Frank Bruni: You and I come into these conversations hoping to focus on new movies with special cultural and social relevance, and for much of the year we’re hard pressed. But December gave us plenty: “Selma,” “American Sniper” and more.
弗兰克·布鲁尼(Frank Bruni)：咱们二人之所以展开这些对话，是希望关注那些具有特殊的文化和社会意义的新电影。去年很多时间里，我们的选择都很有限。但12月出现了很多影片，如《塞尔玛》(Selma)和《美国狙击手》(American Sniper)等。
I wanted to begin, though, with a less obvious candidate for deconstruction, because it does, in a fashion, speak to some of the peculiarities of public life right now. I’m referring to the director Tim Burton’s “Big Eyes,” with Amy Adams as Margaret Keane, the painter whose husband (Christoph Waltz) took credit for her work.
我想先从一个不那么明显的选择开始解构，因为它在一定程度上和眼下公共生活的一些特殊之处有关。我说的是蒂姆·伯顿(Tim Burton)执导的《大眼睛》(Big Eyes)。在该片中，艾米·亚当斯(Amy Adams)饰演的画家玛格丽特·基恩(Margaret Keane)的作品，被丈夫（克里斯托弗·沃尔兹[Christoph Waltz]出演）署上了自己的名字。
Adams just picked up a Golden Globe for best actress in a musical or comedy, which was pretty odd because “Big Eyes” isn’t exactly a comedy. It’s a biopic, essentially, and the disappointment of it is that it never quite transcends the familiar, predictable rhythms of that genre. But “Big Eyes” raises a set of questions that seem to me especially germane to this era of Twitter and Instagram and indefatigable branding and unabashed self-promotion.
艾米·亚当斯获得了金球奖(Golden Globe)音乐剧/喜剧类的最佳女主角这一点很奇怪，因为《大眼睛》根本不是喜剧。从本质上来说，它是一部传记片，但遗憾的是，它并未超越这类影片为人熟悉、可预测的节奏。但《大眼睛》提出了一系列问题。在我看来，这些问题与这个有着Twitter、Instagram、坚持不懈的包装和不加掩饰的自我推销的时代密切相关。
Do the spoils go to the gifted, or do they go to the shameless? How completely can showmanship obscure the truth, and how far can a smooth and self-infatuated operator travel on swagger alone?
成果会落到才华横溢的人，还是寡廉鲜耻的人手里？作秀能力如何能彻底掩盖真相，圆滑、自恋的人又能仅靠自己的趾高气扬走多远？
Waltz’s character goes quite a distance, and as I watched him, I kept thinking of political campaigns and of a central challenge in a country where, all too often, more energy goes into the marketing than into the product (or the policy). Voters have to figure out which of the many people stepping forward with a gaudy sales pitch is truly the author of something substantive. That’s not always easy.
沃尔兹的角色颇具深意。看着他时，我一直在想政治活动和这个国家面临的一个重大挑战。在这里，在营销上投入的精力超过了在产品（或政策）上投入的精力。站到前台的人中，许多都有一套华而不实的推销言辞，选民必须想清楚，他们中哪一个的话才是真的。而这一点并不总是能轻易做到。

Ross Douthat: May I suggest that I detect a hint of a politician’s practiced evasion in your choice of movies to kick things off? An attempt, perhaps, to put off reckoning with the real substance of the Christmas movie season, which is that most of the meaty Big Movies just weren’t particularly good?
罗斯·多赛特(Ross Douthat)：我能说在你对电影的选择中，我发现了一点儿政客逃避问题时的感觉吗？你这么做，或许是不愿太早揭露圣诞电影季的实质：大部分有分量的大片都不是特别好，对吗？
I think this was apparent at the Globes last night, where, apart from Adams’s “Big Eyes” win, the victors (and, for the most part, the nominees) were all movies and performances that came out before — long before, in the case of both best-picture winners — the official holiday rush. Not that they were all particularly bad; it’s just that they mostly called to mind better treatments of similar material. “American Sniper” had some gripping moments and a great performance by Bradley Cooper, but its themes were worked through much more creatively by Kathryn Bigelow in “The Hurt Locker” and “Zero Dark Thirty.” Angelina Jolie’s “Unbroken,” like Gary Ross’s “Seabiscuit” before it, was an intermittently impressive adaptation of Laura Hillenbrand that didn’t live up to the book’s standard, and it mostly made me want to go watch “The Bridge on the River Kwai” again. Only “Selma” left me genuinely impressed, and even there I couldn’t help comparing it somewhat unfavorably with last year’s “12 Years a Slave,” a race-and-history drama less constrained (save during Brad Pitt’s awful cameo) by the conventions of the genre.
