对于Alan迷来说,这部电影并不是一个花痴圣品,虽然将近50分钟的电影几乎全是Alan的特写,但这里的Alan既不是性感魅惑的优雅反派,也不是深情款款的英国绅士,而只是一个小有才华却有点潦倒有点猥琐的中年老男人,在一个默默无闻的小出版社里混日子,对着光彩照人的前女友不知所措。
一部由诗歌改编成的仅47分钟的短片,在轻柔醇厚如红酒般的男声旁白中娓娓道来,诉尽平生辛苦,有着四两拨千斤的气魄。
或许是诗歌本身的凝练含蓄所致,影片情节虽然细碎却不失紧凑,其中的戏剧性也都集中在他和她毫不搭调的对话上,他满脑子神游,说话刻薄而带有讽刺,失魂落魄,她却显得居高临下,对于他的种种毛病带着见怪不怪的包容,就像每一个对前男友仍有感情,怀着歉意,但还是恨铁不成钢的前女友一样。
故事中并没有说明两人见面的原因,是他在拥挤的办公室里闷得窒息了吗?是想给庸烦的生活找个出口?还是他根本还在期待着什么?
然而,一切一如往昔却已今非昔比。
我愿意相信他是去唤醒那沉睡的青春记忆,今日生活已如此无趣,当初怎么也不相信会活到这个境地,还是去找找过去甜蜜的时光吧,哪怕只是一顿午饭也好。曾经的柔情蜜意如今想来仍历历在目,甚至都不敢相信都过了这么久了?
五年?十年?……十五年!
我想他只是发现自己老了,他害怕老去,他或许后悔了?当初为什么没有留住他呢?如果他留住了她呢,生活会怎么样呢?我们也许可以想象出他年轻时是个什么样的人,才华横溢,幽默潇洒,却脆弱而狂妄,就如同身边的很多男孩一样,而她,也可以想象一下,温柔甜蜜,开朗明媚,聪明而优雅,渴望华丽多彩的生活。哪个女孩对自己的终生伴侣不是精挑细选呢?哪个女孩不是希望把婚姻当做一生的依靠呢?谁敢去选择一个毫安全感的人呢?他还是不能明白她离开她的原因,他不去管那些庸俗的现实,其实我们无法评说谁的选择是对的,是像他那样寄情于诗酒,还是像她那样面对现实。
但她俨然像个胜利者那样去数落他,破坏了他追忆往昔的雅兴。她仍是优雅迷人,却难有往日的柔情,他醒悟了吗?哦,不,红酒入喉,还是醉去吧!
英国人特有的幽默,如同这个国家出了名的保守与含蓄一样,它不像美国那种迪斯尼式的夸张,而是同所有英国贵族一样,优雅地,默默地,不动声色地讲述。它不会让你捧腹大笑,整部电影没似乎没什么笑点,但细细回想起来,一个落魄的中年老男人的各种失态却会让人忍俊不禁。英国人颇爱调侃,带着一种风轻云淡的贵族气质,竟把一个细想起来辛酸又无奈的人生故事讲得这般风趣,是骨子里流着莎士比亚的血吧。
一次本该温情脉脉的共叙往事的午宴,却在他的满脑子神游和酒后失态中草草收场,他一定觉得人品低爆了!可是你笑过之后可会惊醒?或许我们的人生也都是这样,带着后悔,带着遗憾,带着自欺,七分醉,三分醒,晃晃悠悠就老啦!
买了这本书. 一来为了仔细研读,力图翻译准确; 二来为了留做纪念, 毕竟是第一次看诗歌改编的剧, 更是第一次接触诗歌翻译.
片子本身我不想再评论, 这种片子需要自己逐字逐句去体会. 看的次数越多, 便越是感叹语言的魅力. 就是这样在字斟句酌之间, 不经意的,好些台词几乎都记在心里了. (然而我要再啰嗦一句: 这种文学性太强的诗歌并不适合当作教材'学英文', 本诗一些用词和表达方式, 英国人表示他们自己也看不太懂, 更别提使用了.)
