Nolan vs. Nolan

2012年諾蘭新作《黑暗騎士崛起》熱映，大衛·波德維爾在當月19日發表文章，結合諾蘭迄今在多部影片中展現的導演技巧，敘事風格，影片主題等元素，旁征博引地進行了“教科書式”的深入而全面的剖析。

本文作者大衛·波德維爾是美國重要的電影理論家，著有多部電影學專著。他與夫人克里斯丁·湯普森合著的《電影藝術-形式與風格》至今已修訂再版7次，被公認為電影文化研究的標桿之作。他在廣大的電影愛好者以及專業人士心中地位甚高。

克里斯多夫·諾蘭是近年來最具票房號召力的導演。在十年前小試牛刀的《記憶碎片》里他便展現了引人入勝的敘事和編導能力，《致命魔術》和《黑暗騎士》等片讓他的地位得以鞏固，而在2010年創下史上多個票房紀錄新高的《盜夢空間》則成就了他的事業巔峰。

2012年諾蘭新作《黑暗騎士崛起》熱映之際，大衛·波德維爾在當月19日發表了本文，結合諾蘭迄今在多部影片中展現的導演技巧，敘事風格，影片主題等元素，旁征博引地進行了“教科書式”的深入而全面的剖析。波德維爾在文中字斟句酌，在許多字句的使用上頗耐人尋味。這篇文章無疑將幫助包括譯者在內的眾多影迷更全面透徹地理解諾蘭的電影，同時對宏觀層面上的商業電影文化有更為深入的認識和思考。

DB here:

Paul Thomas Anderson, the Wachowskis, David Fincher, Darren Aronofsky, and other directors who made breakthrough films at the end of the 1990s have managed to win either popular or critical success, and sometimes both. None, though, has had as meteoric a career as Christopher Nolan.

His films have earned $3.3 billion at the global box office, and the total is still swelling. On IMDB’s Top 250 list, as populist a measure as we can find, The Dark Knight (2008) is ranked number 8 with over 750,000 votes, while Inception (2010), at number 14, earned nearly 600,000. The Dark Knight Rises (2012), on release for less than a month, is already ranked at number 18. Remarkably, many critics have lined up as well, embracing both Nolan’s more offbeat productions, like Memento (2000) and The Prestige (2006), and his blockbusters. Nolan is now routinely considered one of the most accomplished living filmmakers.

保羅·托馬斯·安德森（《美國導演，作品有《木蘭花》，《血色將至》等，譯注）,沃卓斯基兄弟（《黑客帝國》），大衛·芬徹（《角斗俱樂部》，《12宮殺手》），達倫·阿朗諾夫斯基（《夢之安魂曲》，《黑天鵝》）以及其他的一些導演在上世紀90年代后期都取得了突破，他們要么受大眾喜歡，要么被影評人看好，有時候還能兩者兼收。不過他們卻沒有人能像克里斯多夫·諾蘭那樣，成就如同流星般閃耀迅即的事業崛起。

諾蘭的電影在全球票房總收入達到了33億美元，而且這個數字還在繼續攀升。在“IMDB Top 250 List”這樣大眾化的統計榜單上，《暗黑騎士》（2008）排名第8，共獲75萬張投票，而《盜夢空間》（2010）排第14名，有近60萬張投票。《黑暗騎士的崛起》（2012）僅僅上映一個月不到，就已經排到第18名了。值得一提的是，很多影評人無論是對他早期更為特立獨行的作品（諸如《記憶碎片》（2000）和《致命魔術》（2006），還是對其近年拍攝的商業大片，都贊譽有加。現在諾蘭儼然被公認為成就最高的在世導演之一。

Yet many critics fiercely dislike his work. They regard it as intellectually shallow, dramatically clumsy, and technically inept. As far as I can tell, no popular filmmaker’s work of recent years has received the sort of harsh, meticulous dissection Jim Emerson and A. D. Jameson have applied to Nolan’s films. (See the codicil for numerous links.) People who shrug at continuity errors and patchy plots in ordinary productions have dwelt on them in Nolan’s movies. The attack is probably a response to his elevated reputation. Having been raised so high, he has farther to fall.

I have only a welterweight dog in this fight, because I admire some of Nolan’s films, for reasons I hope to make clear later. Nolan is, I think all parties will agree, an innovative filmmaker. Some will argue that his innovations are feeble, but that’s beside my point here. His career offers us an occasion to think through some issues about creativity and innovation in popular cinema.

但也有很多影評人非常不待見他的作品。他們認為其電影思想淺薄，劇情粗糙，技巧拙劣。據我所知，近年來還沒有哪個商業導演的作品受到過像Jim Emerson和A.D. Jameson對諾蘭影片那樣尖刻而細致的剖析。那些對于普通影片中出現的敘事不連貫和情節東拼西湊嗤之以鼻的人，同樣也能在諾蘭的影片中挑刺。他們對于諾蘭的抨擊或許也是對其聲名鵲起的反應。此可謂捧得越高，摔得越重。

如果把這場辯論比作斗狗，那么我牽來的頂多是條中量級的斗犬，這是因為我欣賞諾蘭的一些影片，個中原因我希望能隨后道明。我想正反各方都認同諾蘭是一位有革新精神的導演。有人會說他的革新微不足道，但我想討論的重點與此無關。諾蘭的執導歷程讓我們得以洞見流行電影文化中關于創意和革新的一些議題。

Four dimensions, at least

四層，至少

（譯注：標題似乎略有調侃諾蘭影片中的剪輯手法之意，如《盜夢空間》中的四層夢境，詳見后文中對“交叉剪輯”的分析）

First, let’s ask: How can a filmmaker innovate? I see four primary ways.

You can innovate by tackling new subject matter. This is a common strategy of documentary cinema, which often shows us a slice of our world we haven’t seen or even known about before—from Spellbound to Vernon, Florida.

首先，我們設問：一個制片人該如何革新？我認為有四種方法。

你可以通過挑戰新題材來革新。這是在紀錄片中所慣常采用的策略，我們經常在這類影片中看到世界前所未見或者前所未知的一面，從《拼字游戲》（2003）到《弗農,弗羅里達》(1981)等影片都屬此列。

You can also innovate by developing new themes. The 1950s “liberal Westerns” substituted a brotherhood-of-man theme for the Manifest-Destiny theme that had driven earlier Western movies. The subject matter, the conquest of the West by white settlers and a national government, was given a different thematic coloring (which of course varied from film to film). Science fiction films were once dominated by conceptions of future technology as sleek and clean, but after Alien, we saw that the future might be just as dilapidated as the present.

Apart from subject or theme, you can innovate by trying out new formal strategies. This option is evident in fictional narrative cinema, where plot structure or narration can be treated in fresh ways. Many entries on this blog have charted possible formal innovations, such as having a house narrate the story action, or arranging the plot so as to create contradictory chains of events. Documentaries have experimented with a film’s overall form as well, of course, as The Thin Blue Line and Man with a Movie Camera. Stan Brakhage’s creation of “lyrical cinema” would be an example of formal innovation in avant-garde cinema.