我觉得，在昨晚的金球奖颁奖典礼上，除了让亚当斯摘得大奖的《大眼睛》外，获奖影片（而且在很大程度上来说，算上提名影片）显然都是在正式的假日季到来之前推出的。其中两大最佳影片得主的发行时间，更是远在此之前。它们并不是都特别差劲；只是大多让人回想起了对类似题材更好的处理。《美国狙击手》有一些扣人心弦的镜头，莱德利·库珀(Bradley Cooper)表现出色，但对于该片涉及的主题，凯瑟琳·毕格罗(Kathryn Bigelow)在《拆弹部队》(The Hurt Locker)和《刺杀本·拉登》(Zero Dark Thirty)中的处理要有创意得多。和此前加里·罗斯(Gary Ross)导演的《奔腾年代》(Seabiscuit)一样，安吉丽娜·朱莉(Angelina Jolie)执导的《坚不可摧》(Unbroken)改编自劳拉·希伦布兰德(Laura Hillenbrand)的著作。影片断断续续地会有一些出彩的地方，但总的来说没有达到原著的水准。它常常让我想再去看一遍《桂河大桥》(The Bridge on the River Kwai)。只有《塞尔玛》让我真的印象深刻，但即便是在看这部电影时，我也忍不住有些不满地拿它和去年的《为奴十二年》(12 Years a Slave)相比。作为一部种族和历史片，《为奴十二年》受这类影片的传统限制较少（布拉德·皮特[Brad Pitt]饰演配角的糟糕表现除外）。
And it wasn’t just the prestige movies: The holiday “crowd-pleasers” mostly felt like, if you will, imitation games, failing to live up to standards set by better blockbusters. I’m a conscientious objector from “The Hobbit: The Battle of Five Hours or So,” but I’m assured that it’s exactly the bloated desecration of the “Lord of the Rings” that it appears to be from afar. “Exodus: Gods and Kings,” like every historical epic Ridley Scott has made in the past decade, mostly just made me want to fire up “Gladiator.” And “The Interview,” which I did my patriotic duty and paid $5.99 to watch On Demand, doesn’t really offer anything — save a truly bizarre James Franco performance, an eyebrow-raiser even by his standards — that wasn’t delivered with much more gonzo flair and self-awareness in “Team America: World Police.”
不仅是那些为了获得荣誉的影片是这样：假期里“迎合观众的影片”大多也感觉像是模仿比赛，未能达到更棒的大片定下的水准。我从原则上拒绝看《霍比特人：大概其五小时之战》(The Hobbit: The Battle of Five Hours or So)。相关信息让我确信，它和从远处给人的感觉一样，完全是对《指环王》(Lord of the Rings)的冗长亵渎。和雷利·斯科特(Ridley Scott)过去10年里拍摄的所有历史大片一样，《法老与众神》(Exodus: Gods and Kings)常常让我想去看《角斗士》(Gladiator)。我尽了爱国的义务，付了5.99美元，通过点播的方式观看了《采访》(The Interview)。但这部片子与《美国战队：世界警察》(Team America: World Police)相比，在疯狂的天分及自我意识方面，处处都要甘拜下风。不过詹姆斯·弗兰科(James Franco)的表现真的很怪异，即便是以他的标准来看，也令人意外。
To take off my curmudgeon’s hate for a moment, I did like “Wild” and “A Most Violent Year” (though the latter not as much as I’d hoped), and to put on my political pundit’s hat, I do think the controversy around how “Selma” portrays L.B.J. is genuinely interesting. But before getting into that debate, tell me I’m wrong about December — or just least tell me what you liked last month, and why.
暂时放下我这个脾气不好的人的反感，我的确喜欢《走出荒野》(Wild)和《至暴之年》(A Most Violent Year)（尽管后者和我的期望还有差距），而且如果以政治时事评论员的身份来看，我的确觉得《塞尔玛》对林登·约翰逊(L.B.J.)的描述引发的争议很有意思。但在进行相关讨论之前，你能指出我对12月影片的看法中哪里错了吗，或者至少告诉我上月的影片中，你喜欢哪一部，为什么。
Bruni: No evasion here! You have teed me up to talk about “American Sniper,” and I will gladly take my swing: I found it absurd. From a technical standpoint, it’s made with skill, but in all other regards, it’s dumbfounding. It gives us a protagonist who believes that just about anything is warranted in defense of what he bluntly states is the greatest country on earth, but what little glimpse we get of his back story tells us nothing about how he defines that greatness and about whether his patriotism is rooted in anything more than slogans, received wisdom and the dining-room-table sermons of his spookily intense father. He’s a one-dimensional killing machine in thrall to his own marksmanship, and when he winds up rattled by all the death that he’s seen and at times been the agent of, it’s unclear if this is because he’s come to doubt the war’s purpose or to question its justification. It’s unclear that he’s asked any big questions at all. Maybe that’s the point — that many warriors are simply swept up in the call to battle — but it makes for a thinly written character.Equally frustrating is the way the movie draws a straight line from the attack on the Twin Towers to the war in Iraq. As David Edelstein wrote in his review of “American Sniper” in New York magazine, there’s “no indication that the two events — 9/11 and the Iraq invasion — have been yoked together by unscrupulous politicians who don’t have a clue what lies in store for American soldiers.” Edelstein actually went further, calling “American Sniper” “a Republican platform movie.” I’d love your reaction to that, Ross. Does it indeed veer toward propaganda, or are Eastwood’s critics now seeing his work through the prism of that moment at the 2012 Republican National Convention when he took the stage and talked to an empty chair that was meant to symbolize Obama?
