经济学人114:摇篮将覆 The cradle will rock

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　　文艺；新片；摇篮将覆；

　　Lynne Ramsay has crafted an elegant adaptation of a tricky¹ book;

　　琳恩·拉姆塞将一本难处理的书精心改编成了一部优雅的作品；

　　What is more taboo² than a woman who is repulsed³ by her own child? This is the genius of “We Need to Talk About Kevin”, a remarkable⁴ novel from Lionel Shriver (a former literary critic for this paper), which considers the life of a reluctant mother after her teenage son commits mass murder. The story unfurls as a stream of letters from Eva Khatchadourian to her husband as she retraces⁵ the steps of their lives together—the happy marriage that morphs into a toxic⁶ family, and the haunting event that casts everything in shadow. Yet even as Eva recounts evidence of her son's malevolence⁷ at a young age, the reader is left with a galling⁸ question: would Kevin have fared better if his mother loved him more?

　　还有什么能比一个被自己亲生孩子憎恶的母亲更令人忌讳的呢？这就是《凯文怎么了》一书的精髓。它是莱昂内尔·施赖弗（本报的前任文学评论家）的一部杰出小说，讲述了一位母亲在自己十几岁的孩子犯下屠杀大罪后勉强度日的生活。故事随着伊娃·卡查度瑞安写给丈夫的一连串信件展开，她追溯了他们共同生活的那些阶段——从一段美好婚姻走向了一个毒性家庭，还有那个让一切都变得灰暗的萦绕于心的事件。然而即使伊娃重新搜集了她儿子幼年时狠毒本性的证据，读者仍然会被一个恼人的问题所困扰：如果他的母亲曾多爱他一些的话，凯文会不会好很多？

　　It takes courage to adapt an epistolary novel for the screen, particularly one as psychologically complex as this one. Yet Lynne Ramsay's film of the same name, starring Tilda Swinton as Eva, is excellent. The gift of this version is its visual rendering⁹ of Eva's claustrophobic thoughts. With a minimalist screenplay written with Rory Kinnear, Ms Ramsay translates Eva's clot¹⁰ of dark and messy words into a collage¹¹ of evocative and mostly wordless scenes. These vignettes shift from the present—Eva living as a social pariah¹², a husk of her former self—to the past, and are jumbled¹³ with the non-chronology of memory. As in the book, Kevin's big, violent moment is left until the end, but the bloody¹⁴ fact of it infects everything that comes before.

　　将一部书信体小说搬上银幕需要很大的勇气，尤其当涉及复杂的心理学，例如本片。然而琳恩·拉姆塞的这部同名电影却很优秀。蒂尔达·斯文顿在片中饰演伊娃。该片的精髓表现在对伊娃的幽闭恐惧症想法那栩栩如生的描绘上。剧本由罗里·金奈尔创作，风格极简。拉姆塞将伊娃那一团团模糊凌乱的文字转化成了一系列场景的拼贴，这些大都无言的场景能够唤起人们的回忆。如今的伊娃生活在社会底层，只剩下一副当初的自己的躯壳。这些小片段从当前切换到曾经，不同年月的记忆互相交织，错综复杂。同书里一样，凯文重要的施暴时刻被留在了末尾，但它那血腥的事实感染了之前的一切。

　　Still, something is lost in witnessing Kevin in the flesh instead of through Eva's unreliable recollections. In the novel, Eva perceives her son's cruelty from the start, though it goes unseen by his doting¹⁵ father Franklin (played here by John C. Reilly, everyone's favourite pushover). On-screen, Kevin is quite obviously malicious¹⁶, first as a nasty little boy and then as a spiteful, ink-eyed teenager. As the latter Kevin, Ezra Miller¹⁷ seethes¹⁸ with ruthlessness, his face impenetrable. Yet he is also distractingly attractive, with cheekbones any starlet would covet¹⁹, making him an awkward choice for such an enigmatic role.

　　尽管如此，在经由伊娃那不可靠的回忆而非亲自目击凯文的过程中，某些东西还是不见了。在小说中，伊娃从一开始就感觉到了儿子的残忍，但它随着宠溺凯文的父亲（由人人都爱的弱敌约翰·C·赖利饰演）而被漠视。在影片中，凯文的恶毒颇为明显，起初是一个险恶的小男孩，然后变成一个目光阴沉的刻毒少年。饰演后者的埃兹拉·米勒爆发出了残忍，他的面部表情不可测知。而米勒同时也令人走神地引力十足。他有着任何小明星都觊觎的颧骨，因此由他来扮演这样一个谜一般的角色显得不尴不尬。

　　This is not a problem that affects Ms Swinton, who carries this film. Not unlike a praying mantis²⁰, her odd and otherworldly beauty takes time to notice. Her face, powerful in its spareness, registers emotion with subtle ticks and readjustments. As Eva, she conveys the desolation of a life made meaningless, first by the lonely challenges of motherhood, then by tragedy. Driving in her car to the chirpy strains of Buddy²¹ Holly's “Every day seems a little longer”, her ghost-eyed stare keeps us locked in her nightmare.

　　但这不会对携领全片的斯文顿产生任何影响。她就像一只螳螂，需要时间才能体会出她那奇特脱俗的美。她的脸，瘦弱之中充满力量，将情感投注在微妙的运转与调整之中。她饰演的伊娃传达了生活在丧失其意义之后的荒芜，先是由于身为人母的孤独挑战，接着是因为这出悲剧。她驱车进入了不断叫嚣着巴迪·霍利笔下“每一天都变得更加漫长”的语境之中。她那幽灵般双目的凝视也将我们深锁在她的噩梦之中。

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