你也可以通過展現新主題來革新。上世紀50年代的“自由西部片”用“兄弟情義”主題取代了早前西部片中推動情節發展的“命中注定”主題。白人定居者和政府對西部的征服依然是這類影片的題材，但在主題渲染上（當然每部影片略有出入）卻有所不同。科幻片曾經充斥著對于未來科技優美光鮮的構想，但當《異形》上映之后，我們發現未來也可能會和當下一樣殘破不堪。

除了題材和主題，你還可以通過嘗試新的形式來革新。這在虛構敘事影片中并不鮮見。在這類影片中，情節的結構安排或者敘事可以用新的手法來處理。在刊載本文的博客上有不少文章都涉及到各種形式革新的可能，比如讓一棟房子來作為故事的敘事者，或者安排劇情以便制造一連串矛盾的事件。當然，紀錄片同樣也對影片的整體形式做過革新實驗，比如《細藍線》和《有攝像機的人》。Stan Brakhage(美國20世紀實驗電影先鋒導演，譯注）所創造的“詩意電影”就是先鋒電影中形式革新的例子。

Finally, you can innovate at the level of style—the patterning of film technique, the audiovisual texture of the movie. A clear example would be Godard’s jump cuts in A Bout de souffle, but new techniques of shooting, staging, framing, lighting, color design, and sound work would also count. In Cloverfield and Chronicle, the first-person camera technique is applied, in different ways, to a science-fiction tale. Often, technological changes trigger stylistic innovation, as with the Dolby ATMOS system now encouraging filmmakers to create sound effects that seem to be occurring above our heads.

I see other means of innovation—for instance, stunt casting, or new marketing strategies—but these four offer an initial point of departure. How then might we capture Nolan’s cinematic innovations?

最后你還可以在風格的層面上進行革新 ——通過對電影技巧和影音質感的定型來實現。戈達爾在《精疲力竭》（1960）中的跳接便是一個顯著的例子，而在影片攝影，舞臺調度，取景，布光，色彩設計以及音效中采用的新技術也可歸于其中。影片《苜蓿地》（2008）和《超能失控》（2012）分別用不同的方法，將第一人稱視角的攝影技術運用到了科幻敘事中。技術的變革經常能觸發風格的革新，比如“杜比全景聲”系統（2012年4月24由杜比實驗室推出，譯注）就促使制片人去創造出從觀眾頭頂上方發出的音效。

當然還有其他革新的手段，比如特技，或者新的營銷策略，但上述的四點可以作為我們討論的出發點。那么我們該怎樣理解諾蘭的電影革新呢？

Style without style

沒有風格的風格

Well, on the whole they aren’t stylistic. Those who consider him a weak stylist can find evidence in Insomnia (2002), his first studio film. Spoilers ahead.

A Los Angeles detective and his partner come to an Alaskan town to investigate the murder of a teenage girl. While chasing a suspect in the fog, Dormer shoots his partner Hap and then lies about it, trying to pin the killing on the suspect. But the suspect, a famous author who did kill the girl, knows what really happened. He pressures Dormer to cover for both of them by framing the girl’s boyfriend. Meanwhile, Dormer is undergoing scrutiny by Ellie, a young officer who idolizes him but who must investigate Hap’s death. And throughout it all, Dormer becomes bleary and disoriented because,the twenty-four-hour daylight won’t let him sleep. (His name seems a screenwriter’s conceit, invoking dormir, to sleep.)

總體來講諾蘭的影片不以風格見長。認為諾蘭影片風格不顯著的人可以在《失眠癥》（2002）中找到佐證，這部影片是他的第一部制片廠影片。下面有劇透。

影片講述一名洛杉磯警探和搭檔來到阿拉斯加的一座小鎮上調查一起少女謀殺案。在霧中追逐疑犯的過程中，Dormer開槍誤殺了他的搭檔Hap，隨后他撒謊為自己開脫，試圖把搭檔之死栽給疑犯。但疑犯，一名作家，卻對真相了如指掌，而他的確殺害了那名少女。于是他向Dormer施壓，要他嫁禍少女的男友，由此為他們兩人開脫。與此同時，Dormer受到了一名年輕警官Ellie的調查，Ellie視Dormer為偶像，但她又必須盡職調查Hap的死因。而在這整個過程當中，Dormer因為極晝導致的失眠，陷入了疲憊而紊亂之中。（主角的名字似乎是編劇的暗喻，意指法語中的dormir，即“睡覺”之意。）

Nolan said at the time that what interested him in the script—already bought by Warners and offered to him after Memento—was the prospect of character subjectivity.

A big part of my interest in filmmaking is an interest in showing the audience a story through a character’s point of view. It’s interesting to try and do that and maintain a relatively natural look.

諾蘭曾說該片劇本吸引他的地方在于對于角色的主觀性塑造的可能——不過當時華納公司已經買下了劇本并在《記憶碎片》完成之后交給了他。

我對電影拍攝的興趣很大一部分在于通過一個角色的視角向觀眾展現故事。在嘗試主觀性敘事的同時維持一個相對自然的角度是件有趣的事。

He wanted, as he says on the DVD commentary, to keep the audience in Dormer’s head. Having already done that to an extent in Memento, he saw it as a logical way of presenting Dormer’s slow crackup.

But how to go subjective? Nolan chose to break up scenes with fragmentary flashes of the crime and of clues—painted nails, a necklace. Early in the film, Dormer is studying Kay Connell’s corpse, and we get flashes of the murder and its grisly aftermath, the killer sprucing up the corpse.

他在影片DVD附帶的導演評論中說他想把觀眾置于Dormer的頭腦中。而在一定程度上，諾蘭已經在《記憶碎片》中施展了這一招，而他認為用這種方法來展現Dormer逐漸走向精神崩潰也是合乎邏輯的。

但如何展現主觀性呢？諾蘭選擇的方法是將場景分解為行兇場面和各種線索的快閃片斷，比如涂抹過的指甲，一串項鏈。在影片開始不久后的一幕，Dormer在查看Kay Connell的尸體，觀眾同時也看到謀殺案的片斷，以及隨后兇手整理尸體的悚然片斷。

At first it seems that Dormer intuits what happened bynoticing clues on Kay’s body. But the film’s credits started with similar glimpses of the killing, as if from the killer’s point of view, and there’s an ambiguity about whether the interpolated images later are Dormer’s imaginative reconstruction, or reminders of the killer’s vision—establishing that uneasy link of cop and crook that is a staple of the crime film.

Similarly, abrupt cutting is used to introduce a cluster of images that gets clarified in the course of the film. At the start, we see blood seeping through threads, and then shots of hands carefully depositing blood on a fabric (above). Then we see shots of Dormer, awaking jerkily while flying in to the crime scene. Are these enigmatic images more extracts from the crime, or are they something else? We’ll learn in the course of the film that these are flashbacks to Dormer’s framing of another suspect back in Los Angeles. Once again, these images get anchored as more or less subjective, and they echo the killer’s patient tidying up.

一開始這似乎是Dormer憑直覺通過Kay尸體上的線索來重現犯罪過程。但影片在報幕伊始就有類似的兇殺片斷，似乎是從兇手的視角進行呈現，因此隨后我們看到的片斷究竟是Dormer想象中的犯罪重現還是兇手腦海里的殘像，在這一點的判斷上就顯得模棱兩可了。而籍此諾蘭搭建起了警察和歹徒之間的聯系，這也是犯罪類型片著力描繪的部分。

不連貫剪輯同樣也被用在影片過程呈現一組逐漸明朗的影像。在影片開頭，我們看到血浸過床單，接下來的幾個鏡頭里我們看到有人用手仔細將血放到一塊布料上。之后我們看到Dormer在飛往犯罪現場的飛機上驚醒的鏡頭。這些迷一般的影像究竟是犯罪現場的還原片斷，還是另有其意呢？隨著影片的進行，我們將發現這些片斷其實是Dormer腦海里對他在洛杉磯設計栽贓另一名嫌犯的閃回片斷。再一次，這些影像的呈現多少帶有主觀性，并和兇手細心清理現場的片斷相呼應。

Nolan’s reliance on rapid cutting in these passages is typical of his style generally. Insomia has over 3400 shots in its 111 minutes, making the average shot just under two seconds long. Rapid editing like this can suit bursts of mental imagery, but it’s hard to sustain in meat-and-potatoes dialogue scenes. Yet Nolan tries.