布鲁尼：我没在逃避！既然你让我谈谈《美国狙击手》，我很乐意：我觉得这部片子很荒唐。从技术角度来说，它的制作很有技巧，但在所有其他方面，这部片子让人完全傻眼。影片塑造的主人公直截了当地说美国是最伟大的国家，认为为了保卫这个国家，几乎一切都是正当的，但他的背景故事几乎完全没告诉我们，他是如何定义这种伟大的，以及他的爱国主义的源头，除了口号、传统观念和他那狂热得令人毛骨悚然的父亲在餐桌上的训诫，还有什么。他是一个肤浅的杀人机器，受控于自己的枪法。当他最后对自己亲眼目睹、有时甚至是亲手制造的死亡感到不安时，我们不清楚这是因为他开始质疑战争的目的，还是因为他质疑战争的理由。我们也不知道他到底有没有提出重大的问题。或许这正是问题的关键，很多士兵不过是被卷入了战争的召唤，但这导致剧本中的这个角色很单薄。同样令人失望的是，影片直接从双子塔遇袭切换到了伊拉克战争。正如戴维·埃德尔斯坦(David Edelstein)在《纽约》杂志(New York magazine)上的《美国狙击手》影评中所写的那样，影片“没有指出9·11袭击和入侵伊拉克这两件事情，是被一些寡廉鲜耻的政客强加在一起的，他们不知道美国大兵即将面临什么”。实际上，埃德尔斯坦更进一步，称《美国狙击手》是“共和党的宣传电影”。我想听听你对此的意见，罗斯。这部片子真的偏向于政宣片吗，还是说现在批评伊斯特伍德的人，是在透过2012年共和党全国代表大会(Republican National Convention)上发生的那件事，来看待他的作品？在那次大会上，伊斯特伍德走上台，对着一把象征奥巴马的空椅子讲话。
Douthat: O.K., you’ve provoked me: In spite of finding it middling as art, I’ll speak up in defense of the politics of “American Sniper” — or, more accurately, the conspicuous lack thereof. Edelstein’s a fine critic, but his line about “Sniper” being a “Republican platform movie” is ridiculous, as is the alleged stark contrast he draws between “Sniper” and Eastwood’s “Letters From Iwo Jima.” The reality is that all of Eastwood’s recent war movies — “Iwo Jima” and “Flags of Our Fathers” as well as “Sniper” — share the same basically apolitical quality: They’re interested in the warp and woof of war, the experience of comradeship and wartime stress, and so they take their characters’ official reason for fighting — be it rah-rah American patriotism or dutiful Japanese nationalism or something else — as a given and don’t spend a lot of time asking bigger questions about which side or strategy is right or wrong.
多赛特：好啊，你在挑衅：尽管我觉得作为艺术作品，《美国狙击手》很一般，但我要替影片中的政治说几句，更准确地说是剧中明显缺少的政治。埃德尔斯坦是一名优秀的评论家，但他说《美国狙击手》是“共和党的宣传电影”那句话，以及他所谓的《美国狙击手》与伊斯特伍德之前的《硫磺岛家书》(Letters From Iwo Jima)有着天壤之别都很可笑。事实是，伊斯特伍德最近执导的所有战争片，如《硫磺岛家书》、《父辈的旗帜》(Flags of Our Fathers)，以及《美国狙击手》都有一个共同的特点，那就是基本不关心政治：它们感兴趣的是战争的基本元素、战友情谊和战时压力的体验，所以它们认为，片中角色作战的官方理由——不管是激情澎湃的美国爱国主义，还是尽忠职守的日本民族主义，或是其他什么——是认定了的，不会花很多时间提出更大的问题，质疑哪一方，或哪种战略的对错。
I’m not in love with this approach, but it’s a consistent one for Eastwood. He neither endorses Chris Kyle’s monologues about American greatness nor is he particularly interested in subjecting them to a scathing critique; mostly he just rushes through them in order to get back to the world he’s really interested in, the world of battle, where politics recedes and all the questions that matter are much more immediate than the W.M.D. debate. He’s no more making Bush administration propaganda than he was making imperial Japanese propaganda; he’s just trying to make movies about wartime experience, period, in its varied forms.
