《星际穿越》是一场未来主义的冒险

Like the great space epics of the past, Christopher Nolan’s “Interstellar” distills terrestrial anxieties and aspirations into a potent pop parable, a mirror of the mood down here on Earth. Stanley Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey” blended the technological awe of the Apollo era with the trippy hopes and terrors of the Age of Aquarius. George Lucas’s first “Star Wars” trilogy, set not in the speculative future but in the imaginary past, answered the malaise of the ’70s with swashbuckling nostalgia. “Interstellar,” full of visual dazzle, thematic ambition, geek bait and corn (including the literal kind), is a sweeping, futuristic adventure driven by grief, dread and regret.

就像过去那些伟大的太空史诗一样，克里斯托弗·诺兰(Christopher Nolan)的《星际穿越》(Interstellar)将大地上的焦虑与抱负总结为强有力的流行格言，反映出地球上的各种情绪。斯坦利·库布里克(Stanley Kubrick)的《2001太空漫游》(2001: A Space Odyssey)把阿波罗时代对技术的敬畏与水瓶座时代迷幻剂影响下的希望与恐惧混合在一起。乔治·卢卡斯(George Lucas)《星球大战》(Star Wars)三部曲的第一部不是发生在推断中的未来，而是发生在想象中的过去，以夸大的怀旧回应70年代的莫名不安。《星际穿越》充满视觉奇观、主题上的抱负、极客的花样与玉米花式的感伤（也有真正的玉米），这是一场彻底的未来主义冒险，由悲哀、畏惧和遗憾所驱动。

Trying to jot down notes by the light of the Imax screen, where lustrous images (shot by Hoyte van Hoytema and projected from real 70-millimeter film) flickered, I lost count of how many times the phrase “I’m sorry” was uttered — by parents to children, children to parents, sisters to brothers, scientists to astronauts and astronauts to one another. The whole movie can be seen as a plea for forgiveness on behalf of our foolish, dreamy species. We messed everything up, and we feel really bad about it. Can you please give us another chance?

Imax屏幕上，光彩照人的画面熠熠生辉（摄影是霍伊特·冯·霍伊特玛[Hoyte van Hoytema]，以70毫米胶片放映），我借着屏幕的光线匆匆记下笔记，已经忘了“我很抱歉”这句台词出现了多少次——父母对孩子说、孩子对父母说、姊妹对兄弟说、科学家对太空员说，太空员之间互相说。整部电影可以看做一个请求，代表我们这个愚蠢而又爱做梦的物种进行道歉。我们把一切都搞砸了，我们真的觉得很糟糕。“你”能再给我们一次机会吗？

The possibility that such a “you” might be out there, in a position to grant clemency, is one of the movie’s tantalizing puzzles. Some kind of message seems to be coming across the emptiness of space and along the kinks in the fabric of time, offering a twinkle of hope amid humanity’s rapidly darkening prospects. For most of “Interstellar,” the working hypothesis is that a benevolent alien race, dwelling somewhere on the far side of a wormhole near one of the moons of Saturn, is sending data across the universe, encrypted advice that just may save us if we can decode it fast enough.

这个“你”有可能存在，并且是极为仁慈的，这是片中一个诱人的谜团。人类的前景正在迅速变得黯淡，此时某种信息似乎穿越了宇宙的空虚，沿着时空奇异的扭曲，带给人类一线希望。在《星际穿越》的大部分情节中，这个假说是：有一个仁慈的外星种族，居住在土星卫星附近虫洞的另一端，向整个宇宙传播数据，内容是经过加密的建议，如果我们尽快解开这个密码，就能拯救自己。

What our planet and species need saving from is a slow-motion environmental catastrophe. Rather than explain how this bleak future arrived through the usual montages of mayhem, Mr. Nolan (who wrote the screenplay with his brother Jonathan) drops us quietly into what looks like a fairly ordinary reality. We are in a rural stretch of North America, a land of battered pickup trucks, dusty bluejeans and wind-burned farmers scanning the horizon for signs of a storm. Talking-head testimony from old-timers chronicles what sounds like the Dust Bowl of the 1930s, until we spot a laptop on the table being set for family dinner.

我们的行星和种族面临的危机是一场缓慢演进的环境灾难。诺兰（他与弟弟乔纳森[Jonathan]合写了剧本）没有通过常见的灾害蒙太奇场景来解释这个惨淡的未来是如何发生的，而是让我们静静沉浸在一个看上去相当平凡的现实之中。我们置身北美的乡村地带，农夫们开着破旧的小卡车，穿着脏兮兮的牛仔裤，面容沧桑，看到暴风的征兆，在地平线上奔忙。电视上接受采访的人讲述旧时代的事，听上去有点像20世纪30年代的沙化灾害，后来我们看见一家人用餐的桌子上放着一个笔记本电脑。

The head of the family in question is Cooper (Matthew McConaughey), a widower who lives with his two children and his father-in-law (John Lithgow). Once a NASA pilot, Cooper now grows corn, the only thing that will grow after a blight has wiped out most of the planet’s other crops. The human population has shrunk to a desperate remnant, but the survivors cling to the habits and rituals of normal life. For now, there is plenty of candy and soda and beer (thanks to all that corn); there are parent-teacher conferences after school; and Cooper’s farmhouse is full of books and toys. But the blight is spreading, the dust storms are growing worse, and the sense of an ending is palpable.