In lectures I’ve used the scene in which Dormer and Hap arrive at the Alaskan police station as an example of the over-busy tempo that can come along with a style based in “intensified continuity.” In a seventy-second scene, there are 39 shots, so the average is about 1.8 seconds—a pace typical of the film and of the intensified approach generally.

總體說來，在這些里影片片段里，諾蘭的典型風格就體現在他所依賴的快速剪輯上。《失眠癥》在111分鐘里有3400個鏡頭，平均每個鏡頭長度不足2秒。這樣的快速剪輯適合用來呈現迸發的心理意象，但卻很難用來交代最基本的對話場景。不過諾蘭還是做了嘗試。

在平時的講課中，我用了本片中Dormer和Hap到達阿拉斯加警察局的那一幕，將其作為基于“緊湊連續剪輯”之上的超快節奏風格的一個示例。影片中一個長達70秒的場景包含了39個鏡頭，平均每個鏡頭有1.8秒，這是本片的典型節奏，也是這類緊湊剪輯手法的典型節奏。

Apart from one exterior long-shot of the police station and four inserts of hands, the characters’ interplay is captured almost entirely in singles—that is, shots of only one actor. Out of the 34 shots of actors’ faces and upper bodies, 24 are singles. Most of these serve to pick up individual lines of dialogue or characters’ reactions to other lines. The singles are shot with telephoto lenses, a choice exemplifying what I called the tendency toward “bipolar” lens lengths in intensified continuity–that is, either very long lenses or fairly wide-angle ones.

除了一個展現警察局全貌的外部長鏡頭和四組手部特寫鏡頭，這一幕中角色的互動幾乎全部用單鏡頭交代，就是說每個鏡頭里面只有一名演員。在34個演員的臉部以及上半身的鏡頭里，有24個單鏡頭。這些鏡頭大多用來展示單個角色的對白或是角色的回應對白。這些單鏡頭使用長焦鏡頭拍攝的，這種選擇也可以佐證我以前曾提到的在“緊湊連續剪輯”中鏡頭選擇的“兩極化”趨勢，也就是說要么采用長焦距鏡頭，要么采用廣角鏡頭進行拍攝。

Fast cutting like this need not break up traditional spatial orientation. In this scene, there are a couple of bumps in the eyeline-matching, but basically continuity principles are respected. As Nolan explains on the DVD commentary, he tried to anchor the axis of action, or 180-degree line, around Dormer/Pacino, so the eyelines were consistent with his position, and that’s usually the case here.

The scene’s development and the actors’ line readings are emphasized by the cutting; the lighting and framing remain almost unvarying (though there’s also an occasional slight push-in during an establishing framing). These aren’t innovative choices, having become conventional, gradually but firmly, since the 1970s.

像這樣的快速剪輯無需打破傳統的空間定位。在這幕中，鏡頭間角色在視線順接上有些不連貫，但基本上遵守了連續性原則。諾蘭在DVD附帶評論里說他試圖圍繞Dormer/Pacino來安排動作線/180度線，以確保角色間的視線關系和主角的位置相對應，這一幕中的鏡頭關系基本如此。

這一幕的情節發展和演員的對白通過剪輯得到強調；布光和取景幾乎保持不變（雖然在定位鏡頭中偶爾會有一些細微的推進）。這些拍攝手法算不上革新，自從上世紀70年代起就已經逐漸成為了常規手法。

I can’t illustrate all the shots here, but despite its more or less cogent continuity, the scene seems to me choppy, uneconomical, and fairly perfunctory in its stylistic handling. Nolan makes no effort to move the actors around the set in a way that would underscore the dramatic development. Because of the rapid editing, characters’ lines and gestures are cut off or unprepared for. There is no effort to design each shot, à la Hitchcock, to fit the line or reaction of the actor. Most shots are excerpted from full takes, all from the same setup. The most obvious example is the setup that pans to show Dormer as he comes in, stops, and reacts to the conversation. Thirteen shots are taken from that setup (not necessarily the same full take, of course, as the last frame here shows).

我無法在此展示所有的鏡頭，而這一幕的連續性雖然讓人信服，但在風格上的處理我覺得顯得零碎，不夠簡潔并且頗為草率。諾蘭沒有花太大功夫通過調度演員來強調戲劇化發展。因為快速剪輯的原因，角色的臺詞和動作要么被切斷，要么顯得準備不足。諾蘭沒有像希區柯克那樣，設計每個鏡頭以配合演員的對白或反應。大多數鏡頭都是從使用同一個布景的拍攝片斷中剪輯得來。最顯著的例子就是一個展現Dormer入場，停下，加入談話中的鏡頭布景。在這個布景中共有13個鏡頭（當然并非全部都是從單次鏡頭拍攝中剪切出來，從上面的最后一個鏡頭就可以看出）

In Nolan’s recent films, this avoidance of tightly designed compositions may be encouraged further because he’s shooting in both the 1.43 Imax ratio and the 2.40 anamorphic one. There remains a general tendency toward loose, roughly centered framings.

Somebody is sure to reply that the nervous editing is aiming to express Dormer’s anxiety about the investigation into his career. But that would be too broad an explanation. On the same grounds, every awkwardly-edited film could be said to be expressing dramatic tensions within or among the characters. Moreover, even when Dormer’s not present, the same choppy cutting is on display.

諾蘭在近年拍攝的影片中回避仔細安排鏡頭間關系的做法或許是因為他拍攝的影片既有1.43：1的Imax屏幕比例也有2.40：1的全屏幕比例。而這兩者間折中的拍攝選擇就是往松散，不居中的取景方式靠攏。

有人肯定會說這種緊張的剪輯是為了展現Dormer對于他自己遭遇的調查感到焦慮。但這種解釋太過空泛。按照同樣的邏輯，每一部被剪輯得很狼狽的影片都可以用“表現演員自身或演員之間戲劇張力”來作為托詞。更有甚者，即使Dormer不在場時，影片中同樣也有零碎的剪輯。

Consider the 23 shots showing Ellie greeting Dormer and Hap as they get off the plane. Again we have full production takes broken up into brief phases of action (it takes five shots to get Dormer out of the plane), with an almost arbitrarily succession of shot scales. When Ellie leaves her vehicle to go out on the pier, the action is presented in nine shots.

再來看看Ellie迎接Dormer和Hap下飛機時的23個鏡頭。我們再次看到幾個連續的拍攝段落被分解成了簡短的動作片斷（Dormer下飛機就用了5個鏡頭），而片斷之間的鏡頭焦距變化幾乎是隨意的。Ellie下了車走到碼頭的一幕，整個動作用了9個鏡頭。

We can imagine a simpler presentation—perhaps after an establishing shot, we track with Ellie down along the dock (so we can see her smiling anticipation), then pan with her walking leftward into a framing that prepares for the plane hatch to open. Arguably, the need to show off production values—the vast natural landscape, the swooping plane descending—pressed Nolan to include some of the extra shots. They don’t do much dramatically, and the strange cut back to an extreme long-shot (to cover the change to a new angle on Ellie?) may negate whatever affinity with her that the closer shots aim to build up.