剧中的台词, 全是直接用的原诗句, 但不可避免有删掉的部分, 所以打算把原诗当中没有编进本剧的章节敲出来, 有兴趣的可以看看.
------
注1: 括号中的是剧中出现过的, 方便大家定位.
注2: 大小写, 换行, 标点, 均依照faber&faber出版社2010年版 (
http://www.faber.co.uk/work/song-of-lunch/9780571273522/).
<1>
(Keep your imagination peeled and see
Virginia Woolf
loping off to the library
with a trug full of books.)
At every twentieth step,
she takes a sharp drag at a cigarette
and pulls a tormented face
as if she had never tasted anything
so disgusting.
(And there goes T.S. Eliot,
bound for his first martini of the day.
With his gig-lamps and his immaculate sheen,)
he eases pastyou like a limousine:
a powerful American model.
<2>
(Gaggles of tourists straggle
more provocatively than ever;)
the approach to Bedford Square is blocked:
orange plastic barriers--
our century's major contribution
to the junk art of street furniture!
(Never mind, he's making good time--
note the active verb--
and he expects she'll be late.)
So he allows himself to feel
pleasure in his own fleetness,
in not being carried but riding
the currents and eddies
of the human torrent.
And occasionally stopping
to let another pass,
unthanked politeness being
the ultimate gesture
of the metropolitan dandy.
<3>
(The restaurant
is an old haunt,
though he hasn't been there for years;)
not since the publishing trade,
once the province
of swashbucklers and buccaneers,
was waylaid by suits and calculators,
and a strict afternoon
curfew imposed.
Farewell to long lunches
and other boozy pursuits!
Hail to the new age
of the desk potato,
strict hours of imprisonment
and eyesight tortured
by an impassive electronic screen!
Sometimes, though, a man needs
to go out on the rampage,
throw conscientious time-keeping
to the winds,
help kill a few bottles--
and bugger the consequences.
If not a right, exactly,
it's a rite,
and therefore approved in the sight
of some notional higher authority.
<4>
Lunch being a game with few rules,
and those unwritten,
it's important to him that the field of play
remain the same
as he fondly remembers it.
(Zanzotti's: unreformed Soho Italian.
...
cultureless, fly-by-night.)
He stops for a scrawny lad
wheeling a big, unsteady,
rust-patched, festering bin
to park at the roadside,
and wonders what he will find.
<5>
And that's where Dylan Thomas
scrounged ten bob off him,
then set about seducing his girl.
Not.
Seriously, though,
what will they say when they look back
at our demythologised age?
Postmodern Times:
garrulous, garish classic
starring
some idiot off the box.
Charlie Cretin!
Needs work.
Craplin? Forget it.
He cuts down Meard Street,
now much too smart for its name
but where he remembers
a knocking-shop henever went into--
feral whores at the window--
turns the corner, crosses,
and (hey presto:
Zanzotti's edges into view.)
<6>
Same tricolore paintwork,
thick from repeated coats
and somehow suggesting edibility.
Same signwriter's cursive
festooning the fascia-board
and flanked by the same brass lamps.
It's so much the same, it almost
looks like a replica.
The Wardour Street wideboys and creatives
must love it,
must think it's the campest retro--
when it's the real thing.
Through a gap in the blind,
he can see quite a few of them in there already.
Well, never mind.
He wishes no one ill.
Democracy of the feeding-trough;
swill and let swill.
He and his hand on the door-handle,
and foot on the grooved step,
(when he suddently recollects--
what, precisely?
Deja vu? Some artistic analogy?)
A true liminal moment,
or simply a trick
of the dictionary-picker's skittering brain?
Eye-corner glimpse
of fugitive epiphany
that, for several beats,
he pursues in vain.