我不喜欢这种方式，但这是伊斯特伍德一贯的套路。他既不认可克里斯·凯尔(Chris Kyle)用独白的方式陈述美国的伟大，对于用一篇严厉的评论文章来抨击那些独白也不感兴趣。他主要是想快速处理完这些独白，以便回到他真正感兴趣的那个世界去。在那个战争的世界里，政治退去了，所有要紧的事情都比有关大规模杀伤性武器的辩论更加直接。他在片中对布什政府宣传的关注，并不比对日本帝国宣传的关注多。他不过是试图拍摄各种形式的电影，来讲述战时的经历。
And then since I am interested in political arguments, I’ll also offer a brief word in defense of Kyle’s own attitudes, at least as expressed on-screen. There was no straight line from 9/11 plot to Saddam Hussein’s regime, I agree, but one can regard the invasion as a misbegotten folly and still acknowledge that by the time we arrived at the specific in-theater events the movie narrates — particularly the hunt for Abu Musab al-Zarqawi — United States troops really were fighting adherents of the ideology that inspired the 9/11 attacks (or a variant thereof). Again, that doesn’t make the case for the war itself, but it means that from the ordinary soldier’s perspective, the connection wasn’t just smoke and mirrors, and there’s nothing inherently deluded about invoking it as an argument for staying in the fight.
同时，既然我对政治辩论感兴趣，我也要简单地为凯尔自己的态度，至少是银幕上表现出来的他的态度说几句。我同意，9·11阴谋与萨达姆·侯赛因(Saddam Hussein)政权没有直接联系，但人们能够在认为入侵是卑劣的愚蠢之举的同时，也承认在电影里描述的那些特定事件——特别是追捕阿布·穆萨卜·扎卡维(Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi)——发生时，美国军队的确在与激励了9·11袭击的那种意识形态的追随者作战。是的，这并不能成为战争本身的理由，但它意味着从普通士兵的角度来看，这种联系并不是雾里花、镜中月，使用这个说法来解释为什么继续战斗本身并非胡思乱想。
Bruni: The problem that I have with the odd vacuum in which “American Sniper” tells its story is that there’s been, and almost immediately was, such a furious swirl of questions about why we went into Iraq, about whether it was the right target at the right time and about how the war was marketed, that you simply can’t watch the movie without feeling that a crucial bit of context is being steadfastly avoided. It’s a voice in your head that intrudes on and distracts from what’s happening on-screen. Like you, I wouldn’t go so far as to call “American Sniper” a “Republican platform movie,” but I would call it disconcertingly simplistic and off key.
布鲁尼：《美国狙击手》是在一个奇怪的真空里讲述自己的故事。我对这个真空的不满是，一直且几乎一开始就有铺天盖地的问题，针对的是我们为何要入侵伊拉克、伊拉克是不是在正确的时间里选择的正确目标，以及这场战争是如何进行宣传的，所以在观看该片时，你不可能感觉不到电影决绝地回避了一些关键背景。你脑海里会出现一个声音干扰屏幕上的情节，转移你的注意力。和你一样，我也不至于说《美国狙击手》是“共和党的宣传电影”，但我会说它的简单化和跑题令人不安。
“American Sniper” has a plot that could easily have accommodated big questions about America, and it chooses not to ask them. “Foxcatcher,” another somber awards-season movie, is the opposite. It insinuates that the story of the spectacularly wealthy industrialist John du Pont’s ill-fated patronage of working-class wrestlers is some sort of mirror of the country’s dysfunctions: Flags, eagles and references to national pride abound. But really it’s about a singularly creepy social misfit, and it buckles under the weight of the larger meanings piled onto it. It’s also strangely dull, and I say “strangely” because its director, Bennett Miller, previously made “Moneyball,” turning a tale of statistics into a riveting, moving drama: the best movie of its year, IMHO. In “Foxcatcher,” he has a kook, half-naked men pinning each other to the ground and a bizarre true crime to work with, and he presses them into a hushed, stately, stale epic.
