外媒看中国:《一步之遥》用力过猛

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　　Maverick¹ actor-director Jiang Wen continues to jab at Chinese history with a satire² about the fallout of an over-the-top beauty contest in '20s Shanghai.

　　不按常理出牌的导演，同时也是演员的姜文，用20世纪20年代上海言过其实的一起选美比赛的改编电影，继续在中国历史上猛敲了一记。

　　"We should struggle less at home, and expand more ashore," says a character during Gone With The Bullet's first section, in which a Chinese diva triumphs over her US and European counterparts in a rigged beauty pageant³ in Shanghai. Director Jiang Wen, who co-penned this film with eight other screenwriters, has certainly walked the talk in this line: Gone with the Bullets is an extraordinary mélange of seminal⁴ stylistic tropes from abroad, a two-hour-plus journey taking in nods to newsreels, silent slapstick, musicals, film noir and even New Hollywood - not to mention the specific pastiches⁵ of The Godfather, Chicago, The Italian Job and even the Bogart-Bacall whistle moment in To Have And Have Not.

　　“我们不能在家里挣扎，而要去开拓更多的天地，“《一步之遥》第一部分的一个角色这么说道，这位国人女星在上海一场内箱操作的选美大赛中，击败了她美国和欧洲的竞争对手。导演姜文，和他的八位编剧真的是言出必行：《一步之遥》是外国创意体裁隐喻非凡绝伦一锅炖，两个多小时的电影向新闻片，喜剧默片，音乐剧，玄色电影，甚至是新好莱坞电影致敬——且不说《教父》，《芝加哥》，《偷天换日》甚至还有《江湖侠侣》里比歌的吹口哨场景。

　　But a mish-mash of references a masterpiece does not make. Unlike his brilliantly barbed, sensitively structured and meticulously⁶ multi-layered 2010 hit Let the Bullets Fly, Gone With The Bullets -  described as the second installment⁷ of a trilogy of gun-slinging satires⁸ set in tumultuous, 1920s China  - is a sprawling⁹, episodic spectacle reading less like a j'accuse of social malaise, and more like a record of a self-styled auteur's ego¹⁰ going completely into overdrive, as he indulges in shaping his lead character (played by himself) as a misunderstood and victimized idealist, while unleashing¹¹ a torrent¹² of supposedly clever bites at the hands who feed him.

　　但是这部致敬杰作的混合物没有任何意义。不像他才华横溢的佳作《让子弹飞》（2010年）里绝妙的讽刺，敏感的结构和一丝不苟的多层次构架，《一步之遥》——作为其子弹三部曲的第二部——用吵吵闹闹喧嚣不堪构起一部讽刺诗集，20世纪20年代的中国——笨拙的前行，插话式的场景看起来不太像是社会疾病的抨击，更像是自封为电影导演的自负到彻底失控的一次记录，因为他沉浸于塑造他的主角（他自己饰演）成为一个被误解的，受到伤害的理想主义者，他用释放才华激流的方式在饲养他的这群人手上狠狠咬上了一口。

　　And the hands have seemingly bitten back, as Jiang has finally gone one step too far with his misanthropy, a trait which used to amuse with his more skilful¹³ portrayal¹⁴ as the masses as self-seeking and unwashed in his previous outings like the second-world-war drama Devils on the Doorstep and Let the Bullets Fly.

　　看上去他是咬回去了，而姜文在他愤世嫉俗的道路上终究是做的太过了，他越发灵巧地刻画了追逐私利，愚昧不堪的大众人群——一如他之前的二战电影《鬼子来了》和《让子弹飞》里那样，是他带有取乐意味的特质。

　　Jiang's character in the film, Ma Zouri, carries a similar life trajectory¹⁵ to Yan Ruisheng, a middle-class man who plotted the murder of a prostitute in Shanghai in 1920.

　　姜文在电影中的角色马走日，原型就是阎瑞生——这个中产阶级男人在1920年于上海密谋杀害了一名妓女。

　　What makes Yan's case legendary¹⁶ is not the crime itself, but its fallout: the case at once scandalized and mesmerized¹⁷ the city's chattering¹⁸ classes, with the man's trial and subsequent execution leading to entrepreneurs staging plays, stand-up comedy shows, musicals and even making a film out of the incident. It's perhaps ironic¹⁹ that Jiang is to mock those transforming the so-called Yan Ruisheng affair into entertainment by, well, making a film which transforms the incident into a film comprising scenes reminiscent of stage plays, stand-up comedy and a musical.

　　让阎瑞生案名声大噪的不是因为这起犯罪本身，而是其附带后果：上海那些爱好八卦的中上级阶层马上被这个案件震惊和迷住了，由于这个案子，阎瑞生的审讯和随后的死刑被改编成企业家编排的舞台剧，单口相声表演，音乐剧甚至是电影。也许讽刺的就是，姜文想要嘲笑这些所谓的，把阎瑞生一案变成娱乐笑料的改编，将这起案子编成了由怀旧的舞台剧，单口相声和音乐剧的杂烩电影。

　　Now that Jiang has committed an auteur's inevitable²⁰ ego-driven project about himself and his history - Ma's recollections of a Gallic romance mirrors the director's eight-year marriage with a Frenchwoman, while the materialistic²¹ Wanyan Ying and the artistic²² Wu Liu (played by his own wife) could be seen as Jiang torn between commerce and culture - maybe it's time for Jiang to step off his pedestal, cast his cynicism aside and engage with the real crossfire²³ beyond his own comfort zone, and to reveal the state of mind a population who think they are calling the shots, but are actually only being stood there to be shot at.

　　如今的姜文已经证明了一位电影导演对于其自身和他的历史，会有无可避免自尊心驱逐计划——马走日法国式的浪漫回忆映射了他和一个法国女人八年的婚姻，而唯物主义者完颜英和艺术家武六（由他妻子饰演）可以被视为姜文在商业利益和文化追求上的进退维谷——也许是时候让姜文从他的基座上走下来，把他的玩世不恭扔到一边，离开他的安全领域去加入真正的火线战争，如揭露某些人的心理状态——那些自认为在发号施令，实际上却在站在那被射击的人。

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