这个家庭的一家之主名叫库珀（Cooper，马修·麦康纳[Matthew McConaughey]饰），他是一个鳏夫，与两个孩子和岳父（约翰·利特高[John Lithgow]）一起生活。他曾经是NASA太空员，现在种玉米，枯萎病侵袭了这个星球上的其他农作物，能种的庄稼只有玉米了。地球总人口已经缩减到令人绝望的数目，但幸存者还保持着正常生活的习惯与仪式。目前这里还有许多糖果、苏打水和啤酒（多亏了这些玉米）；学校放学后还有家长和老师的会面；库珀的农舍里有许多书籍和玩具。但灾害在传播，沙尘暴愈演愈烈，末日气息触手可及。

The Nolans cleverly conflate scientific denialism with technophobia, imagining a fatalistic society that has traded large ambition for small-scale problem solving and ultimate resignation. But Christopher Nolan, even in his earlier, more modestly budgeted films, has never been content with the small scale. His imagination is large; his eye seeks out wide, sweeping vistas; and if he believes in anything, it is ambition. As it celebrates the resistance to extinction — taking as its touchstone Dylan Thomas’s famous villanelle “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night,” with its repeated invocation of “rage against the dying of the light” — “Interstellar” becomes an allegory of its own aspirations, an argument for grandeur, scale and risk, on screen and off.

诺兰兄弟聪明地把科学否定主义和技术恐惧混合在一起，想象出一个宿命笼罩的世界，雄心壮志已经变成解决小规模问题和最终的屈服。但克里斯托弗·诺兰即便在早期的中等预算影片里也从未满足于小规模问题。他的想象力非常宏大，他的眼界无比宽广；如果他信仰什么东西，那就是雄心壮志。《星际穿越》歌颂对灭亡的抵御——它使用迪伦·托马斯(Dylan Thomas)的名诗《不要温和地进入那美好的夜晚》作为点睛之笔，不断祈祷“怒吼吧，即使光明消逝”——因此影片便成为关于自身抱负的寓言，在屏幕内外都为宏大、规模与冒险而争辩。

Dick Cavett, a son of Nebraska, used to ask (quoting Abe Burrows), “How you gonna keep ’em down on the farm, after they’ve seen the farm?” Cooper and “Interstellar” are clearly marked for something other than agrarian pursuits, but the first section of the movie is the richest and most haunting, establishing a delicately emotional tone and clear moral and dramatic stakes for the planet-hopping to follow. Cooper is devoted to his children, in particular his daughter, Murph, played as a young girl by the preternaturally alert and skeptical Mackenzie Foy and as an adult by Jessica Chastain. When her father is recruited for a secret NASA mission to search for a habitable new planet, Murph is devastated by his departure. Her subsequent scientific career is both a tribute to his memory and a way of getting even.

内布拉斯加人迪克·卡维特(Dick Cavett)曾经引用艾贝·布洛斯(Abe Burrows)的话问道：“如果他们亲眼见过农场，你还怎么把他们留在农场里？”库珀和《星际穿越》显然是要讲述土地之外的东西，但影片的第一部分是最丰富，也是最令人难忘的，它为其后的星际旅行奠定了优美的情感基调，以及清晰的道德和戏剧性基础。库珀深爱自己的孩子们，特别是女儿墨菲(Murph)，小女孩时期的墨菲由异常警觉，充满怀疑的麦肯吉·弗伊(Mackenzie Foy)饰演，成年后由杰西卡·查斯坦(Jessica Chastain)饰演。父亲被招去参加NASA的秘密任务，寻找适宜居住的新行星，他的离去令墨菲悲痛欲绝。后来她当上了科学家，这既是对父亲的记忆致敬，也是一种报复。

The Nolans are fond of doubled characters and mirrored plots, and so “Interstellar” is built around twinned father-daughter stories. Among Cooper’s colleagues on board the spaceship is Dr. Brand (Anne Hathaway), whose father, also called Dr. Brand (Michael Caine), has developed the theories behind their quest. He and Murph remain on the ground, crunching the numbers and growing older in the usual earthly way, while Cooper and the younger Brand, thanks to relativity, stay pretty much the same age. (Cooper’s son, Tom, played by Timothée Chalamet as a boy, matures into Casey Affleck). The two pairs of daughters and dads perform variations on the theme of paternal and filial love, finding delicate and moving passages of loyalty, rebellion, disillusionment and acceptance.

