时报为安吉丽娜朱莉导演处女作点赞

Angelina Jolie opens “Unbroken” with a shot of a celestial blue sky that soon darkens with a battle scene so tense and fluidly choreographed that you quickly sense that, as a director, she leans closer to hell than heaven. She has given herself plenty to work with: The movie takes a slice out of the life of Louis Zamperini, the Olympic runner turned World War II bombardier who, after surviving a plane crash and 47 days adrift on the Pacific, was fished out of the water by a Japanese patrol boat and then imprisoned in camps where he was brutalized for years. His is one of those stories that has come to define the Greatest Generation.

安吉丽娜·朱莉(Angelina Jolie)的《坚不可摧》(Unbroken)以这样一个镜头开始：蔚蓝的天空迅速变得昏暗，出现了紧凑的战争场面。场景设计优美流畅，让你很快感觉到，作为导演，她更加贴近地狱，而非天堂。朱莉给自己安排了很重的任务：这部影片反映了路易·赞贝里尼(Louis Zamperini)的人生片段，他曾是奥运会长跑选手，后来成为“二战”中的轰炸机士兵，堕机生还后在太平洋上漂流了47天，被日军巡洋舰从海上捞起，关入集中营，受到数年残忍虐待。他的生平是曾经定义了“最伟大一代”的故事之一。

That story, in its human reach and cosmic scale, in its different permutations and theaters of war, has been recounted in memoirs, novels, fiction films and all too painfully true documentaries. It emerges again in Laura Hillenbrand’s 2010 best seller, “Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience and Redemption,” which is the basis for the movie. With some narrative rejigging, a lot of compression and one significant exception, Ms. Jolie follows the lead of the book, which focuses on the first 25 years or so of Mr. Zamperini’s life. She also sweeps through his early education as a peewee gangster, truculent son of Italian immigrants and accidental athlete who discovers he can run like the wind, but she gets to the war sooner.

这个故事有着人性的角度与宏大的规模，曾以各种排列组合方式进入各种关于战争的领域，它曾经成为回忆录、小说、虚构电影以及极度真实的纪录片。2010年，它又再度浮现于劳拉·希伦布兰特(Laura Hillenbrand)的畅销书《坚不可摧：一个二战中生存、坚韧与救赎的故事》(Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience and redemption)之中，电影正是根据此书拍摄。朱莉做了若干叙事性的调整，进行了很多压缩，以及一处重要的删节，但主要还是跟着这本书的线索，关注赞贝里尼前25年左右的人生。她还简单介绍了他早期做小流氓时的经历，他是意大利移民的儿子，凶猛好斗，意外成为运动员，发现自己可以跑得像风一样飞快。但朱莉很快就让故事来到了战争的部分。

Ms. Jolie is a fast worker. After her inaugural nod at the wide blue yonder, she thrusts you inside the claustrophobic confines of a B-24 bomber that’s soon under Japanese attack. There, the adult Louie, as he was called, bounces through the plane while bullets begin shredding its exterior and soon its occupants, the fusillade opening little circles of light in the hull as effortlessly as a pencil punches holes in paper. It’s a shrewd opener, because it immediately puts you on notice in regard to the story’s life-and-death stakes and draws you close to Louie (the appealing Jack O’Connell). Mr. Zamperini was a distance runner, but here he’s a sprinter whose quicksilver movements — he crouches and scuttles while tending the wounded plane and men — suck you in with gravitational force.

朱莉追求快速的进展，拍完遥远的蓝色天际，她马上就让你进入B-24轰炸机幽闭恐惧般的世界，很快又受到日军的袭击。已经长大成人的路易在机舱里颠簸，子弹突破了轰炸机的外壳，也打中了里面的人，炮火在机舱外壳上打出一个个小圆点，光亮透进来，就像用铅笔在白纸上戳出窟窿一样容易。这是一个聪明的片头，因为它能很快让你意识到，这个故事是关于生死之间的重大主题，也能让你马上关注路易（由迷人的杰克·奥康奈尔[Jack O’Connell]饰演）。赞贝里尼是长跑运动员，但此时他成了个反应很快的短跑运动员——他卧倒，疾走，同时还在照顾受伤的飞机和人们——这一切马上就能吸引住你。

Louie’s life moves so rapidly here that about 30 minutes after the movie’s start, he’s running laps at the 1936 Berlin Olympics. There, he catches a glimpse of Jesse Owens and gawps at the cheering crowds and bloated Nazi spectacle, which Ms. Jolie conveys with digital effects and a touch of Leni Riefenstahl pomp-and-creepiness. Then Louie’s off to the races, and we’re off to something of a narrative cheat. He scores mightily on the track — with a rabbity final sprint — but Ms. Jolie pumps the inspirational uplift so high that with all the soaring music, swirling camerawork, excited commentary and slow-motion shots of Louie’s straining and gasping you may not realize he didn’t win any Olympic medals.