(Too bad. Let it go.)
He has his hand still on the dimpled
brass bul of the door-handle.
Which he turns, noticing
the familiar loose-jointedness:
that's a promissing sign.
With the meekest bump of resistance
from the spring contraption overhead,
the door yields and he steps inside
to stand on the prickled mat,
peering into the gloom.
Midday twilight,
requiring adjustment
of all the senses
before it delivers its secrets.
He scans the room,
which is deeper than you might guess from the street,
registers its busyness,
and wonders which of the few
untaken covers will be his.
Not that one by the door
to the toilets, he hopes;
nor the one with too much window light.
Snug privacy is what he wants:
to be tucked away from the bustle:
ideally, over there.
(On the threshold, on the edge
of a shadow-world)
<7>
(Without a smile, without a word,
he is eybrowed and nodded to follow.)
Which he does, past tables,
past people at tables,
he is careful not to brush
with either himself or his shoulder-bag.
Aloof carriage, side=steps,
calculated indirection:
it's as much a dance as a walk.
And it gets him nicely
to the spot he had spotted
from the door.
Laid for two. A little island. An eyot.
Perfect.
<8>
(We said we wouldn't look back.)
Innocent jaunty wistful
ditty from the wings
and would run uninterrupted
if he didn't shoo it away.
Just one of those things.
Ditto.
A song for every cliche!
Though it was more, he's perfectly sure,
than a bell that now and then
(Why did she e-mail him
suggesting)
No, he
Woofs of laughter
in imprecise unison
from a table, all men,
jolly good company,
off to his right.
He draws a breadstick,
wrong brand, from its ripped sheath
and beheads it with a bite.
<9>
In twilight himself
(he commands, nice word,
a clear view of the entrance,
...
What will she look like?)
On his third tasteless
but moreish breadstick,
he's startled: she's changed.
But he's wrong. She hasn't. She isn't.
Back to his chewing:
the fragmentation
and mashing of rusk
soothingly loud
in the isolated chamber of his skull.
<10>
(Hello?)
He jolts. Ice cubes
slurrily clatter
to the bottom of the tumbler
as he bumps it back on the table.
Wiping his wet lip
also expresses surprise.
(She's here. How did that happen!)
<11>
(Have some wine,) he adds,
any stage business
being better than a dry.
(I'm afraid it hasn't really had time,
but
He pours into the two glasses,
measuring by ear
identical notes,)
then doesn't put the bottle down.
He has a speech to deliver.
(...
And they drink.
Becoming palatable.)
Her expression expresses no judgement
and she puts the glass down.
(You haven't changed.
...
It's almost all pizzas,)
he apologises
before she has read a word.
(I'm afraid the place has gone to the dogs.)
She looks around, cursorily.
(Don't be absurd, it's fine.)
<12>
Across the table
across clean cloth and clutter
she leans and wooingly twice
with middle finger
nudges him on the knuckle.
(Come on, no sulks. Be nice. Sois sage.
...
Pax,) he agrees, aggrieved.
And they shake hands,
a squeeze of fingers rather:
hers light then tight
then light again in his,
then efficiently retrieved.
<13>
He is startled from this reckless
plunge into memory
by his own awareness of it:
like snpping out of a doze.
How long can it have lasted?
Gone some time.
(But she seems not to have noticed,
...
you were practically seducing him
a minute ago.)
She swivels her gaze back:
smiling, surprisingly.
(It's nice to know
you're still madly jealous.)
<14>
(And we'll need another bottle of this.)
The waiter goes:
one of those fellows
you'd describe as nondescript
if the word wasn't forbidden.
How many times
in some author's manuscript
has he crossed it out and written
There is nothing that cannot be described.
But in this particular case,
searching in ain
for any distinctive feature,
he may allow and exception.
