雙語閱讀美文：失敗的翻拍之作
下面是本站小編整理的雙語閱讀美文：失敗的翻拍之作，歡迎大家閱讀。
Baz Luhrmann's 'The Great Gatsby' is a tale told idiotically, full of noise and furor, signifying next to nothing.
茲·呂爾曼(Baz Luhrmann)導演的《了不起的蓋茨比》(The Great Gatsby)是一個敘事手法愚蠢，充滿喧囂和狂躁，幾乎沒有任何意義的故事。
The production is not insipid, let's give it that. An exercise in absurdist excess, this fourth screen adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel, with Leonardo DiCaprio in the title role, means to dramatize the excesses of the Jazz Age, with hints of Weimar decadence thrown in for bad measure. But that's a banality by this late date, and it's as far as Mr. Luhrmann goes in making sense of the book. The film's only governing principle is maximalism -- everything has been made as big as possible, apart from conversational interludes, when big feelings are displayed, like bullet points, by actors striking static poses.
平心而論，這部電影並不平淡。它秉持荒誕誇張的風格，將F. 斯科特·菲茨傑拉德(F. Scott Fitzgerald)的這部同名小說第四次搬上銀幕，萊昂納多·迪卡普里奧(Leonardo DiCaprio)在片中擔任男主角。作品意在戲劇化表現爵士時代的放縱無度，還畫蛇添足地加入了一點點魏瑪式的頹廢。但現在看來這種手法未免太顯老套，而呂爾曼對原書的理解也就到此爲止。這部電影唯一的指導原則是極大主義──除了插入的對話以外，一切都被儘可能誇大，演員擺出的靜態姿勢表達出了強烈的感覺，就像提示要點一樣。
For a while the sheer scale of the thing keeps you engaged, if not agog. (I watched through 3-D glasses that weren't worth the bother.) Gatsby's mansion is a cross between Neuschwanstein Castle and what San Simeon might have been if Hearst had been more gregarious; partygoers swarm like cicadas, and make as much of a racket. A road trip between Long Island and Manhattan takes on the thunderous intensity of a Grand Prix; the mere arrival of Gatsby's gorgeous yellow Duesenberg in Nick Carraway's driveway is enough to set teacups rattling on a kitchen shelf. (Nick, the novel's narrator and aspiring writer, is played by Tobey Maguire.) Fitzgerald's valley of ashes, a desolate strip half way between West Egg and New York City, has become an expressionist Hades where doomed workers slave away on giant slag heaps. (That's as close as the movie comes to the author's complex attitude toward American capitalism.)
這種誇大的表現手法即使不能讓你興奮，也會讓你在一段時間內保持投入。(我是戴着3D眼鏡看的，但其實不值得戴它看。)蓋茨比的宅邸介於新天鵝堡(Neuschwanstein Castle)和聖西蒙(San Simeon)的赫式古堡(Hearst Castle，如果它的主人赫斯特(Hearst)將它打造得更適合舉辦派對的話就更爲接近了)之間;派對客人像蟬一樣簇擁成羣，盡情享樂。長島(Long Island)和曼哈頓(Manhattan)之間的公路上充斥着國際汽車大獎賽般的雷鳴轟響;蓋茨比華麗的黃色杜森博格(Duesenberg)駛入尼克·卡拉韋(Nick Carraway)的車道的聲音就足以讓櫥架上的茶杯喀喀作響。(尼克是這部小說的敘述者，他是一位有抱負的作家，由託比·馬圭爾(Tobey Maguire)扮演。)菲茨傑拉德描繪的位於西卵(West Egg)和紐約中間的名爲“灰燼谷”的荒涼地帶，成了一個表現主義的地獄，命運悲慘的工人在那裏的巨型礦渣堆上埋頭苦幹。(這是電影最貼近地反映出作者對美國資本主義的複雜態度的地方。)
The artistic elephantiasis takes many forms. When young James Gatz, who hasn't yet transformed himself into Jay Gatsby, first encounters his benefactor-to-be, Dan Cody, he doesn't just row a borrowed rowboat out to Cody's yacht on Lake Superior, as in the book; Gatz saves Cody and his vessel from incipient calamity during a storm of sufficient ferocity to scuttle the Titanic. And when the camera first catches sight of the fully formed Gatsby, presiding like a god over one of his parties, fireworks fill the summer sky behind him and a symphony orchestra summons up the majestic strains of 'Rhapsody in Blue.'