我們可以設想一個更簡單的呈現方式—或許在一個定位鏡頭之后，我們一路跟拍Ellie走到碼頭（從而我們可以看到她面露微笑期待偶像的到來），接著鏡頭隨她往左橫搖進入一個靜止景框，隨后可以從中看到開啟的飛機艙門。當然向觀眾炫耀制作成本的必要——廣袤的自然風光，水上飛機滑翔降落等場景，促使諾蘭加入了一些多余的鏡頭。但這些鏡頭并沒有什么戲劇效果，而且一個到遠距鏡頭的回切（以此來掩蓋Ellie在鏡頭里的角度變化？）卻足以抵消之前中近鏡頭試圖對她建立的任何親切感。

Swedish sleeplessness

瑞典式失眠

（譯注：瑞典導演的失眠場面處理）

《神奇的邁克》劇照

Want an up-to-date comparison? Steven Soderbergh’s Magic Mike has a quiet, clean style that conveys each story point without fanfare. Soderbergh saves his singles for major moments and drops back for long-running master shots when character interaction counts. His cuts are just that; they trim fat. He doesn’t resort to those short-lived push-in camera movements that Nolan seems addicted to. He doesn’t waste time with filler shots of people going in and out of buildings, or aerial views of a cityscape. Soderbergh can provide an unfussy 70s-ish telephoto long take of Mike and Brooke walking along a pier and settling down at a picnic table in front of a Go-Kart track while her brother Adam materializes in the distance. In a single year, with Contagion, Haywire, and Magic Mike, Soderbergh has confirmed himself as our master of the intelligent midrange picture. To anyone who cares to watch, these movies give lessons in discreet, compact direction.

For a more pertinent contrast case, we can go back Insomnia’s source, the 1997 Norwegian film of the same name written and directed by Erik Skjoldbjaerg. Here a Swedish detective, vaguely under suspicion for an infraction of duty, comes to a town on the Arctic Circle for a murder investigation. The plot is roughly similar in its premise, but the working out is quite different, and I can’t do justice to it here. Let me mention just two points of contrast.

拿眼下其他導演的作品來作個比較如何？Steven Soderbergh(譯注：美國導演，憑借《販毒網絡》獲得2000奧斯卡最佳導演獎）的《神奇的邁克》有著安靜，簡潔的風格，其中的每個情節要點的都沒有被大勢渲染。Soderbergh只在一些重要的時刻使用單鏡頭敘事，而在角色互動的場景里又用回了主鏡頭。這就是他的剪輯方式；不留臃腫。他沒有采用那種短促的推進式鏡頭，對此諾蘭倒是樂此不疲。他沒有用諸如人們走進走出建筑或是城市的航拍等填充鏡頭來浪費時間。Soderbergh可以用一個70年代常見的長焦長鏡頭來展現Mike和Brooke沿著碼頭一直走到Go-Kart外面的野餐桌前，而她的弟弟逐漸從遠方走來。Soderbergh憑借一年里推出的三部作品：《傳染病》，《致勝一擊》和《神奇的邁克》向我們證明了他是中等成本情節片的大師。這三部電影像我們展現了低調而簡潔的導演技巧。

如果要做一個更貼切的對比，我們可以回到《失眠癥》的源頭，1997年由挪威導演Erik Skjoldbjaerg編寫并執導的同名影片。在本片中，一位被懷疑有瀆職行為的瑞典警探，來到了位于北極圈中的一座小鎮調查一起謀殺案。兩部影片的情節大致類似，但展現的手法卻大不相同，而在本文中無法對此做全面分析。我只想提及兩個不同點。

First, the cutting is less jagged. Skjoldbjaerg’s film comes in at ninety-seven minutes, about fifteen minutes shorter than Nolan’s, and its cutting rate is much slower, around 5.4 seconds. That means that many passages are built out of sustained shots, particularly ones showing the detective Jonas Engstr?m walking or sitting in a brooding, self-contained silence. Also, this version finds ways to convey several bits of information concisely, in carefully designed shots. For a straightforward example: We see Engstrom’s eyes open, as he’s unable to sleep, and then he lifts his head. Rack focus to the clock behind him.

首先，原版影片的剪輯更為流暢。Skjoldbjaerg的版本時長97分鐘，比諾蘭的版本短了約15分鐘，而原版里的剪輯頻率也要比諾蘭版本慢了不少，大概平均每個鏡頭耗時5.4秒。這就意味著許多片斷是由連貫的鏡頭構成的，特別是展現警探Jonas Engstr?m坐立不安，若有所思，沉默不語的那些鏡頭。而且原版影片通過仔細設計的拍攝鏡頭，以頗簡練的方式向觀眾傳達信息。舉個最直接的例子：我們看到Engstrom睜著雙眼，無法入睡，而當他抬起頭以后，畫面聚焦到了他身后的電子鐘。

Nolan uses several shots to get across a comparable point.

諾蘭則用了數個鏡頭來表達同樣的內容。

As for subjectivity, Skoldbjaerg is just as keen to get us inside his detective’s head as Nolan is. At times he uses the sort of flash-cutting Nolan employs, so we get fragmentary reminders of the fog-clouded shooting. But Skoldbjaerg doesn’t tease us with unattributed inserts (Nolan’s flashbacks to Dormer’s framing of a suspect), and he never suggests, via images of the murder and its cleanup, that his detective can imagine the crime concretely. Instead, Skoldbjaerg often evokes his character’s unease through camera movements that upset our sense of his spatial location. The camera shows Engstrom striding into a room…and then swivels rightward to show him in his original location, as if he’s sneaked around behind our back.

而在主觀性這一點上，Skoldbjaerg和諾蘭一樣，迫切想把我們拉進偵探的頭腦中。片中他有幾次也像諾蘭那樣使用了閃回的剪輯來向我們呈現霧中槍擊的片斷。但是Skoldbjaerg沒有用指向不明的片斷來吊我們胃口（比如諾蘭片中Dormer對另一起案件中設計嫌犯的閃回），而且他從來沒有通過謀殺案的畫面和善后清理的鏡頭來暗示偵探能切實想象出謀殺過程。Skoldbjaerg轉而籍由調度片中主角在畫面中的位置來呈現出令觀眾不安的觀感，并由此讓觀眾感受到主角的不安情緒。（如下圖）鏡頭中Engstrom走進了一個房間…接著鏡頭向右搖轉展現他站在最初的位置，仿佛他悄然走到了我們觀眾的背后。

Then Engstrom turns, and we hear a footstep. Cut to a shot showing that the sound is made by him, walking in another room.

接著接著Engstrom轉過身，然后我們聽到了腳步聲。影片跳到下一個鏡頭，我們看到這是他在另一個房間踱步發出的聲音。

I’m not going to suggest that Skoldbaerg innovates more radically than Nolan does, though most viewers probably are more startled by these devices than by Nolan’s. I think that the original Insomnia’s stylistic gamesmanship owes something to other precedents, going back to Dreyer’s Vampyr. What I find more interesting is that Nolan had available the prior example of these strategies from his Nordic source, and he still chose to go with the more conventional, cutting-based options.

Theediting-driven, somewhat catch-as-catch-can approach to staging and shooting is clearly Nolan’s preference for many projects. He doesn’t prepare shot lists, and he storyboards only the big action sequences. As his DP Wally Pfister remarks, “What I do is not complicated.” Comparing their production method to documentary filming, he adds: “A lot of the spirit of it is: How fast can we shoot this?”

我不會因此就表示相比起諾蘭，Skoldbjaerg所做的革新更為極端，即便對比起諾蘭的快剪手法，大多數觀眾或許會更驚訝于Skoldbjaerg在此的呈現方式。我認為原版《失眠癥》在風格上的高明把控也借鑒了其他的電影前輩，早至Dreyer的《吸血鬼》（1932）。更讓我感興趣的是諾蘭在北歐原版影片中可以借鑒到這些拍攝方法，但他仍然選擇了更為常規，基于后期剪輯的表現形式。

諾蘭在很多影片中顯然更喜歡運用這種依賴剪輯，有點像瞎貓逮死耗子(catch-as-catch-can)的手段來進行場面調度和影片拍攝。他不會事先準備拉片分鏡表，而他只會為一些大場面的場景準備故事板。正如他的攝影導演Wally Pfister所言，“我要做的事情并不復雜。”Wally把他們的攝制方法與紀錄片拍攝做類比，他還說：“其中的主導思想在于：我們多塊能拍完？”

Throwing it against the wall

往墻上扔過去

We can find this loose shooting and brusque editing in most of Nolan’s films, and so they don’t seem to me to display innovative, or particularly skilful, visual style. I’m going to assume that his strengths aren’t in the choice of subjects either, since genre considerations have kept him to superheroics and psychological crime and mystery. I think his chief areas of innovation lie in theme and form.