《美国狙击手》的情节很容易融入一些和美国有关的宏大问题，但影片选择不这么做。另一部低沉的影片《狐狸猎手》(Foxcatcher)则截然相反。该片旁敲侧击的暗示，富得惊人的实业家约翰·杜邦(John du Pont)赞助工人阶级摔跤手却没带来好结果的故事，在一定程度上反映了这个国家的症结所在：片中有大量国旗、老鹰和提到民族自豪感的地方。但实际上，它讲述的是一个与社会特别格格不入的人的故事，影片所承载的更大意义令其不堪重负。这部片子奇怪地无趣，我说“奇怪”是因为它的导演贝尼特·米勒(Bennett Miller)曾在《点球成金》(Moneyball)中，把一个统计学故事，变成了一部引人入胜、令人动容的电影，个人认为那是当年的年度最佳电影。在《狐狸猎手》中，他要应对的是一个怪人、两个要将对方压倒在地的半裸男子和一桩真实的奇案。他却把这些东西一股脑儿塞进了一部节奏沉闷、推进缓慢、题材陈旧的大片里。
More engrossing than anything in “Foxcatcher” were the recent real-life Twitter tantrums of Mark Schultz, the wrestler at the center of du Pont’s obsessions, played by Channing Tatum in the movie. He’s apparently outraged about scenes that suggest homoerotic currents between him and du Pont. I mention that partly to pivot to the following question, Ross, since it applies not just to “Foxcatcher” but also to “American Sniper” and perhaps to “Selma” most of all: What obligation, if any, do movies have to hew to the historical record and the known truth? I’m curious if you think there are any firm dos and don’ts, any inventions or suppositions that should be out of bounds.
《狐狸猎手》最引人入胜的是最近发生在现实中的情节，杜邦十分关注的摔跤手马克·舒尔茨（Mark Schultz，在剧中由查宁·塔图姆[Channing Tatum]扮演）在Twitter上发飙了。让他愤怒的显然是剧中暗示他跟杜邦之间，有同性暧昧情绪的场景。罗斯，我提这个，部分目的是想把话题转到下一个问题，这个问题不仅适用于《狐狸猎手》，也适用于《美国狙击手》，可能最适用于《塞尔玛》：电影有怎样的义务去遵从历史记载和已知的事实，甚至有没有这样的义务？我好奇的是，你会不会觉得有某些确定的“什么可以做什么不可以做”的规则，有没有哪些编造或者臆测是不可接受的？
Douthat: Well, it’s complicated. The obligation to historical fidelity clearly can’t be absolute, or no filmmaker could pass it, and there has to be ample room for movies to play with real-life events to get at particular points and argument and ideas. To pick an apolitical recent example, I loved “The Social Network,” a movie that I thought captured the culture of meritocracy (or at least its Harvardian iteration) brilliantly, even though its “Mark Zuckerberg” bore little relationship to the real-life man. In that case and many others, I tend to agree with Jamelle Bouie’s argument — made last week in the context of the “Selma” debate — that viewers should be generally “less concerned with fact-checking and more interested in understanding” why, exactly, directors and screenwriters wrestling with history make the compressing/eliding/inventing choices that they make.
多赛特：实际上挺复杂的。忠于历史的义务显然不能是绝对的，否则没有哪个电影人能及格，电影中应该有充裕的空间对现实事件进行演绎，从而表达某些特定的观点、论调和思想。我可以从最近的电影里挑一个不涉及政治的例子，我很喜欢《社交网络》(The Social Network)，我认为这部电影出色地反映了崇尚精英的文化（至少可以说是哈佛风格的这种文化），尽管剧中的“马克·扎克伯格”(Mark Zuckerberg)与现实生活中的那个人没有多少关系。在这部片中，以及其他例子里，我倾向于认同贾梅尔·鲍伊(Jamelle Bouie)的观点——他说这话的背景是上周《塞尔玛》引发的争论——观众总体上应该“别那么操心事实核查，更应该感兴趣的是理解”那些与历史掰腕子的导演和编剧，为什么选择做出这样的压缩/省略/虚构？
That means, in turn, that I’m inclined to reject comprehensive indictments of the historical liberties taken by “Selma” — say — as a historian’s version of the tedious, commonplace “why didn’t the filmmaker make the movie I wanted her to make?” critique. But at the same time, I remain a little uncomfortable with the specific way that Ava DuVernay’s movie portrays Lyndon Johnson (which is the key problem the historian-critics raise), because in addition to being untrue to the record it has the effect of flattening his character and making the tangled relationship between activists and politicians — one of the movie’s key themes — less interesting and more unsubtle and thus less artistically satisfying than it could have been. I can see what the movie gained dramatically by making the president more of a stumbling block to the movement than he actually was, and I respect DuVernay’s professed desire to avoid anything resembling the “white savior” cliché. But I think that all this could have been accomplished without (spoiler alert) having Johnson actually sic J. Edgar Hoover on King, a black-hat moment that just seemed crude and unlikely in the context of the film, setting aside its lack of grounding in the facts.
