《星際穿越》 如果愛能穿越時空

Most Hollywood movies are about romantic love, or at least sex. But Christopher Nolan’s epic movie “Interstellar” has almost no couples, so you don’t get the charged romance you have in normal movies where a man and a woman are off saving the world.

大多數好萊塢電影講的都是愛情，至少是性。然而克里斯托弗·諾蘭(Christopher Nolan)的史詩電影《星際穿越》(Interstellar)卻幾乎沒有情侶，所以觀衆不會感受到普通的電影裏那種感情充沛的浪漫氛圍，也沒有普通電影裏一對男女勇往直前拯救世界的情節。

Instead, there are the slightly different kinds of love, from generation to generation, and across time and space.

取而代之的是，劇中展示了一種不大一樣的愛，是上一代與下一代之間，穿越時間和空間的愛。

The movie starts on a farm, and you see a grandfather’s love for his grandkids and the children’s love for their father. (Mom had died sometime earlier).

情節從一個農場開始，你能看到祖父對孫輩的愛，也能看到孩子對父親的愛（母親此前已經去世）。

The planet is hit by an environmental catastrophe, and, in that crisis, lives are torn apart. The father, played by Matthew McConaughey, goes off into space to find a replacement planet where humanity might survive. The movie is propelled by the angry love of his abandoned daughter, who loves and rages at him for leaving, decade after decade.

地球遭受了環境災難，而在這場危機中，人們的生活都被撕裂了。馬修·麥康納(Matthew McConaughey)飾演的父親飛向太空，試圖尋找一個替代行星，來讓人類存活下去。被他丟下的女兒心中憤怒的愛推動了劇情的發展，十年又十年，她愛着父親，又因爲父親的離去而怒不可遏。

On top of that, there is an even more attenuated love. It’s the love humans have for their ancestors and the love they have for the unborn. In the movie, 12 apostles go out alone into space to look for habitable planets. They are sacrificing their lives so that canisters of frozen embryos can be born again in some place far away.

除此之外，還有一種更含蓄的愛。那就是人類對祖先的愛，以及對尚未出生的後代的愛。在電影中，12門徒各自走向太空，尋找適宜居住的行星。他們爲了讓罐中冷凍的那些胚胎能在一個遙遠的地方出生，願意犧牲自己的生命。

Nolan wants us to see the magnetic force of these attachments: The way attachments can exert a gravitational pull on people who are separated by vast distances or even by death. Their attention is riveted by the beloved. They hunger for reunion.

諾蘭希望我們看到這些牽掛所具有的磁力。即使人們相隔遙遠，甚至陰陽兩隔，這種牽掛仍然能產生萬有引力一般的牽引作用。他們的注意力始終凝聚在摯愛親人身上。他們渴盼重逢。

When the McConaughey character goes into space he leaves behind the rules of everyday earthly life and enters the realm of quantum mechanics and relativity. Gravity becomes variable. It’s different on different planets. Space bends in on itself. The astronauts fly through a wormhole, a fold in the universe connecting one piece of space with another distant piece.

麥康納的角色進入太空時，丟掉了地球日常生活的規則，進入了由量子物理和相對論統治的領域。重力開始變化，在不同的行星上不盡相同。空間自身發生扭曲，宇航員穿越蟲洞，它是宇宙中的褶皺，將一塊空間與另一塊空間相連。

Most important, time changes speed. McConaughey is off to places where time is moving much more slowly than it is on Earth, so he ends up younger than his daughter. Once in the place of an ancestor, he becomes, effectively, her descendant.

最重要的是，時間還會改變速度。在麥康納飛去的空間，時間的行進比地球上慢得多，所以最後他比女兒還要年輕。本來他是一位前輩，卻基本上成了女兒的後人。

These plotlines are generally based on real science. The physicist Kip Thorne has a book out, “The Science of Interstellar,” explaining it all. But what matters in the movie is the way science and emotion (and a really loud score) mingle to create a powerful mystical atmosphere.

這些情節大體上基於真實的科學原理。物理學家基普·索恩(Kip Thorne)出版了一本書《星際穿越背後的科學》(The Science of Interstellar)，解釋了所有科學原理。然而這部電影中最重要的特點是，科學與情感（以及響亮的背景音樂）怎樣融合在一起，創造出了強有力的神祕氛圍。

Nolan introduces the concept of quantum entanglement. That’s when two particles that have interacted with each other behave as one even though they might be far apart. He then shows how people in love display some of those same features. They react in the same way at the same time to the same things.

