隻局限在兩個人物相互愛慕的視線中。暴力也是通過暗示去體會而非直接展現出來的。在所有即興表演的氛圍中(一開始演員們的劇本隻有幾頁長)，有一個精明的幫手在起作用。完成的電影僅持續兩個多小時，但它似乎容納一生的光陰。它做到了一些大片很少能做到的事情，為你呈現你會關心的也會想念的角色。它的濃縮和簡練使它像寶石一樣珍貴，這是長篇電視劇無論有多少優點都無法做到的。它做到隻有電影才能做到的。

 

原文 P234

《How to sound cultured》-Victoria

A girl dances in a Berlin nightclub. She is Spanish, 20-something, and sufficiently pretty(her smile makes you want to smile) to light up her seedy surroundings. She’s having a good time or trying to. Alone, a little lonely, she attempts to chat up the hipster barman but he’s not interested. Then,, as she’s leaving, because she has to go to work the next day, she falls in with a group of likeable Berliner low-lifes, led by the courteous Sonne. These are the opening few miutes of Victoria(2015), whose plot eventually sees the eponymous heroine being roped into an armed robbery, with devastating consequences.

 

The narrative is Dickensian. It’s like an extended version of that scene in Oliver Twist when the naive hero, on the loose in London， realises that his new friends are doing more than playong games. And put like that, the movie may not sound so remarkable. But when you learn that it was filmed in one unbroken shot-the cameraman doggedly following the actors around Berlin for the entirely of its 148-minute running time- you may be more inclined to believe there is something special here. The ‘one shot’film has recently become trendy, promising an aura of truth in an era of CGI rckery, yet in the case of Victoria it’s more than a gimmick. It’s approapriate to the tale being told, of a girl who finds herself on a ride she can’t get off, the vertiginous fear growing until it becomes almost unbearble. And it also seems fitting that her character’s risk-taking was mirrored by the director, Sebastian Schipper, and his crew and cast. According to Schipper, he could only afford to try the experiment three times. The first two were dud. “There is no plan B”, he told his actors before their third attempt. ‘Give them your heart, ‘ he urged.  ‘Feel it. Be afraid.’ The pep talk seems to have worked.

 

Victoria is story of romance and violence, but one of the things that makes it so effective is that neigher of those elements is explicit. The romance is restrained, limited to the sight of two characters who above all seem to like each other. The violence too is understated, suggested rather than shown. For all the air of improvisation(the script the actors started with was just a few pages long), there’s a canny hand at work. The finished film barely lasts more than two hours but it seems to accommodated a lifetime. It does something that blockbusters rarely manage, presenting you with characters you care about and will miss. Its contained concentration and concision make it gemlike in a way that long-form TV drama, for all its virtues, can never be. It does things that only a film can.

 

P207：第三章

真逼格（Real Deal )

•勇氣

•韌性

•善良

•神秘感

•偏心

•身體

•獨處的能力

•缺乏自我意識

•淡泊名利

我不知道這些品質對我來說有多重要，直到我編輯了這個真逼格部分，它包含了這個星球上最酷的25件事。直到後來，我才能夠通讀我的文章條目，挑出一些共同的主題。也許可以把它們稱為“九種最酷逼格”，與通常的九種品質相比較。這一節我要摒棄公允客觀的麵具。《教父》(The Godfather)中有一個場景，邁克爾·考利昂(Michael Corleone)將自己為父親報仇的決定描述為“純粹的生意”而非“私人恩怨”。這一部分正好相反。這絕對是個人喜好。

 

PART THREE:

THE REAL DEAL

• Courage

• Tenacity

• Kindness

• Mystique

• Eccentricity

• Physicality

• A capacity for solitude

• The lack of self-consciousness

• Indifference to fame and reputation

I didn’t know that these qualities were important to me until I had compiled this Real Deal section, which consists of the 25 coolest things on the planet, in my opinion. It was only afterwards that I was able to read back through my entries and pick out some common themes. You might call them the NINE REFINING QUALITIES OF COOL, for comparison with our Nine Defining Qualities. In this section I’m abandoning my mask of objectivity. There’s a scene in The Godfather when Michael Corleone describes his decision to avenge an attempt on his father’s life as not ‘personal’ but ‘strictly business’. This section is the opposite. It’s strictly personal. 