The thematic dimension is easy to see. There’s the issue of uncertain identity, which becomes explicit in Memento and the Batman films. The lost-woman motif, from Leonard’s wife in Memento to Rachel in the two late Batman movies, gives Nolan’s films the recurring theme of vengeance, as well as the romantic one of the man doomed to solitude and unhappiness, always grieving. If this almost obsessive circling around personal identity and the loss of wife or lover carries emotional conviction, it owes a good deal to the performances of Guy Pearce, Hugh Jackman, Christian Bale, and Leonardo DiCaprio, who put some flesh on Nolan’s somewhat schematic situations.

在諾蘭大多數影片中，我們都能看到到這種松散的拍攝手法和唐突的后期剪輯，因此在我看來，這些都沒有展現出革新的或者是特別有技術含量的視覺風格。我猜想他的強項也不在題材的選擇上，他拍攝的影片主要是超級英雄，心理犯罪以及懸疑這樣的類型。我認為他革新的主要領域在于影片的主題和形式。

諾蘭影片的主題層面不難考察。其中包含“身份不明”的話題，這在《記憶碎片》和《蝙蝠俠》系列中顯而易見。“缺失的女人”這個主旨，從《記憶碎片》中Leonard的妻子到前兩部《蝙蝠俠》影片中的Rachel，使得諾蘭影片一再出現復仇主題，以及男主角注定孤獨悲傷這種浪漫主題。如果說這種對于個人身份近乎癡迷的糾纏以及愛人缺失的主題在情感上能讓觀眾認同，那也要多虧Guy Pearce, Hugh Jackman, Christian Bale以及Leonardo DiCaprio等明星的演技，他們讓諾蘭這種按部就班的影片場景變得鮮活。

You can argue that these psychological themes aren’t especially original, especially in mystery-based plots, but the Batman films offer something fresher. The Dark Knight trilogy has attracted attention for its willingness to suggest real-world resonance in comic-book material. Umberto Eco once objected that Superman, who has the power to redirect rivers, prevent asteroid collisions, and expose political corruption, devotes too much of his time to thwarting bank robbers. Nolan and his colleagues have sought to answer Eco’s charge by imbuing the usual string of heists, fights, chases, explosions, kidnappings, ticking bombs, and pistols-to-the-head with sociopolitical gravitas. The Dark Knight invokes ideas about terrorism, torture, surveillance, and the need to keep the public in the dark about its heroes. Something similar has happened with The Dark Knight Rises, leaving commentators to puzzle out what it’s saying about financial manipulation, class inequities, and the 99 percent/ 1 percent debate.

Nolan and his collaborators are doubtless doing something ambitious in giving the superhero genre a new weightiness. Yet I found The Dark Knight Rises, like its predecessor, unable to bear the burden. It seemed to me at once pretentious and confused in a manner typical of Hollywood’s traditional handling of topical themes.

你也可以找茬說這些心理主題不是格外具有原創性，尤其是那些基于懸疑的情節，不過《蝙蝠俠》系列倒有些新意。《暗黑騎士》三部曲吸引人的地方在于以漫畫故事的素材來呼應現實世界。Umberto Eco（意大利著名學者，小說家，評論家，譯注）曾經就質疑說像超人能力驚人，他能改變河流流向，避免地球遭受隕石撞擊，揭發政治腐敗，但他卻花了太多時間來對付銀行搶劫犯。似乎是為了回應Eco的指摘，諾蘭和同事們把影片中一連串平淡無奇的搶劫，打斗，追逐，爆炸，綁架，炸彈倒計時，頭頂槍口的場面再摻入了社會政治層面的沉重感。《暗黑騎士》讓人思索恐怖主義，虐待，監視以及幕后英雄不必為人知曉等話題。而在《暗黑騎士的崛起》中類似的思考同樣被勾起，讓一眾評論家去糾結影片關于金融操控，階級不平等以及99%/1%財富分配這些問題究竟想表達什么。

諾蘭和他的合作者們無疑在超級英雄類型片中野心勃勃地加入了新的砝碼。不過我認為《暗黑騎士的崛起》和系列前作一樣，無力承載過重的意指。我很快就感覺了其中裝腔作勢，含混不清的呈現方式，這也是好萊塢在處理這類話題性主題時的典型而傳統的方法。

The confusion comes into focus when journalists, needing an angle on this week’s release, look for a coherent reflection of that elusive, probably imaginary zeitgeist. I think that most popular films don’t capture the spirit of the time, assuming such a thing exists, but simply opportunistically stitch together whatever lies to hand. Let me recycle what I wrote four years ago.

I remember walking out of Patton (1970) with a hippie friend who loved it. He claimed that it showed how vicious the military was, by portraying a hero as an egotistical nutcase. That wasn’t the reading offered by a veteran I once talked to, who considered the film a tribute to a great warrior.

這種含義不明，令人理解混亂的情況凸顯在記者們對影片各自不一的解讀。他們都需要琢磨出影片中那令人迷惑，甚至或許只存在于想象中的時代精神，從而能寫出本周影評。如果時代精神真的存在，那我認為絕大多數大眾電影都沒有將其把握—這些電影不過是投機地把手中的話題拼湊到一塊。讓我來看看自己四年前寫的東西。

我記得和一位嬉皮朋友看完《巴頓》后走出影院。他喜歡這部影片，認為影片通過刻畫一個自我主義的頑固派英雄，表現了軍隊的丑惡。但當我和一位退役老兵談到該片時，他的觀感卻不盡相同，他認為影片是向一名偉大的戰士致敬。

It was then I began to suspect that Hollywood movies are usually strategically ambiguous about politics. You can read them in a lot of different ways, and that ambivalence is more or less deliberate.

A Hollywood film tends to pose sharp moral polarities and then fuzz or fudge or rush past settling them. For instance, take The Bourne Ultimatum: Yes, the espionage system is corrupt, but there is one honorable agent who will leak the information, and the press will expose it all, and the malefactors will be jailed. This tactic hasn’t had a great track record in real life.

從那時起我開始懷疑好萊塢電影通常策略性地把其政治傾向模糊化。你可以從不同角度來解讀，而這種含混曖昧或多或少是刻意為之的。

好萊塢電影傾向于呈現出尖銳的道德兩極，然后又語焉不詳，或者回避討論，或者草草結尾。拿《伯恩身份3》來舉個例：沒錯，間諜系統是腐敗的，但還是有一個品行高尚的特工愿意透露出內幕，而媒體也會將其全部曝光，然后壞人會被抓進監獄。但在真實世界里，這名特工的選擇可不會有什么好結果。

The constitutive ambiguity of Hollywood movies helpfully disarms criticisms from interest groups (“Look at the positive points we put in”). It also gives the film an air of moral seriousness (“See, things aren’t simple; there are gray areas”). . . .