这又意味着，尽管有人因为《塞尔玛》中对历史事件的演绎，提出了全面的指责，但是我倾向于排斥这种指责——比如，历史学者喋喋不休、陈词滥调地批评：“为什么电影主创没有拍一部像我想象的那种电影？”但与此同时，阿娃·杜威内(Ava DuVernay)的这部电影里刻画林登·约翰逊(Lyndon Johnson)的某些具体方式，还是让我有点不舒服，这也正是持批评态度的历史学者提出的关键问题。之所以不舒服是因为，它不仅没有忠实于历史记载，还导致人物平面化，让活动人士与政客之间本来可以显得有趣、微妙，在艺术上很完满的纠结关系（这是剧中关键主题之一），变得没那么有意思、没那么微妙，在艺术上也没那么令人满意。电影对林登·约翰逊的描绘，比他实际扮演的角色更像是一个绊脚石，我明白这样做在戏剧上对电影有怎样的帮助，我也尊重杜威内明确表达过的，免得像是落入“白人救世主”套路的愿望。不过我想，（有剧透）所有这些，即使不让约翰逊实际上差遣J·埃德加·胡佛(J. Edgar Hoover)对付马丁·路德·金，也是可以达成的。这个卑劣的情节在这部电影的语境里，简直有些粗糙、格格不入，且不说它缺乏确凿的事实依据。
Bruni: I’d say that movies don’t have any absolute duty to history. Even historians pick and choose what to focus on and come up with a perspective or argument that doesn’t do full justice to all of the small facts and subtleties in the unedited, messy record of real life. When you shape events into a particular form with finite parameters, be it a movie or a tome, some distortion occurs. It’s built into the process. But is there a rationale for the distortion? Does it serve a clear purpose without undermining your credibility and thus your impact? Some of the tweaks made by “Selma” seem unnecessary, and I think that may well be hurting the film in the awards season: Neither it nor its star, David Oyelowo, got Bafta nominations, which were announced after the controversy over the movie had grown in volume, and at the Golden Globes, the movie won only in the category of best original song.
布鲁尼：我想说电影对于历史没有绝对的义务，就连历史学者都会挑拣要关注的问题，提出一些观点和论断，而不会面面俱到地顾及对于现实生活未经编辑、混乱的纪录中，所有细微的事实和微妙细节。在有限的参数内将事件塑造为特定的形式，无论是电影还是大部头的著作，总会发生一些扭曲。这是过程中的内在特点。不过这种扭曲有理由吗？它能否达成清晰的目的，而又不影响你的可信度，于是也不破坏你的影响力？《塞尔玛》做的一些改动似乎没有必要，而且我觉得可能是这些因素，在颁奖季影响了这部电影的成绩：无论是这部片子还是其中的主角戴维·奥伊罗(David Oyelowo)都没有得到英国电影学院奖(Bafta)的提名，这个奖项公布之前，关于这部电影已经产生了极大争议，而在金球奖(Golden Globes)的颁奖中，这部电影只在最佳原创歌曲这一个门类里获奖。
But not all of its digressions from truth are as wildly cavalier and irresponsible as their harshest critics suggest. I talked about this with the Princeton historian Julian Zelizer, whose new book on L.B.J., “The Fierce Urgency of Now,” was the grist for my Tuesday column. He agreed with you, Ross, that the L.B.J.-Hoover emphasis was both wrong and needless; as for L.B.J. and voting rights, he wrote this interesting piece explaining precisely where and how “Selma” and fact diverge.
然而并非剧中所有脱离史实的情节都像最严厉的批评人士所说的，过于漫不经心、严重不负责任。我与普林斯顿大学的历史学者朱利安·杰里哲(Julian Zelizer)讨论过这个问题，他关于约翰逊的书《当下的紧迫性》(The Fierce Urgency of Now)为我周二的专栏文章提供了素材。罗斯，他也同意你的看法，强调约翰逊和胡佛的情节不仅是错的，而且是没有必要的。至于约翰逊和投票权的话题，他写了篇有趣的文章，准确地解释了《塞尔玛》是在哪里以怎样的方式脱离了现实。
“Selma” is saddled by the ease with which it can be fact-checked (an ease that the moviemakers perhaps should have kept in mind). I’m sure if we had similar documentation against which to measure “Unbroken” and “Wild,” two other real-life narratives, we’d find inconsistencies, hyperbole, a tidying-up of things. The events of each occurred long before they were molded into the best sellers on which the movies are based, and memory has its biases and limits. I took both movies at face value, finding “Unbroken” tedious and disconcertingly old-fashioned but enjoying “Wild” largely for its soulful mood, achieved through music, imagery and Reese Witherspoon.
