当情人节遇上《爱乐之城》

08 当情人节遇上《爱乐之城》

如今浪漫的情人节，其起源却残忍血腥？买好了《爱乐之城》电影票却不知其为何如此火爆？ FT为你揭开谜底。

过了这么多年情人节（或是看了这么多年的虐狗节），还不知道情人节怎么来的？肯定是王子公主花前月下不可描述？这可就大错特错了，情人节的来源虽说法不一，但广为流传的是罗马人这一版本，其故事情节与今日浪漫却相去甚远。

From Feb.13 to 15, the Romans celebrated the feast of Lupercalia.The men sacrificed a goat and a dog, then whipped women with the hides of the animals they had just slain.Young women would actually line up for the men to hit them.They believed this would make them fertile.

在每年的2月13日到2月15日，罗马人在一起庆祝牧神节。男人们会杀一头羊和一只狗作为祭品，然后就用刚剥下来的兽皮抽打女人。年轻姑娘们排成一排，等待男人们来打她们。她们认为这样她们就能够繁育后代了。

The brutal fete included a matchmaking lottery, in which young men drew the names of women from a jar.The couple would then be, um, coupled up for the duration of the festival—or longer, if the match was right.

在这个残忍的节日中，其中一个环节是配对抽彩，年轻小伙子们从罐子里抽出女人的名字。接下来，这对男女将在节日期间成为情侣。如果恰好点对了鸳鸯谱，那么他们可能在一起更长时间。

The ancient Romans may also be responsible for the name of our modern day of love.Emperor Claudius II executed two men—both named Valentine—on Feb.14 of different years in the 3rd century A.D.Their martyrdom was honored by the Catholic Church with the celebration of St.Valentine's Day.

我们今天的“情人节”的名称的由来也与古罗马人有关。公元3世纪某两年的2月14日，罗马皇帝克劳迪亚斯二世先后处死了两个人，他们都叫Valentine。天主教会为纪念这二人的牺牲，特设了圣瓦伦节（St.Valentine's Day）。

——NPR News

在如今吃饭看电影压马路的约会模式下，想必正式登上荧屏的《爱乐之城》将会成为许多情侣（以及单身狗和爱电影人士）的不二之选，毕竟这部电影在金球奖崭露头角之后，又成为英国学院奖（BAFTA）大赢家，而且还是2017年冲击奥斯卡的大热门。接下来FT记者通过采访导演达米恩·查泽雷（Damien Chazelle）带你了解电影背后的故事。

La La Land Official Trailer 截图

Music came before the movies.Born in Rhode Island, Chazelle pursued drumming at school before studying film-making at Harvard, where he met composer Justin Hurwitz, who has provided the scores for all his films so far.Whiplash, only Chazelle's second film, took the top prizes at the Sundance Film Festival and went on to scoop three Oscars—for sound mixing, editing, and for JK Simmons as Best Supporting Actor.

电影源于音乐。查泽雷生于罗德岛，上学时就喜欢击鼓，之后在哈佛大学学习电影制作。在哈佛大学，他结识了作曲家贾斯汀·赫维玆，迄今为止查泽雷的所有电影配乐都出自于这位作曲家。查泽雷的第二部电影《爆裂鼓手》就在圣丹斯电影节拔得头筹，并且势头不减，继续摘得三项奥斯卡奖项，分别是混音奖、剪辑奖，还有J·K·西蒙斯的最佳男配角奖。

But Chazelle knew full well that many ascendant film-makers have experienced whiplash of another kind: seeing their careers take off only to be quickly rear-ended by the fast-moving and fickle movie business.“Right after Sundance, my producers and I in LA were frantically setting up meetings for La La Land because you're worried that the window is going to close any minute,” he recalls.

但是查泽雷深知，很多青云直上的电影制作者都经历过另一种疼痛，那就是亲眼见证他们的事业腾飞，却很快埋没在迅速发展、变幻无常的电影大潮中。他回忆说：“圣丹斯电影节过后，我和我的制片人们迅速在洛杉矶集结，举行会议筹备《爱乐之城》，因为你会担心这扇机会之窗随时有可能关上。”

It helped that Chazelle already had the script for La La Land in his pocket.In fact, while many assumed Whiplash to be his debut, he had already made one jazz-flavoured musical, his 2009 student film Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench.