诺兰喜爱双重性的人物与互为镜像的情节，《星际穿越》也是建立在父女之间双重叙述的故事之上。库珀在飞船上的同事中有位布兰德博士（Dr. Brand，安妮·海瑟薇[Anne Hathaway]饰），她的父亲也是布兰德博士（迈克尔·凯恩[Michael Caine]饰），正是他建立了这次探索行动背后的理论。老布兰德博士和墨菲留在地球，进行艰苦的研究工作，按照正常的地球方式增长年纪，库珀和年轻一点的布兰德由于相对论的关系，基本保持在和出发时同样的年龄。（库珀的儿子汤姆[Tom]小时候由蒂莫西·卡拉麦特[Timothée Chalamet]饰演，成年后由卡西·阿弗莱克[Casey Affleck]饰演。）两对父女诠释着父爱与子女之爱这个主题，巧妙感人地在忠诚、背叛、幻灭与接纳中穿行。

A lot of other stuff happens, too, as it tends to out in space. A cynical critic might suppose that the last two hours of “Interstellar” were composed in a fit of spoiler hysteria. Nondisclosure pleas from the studio have been unusually specific. Forget about telling you what happens: I’m not even supposed to tell you who’s in the thing, aside from the people you’ve seen on magazine covers. I guess I can disclose that Cooper and Brand are accompanied by two other astronauts, played by a witty, scene-stealing David Gyasi and a deadpan Wes Bentley, and also by a wry robot who speaks in the voice of Bill Irwin.

来到太空，有很多事情发生。一个愤世嫉俗的评论家可能会觉得《星际穿越》的后两个小时已经被笼罩在歇斯底里的防剧透狂热之中了。制片公司特别请求保密。我不会告诉你接下来发生了什么，我甚至不应该告诉你，除了你在杂志封面上见过的那些人之外，还有谁参与了这件事。不过我觉得可以告诉你，库珀和布兰德身边还有另外两个宇航员，由诙谐抢镜的大卫·吉亚西(David Gyasi)和面无表情的韦斯·本特利(Wes Bentley)饰演，此外还有一个爱挖苦人的机器人，由比尔·欧文(Bill Irwin)配音。

The touches of humor those characters supply are welcome, if also somewhat stingily rationed. Nobody goes to a Christopher Nolan movie for laughs. But it is hard to imagine that his fans — who represent a fairly large segment of the world’s population — will be disappointed by “Interstellar.” I haven’t always been one of them, but I’ve always thought that his skill and ingenuity were undeniable. He does not so much transcend genre conventions as fulfill them with the zeal of a true believer. It may be enough to say that “Interstellar” is a terrifically entertaining science-fiction movie, giving fresh life to scenes and situations we’ve seen a hundred times before, and occasionally stumbling over pompous dialogue or overly portentous music. (In general, the score, by Hans Zimmer, is exactly as portentous as it needs to be.)

这些角色带来的幽默气息很受欢迎，虽说分量有点少。没有人来看克里斯托弗·诺兰的电影是为了大笑一场。不过，很难想象他在全世界为数甚众的影迷看过《星际穿越》后会感到失望。我并不总是他们之中的一员，但我一直都认为诺兰的技巧和独创性都是无可否认的。他并没有过多超越类型电影的传统，而是用真正信仰者的热情去充实它们。《星际穿越》是一部极具娱乐性的科幻电影，为我们已经看过上百次的情节和场面赋予了新鲜气息，有时也会笨拙地来点浮华的对话或者过分装腔作势的音乐（总体而言，汉斯·齐默[Hans Zimmer]的配乐的装腔作势程度还是恰到好处的），这么说也许就够了。

Of course, the film is more than that. It is in the nature of science fiction to aspire to more, to ascend fearlessly toward the sublime. You could think of “Interstellar,” which has a lot to say about gravity, as the anti-“Gravity.” That movie, which would fit inside this one twice, stripped away the usual sci-fi metaphysics, presenting space travel as an occasion for quiet wonder and noisy crisis management. Mr. Nolan takes the universe and eternity itself as his subject and his canvas, brilliantly exploiting cinema’s ability to shift backward and sideways in time (through flashbacks and cross cuts), even as it moves relentlessly forward.

当然，这部影片不止于此。科幻电影的本质就是渴望更多，无畏地向顶点攀登。《星际穿越》与引力关系很大，你也可以把它看做电影《地心引力》(Gravity)的反面。《地心引力》的长度几乎只有《星际穿越》的一半，它剥除了科幻片中常见的形而上学，把太空旅行呈现为宁静的奇观与嘈杂的危机管理。诺兰把宇宙和永恒本身当做自己的题材和画布，通过闪回和交叉剪辑绝好地探索了电影在时空中向后或平行发展的能力，尽管它一直不屈不挠地向前发展。

But “Gravity” and “Interstellar” are both ultimately about the longing for home, about voyages into the unknown that become odysseys of return. And “Interstellar” may take its place in the pantheon of space movies because it answers an acute earthly need, a desire not only for adventure and novelty but also, in the end, for comfort.

13但是《地心引力》与《星际穿越》最终都反映出对回家的渴望，反映出进入未知的旅行都会变成奥德赛的归乡之途。《星际穿越》在太空电影的殿堂中会享有它的一席之地，因为它回应了一个尖锐而现实的需要，人们渴望冒险与新奇，但最终也渴望着安慰。

“Interstellar” is rated PG-13 (Parents strongly cautioned). A few expletives, a lot of peril.

《星际穿越》被标记为PG-13级（强烈建议父母指导观看），若干咒骂的语言，很多冒险情节。