《塞尔玛》的一个负担是，事实核查做起来很容易（这一点电影主创本应该注意的）。我敢肯定如果我们有相似的文献记载，用来对另外两个讲述现实事件的电影《坚不可摧》(Unbroken)和《走出荒野》(Wild)做事实核查，也会发现前后不一致、夸张、装扮事实的情况。两部电影中的事件，过了很久才成为畅销书，之后才在此基础上拍成电影，而记忆也有自身的倾向和局限。我选择不去质疑这两部电影，不过感觉《坚不可摧》很枯燥，而且老派到令人难堪的地步，但我很喜欢《走出荒野》，主要是因为它通过音乐烘托出的真挚感情、映像，以及瑞茜·威瑟斯彭(Reese Witherspoon)。
While this has been a better year for actors than for actresses, which is to say it’s been depressingly like every other year, we were treated to some great and surprising performances by women over the last month. I think of Julianne Moore’s in “Still Alice.” I mentioned that movie in a recent column, and I was happy to see Moore win a richly deserved Golden Globe, for best actress in a drama. I also think of “Cake” and Jennifer Aniston, whom I wrote about for last weekend’s Arts & Leisure section. Have you seen either, Ross? If not, do you have any actors or actresses to whom you’d like to give shout-outs before we wrap up this latest session?
这一年男演员的日子过得比女演员好，其实每年都是如此，真令人沮丧；不过上个月我们有幸看到一些女性有着伟大而令人吃惊的表现。我想到了《我想念我自己》(Still Alice)里的茱丽安·摩尔(Julianne Moore)。我在最近的一篇专栏里提到过这部电影，很高兴看到摩尔能实至名归地拿到一座金球奖剧情类电影最佳女主角。我还想到了《蛋糕》(Cake)和詹妮弗·安妮斯顿(Jennifer Aniston)，上周末我给“艺术与休闲”(Arts & Leisure)版块写的文章写了她。你也看到了吧，罗斯？如果没有，在我们结束最后这个环节之前，你有哪些男女演员想特别拿出来夸一夸的呢？
Douthat: Wait — has this really been a better year for actors? We talked about this during our first go-round, at the end of the summer, and I think it all depends on where you set the baseline. I’m not going to join Russell Crowe and dismiss industry sexism: The persistent male advantages and endless May-November romantic pairings are real enough, and in the age of presold genre franchises, the business arguably caters more than ever to adolescent (and adultescent) males.
多塞特：等一下——这一年真的是男演员过得更好么？我们在夏末的第一次讨论时谈过这个，我认为这完全取决于你的标准。我不打算跟罗素·克劳(Russell Crowe)手拉手去否认业内的性别歧视：男性一直以来占据的优势，还有没完没了的男长女幼恋人配对，都是真实存在的，在这个预售类型系列片的时代，这一行无疑在更多地迎合青少年（和人老心不老的）男性。
But at the same time, even though the action-driven culture of blockbusters provides permanent employment opportunities for younger actors who know their way around a weight room, it also seems to make them more interchangeable (how many moviegoers recognize the name Henry Cavill? how many can tell the Hemsworth brothers apart?), disposable (blink, and somebody else is playing Spiderman and Superman and Batman) and forgettable (quick, who played the male lead in “Godzilla”?) than the male stars of 20 years ago. Put it this way: If I had to pick the younger stars who had the best year in 2015, I’d put Jennifer Lawrence, Shailene Woodley (who had not one but two $100-million-plus movies) and Scarlett Johansson (who single-handedly propelled the lousy “Lucy” to big business while also racking up deserved art-house plaudits for “Under the Skin”) above any younger male of the species not named Chris Pratt. Or again: I don’t think any famous male star carried a major blockbuster as completely as Angelina Jolie did “Maleficent.” Or yet again: We haven’t talked about “Into the Woods,” but it’s the Christmas season’s second-biggest earner after Peter Jackson’s 17-hour Middle Earth cash-in, it’s thick with female stars, and it has Meryl Streep looming on its poster, not Johnny Depp or Chris Pine. (Again, how many moviegoers have even heard of Chris Pine?)Even the land of Seth Rogen and Co., long a bit of a wasteland for female co-stars, delivered us Rose Byrne’s terrific turn in “Neighbors.” And the likely best-actress contest, in which the terrific Witherspoon will probably still lose out to either Moore or Aniston, is dominated by women in roles that suggest — like Streep’s box office clout, and Sandra Bullock’s, and even Melissa McCarthy’s — that there’s some life (if, again, not as much as Crowe believes) in Hollywood for women near and over 40.