 

P208：《荷馬》

關於詩人荷馬是誰我們其實一無所知，這是一個相對較新的發現。幾個世紀以來,史詩《伊利亞特》(關於特洛伊戰爭)和《奧德賽》(關於經曆十年戰爭的英雄奧德修斯歸來)被認為出自於一位男性盲人吟遊詩人。後來人們發現，這些詩帶有口述詩的特征，也就是說不是被寫下來的，而是根據記憶背誦來的詩。從而可以說它們可能不是由一個人創造的，而是由幾代人的一係列表演詩人創造的。這讓它們更有趣。這些詩歌加入了對觀眾評論的編輯。流行的部分保留下來並得到擴展;不好或無聊的部分將被刪除。在某種意義上，你可以說這些詩是由希臘民眾創作的。閱讀它們的體驗就像窺探古希臘人的內心。

不管我們是否接受這個過程構成了一個“突發性創造”的實例(類似於維基百科詞條的添加方式)，結果都是驚人的: 兩個完全不同但令人難忘的故事類型，由兩個完全不同但令人難忘的英雄主導。在《伊利亞特》中，阿喀琉斯是一個不願戰鬥的戰士。他因為他的長官偷了他的一些戰利品而生悶氣，其中包括一個名叫布裏塞絲的性感女奴隸。結果，特洛伊戰爭向有利於特洛伊人的方向傾斜，希臘人陷入了困境，直到有事促使阿喀琉斯重新加入戰鬥。當他歸來，他的破壞力是無以倫比的。

《奧德賽》的內容更多樣，描述了奧德修斯(一個機智的探險家和戰士)的冒險經曆，包括他遇到了吃人的獨眼巨人、不可抗拒的海妖塞壬、自滿的食蓮者等等。此外也有詩意細膩的時刻，比如，當主人公遭遇海難，精疲力竭爬上海灘，躲在灌木叢中，被比喻為火花。還有那些餘音繞梁的演說，例如，奧德修斯宣稱，沒有什麽比男女之間的真愛更美好的。真愛使他們的朋友歡欣鼓舞，使他們的敵人煩惱不已。

 

Homer

Homer is a poet about whom nothing is known. That’s a relatively new discovery. For centuries, it was thought that the epic poems The Iliad (about the Trojan War) and The Odyssey (about the decade-long struggle of the hero Odysseus to return from that war) were the work of a blind, male, wandering bard. Then it was recognised that they bore the hallmarks of oral poems, meaning ones that weren’t written down but recited from memory. That is, they were probably created not by one man, but by a series of performance poets over several generations. This makes them not less but more interesting. It seems likely they were edited in response to comments from contemporary audience members. Popular bits remained and got extended; bad or boring bits would be excised. In a sense, you could say that the poems were composed by the Greek people. The experience of reading them is like peering into the mind of Ancient Greece.

Whether or not we accept that this process constitutes an example of ‘emergent creativity’ (comparable to the way Wikipedia entries evolve), the results are phenomenal: two entirely different but unforgettable story types, dominated by two entirely different but unforgettable heroes. In The Iliad, it’s Achilles, the warrior who won’t fight. He’s sulking because his commander-in-chief stole some of his booty, including a hot slave girl named Briseis. As a consequence, the Trojan War tilts in favour of the Trojans, while the Greeks flounder, until something happens that goads Achilles to rejoin the fray. And when he does, his destructive power is awesome.

The Odyssey is more varied, describing the adventures of Odysseus (a quick-witted explorer as well as a fighter), including his encounters with the man-eating Cyclops, the irresistible Sirens, the complacent Lotus Eaters, and all the rest. There are moments of fine poetic delicacy, such as when the hero, shipwrecked and exhausted, crawls ashore on a beach and takes shelter under a bush, and is compared to a spark of fire. And speeches whose resonance hasn’t faded, as, for instance, when Odysseus declares that there is nothing finer than true love between a man and woman, which is a source of great delight to their friends, and great annoyance to their enemies.