I’m not saying that films can’t carry an intentional message. Bryan Singer and Ian McKellen claim the X-Men series criticizes prejudice against gays and minorities. Nor am I saying that an ambivalent film comes from its makers delicately implanting counterbalancing clues. Sometimes they probably do that. More often, I think, filmmakers pluck out bits of cultural flotsam opportunistically, stirring it all together and offering it up to see if we like the taste. It’s in filmmakers’ interests to push a lot of our buttons without worrying whether what comes out is a coherent intellectual position. Patton grabbed people and got them talking, and that was enough to create a cultural event. Ditto The Dark Knight.

好萊塢電影這種觀點構成上的模棱兩對其消解來自各利益團體的批評倒是大有裨益的。（“看吧，我們在里面也加入了正面內容的哦”）。這種含混還讓影片有一種道德上的嚴肅感（“看嘛，事情沒那么簡單；還有些灰色地帶呢”）。

我不是說電影不能傳遞一些意味明確的信息。Bryan Singer和Ian McKellen就認為《X戰警》系列批評了對于同性戀和少數群體的歧視現象。我也不認為如果一部電影觀點模糊，就是因為制作人刻意植入了各種相互制衡的信息。有時他們可能會這么做。更多的時候我覺得電影制作者們是投機地把各種文化符號攪到一塊然后端出來，看大家是否喜歡。能勾起我們觀眾的各種想法，又不用考慮其觀點立場是否連貫同意，電影制作者們肯定是樂于此道的。《巴頓》吸引了各種觀眾并引發了他們的討論，這就足以制造一次文化事件。現在的《暗黑騎士》也是如此。

Since I wrote that, Nolan has confirmed my hunch. He says of the new Batman movie:

We throw a lot of things against the wall to see if it sticks. We put a lot of interesting questions in the air, but that’s simply a backdrop for the story. . . . We’re going to get wildly different interpretations of what the film is supporting and not supporting, but it’s not doing any of those things. It’s just telling a story.

我當時這么寫道，而今諾蘭映證了我的猜測。他自己對新蝙蝠俠影片的看法如下：

我們把很多元素扔到墻上，看他們能不能粘上去。我們提出了很多有趣的問題，但這只是影片的故事背景…關于影片支持什么，反對什么，我們會得到很多迥異的解讀，但電影本身并不參與其中。電影只是講個故事。

Just to be clear, I don’t think the just-telling-a-story alibi is bulletproof. The cultural mix on display in a movie can still exclude certain ideological possibilities, or frame the materials in ways that slant how spectators take them up. My point is only that we ought not to expect popular movies, or indeed many movies, to offer crisp, transparent visions of politics or society. Thematic murkiness and confusion are the norm, and the movie’s inconsistencies may reflect nothing more than the makers’ adroit scavenging.

確切地說，我不認為“只為了講故事”這種托詞是無懈可擊的。一部影片中的文化大雜燴仍然會排除某些意識形態上的可能性，或者素材選擇的范圍也會影響觀眾的解讀。我的觀點只不過是我們不應該指望大眾電影，或者說包括大眾電影在內的很多電影，能對于政治或者社會提出清晰，明確的觀點。主題上的模糊含混是很尋常的，而影片缺乏連貫性也不過是反映了制作者機靈到了來者不拒的程度。（原文為adroit scavenging，前者為聰明機智，后者意指從垃圾堆里撿東西，饑不擇食，Bordwell對諾蘭的奚落可見一斑，譯注）

Subjectivity and crosscutting

主觀性和交叉剪輯

Nolan’s innovations seem strongest in the realm of narrative form. He’s fascinated by unusual storytelling strategies. Those aren’t developed at full stretch in Insomnia or the Dark Knight trilogy, but other films put them on display.

One way to capture his formal ambitions, I think, is to see them as an effort to reconcile character subjectivity with large-scale crosscutting. Nolan has pointed out his keen interest in both strategies. But on the face of it, they’re opposed. Techniques of subjectivity plunge us into what one character perceives or feels or thinks. Crosscutting typically creates much more unrestricted field of view, shifting us from person to person, place to place. One is intensive, the other expansive; one is a local effect, the other becomes the basis of the film’s enveloping architecture.

諾蘭的各項革新似乎在敘事形式領域最顯著。他著迷于與眾不同的敘事方式。在《失眠癥》和《暗黑騎士》三部曲中，他的敘事手法未能得以全面展現，但是在其他作品中有所體現。

要理解諾蘭在形式上的雄心壯志，我覺得不妨將其看作是他為了調和主觀性敘事和大規模交叉剪輯所做的努力。諾蘭對兩者都展現出了強烈的興趣。但乍看起來，這兩者卻是相互對立的。主觀性敘事的技巧把觀眾推進影片角色的視角或者思維出發點。而交叉剪輯則典型地被用來制造更自由的視角，讓觀眾在不同角色和不同場景間游走。前者是集中視角，后者是發散視角；一面是局部效果，另一面卻是包裹整部影片的基礎。

The Batman trilogy has plenty of crosscutting, but as far as I can tell, subjectivity takes a back seat. Nolan’s first two films reconcile subjectivity and crosscutting in more unusual ways. Following takes a linear story, breaks it into four stretches, and then intercuts them. But instead of expanding our range of knowledge to many characters, nearly all the sections are confined to what happens to one protagonist, and they’re presented as his recounted memories in a Q & A situation.

Likewise, Memento confines us to a single protagonist and skips between his memories and immediate experiences. Again what might be a single, linear timeline is split, but then one series of incidents is presented as moving chronologically while another is presented in reverse order. Again, the competing time trajectories aren’t presented as large blocks but are fairly swiftly crosscut.

《蝙蝠俠》三部曲里面運用了不少交叉剪輯，但在我看來，主觀性敘事仍然是影片的基調。諾蘭前兩部影片在調和主觀性和交叉剪輯上采用了不尋常的方式。諾蘭的處女作《跟蹤》（1998）把一個線性的故事情節分解成四段，然后進行交叉剪輯處理。但這種交叉剪輯并沒有拓展觀眾對各個角色的認知，相反幾乎所有的片斷都局限在一位主角的經歷，而且是以主角在問答對話場景下以復述回憶的方式呈現。

《記憶碎片》也用類似手法將觀眾的視角局限在單個主人公身上，并且在他的回憶和當下經歷之間切換。原本是單一，線性的時間線再次被分割，然后一系列的事件以時間先后順序呈現，而另一串事件又以相反的時間順序來呈現。又一次，影片中各條對立的時間軌跡不是被整塊展現出來，而是通過快速的交叉剪輯來呈現。

In The Prestige, dual protagonists, both with a secret, take over the story, but the presentation remains steeped in subjectivity. Now much of the action is filtered through each magician’s notebook of jottings and recollections, translated into voice-over commentary. One character may be reading another’s notebook in which the writer reports reading the first character’s notebook! And of course these tales-within-tales are intercut, with one man’s frame story alternating with the other’s past experience. You can work it all out diagrammatically, as I tried to do in my notes (on right).

With Inception, subjectivity takes the shape of dreaming, and the crosscutting is now among layers of dreams. The embedding that we find in The Prestige is now carried to an extreme; in the long, climactic final sequence a group dream frames another dream which frames another, and so on, to five levels. Once again, these all get intercut (although Nolan wisely refrains from reminding us of the outermost frame too often, so that our eventual return to it can be sensed more strongly).

