The point of no return in “Stray Dogs,” Tsai Ming-liang’s glum, humorless exercise in Asian miserablism, is an 11-minute scene of a homeless man smothering and devouring a cabbage with a face painted on it.
《郊游》(Stray Dogs)是蔡明亮对亚洲愁苦主义忧郁而严肃的尝试，片中一个长达11分钟的场景是一个无家可归的男人狼吞虎咽地吞吃着一个画有人脸的高丽菜，把影片推向无法回头的境地。

Living on the outskirts of Taipei, where he earns a subsistence wage holding up real estate placards at a crowded intersection in the wind and rain, the unnamed character (Lee Kang-sheng, the director’s regular leading man) arrives at the dingy, abandoned apartment where he squats with his two children. Climbing into bed, he discovers the cabbage propped up on a pillow. On it, his young daughter has painted a doll face.
这个没有名字的角色由经常在蔡明亮片中出任主角的李康生饰演，他住在台北郊区，在车水马龙路口高举广告招牌维生，风雨无阻，赚着只能维持最低生活水准的工资，他和自己的两个孩子住在一处肮脏、废弃的公寓。上床后，他发现枕边有一颗高丽菜，他的小女儿在上面画了一个娃娃的面孔。
In a fit of despair and self-loathing, he suffocates the vegetable with a pillow, eats and spits out parts, then furiously gouges out its features before ravenously consuming the rest and bursting into sobs. Augmenting the anguished mood, a drenching rain falls outside, as it does through much of the film.
在一阵绝望与自我厌恶的侵袭之下，他用枕头闷死了高丽菜，吃了一口又吐出来，疯狂地割掉它的脸，狼吞虎咽地吃掉了剩下的部分，最后爆发出哭泣。屋外的倾盆大雨进一步渲染了笼罩全片的痛苦气氛。
The scene brings to mind the moment in “Gone With the Wind” when Scarlett O’Hara, half-starving, digs up a radish, bites into it, vomits and vows never to be hungry again. In a tiny fraction of the time it takes for Mr. Lee to finish off that cabbage, Vivien Leigh conveys the same desperation. But instead of lapsing into a despairing funk, she claws her way out of the abyss. Because Mr. Lee’s character has none of her gumption, it’s hard not to feel a twinge of contempt for his lachrymose self-pity.
这一幕令人想起《乱世佳人》(Gone With the Wind)中饿着肚子的郝思嘉(Scarlett O’Hara)从土里刨出一颗萝卜，咬了一口又吐出来，发誓自己再也不会挨饿。费雯丽(Vivien Leigh)用的时间比李康生吃高丽菜的时间少得多，但传达出同样的绝望之感。最后郝思嘉没有变成一个绝望的懦夫，而是从深渊中爬了出来。但是李康生的角色就没有这样的魄力了，看到他眼泪汪汪的自怜，很难不让人感到一阵轻蔑。
That said, Mr. Tsai has his fervent admirers, some of whom have declared “Stray Dogs” a masterpiece. The 10th feature by this Malaysian-born, Taiwan-based director, it won the grand jury prize at the 2013 Venice Film Festival and was shown at the New York Film Festival. In the production notes, Mr. Tsai professes to have become “tired of cinema.” And “Stray Dogs,” with its glacial pace and disconnected narrative, often feels more like an art installation than like a movie.
尽管如此，蔡明亮也有他的狂热拥趸，有些人已经宣告《郊游》是一部杰作。蔡明亮是一位马来西亚出生的台湾导演，《郊游》是他的第十部电影长片，在威尼斯电影节上赢得了评委会大奖，也在纽约电影节上放映。在拍摄笔记中，蔡明亮承认自己已经“厌倦了电影”。《郊游》有着冰川般的步调和不连贯的叙事，更像一件艺术装置，而不是一部电影。
In the story, such as it is, Mr. Lee’s character slowly loses all hope as he drags his children and a female partner (played by three actresses) around the muddy fringes of Taipei. Few words are spoken. In the longest monologue, Mr. Lee, tears welling in his eyes, recites a Southern Song dynasty poem that distills the film’s fatalistic mood:
在片中，如前所述，李康生饰演的角色渐渐丧失了一切希望，他带着孩子和一个女性伴侣（由三位女演员饰演）在台北泥泞的边缘地带漫游。片中没有多少台词。在最长的一段独白中，李康生双眼含泪，念着一首南宋词，极好地概括了这部影片的宿命感：
I launch a shrill cry at the heavens My valiant heart loses hope My exploits are naught but mud and dust O vainglorious pain The shame of defeat is not yet washed away.
“抬望眼，仰天长啸，壮怀激烈。三十功名尘与土……靖康耻，犹未雪，臣子恨，何时灭……”
Until it goes haywire with the cabbage scene, “Stray Dogs” sustains a hypnotic intensity anchored in exquisite cinematography that portrays the modern industrial cityscape as a chilly wasteland. We see double and triple reflections in a supermarket where a kindly clerk lets the children feast on food samples. The camera tracks family members from a distance as they inch from one end of the screen to the other. For every tableau of the people on the far horizon, there is an intimate shot of family members, bathing, brushing their teeth and urinating, sometimes in a public restroom and other times outdoors.
直到吃高丽菜那疯狂的一幕之前，《郊游》靠精致的摄影把现代工业都市展现为一片冷峻的荒原，维持着一种催眠般的力量。在一个超市里，一个善良的店员让孩子们饱餐食品样品，这个时候观众可以看到二重和三重映像。每个家庭成员步履缓慢地从银幕一段踱到另一端，摄影机从远处追随他们。许多镜头都是远方地平线上的人物的静态画面，但有一个镜头反映了家庭成员之间的亲密，他们洗澡、刷牙、小便——有时在公厕，有时是在室外。
Beginning with the cabbage scene, the momentum grinds to a halt. It concludes with a static 12-minute shot of Mr. Lee and his distraught partner gazing off into space as a single tear trickles down her expressionless face. One by one, they walk away. The scene suggests a parody of the final moments of “L’Avventura,” whose anguished lovers find themselves trapped in modern relationship hell.
从吃高丽菜的那一幕开始，影片的势头慢慢放缓，最后以一个12分钟的镜头结束。在这个镜头里，李康生和他那个忧心忡忡的伴侣望着天空，一滴眼泪从她没有表情的脸上流下来。两人先后离去。这一幕是对影片《奇遇》(L’Avventura)中最后一幕的戏仿，在《奇遇》片尾，一对痛苦的恋人发现自己陷入了现代式恋情的地狱。
Oh, weep for the sadness of it all! Or not.
啊，为这一切悲伤而哭泣吧，或者不哭。