在影片开头的30分钟里，路易的生活变化很快，他在1936年的柏林奥运会上奔跑。看见了杰西·欧文斯(Jesse Owens)的身影，看着欢呼的群众与膨胀的纳粹场面，不禁为之震惊，朱莉用数码特效和蕾妮·瑞芬舒丹(Leni Riefenstahl)那种壮丽而又诡异的风格营造出了这些纳粹的景观。后来路易参赛了，我们则得到一个叙事上的欺骗。他在田径赛场上成绩出色，像兔子一样最后冲刺，朱莉使用了上扬的音乐、回旋的镜头、兴奋的评论，用慢镜头拍摄路易的拼搏和喘息，她把这鼓舞人心的一幕拔得太高，搞得你可能根本意识不到，他其实并没有获得奥运奖牌。

That Mr. Zamperini didn’t win that day doesn’t lessen his accomplishments on or off the track, of course, or make his story any less touching. Being an Olympian is a triumph in and of itself, yet that truism doesn’t seem to have been grand enough for Ms. Jolie’s purposes. The Olympic interlude is sandwiched between some wartime scenes, right after the plane that Louie’s on starts to malfunction and just before it falls into the Pacific. The placement of his Olympic experience suggests that Louie’s life is flashing before him or that he’s drawing strength from a memory. But the triumphalism of the race is so excessive that it competes with, rather than complements, the war scenes and ends up being another clip in what increasingly will feel like one man’s extended highlight reel.

赞贝里尼那天一无所获，但是，这并不能令他在田径场内外的成就减色，或者让他的故事不那么动人。成为奥运选手本身就已经很荣耀了，但是这个不证自明的真理似乎对于朱莉来说还不够辉煌。奥林匹克的场景被夹在战争戏之间，发生在在路易乘坐的飞机失灵之后，飞机堕入太平洋之前。这段奥运的经验说明路易的一生在他脑海中闪回，或者说他从回忆中汲取了力量。但竞赛中的必胜信念有些过度，使得它仿佛不是战争场面的补足，而是和战争场面在竞争，最后仿佛成了另一段剪辑，感觉越来越像一个人的高光时刻纪录。

It took four marquee writers — Joel Coen, Ethan Coen, Richard LaGravenese and William Nicholson — to wrestle Ms. Hillenbrand’s many pages into a movie, which clocks in at 2 hours 17 minutes. That’s scarcely enough time for any life, but it’s impossible when each chapter in that life could itself be a book (including an underplayed epiphany), and the strain shows, especially in the camp sequences. Ms. Jolie does fine work throughout, including on the raft where, after the crash, Louie and two others, Phil (Domhnall Gleeson) and Mac (Finn Wittrock), battle dehydration, starvation and sharks, including one that the men, in a jolting scene, wrestle onboard and devour. Like a lot of actors turned directors, she’s good with the performers, even when platitudes gush from their mouths along with the blood.

电影有四个编剧——乔尔·科恩(Joel Coen)、伊桑·科恩(Ethan Coen)、理查德·拉·格拉文思(Richard LaGravenese)和威廉姆·尼克尔森(William Nicholson)，他们勉强才把希伦布兰特篇幅浩大的书浓缩成一部2小时17分钟的电影。这么长的时间对任何人来说都堪称宝贵，但对于这个人生中的任何一段经历都足以独立成书的人来说（包括一段顿悟人生真谛的故事，电影里没有拍），还是显得短了些。叙事很紧凑，特别是在集中营中的几幕戏。朱莉的工作从始至终很细致，包括堕机后在木筏上的戏。路易和另外两人，菲尔（Phil，多姆纳尔·格利森[Domhnall Gleeson]饰）和马克（Mac，芬·维特洛克[Finn Wittrock]饰）与脱水、饥饿和鲨鱼作战，在令人震撼的一场戏里，其中一人在船上挣扎，最后走向覆灭。和许多演员出身的导演一样，朱莉擅长处理和演员有关的环节，尽管他们一边吐血，一边说着一些陈词滥调。

That blood gushes and splatters, mostly discreetly, at times with misplaced tastefulness, as Louie falls and rises in spirit and body. Ms. Jolie’s tendency to go David Lean with this material works against her in the camp sequences, because what you want to know isn’t what the prisoners looked like standing in formation in long shot but what they thought and did to survive. What the movie ends up in desperate need of is a sense of life made real and palpable through dreadful, transporting details, not a life embalmed in hagiographic awe. You can find that movie here, at times, tucked amid the crane shots and angelic singing, though mostly in the perverse intimacy that emerges between Louie and the sadistic officer, Watanabe (Miyavi), and shows just how personal war can really be.

鲜血流淌的场面大都处理得很谨慎，有时也有不恰当的品位，比如路易在灵魂和肉体之间挣扎。朱莉倾向于模仿大卫·里恩(David Lean)，但在集中营里，这些素材并不合适，因为观众想知道的并不是囚犯在长镜头中列队站好时的模样，而是想知道这些人为了生存，心里在想些什么、要做些什么。影片结束时，最迫切需要的是一种生命令一切成真之感，是可感知的、可以传达给观众的细节，而不是一个被封存在圣人行传的敬畏感之中的人生。在这部电影中，观众偶尔可能会感受到这一点，有时是通过俯拍镜头和天使般的歌唱声，不过主要是通过路易与虐待狂日本军官渡边（石原贵雅饰）之间变态的亲密感，它让人们看到战争有可能变得多么个人化。

“Unbroken” is rated PG-13 (Parents strongly cautioned). War violence and crimes.

《坚不可摧》被标记为PG-13级（强烈建议家长指导观看）。有战争暴力和罪行。