In the Pursuit of a Haunting and Timeless Truth

追尋一段永世難忘的史實

Pauline Kael

波琳·凱爾

Louis Malle's Au Revoir les Enfants" (or "Goodbye, Children") is set in Occupied France in 1944, when Malle was an eleven-year-old at a Catholic boys' boarding school near Fontainebleau that sheltered several Jewish boys. The Gestapo learned they were there, and sent the ones they found to Auschwitz , and the headmaster to a work camp c4J One of the Jewish boyswas in Malle's class, but Malle didn't get to know him well and didn't realizethat he was Jewish. For the dramatic purposes of the movie, he has conceived a close friendship between his alter ego, the fairhaired Julien Quentin(Gaspard Manesse), and the dark boy who is using the false name Jean Bonnet (Raphael Fejto). Malle has every right to fantasize and invent, but I'm puzzled by the kind of fantasizing he does here. The First half of the film is so hushed and enervated that I kept peering into the schoolyard looking for signs of life. It's full of wealthy boys at play; they're even there on stilts,battling and falling down. But their games-which might clue us in totheir ruling-class assumptions and their snobbery and the limits of their understanding-are shown at a distance. The camera is so discreet it always seems about ten feet too far away, and the boy who plays Julien is directed so that he never engages us; we can't look into him, or into anyone else.

路易·馬爾執(zhí)導(dǎo)的《再見，孩子們》以1944年的法國被占區(qū)為背景，當(dāng)時他11歲，在楓丹白露附近一所天主教辦的寄宿男校上學(xué)。學(xué)校藏下了好幾個猶太孩子。蓋世太保探知他們的下落，把搜出來的送往奧斯維辛，校長發(fā)配勞動營。孩子當(dāng)中有一個就在馬爾班上，不過馬爾跟他不熟，也沒看出他是猶太人。在電影里，為求得戲劇性的效果，馬爾虛構(gòu)了自己的化身—金發(fā)少年朱利安·昆廷（加斯帕德·馬內(nèi)斯飾）——和化名讓·博內(nèi)的深膚色男孩（拉斐爾·費日托飾）之間的親密友情。馬爾有充分的權(quán)利進行想象和虛構(gòu)，但我對他在這里做出的這種想象大惑不解。影片的前半部抑悶不張，軟弱無力，我禁不住朝校園里不斷張望，尋找生氣。滿園都是富家子弟在玩耍；他們還踩起了高蹺，互相打斗又摔倒在地。但是，他們的嬉戲——本可以向我們揭示一下他們身上那副統(tǒng)治階級的裝腔作勢、那份勢利眼和見識短淺——都拍成了遠景。攝影機太小心謹慎了，總像是遠了十來英尺；飾朱利安的小演員讓導(dǎo)演導(dǎo)得毫不動人；我們看不到他的內(nèi)心活動，也看不到別人的。

As the story is presented, Julien, who is quick, grasps almost at once that this new boy, Jean Bonnet, is an impostor, who isn't really Catholic; Julien catches Jean standing by his bed at night, praying silently, with two lighted candles, and Julien rummages in Jean's books and discovers that his realname is the German-sounding Jean Kippelstein. Julien is the only boy in the class who offers Jean friendship; the others play tricks on Jean and gang upon him, because he's different-he's not one of them. Julien, who knows how different Jean actually is, keeps his discovery to himself. He and Jeanare the two brightest boys in the class; they both love to read, and they become best friends. This is a rather moist fantasy of Julien's virtue; it's eventually mixed with a fantasy self-accusation of guilt. When the Gestapo chief comes into the classroom asking for Jean Kippelstein, the scared, nervous Julien involuntarily turns and looks at his friend-it's a Judas kiss ,but an unintentional one. And Jean exonerates him: when he is packing his gear to go with the Gestapo men, he tells Julien that it didn't matter, that the Nazis would have caught him anyway.

燭，立在床邊默默祈禱；他翻看讓的課本，發(fā)現(xiàn)他的真名叫讓·基普爾斯坦，聽音是個德國姓。朱利安是班上惟一待他友好的同學(xué)；別人都捉弄他，合伙欺負他，因為他不一樣——跟他們不一路。朱利安明知這不一樣的真情，把親瞍所見藏在心底。他和讓是班上兩名最聰明的學(xué)生；他倆都喜歡讀書，還成了最要好的朋友。這里是說朱利安的善良，想象中很有幾分傷感；到最后更添了一層，想象他因負疚而自責(zé)。只見蓋世太保的頭子走進教室，來要讓·基普爾斯坦，張皇失措的朱利安不由自主轉(zhuǎn)過臉去看了看他的朋友——豈不正是猶大之吻，但并非存心所為。讓并不記恨他：他收拾好東西跟蓋世太保走，一面對朱利安說沒什么，反正納粹會抓到他的。