《致命魔術》有兩位主角，各自有一個秘密，但影片敘事仍然偏向主觀性的手法。影片中故事通過兩位魔術師各自在筆記本上的記錄和回憶被過濾，然后再由畫外音轉述。片中一個角色可能讀到另一人的筆記，而其作者又在其中記敘他閱讀對方的筆記！當然這些戲中戲是被交叉剪輯過的，由其中一人的故事情節來替代敘述對方之前的經歷。你可以將影片的結構以圖表形式勾勒出來，就像我在上面自己的筆記里面那樣來勾勒。

在《盜夢空間》中，主觀性以夢的形式呈現，而交叉剪輯是在各層夢境中完成。而我們在《致命魔術》中看到的疊加被運用到了極致；在那幕最后的高潮片斷中，一個集體夢境套入了第二個夢境，而第二個夢境再套入第三個，以此類推到了五層夢境。而這些夢再一次被交替剪輯（不過諾蘭明智地避免讓觀眾過多回想到最外一層夢境，這樣一來我們最后的逐層回歸才會顯得更為震撼）。

Kristin and I have written at length about these strategies in earlier entries (here and here). To recapitulate, Kristin found Inception‘s reliance on continuous exposition a worthwhile experiment, and I argued that the lucid-dreaming gimmick was simply a motivational strategy, a pretext for connecting multiple plotlines through embedding rather than parallel action. My point in the first essay is summed up here:

As ambitious artists compete to engineer clockwork narratives and puzzle films, Nolan raises the stakes by reviving a very old tradition, that of the embedded story. He motivates it through dreams and modernizes it with a blend of science fiction, fantasy, action pictures, and male masochism. Above all, the dream motivation allows him to crosscut four embedded stories, all built on classic Hollywood plot arcs. In the process he creates a virtuoso stretch of cinematic storytelling.

在之前的博客文章中，我和Kristin用了很長篇幅來討論這些形式策略。歸納起來，Kristin認為《盜夢空間》依賴連續闡述（形式動機）是有其實驗性價值的，而我則認為清醒夢境的把戲只是用來推動情節發展的策略，是為了通過疊加而非平行敘事的方式來連接多條情節的邏輯前提。我在第一篇文章中的觀點可以總結如下：

有抱負的電影藝術家們爭相設計時間線索清晰的敘事和耐人尋味的電影，而諾蘭則把籌碼加得更高，不過他是依靠著復興故事疊加這種非常古老的敘事傳統來參與競爭。他通過夢來推動情節發展，并且利用科幻，幻想，動作片以及大男子主義等元素賦予其現代感。總而言之，夢作為動機讓他可以交替剪輯四個疊加的故事，而故事本身都是基于經典的好萊塢情節套路。在這個過程中他創造出一段電影敘事的炫技演出。

My later thoughts tried to survey the breadth of Nolan’s development of formal strategies. Here’s my conclusion:

From this perspective, Inception marks a step forward in Nolan’s exploration of telling a story by crosscutting different time frames. You can even measure the changes quantitatively. Following contains four timelines and intercuts (for the most part) three. Memento intercuts two timelines, but one moves backward. Like Following, The Prestige contains four timelines and intercuts three, but it opens the way toward intercutting embedded stories. The climax of Inception intercuts four embedded timelines, all of them framed by a fifth, the plane trip in the present. For reasons I mentioned in the previous post, it’s possible that Nolan has hit a recursive limit. Any more timelines and most viewers will get lost.

我在當時的文章里還試圖考察諾蘭在形式策略上的一些發展。我的結論如下：

從這個角度來看，《盜夢空間》標志著諾蘭通過對不同時間片斷的交替剪輯從而對敘事的探索上更進一步。你甚至可以量化這種變化。《跟蹤》包含四條時間線，（在影片大部分中）交替剪輯了三條。《記憶碎片》交替剪輯了兩條，但有一條是回溯的。和《跟蹤》一樣，《致命魔術》有四條時間線，交替剪輯了三條，但在片中出現了交替剪輯的疊加故事。《盜夢空間》的高潮部分交替剪輯了四條疊加的時間線，而這四條時間線由第五條時間線承載，即影片中的現實長途飛行旅程。在我之前的博客文章中提到過，諾蘭可能已經觸到了這套循環結構的極限。如果再加入更多的時間線，那么大多數觀眾將會摸不著頭腦了。

The Dark Knight Rises hasn’t dulled my respect for Nolan’s ambitions. Very few contemporary American filmmakers have pursued complex storytelling with such thoroughness and ingenuity.

Nolan has made his innovations accessible, I argued, by the way he has motivated them. First, he appeals to genre conventions. Following and Memento are neo-noirs, and we expect that mode to traffic in complex, perhaps nearly incomprehensible plotting and presentation. He has called Inception a heist film, and what many viewers objected to—its constant explanation of the rules of dream invasion—is not so far from the steady flow of information we get in a caper movie. In the heist genre, Nolan remarks, exposition is entertainment. Further, the separate dreams rely on familiar action-movie conventions: the car chase that ends with a plunge into space, the fight in a hotel corridor, the assault on a fortress, and so on.

《暗黑騎士崛起》依然顯示了諾蘭的雄心，而我對此的敬意也不曾麻木。當今的美國電影制作者中鮮見有人對復雜敘事進行如此徹底而機智的求索。（譯注：原文中，respect后接的不是Nolan而是Nolan’s ambitions,似乎表明Bordwell頗有保留，都不愿意直接肯定他；而后一句，原文中用了Very few這樣頗極化的表達來說明美國導演數量之少，似乎也并非在展現Bordwell對諾蘭的贊許之意。因此在這一段上，以及通觀前文中的許多類似的表達，可以看出Bordwell對諾蘭持有相當保留的意見）。

我認為諾蘭通過在影片中不斷地為其革新賦予動機來幫助觀眾理解。首先他借助常規的電影類別劃分。《跟蹤》和《記憶碎片》都是新黑色電影，我們印象中這種類型的電影就應該有復雜到近乎無法理解的情節和表現形式。他還把《盜夢空間》稱為“盜竊片”，而很多觀眾不太喜歡影片中反復對盜夢機制進行的闡釋，這種大量鋪呈的輔助信息的確和“獵奇片”中的敘事手段差別不大。在盜竊片這種類型中，諾蘭認為闡釋形式邏輯是看點所在。更進一步說，《盜夢》中各個夢的敘述都采用了各種我們熟悉的動作片手法：汽車追逐飛到半空，賓館走廊上的打斗，要塞攻堅，等等。

But I should have mentioned another method of motivation–one that helps make the films comprehensible to a broad audience. In some cases the formal trickery is justified by the very subjectivity the film embraces. It’s one thing to tell a story in reverse chronology, as Pinter does in Betrayal; but Memento’s broken timeline gets extra motivation from the protagonist’s purported (not clinically realistic) anterograde memory loss. (We’ve already seen a lot of amnesia in film noirs.) Subjectivity is enhanced by the almost constant voice-over narration, reiterating not only Leonard’s thoughts but what he writes incessantly on his Polaroids and his flesh.

In The Prestige, each magician’s journal records not only his trade secrets but his awareness that his rival might be reading his words, so we ought to expect traps and false trails. And in Inception, the notion of plunging into a character’s mind becomes literalized as a dream state. Once we accept the conceit of controlled dreaming, we can buy all the spatial and temporal constraints the dream-master Cobb sets forth. As with Memento, Nolan creates a set of rules that allow him to crosscut many different time lines. In each film, the subject matter—memory failure, magicians’ enigmas, controlled dreaming—serves as an alibi for both subjectivity and broken timelines.