諾蘭介紹了量子糾纏的概念，即兩個粒子發生互動，即使相隔甚遠，也像是一個粒子那樣運動。之後他又展示了，摯愛的人也會表現出相同的一些特質。他們會在相同的時間對相同的事做出相同的反應。

The characters in the movie are frequently experiencing cross-cutting and mystical connections that transcend time and space. It’s like the kind of transcendent sensation you or I might have if we visited an old battlefield and felt connected by mystic chords of memory to the people who fought there long ago; or if we visited the house we grew up in and felt in deep communion with people who are now dead.

電影中的人物時常感受到超越時間和空間的交叉，以及神祕的聯結。就像是你我在參觀古戰場時，通過記憶中神祕的線索，與古時候在這裏作戰的人之間，產生的那種超越時間的感受；又好像是重訪我們幼年時的舊居，與如今已經過世的人之間，產生的那種深深的交流。

Bloggers have noticed the religious symbols in the movie. There are those 12 apostles, and there’s a Noah’s ark. There is a fallen angel named Dr. Mann who turns satanic in an inverse Garden of Eden. The space project is named Lazarus. The heroine saves the world at age 33. There’s an infinitely greater and incorporeal intelligence offering merciful salvation.

博客作者們注意到了電影中的宗教符號。片中有12門徒，有諾亞方舟。還有一個名爲曼恩博士(Dr. Mann)的隕落天使，在與伊甸園截然相反的環境裏變得猶如魔鬼一般。太空計劃名爲拉撒路(Lazarus)，女主角拯救世界時年齡是33歲。在電影中，存在着一種無限宏大而又無形的智慧，給人以仁慈的救贖。

But this isn’t an explicitly religious movie. “Interstellar” is important because amid all the culture wars between science and faith and science and the humanities, the movie illustrates the real symbiosis between these realms.

不過這並不是一部具有明顯宗教意味的影片。《星際穿越》之所以重要，是因爲面對着科學與宗教、科學與人性之間的各種文化戰爭，這部電影勾畫了這些領域之間真正的共生關係。

More, it shows how modern science is influencing culture. People have always bent their worldviews around the latest scientific advances. After Newton, philosophers conceived a clockwork universe. Individuals were seen as cogs in a big machine and could be slotted into vast bureaucratic systems.

此外，它還顯示出現代科學是如何影響文化的。人類一直都會因爲最新的科學進步，而轉變世界觀。在牛頓(Newton)之後，哲學家構想出了一種類似發條裝置的宇宙。個人被認爲是一個巨大機械裏的齒輪，可以嵌入宏大的官僚體制裏。

But in the era of quantum entanglement and relativity, everything looks emergent and interconnected. Life looks less like a machine and more like endlessly complex patterns of waves and particles. Vast social engineering projects look less promising, because of the complexity, but webs of loving and meaningful relationships can do amazing good.

然而在量子糾纏和相對論的領域，所有的事物看起來都像是新生的，互相關聯的。生命不再那麼像機器，而更像是無窮無盡樣式繁複的波動和粒子。因爲過於複雜，龐大的社會工程項目似乎沒那麼可行，但是愛與深刻的人際關係組成的網絡，卻能產生令人驚詫的效果。

As the poet Christian Wiman wrote in his masterpiece, “My Bright Abyss,” “If quantum entanglement is true, if related particles react in similar or opposite ways even when separated by tremendous distances, then it is obvious that the whole world is alive and communicating in ways we do not fully understand. And we are part of that life, part of that communication. ...”

就像詩人克里斯蒂安·威曼(Christian Wiman)在他的著作《我明亮的深淵》(My Bright Abyss)中所寫，“如果量子糾纏是真實的，如果相關的粒子即使相距甚遠，也能以相似或相反的方式互動，那麼整個世界顯然就是有生命的，在以我們並不能完全理解的方式溝通。我們是這種生命的一部分，是這種溝通的一部分。”

I suspect “Interstellar” will leave many people with a radical openness to strange truth just below and above the realm of the everyday. That makes it something of a cultural event.

我猜想，《星際穿越》也會讓許多人對日常生活層面之上和之下的陌生事實，產生一種徹底的洞明感。這就能使它成爲某種文化事件。