該片表現出了多種形式的藝術誇大症。在年輕的詹姆斯·蓋茨(James Gatz)還沒有變身爲傑伊·蓋茨比(Jay Gatsby)時，當他第一次遇到了他未來的恩人丹·科迪(Dan Cody)時，他沒有像書中那樣，只是划着一艘借來的船趕往蘇必利爾湖(Lake Superior)上科迪的遊艇，而是在一場足以掀翻“泰坦尼克號”的風暴中，將科迪和他的船從危難邊緣救了回來。當鏡頭第一次捕捉到完全成形的蓋茨比的樣子時，他正像一位備受推崇的偶像一般主持着一個派對，煙花綻滿他身後的夏夜天空，一個交響樂團演奏着《藍色狂想曲》(Rhapsody in Blue)的宏偉樂章。
It's a moment that makes you smile, even if you recall that Woody Allen used Gershwin's anthem, and fireworks, to far greater effect in the preface of 'Manhattan.' There's something touching -- again, for a while -- in the filmmaker's desire to please, in his fevered efforts to define a time in American history by the way it looks. (He's so eager to cram in pieces of period detail that one camera pullback reveals high-steel workers constructing a skyscraper, even though it's the middle of the night.) But many of the borrowings -- from Busby Berkeley, from 'The Crowd, ' from 'Citizen Kane' -- begin to ring hollow, especially because Mr. Luhrmann borrows, well beyond the point of self-parody, from the same bag of tricks he opened up more than a decade ago in 'Moulin Rouge!'
這是一個讓人莞爾的時刻，即使你想起了伍迪·艾倫(Woody Allen)曾在《曼哈頓》(Manhattan)的序幕中用格什溫(Gershwin)的這首曲子和焰火製造出了宏大得多的效果。同樣，偶爾也有令人感動的時刻──在導演希望取悅觀衆的時候，在他竭盡全力原汁原味地呈現美國曆史中某個時刻的時候。(他是如此渴望在片中填入某個歷史時期特有的細節，片中有一個鏡頭拉回顯露出了正在建造摩天大樓的高架鋼鐵工人，儘管那時已是午夜時分。)但許多借鑑──從巴斯比·伯克利(Busby Berkeley)那裏、從《羣衆》(The Crowd)那裏、從《公民凱恩》(Citizen Kane)那裏──開始顯得空洞，尤其是因爲呂爾曼的借鑑遠遠超出了自我諧擬的範圍，他運用的技巧和10多年前他在《紅磨坊》(Moulin Rouge)中所用的一模一樣!
The problem isn't those tricks per se. When the camera swoops and darts ecstatically, or in this case plummets into Manhattan's stone canyons, the effect can be impressive, never mind that Spider-Man has claimed such aerobatics for his own. One fleeting but striking image is that of an apartment building, with each window expanding or contracting, like a window on the screen of a giant computer, as it frames a half-seen life.
問題不在於這些技巧本身。當鏡頭令人心醉神迷地俯衝和急馳時，或者在這個情景中驟降至曼哈頓的石頭峽谷中時，特效是可以令人印象深刻的，即便蜘蛛俠已經將這種特技飛行當作了自己的招牌動作。影片中有一幅短暫但富有衝擊力的景象：一棟公寓樓的每扇窗戶都在擴大或縮小，就像一臺巨型電腦屏幕上的窗口一樣，勾勒出若隱若現的生活百態。
Nor is the music problematic, notwithstanding the film's much-hyped use of hip-hop, or the presence of the rapper Jay-Z as one of the producers. In fact, the hip-hop is used judiciously; it kicks in mainly during party scenes, when there's monstrous pounding from other sources, and it's no more intrusive than all the other efforts to heighten the story's reality. (The screenplay is credited to Mr. Luhrmann and Craig Pearce. Catherine Martin designed the lustrous production and the stunning costumes. Simon Duggan did the cinematography, which seemed of variable quality at the studio screening I attended.)
音樂也沒有問題，儘管電影大肆宣傳對說唱音樂的運用，而且說唱歌手Jay-Z出現在了製片人名單上。事實上，說唱音樂使用得很明智。它主要出現在派對場景中，那裏原本就有震耳欲聾的噪音，因此它並不比其他旨在強化故事現實性的努力更突兀。(本片編劇是呂爾曼和克雷格·皮爾斯(Craig Pearce)。凱瑟琳·馬丁(Catherine Martin)設計了輝煌的場景和令人驚豔的服裝。西蒙·達根(Simon Duggan)負責攝影，在我參加的製片廠試映中，攝影質量似乎不太穩定。)
What's intractably wrong with the film is that there's no reality to heighten; it's a spectacle in search of a soul. For all of its glittery fragmentation, 'Moulin Rouge!' came around to moments of genuine passion. None of these new trappings means a thing because the people who populate them are stylish sticks, unsinged by the spark of life.