查泽雷已经拥有了《爱乐之城》的剧本，这有如天助。许多人认为《爆裂鼓手》是他的处女作，实际上，他已经制作了一部爵士表演风格的音乐喜剧。2009年他还是学生时，他就制作了电影《公园长凳上的盖伊和艾德琳》。

That, however, had not been the easiest ride: “One time, I stepped into a theatre where you just sense the whole theatre, it's about 300 people, are just buzzing with vitriol, because they were so angry with the movie.You'd think I'd made torture porn or something—it was a jazz musical.”

不过这还不是他最早的尝试，他说：“有一次，我走进一家剧院，在那里面，大概有300人，大家都在吐槽，因为他们对这部电影充满愤怒。你可能认为我拍了一部让人备受煎熬的色情片或者什么的，但其实是一部爵士音乐剧。”

But it clearly wasn't enough to put him off revisiting the genre, and La La Land is super-confident film-making on a grand scale, with big, showstopping musical numbers, daring shifts in tone, sweeping camera moves and a dizzying final crescendo-montage.

但是，显而易见，这次失败并没能阻止他在这个领域继续尝试，《爱乐之城》就是一部极其自信的大制作，宏大精彩的音乐，大胆的音调转换，大规模的镜头移动，以及最后令人眩晕的渐强的蒙太奇的运用。

Damien Chazelle

One of La La Land's strengths is that, for all its old-fashioned flourishes, it inhabits an LA that is recognisably contemporary and at least partly grounded in reality.Chazelle himself lived the outsider experience of both Gosling and Stone's characters: the struggling musician and the greenhorn with movie-world aspirations.“I moved to LA… played some drums and got fired from the band I was playing in.At the same time, I was trying to turn out scripts, and none of them were going anywhere,” he recalls.

《爱乐之城》的优势之一就是，虽然剧情老套，但故事发生在当代的洛杉矶，而且至少有一部分是有现实依据的。查泽雷自己也体验过高斯林和斯通所扮演角色的生活：既是一个窘迫的音乐家又是一个怀有电影梦想的愣头青。他回忆道：“我搬到洛杉矶，在乐队击鼓，然后被乐队炒鱿鱼。同时，我试着写剧本，但一个也没成功。”

As a result the movie captures the allure of LA but is not blind to its dead ends.“You develop this relationship to the city at the time, and it was a tense relationship…an alternately inspiring and crushing experience.”

因此，电影中既表现了洛杉矶的吸引力，也没有忽略其令人绝望的一面。“你为当时的这座城市创造了这段爱情，这是一段令人紧张的爱情，或者说令人振奋、心跳加速的体验。”

The same could be said of La La Land, which, though undeniably romantic, proves to be more of an emotional rollercoaster than some reviews might have you believe.“Every time I make a movie and I think it's a bummer, people say it's happy,” Chazelle observes.

《爱乐之城》也是一样，毫无争议，它非常浪漫，但是，相比令你深信的一些影评，它更加注重情感的波折，像一个过山车。查泽雷说：“我每次做电影时，我认为电影很沮丧，人们却认为它很快乐。”

“If you're trained to be smiling and laughing for the first chunk of the movie…you don't see the knife coming,” says Chazelle.But he insists that his real intention was to reflect the vicissitudes of life.“I felt like there was a way that the joy and the heartbreak could coexist.”

查泽雷表示：“如果你在电影的第一部分跟着情节笑了起来，那么你就不会意识到即将到来的刀子。”不过他坚持说他的真实意图是表现每况愈下的生活。“我认为快乐与心碎会以某种方式并存。”

Here, too, Chazelle may have drawn on personal experience.He married his Harvard sweetheart Jasmine McGlade in 2010 but the couple divorced in 2014.In Whiplash the main protagonist breaks off a relationship that threatens to get in the way of his drumming, and in La La Land one of the key dramatic moments involves a choice between pursuing professional or romantic dreams.Does he think there has to be a trade-off?

查泽雷在这里也借用了他的个人经历。2010年，他与他的大学恋人Jasmine McGlade结婚，却在2014年遭遇离婚。在《爆裂鼓手》当中，主人公结束了一段阻碍他的击鼓事业的感情，而在《爱乐之城》中，关键的戏剧性的情节之一就是在事业与爱情之间的选择。是不是他认为这两者之间一定存在权衡呢？

“I've only recently been lucky enough to feel like they don't have to be mutually exclusive,” he says.“But I was, for a large part of my life, that kind of hermit, a little bit like Ryan's character at the beginning of the movie: ‘Fuck the world, I'm going to stay in my room and write the next great American screenplay'.”