From that thought idly
on a ride of the eye
around the room--
the bustle, the hubbub--
he travels to the next:
a small dark waitress carrying
three filled plates
from the kitchen hatch
reverses pauses turns proceeds
with such practised fluency
that he'd like to catch
her eye to show her
his appreciation
and be rewar
Now, according to my logic, the Eurydice that you're trying to rescue with your brave little song must be yourself, your inner self, your soul.
But you've not been in touch with that in your entire life, which puts you in a hole, strategically speaking.
And who was it dumped you there in the first place?
The kidnapper i was talking about whom i can now reveal to be the Lyric Muse, who should have left you alone to work out your problems in some healthier fashion, and not led you on, not made you confuse poetry with therapy.
It's not just that you're stuck in the past.
You're stuck in your poems which have their merits. They're nicely written. They're clever and so on.
But they're misconceived, false, hollow, wrong.
You should never gone there. Yet you did. That's the catastrophy.
Ever the escape artist, ever the clown.
特意从巴黎跑来吃一顿午饭的女人,说这么些话是为了讽刺还是责骂么?
Emma演的真切,Alan对的自然。真实生活的结尾,往往如此。
但凡未得到,但凡是过去,总是最登对。
这两只怎么不管到哪儿都这么来电
诗很好,兴奋和期待开头,难堪和沮丧中场,怅惋收尾。改编真特别。想想这的确是最合适的改编方式。"cajoling english, caressing french".
英伦的靡靡口音绝对是一笔巨大的财富,听着Alan Rickman的旁白,几乎可以将人融化。Christopher Reid的叙事诗耐人寻味,两位实力派的演技同样让人惊艳,一部几乎完美同时又很无聊的电影,除非你感性敏感热爱诗歌。好吧,也自恋一回,我想我是。★★★★
多么精致的故事,多么成功的改编,多么过瘾的对手戏!
终极银幕情侣档,就是AR+ET
斯内普磁性的声音让人难以自拔 细细长长的生命之河 怀念过往 或 许真的不快乐 却又能够让浮躁的心安静下来 真快我们在老去 四周的亲切的事物都已消失 一切都是物是人非一切也都改变 或许我们真的不应该来赴这场午餐之约 只在夕阳缓落的傍晚在记忆里 一遍又一遍重温和你走过的美好
"but he might have died and be returning as a ghost." 15年后,你约到了曾经的亲密恋人,你们在老地方共进午餐,你压抑着、遐想着、冲动着、尴尬的遮掩着,试图在她眼睛里找到一些过去的影子,但最终确只能承认:爱如云烟。
费那劲拍电影做啥,直接录成有声读物不是更好。
我喜欢这种絮絮叨叨的电影。
太棒了,这两人放一起绝配啊~AR是神啊~
女人喜欢的老男人和男人喜欢的老女人
Christopher Reid 的好诗啊,很喜欢这个调调
诗居然可以拍成电影,太神奇了。人真是复杂的生物,就算面对面坐着的两个人,其实也各有各的世界,沟通实在不易。
AR的表演课,ET负责喂招。电影的发明让illusion和reality变得不再泾渭分明也没有道德评判,可是电影工业却朝着消解现实一路狂奔过去。但它应该是这样,未完成,不彻底,混沌又有照见人心的真实。想到叶芝的饮酒歌:当我们还未老,未死,我举杯,看着你,叹息。
两位是演技的保证,艾玛头一次如此美丽。
感性优雅,冷静又舒缓的旁白,意犹未尽。老戏骨对决,好有味
他不确定究竟是意志力还是红酒的作用,老狗终究还是不情愿的服从了,缩回它孤独寂寞,气味难闻的小窝,沉入另一个冗长的梦中。
擦 明天就播了啊 有爱的逼逼西啊!诗歌改变成电影电视 创举!!AR磁性的嗓音就着苦逼的银生显得格外地沧桑且深沉!Emma婶一改Mcphee的扮丑 回归了优雅!绝对的Amazing!
妈的 为了这俩人 我直是生肉也要啃了