這部電影的痼疾在於，其實沒有什麼地方需要強化現實性的;所以它成了一具尋找靈魂的華麗軀殼。《紅磨坊》所有的閃光片段都圍繞着真情迸發的時刻。而本片中所有這些新服飾都沒有意義，因爲穿戴者就像時尚木偶一樣，絲毫沒有烙上生命的火花。
That's almost surely not the fault of the actors, for the director turns them into lifelike props. Mr. DiCaprio, who's no more comfortable with the phrase 'old sport' than Robert Redford was in the previous version, is elaborately sincere when he isn't frowning like Jack Nicholson; being charming like, well, Leonardo DiCaprio, or being mysterious, except that people who are genuinely mysterious don't look mysterious. Carey Mulligan's Daisy is either languorous or amorous, not a lot in between. Mr. Maguire's Nick is cheerlessly impressionable. Joel Edgerton's Tom is charmlessly brutish. Elizabeth Debicki's Jordan Baker is a flouncing cipher. And Mr. Luhrmann uses Amitabh Bachchan, a legendary star in his native India, to make the Jewish gangster Meyer Wolfshiem a leering Fagin.
幾乎可以肯定，這不是演員的錯，因爲是導演把他們變成了有生命的道具。迪卡普里奧說“老兄”這個詞時並不比之前版本中的羅伯特·雷德福(Robert Redford)說得更順嘴，當他不像傑克·尼科爾森(Jack Nicholson)一樣皺眉，而是像──呃──萊昂納多·迪卡普里奧一樣迷人，或者顯得神祕時，他是在努力表現得真誠，只可惜真正神祕的人看上去並不神祕。凱麗·馬利根(Carey Mulligan)扮演的黛西(Daisy)要麼無精打采，要麼極度熱情，很少能拿捏適中。馬圭爾扮演的尼克敏感而無趣。喬爾·埃傑頓(Joel Edgerton)扮演的湯姆(Tom)殘酷而毫無魅力。伊麗莎白·德比齊(Elizabeth Debick)扮演的喬丹·貝克(Jordan Baker)是個可有可無的花瓶。呂爾曼還起用了印度的傳奇明星阿米塔布·巴沙坎(Amitabh Bachchan)，他將猶太黑幫分子邁耶·沃爾夫山姆(Meyer Wolfshiem)塑造成了一個色迷迷的教唆犯。
Given the lifelessness of the enterprise, there's little point in belaboring its failure to convey the novel's themes, let alone the emotional and social resonance of what has come to be considered a masterpiece of world literature. Although the hero created himself out of the whole cloth of romantic yearning, we see almost nothing of that self-creation, only the conflicted result. Although the Nick of the novel arrives at a new and tragic understanding of the American Dream, the Nick on screen can't be more than an earnest observer, since any vestige of the story's tragic sense has been replaced by melodramatic sadness.
鑑於這部電影的創意如此缺乏活力，抨擊它沒能傳達小說的主題沒有什麼意義，更不用說傳達被譽爲世界文學傑作的原作引起的情感與社會共鳴了。儘管主人公因爲思慕之情而創造出了一個全新的自我，但我們看不到這種自我創造，只有矛盾的結果。儘管小說中的尼克對美國夢有了新的悲劇性理解，但銀幕上的尼克不過是一個認真的觀察者，因爲故事中任何殘留的悲劇感已經被誇張的悲傷所取代。
This dreadful film even derogates the artistry of Fitzgerald, who wrote 'The Great Gatsby' while living on Long Island and in Europe. In a deviation from the book that amounts to a calumny against literary history, Nick, the author's surrogate, is discovered in a psychiatric hospital where, as an aging alcoholic, he struggles to comprehend the vanished figure at the center of the long-ago story, and finally completes his treatment by writing the novel. It's literature as therapy, and Gatsby as Rosebud.
這部可怕的電影甚至歪曲了菲茨傑拉德的藝術創作生涯。菲茨傑拉德是住在長島和歐洲時寫成了《了不起的蓋茨比》。而在影片當中，在一處對原書的偏離中──這相當於對文學史的污衊──作者的代言人尼克成了一個住在精神病院中的老酒鬼，他努力去理解那個已然逝去的很久以前的故事中的主人公，最後通過寫小說完成了治療。文學成了藥方，而蓋茨比成了“玫瑰花蕾”。