但同时，虽然动作导向的大片文化给那些会举几下杠铃的年轻男性演员带去了铁饭碗，却也让他们比20年前的男星更容易被取代（有多少电影迷知道亨利·卡维尔[Henry Cavill]这名字？有谁分得清海姆斯沃斯兄弟[Hemsworth]谁是谁？）、抛弃（一眨眼蜘蛛侠超人蝙蝠侠就换人了）和遗忘（我问你，《哥斯拉》[Godzilla]男主角是谁？）。这么说吧：如果非要我选出2015年最风光的年轻明星，我选詹妮弗·劳伦斯(Jennifer Lawrence)、谢琳·伍德利(Shailene Woodley)和斯嘉丽·约翰逊(Scarlett Johansson)，伍德利有过亿票房的片子，两部；约翰逊凭一己之力把《超体》(Lucy)这个烂片弄成大热，同时还能撑起《皮囊之下》(Under the Skin)这种受好评的艺术片，她们比任何一个年轻男星都强，克里斯·普瑞特(Chris Pratt)除外。还有：我觉得没有哪个男性明星能像《沉睡魔咒》(Maleficent)里的安吉丽娜·朱莉(Angelina Jolie)那样，在一部一线大制作影片里有那么重的分量。还有：我们还没说《魔法黑森林》(Into the Woods)呢，它是圣诞季票房第二，只输给彼得·杰克逊(Peter Jackson)那个17小时的中土赚钱机器，影片的女星阵容强大，海报上是梅尔·斯特里普(Meryl Streep)的脸，不是约翰尼·德普(Johnny Depp)或克里斯·潘恩(Chris Pine)。（再问一句，有多少影迷认得克里斯·潘恩？）连赛斯·罗根(Seth Roge)这类一向忽视女性角色的人物，也推出了萝丝·拜恩(Rose Byrne)在《邻居大战》(Neighbors)里的精彩转型。而从最佳女主角的主要竞争者来看——大放异彩的威瑟斯彭可能还是会输给摩尔或安妮斯顿——接近或超过40岁的女性在好莱坞还是有生命力的（虽说可能不像克劳想的那么好），比如斯特里普的票房号召力，还有桑德拉·布鲁克(Sandra Bullock)，甚至梅丽莎·麦卡锡(Melissa McCarthy)。
With all that said, maybe I’ll prove your point by offering my own parting shout-out to two men, J.C. Chandor and Oscar Isaac, respectively the writer-director and star of “A Most Violent Year,” about a heating-oil industry rivalry (it’s more interesting than it sounds) in the grim, crime-haunted Gotham of 1981. I’m offering it even though, as I noted above, the movie disappointed me in the end: It’s ridiculously good for two-thirds of its running time, but then it sort of peters out, leaving too many subplots unresolved instead of making them successfully converge. But Chandor has earned the right to disappoint just a little: He’s made three movies, “Margin Call” and “All Is Lost” and now this one, and they’ve all been more ambitious and effective and interesting than the work of — well, a long list of better-known directors, let’s just say. And Isaac (who’s also in the next “Star Wars,” for good or ill) is just phenomenal, as he was in a completely different sort of part last year in “Inside Llewyn Davis.”
话虽如此，我还是要在最后特别提一下的两个男性，这也许验证了你的看法，他们是J·C·陈多尔(J.C. Chandor)和奥斯卡·伊萨克(Oscar Isaac)，分别是《至暴之年》(A Most Violent Year)的编导和主演，影片讲的是1981年发生在阴森恐怖、犯罪丛生的纽约的一场燃料油行业厮斗（片子并非听上去那么无聊）。我以前写过，影片到最后是让我失望的，但我还是把它拿出来：在全片三分之二的时间里，它好的不可思议，然后就慢慢走下坡路，太多的情节支线悬而未决，没能交汇到一起。但是陈多尔有权留下一点不如意的地方：他拍了三部电影，《利益风暴》(Margin Call)和《一切尽失》(All Is Lost)，还有就是这部，它们都比——呃，就说是一长串更出名的导演吧——有更多的抱负、更精彩、更有趣味。伊萨克（他会出演下一部《星球大战》，不知是好事还坏事）的演出惊世骇俗，跟去年在《醉乡民谣》(Inside Llewyn Davis)里那个角色完全不是一回事。
Neither man is any kind of household name; neither earned even a nomination at the Globes. (Jessica Chastain, yet another female star enjoying a steady run of meaty parts, had the movie’s only Globe nod.) I’ll be interested to see if either one gets Oscar recognition this year. But whether they do or don’t, I’m sure something interesting will happen once Oscar season overwhelms us … and hopefully, we’ll be right back here to talk about it.
两个人都不算家喻户晓；连金球奖提名都没拿过。（杰西卡·查斯坦[Jessica Chastain]，又一个不断出现在重量级制作里的女性明星，是整部影片里唯一得到金球认可的。）我倒是很想看看他们两个在今年会不会得到奥斯卡的赏识。不管有没有，我相信等到奥斯卡季向我们涌来那一刻，一定会发生点有意思的事……希望到时候我们能回到这里来聊聊。