In the finest scene of the movie, Jean shakes hands with the boys near him just before he's taken away; it's a well-brought-up young boy's leavetaking,and nothing has prepared you for it. But throughout Lrean is used as an aesthetic objea-spiritual, sensitive, foreign . He's often shot in profile, with his lips parted, and in one scene he goes to Mass with the other boys and tilts his face, open-mouthed-almost yearning-to receive the holy wafer, whichm is denied him by the Reverend Father, the headmaster. Is the boy merely seeking acceptance by the other boys-is he just trying to pass as one of them-or is something else implied? The whole movie seems padded and muted, it's designed to make you understand that Julien is stricken by the horror of what happens to his friend. But nothing in it comes into clear focus-not the boys' attitudes, not even the images (and certainly not a lengthy sequence in which the two boys are on a treasure hunt in Fontainebleau Forest).

影片有一場精彩之至。讓即將被人帶走，他與身邊的同學(xué)一一握手；一個很有教養(yǎng)的少年跟人話別的做派，事先未做任何鋪墊。但讓自始至終都用來充當(dāng)一個審美的對象——超凡脫俗，有靈性，希罕。他往往拍成雙唇微啟的側(cè)面形象，有一場戲是他隨同學(xué)去做彌撒，他仰起臉，張著嘴——幾乎是渴望著——去領(lǐng)神父大人即校長并沒有賜給他的圣餅。這孩子是否只求同學(xué)收下他——只求把他當(dāng)自己人，還是其中別有寓意呢？整部影片顯得沉悶壓抑，意在要你理解朱利安因見朋友慘遭不幸而深感痛心。不過，影片中一切都看不真切——同學(xué)的態(tài)度如此，就連圖像也如此（兩個孩子在楓丹白露森林里尋寶的那一長段穿插，自然也是如此）。

Malle has said that this is the most personal and important film of his career,and I believe that he thinks that. I also believe that he's wrong. If "Au Revoir"is very personal to him, this may be because as an adult he has felt stricken by the recognition that he wasn't stricken then, and it may involve his feelings of guilt over his own family's safety and prosperity-everything that the film barely touches on.

馬爾曾說，這是他導(dǎo)演生涯中最富自傳色彩也是最重要的一部影片。我認為他是這樣想的。我又認為他并沒有說對。如果說他自認《再見》一片極富于自傳色彩，那也許是因為他成年后認識到當(dāng)年未感痛心，因而一直深感痛心，其中也許還夾有他自己的家庭當(dāng)年安富尊榮因而每每內(nèi)疚于心——這一切在影片中倒是甚少觸及。

Malle has said of "Au Revoir." "I reinvented the past in the pursuit of a haunting and timeless truth." Maybe that's why I felt as if I were watching a faded French classic, something I dimly recalled. In pursuit of haunting and timeless truth, Malle has gone back to the anti-Nazi movies of the forties,and polished and formalized the actions until he's turned melodrama into polite reverie.

對《再見》馬爾說過：“我這樣舊事新編，是在追尋一段永世難忘的史實。”難怪我覺得像是在看一部退了色的法國經(jīng)典片，依稀中似曾相識，恐怕就是這個緣故。馬爾在追尋永世難忘的史實中回到40年代那些反納粹的電影，他對劇情加工潤色，自成一格，終于把情節(jié)劇變成了文雅的幻想曲。

Yes, it gets to you by the end. How could it not? But you may feel pretty wom down-by how accomplished it is, and by all the aching, tender shots of Jean. He's photographed as if he were a piece of religious art: Christ in his early adolesence. There's something unseemly about the movie's obsession with his exotic beauty-as if the French-German Jews had come from the far side of the moon. And does he have to be so brilliant, and a gifted pianist, and courageous? Would the audience not mourn him if he were just an average schmucky kid with pimples?

不錯，你看到劇終正是這般感受。豈有他哉？但你也許會感到疲憊不堪——就為它技法如此精湛，就為讓有那么些凄楚動人的鏡頭。他攝下的形象猶如一件宗教藝術(shù)品：少年時期的基督。影片一味醉心于他的異族情調(diào)之美，總不那么妥當(dāng)吧——仿佛法德兩國的猶太人都是來自天外的月球。再說，他難道就非如此光彩照人不可嗎，又有彈鋼琴的天賦，又能臨危不懼？他若只是個普普通通、呆頭呆腦的孩子，長一臉雀斑，觀眾難道就不哀其不幸了嗎？

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