他说：“只有近期，我才足够幸运，能够感受到这两者不是互相排斥的。但是，在我前大半辈子，我都是抱着一种遁世的态度，有点像电影开头时瑞恩所饰角色那样：‘靠，我要待在屋里，写出美国下一个伟大的剧本'。”

Certainly he now seems to be living the Hollywood dream, working with the likes of Stone, Gosling and musician John Legend.Does he still get star-struck? “Yes, I do.I'm star-struck right now,” he says, referring to his audience with the FT.In that case, I say, he really does have a low threshold.“I still get it quite easily…I was talking with Ryan about another project just earlier today, and in my head I pinched myself.I get to make movies with this guy? What?”

的确，似乎现在他就生活在好莱坞之梦中，和斯通、高斯林和音乐家约翰·传奇这样的人一起工作。那他现在还会特别倾慕明星么？他说：“嗯，我现在就倾慕着明星”，指的是他的观众，他跟FT说道。这样看来，他真的很平易近人。“我的确很容易崇拜明星，今天早些时候我在跟瑞恩讨论另一个项目，我就想自己掐自己一下，我在跟这个大明星一起拍电影？真的么？”

It's refreshing to meet a director who still seems genuinely unjaded, even giddy, about being able to explore his fantasies in the big sandbox of Hollywood.But I wonder if his youth ever works against him.

能遇到这样一个导演真是让人精神一振。他充满热情、真实、不做作，甚至还有点嬉皮笑脸。他马上就要在好莱坞这片土地上创造奇迹了。但是我想知道他的年轻是否是某种阻碍。

“There are instances where I wasn't taken seriously,” he says.But, given Hollywood's “obsession with the new and the young”, he reckons the effect is “net neutral”.

“有些时候我没被当回事儿，”他说。不过既然好莱坞“对新人和年轻人十分着迷”，他认为这些影响“纯中性”。

One thing that might help, I suggest, would be having a Best Director or Best Picture Oscar under his belt.“To beat people with it physically?” he laughs.“It's too heavy to do that with.” I've never held one, I tell him, but he may soon.For a moment he looks unusually reticent.With La La Land the big Oscar favourite, surely he can't avoid talking about it.“I try not to,” he says.Does he dare even think about it? A pause.“Yes.”

我认为，如果他能把奥斯卡最佳导演或者最佳影片奖收入囊中，那将对他十分有利。他笑着说：“要我拿小金人去砸人么？那太重了。”我告诉他，我从没捧过一尊小金人，不过他可能快了。有那么一小会儿，他看起来异常沉默。《爱乐之城》成为奥斯卡最大热门，他肯定无法避免谈论这件事。他说：“我努力不谈及这件事。”那他敢想一想么？他沉默一下，说了句：“嗯。”

词汇总结

fete [feɪt]

n.祭祀；庆祝；节日；游乐会

v.宴请；招待

The brutal fete included a matchmaking lottery, in which young men drew the names of women from a jar.

在这个残忍的节日中，其中一个环节是配对抽彩，年轻小伙子们从罐子里抽出女人的名字。

trade-off ['treidɔf,-ɔ:f]

n.交换，交易；权衡；协定

In La La Land one of the key dramatic moments involves a choice between pursuing professional or romantic dreams.Does he think there has to be a trade-off?

而在《爱乐之城》中，关键的戏剧性的情节之一就是在事业与爱情之间的选择。是不是他认为这两者之间一定存在权衡呢？

hermit['hɜːmɪt]

n.（尤指宗教原因的）隐士；隐居者

But I was, for a large part of my life, that kind of hermit, a little bit like Ryan's character at the beginning of the movie.

但是，在我前大半辈子，我都是抱着一种遁世的态度，有点像电影开头时瑞恩所饰角色那样。

star-struck

崇拜明星的; 一心想当明星的

Does he still get star-struck?

那他现在还会特别倾慕明星么？

reticent['retɪs(ə)nt]

adj.沉默的；有保留的；谨慎的

For a moment he looks unusually reticent.

有那么一小会儿，他看起来异常沉默。