但我還要提及諾蘭另一種為形式賦予動機的方法，以此來幫助大眾看懂他的電影。在很多情況下，敘事形式上的花巧是由電影所采用的主觀性視角來支撐。用倒序的形式來講故事并不鮮見，比如Pinter在《背叛》中的敘事；不過《記憶碎片》中，主角反復出現（臨床上不真實的）的順行性遺忘為影片破碎的時間線賦予了額外的動機（我們在黑色電影中已經看到了許多的失憶場面）。此外影片中幾乎時刻存在的畫外音，反復重述著Leonard的想法；他不停地在“拍立得”照片上和自己身體上所寫下各種線索，依靠這些元素，影片的主觀性也得到了加強。

在《致命魔術》中，魔術師各自的日記不僅記錄著他們的秘密，其中也透露了他們知道其對方或許也能讀到自己的日記，因此觀眾就應該能設想到其中可能存在著陷阱和假線索。而在《盜夢空間》中，進入角色的思維是通過夢境來實現。一旦我們接受了夢境控制的這個前提，那么我們對于造夢大師Cobb所設下的所有空間和時間的限制也就可以全盤接受了。而在《記憶碎片》里，諾蘭創造了一套規則讓他可以在許多不同的時間線中交替剪輯。諾蘭每一部電影里的主題——失憶，魔術師的秘密，受控的夢境——是用來為主觀性敘事和支離破碎的時間線進行辯解的。

Synching story and style

故事和風格的同步

Can you be a good writer without writing particularly well? I think so. James Fenimore Cooper, Theodore Dreiser, Sherwood Anderson, Sinclair Lewis, and other significant novelists had many virtues, but elegant prose was not among them. In popular fiction we treasure flawless wordsmiths like P. G. Wodehouse and Rex Stout and Patricia Highsmith, but we tolerate bland or clumsy style if a gripping plot and vivid characters keep us turning the pages. From Burroughs and Doyle to Stieg Larsson and Michael Crichton, we forgive a lot.

Similarly, Nolan’s work deserves attention even though some of it lacks elegance and cohesion at the shot-to-shot level. The stylistic faults I pointed to above and that echo other writers’ critiques are offset by his innovative approach to overarching form. And sometimes he does exercise a stylistic control that suits his broader ambitions. When he mobilizes visual technique to sharpen and nuance his architectural ambitions, we find a solid integration of texture and structure, fine grain and large pattern.

不依靠好的寫作能力，你能否成為一個好作家？我覺得可以。James Fenimore Cooper, Theodore Dreiser, Sherwood Anderson, Sinclair Lewis（以上幾位均為19世紀中期至20世紀早期的美國作家，譯注）還有其他一些重要的小說家有很多優點，但行文優雅卻不是他們的強項。在通俗小說中，像P.G.Wodehouse, Rex Stout, Patricia Highsmith這些字斟句酌，力求完美的作家令人肅然起敬，但只要情節扣人心弦，角色栩栩如生，那即便某位作家在敘事風格上有些笨拙乏味，我們也還是可以接受的。從Burroughs（美國“垮掉的一代”作家，譯注）和Doyle（柯南道爾？譯注）到Stieg Larsson（《龍紋身的女孩》系列作者）和Michael Crichton（美國暢銷書作家，《侏羅紀公園》作者），我們原諒了不少作家。

同樣的，諾蘭的作品，即便在鏡頭與鏡頭間的層面來看缺乏美感，不夠連貫，仍然是值得關注的。我在前文中所提到他那些風格上的瑕疵，以及他與其他作家類似的一些不足，都不足以掩蓋他在搭建宏大敘事形式中所采取的革新手段。而有時他也會進行風格上的操控以配合他實現其他目的。當他調用視覺技巧來彰顯他在影片結構上的野心時，我們能發現畫面質感和構圖上的切實統一，即細膩的顆粒感與大幅構圖的統一。

Here’s a one-off example. Nolan has remarked that he’s mostly not fond of slow-motion simply to accentuate a physical action, or to suggest some mental state like dream or memory. Inception motivates slow-motion by another of its arbitrary rules, the idea that at each level of dreaming time moves at a different rate. Here a stylistic cliché is transformed by its role in a larger structure, as Sean Weitner pointed out in a message to us.

Memento displays a more thoroughgoing recruitment of style to the purposes of guiding us through its labyrinth. The jigsaw joins of the plot require that the head and tail of each reverse-chronology segment be carefully shaped, because they will be reiterated in other segments. Within the scenes as well, Nolan displays a solid craftsmanship, with mostly tight shot connections and an absence of stylistic bumps.

舉個例子說明。諾蘭曾表示他大多數時候不喜歡用慢動作來強調肢體動作或是用來表示夢境或者回憶這類心理狀態。《盜夢空間》中對慢動作的運用則是遵循電影中的一條規則即每一層夢境中的時間以不同速率流逝這個規則。于是一個風格上的老把戲因為其在影片結構中所起的作用而起了變化，Sean Weitner對此也有相關討論（Sean Weitner的具體觀點可參見原文中的鏈接，譯注）。

《記憶碎片》展現了諾蘭為了實現引導觀眾穿越影片的結構迷宮這一目的，對影片風格更為透徹的運用。因為故事情節被打散成很多塊拼圖，因此每一塊倒敘情節拼圖的首尾都必須被仔細打磨，才能與其他的情節拼圖能契合。諾蘭對影片的各幕也精心打磨，鏡頭間的連接緊密，風格連貫。

He can even slow things down enough for a fifty-second two-shot that develops both drama and humor. Leonard has just shown Teddy the man bound and gagged in his closet, and Teddy wonders how they can get him out. In a nice little gag, Leonard produces a gun from below the frameline (we’ve seen him hide it in a drawer) and then reflects that it must be his prisoner’s piece. This sort of use of off-frame space to build and pay off audience expectations seems rare in Nolan’s scenes.

他甚至可以把節奏慢下來用一個50秒的鏡頭來展現戲劇和幽默。Leonard向Teddy展示他房間衣櫥里那個五花大綁的男子，而Teddy則盤算該如何把他弄出旅館。接著諾蘭玩了一個小把戲，他讓Leonard從畫面之外的下方掏出一把手槍（我們在之前看到他把槍藏在抽屜里）然后Leonard意識到這一定是那個人質的武器。這種利用畫面之外的空間來搭建并滿足觀眾的期待的方法在諾蘭影片中是很少見的。（譯注：仔細閱讀這一段，仿佛更像是Bordwell對諾蘭影片的連貫性在挑刺，之前在抽屜里的手槍是怎么被他突然從畫面下方掏出來的呢？）

The moment is capped when Leonard adds, “I don’t think they let someone like me carry a gun,” as he darts out of the frame.

The straightforward stylistic treatment of Memento‘s more-or-less present-time scenes, both chronological and reversed, is counterbalanced by the rapid, impressionistic handheld work that characterizes Leonard’s flashbacks to his domestic life and his wife’s death (in color) and his flashbacks to the life of Sammy Jankis (in black-and-white). Nolan shrewdly segregates his techniques according to time zone.

在這幕的結尾Leonard說了句“我不認為他們會讓我這種人有一把手槍，”然后他就沖出了畫面。

《記憶碎片》中的正序或是倒序的現代時場景里，風格處理比較直接，而與之對應的則是展現Leonard家庭生活以及妻子逝世（均為彩色畫面）的閃回片斷以及他對Sammy Jankis生活回憶的閃回片斷（黑白畫面），在這些片斷的處理上諾蘭采用了快速且頗具印象主義的手法。諾蘭在不同的時間區域里面巧妙地區分利用了他的風格技巧。

If anything, The Prestige displays even more exactitude. Facing two protagonists and many flashbacks and replayed events, we could easily become lost. Here Nolan doesn’t use black-and-white to mark off a separate zone. Instead he relies more on us to keep all the strands straight, but he helps us with voice-overs and repeated and varied setups that quietly orient us to recurrent spaces and circumstances. Here Nolan’s preference for cutting together singles is subjected to a simple but crisp logic that relies on our memory to grasp the developing drama.

I’ve discussed these stylistic strategies in another entry and in Chapter 7 of Film Art. More generally, they serve the larger dynamic of the plot, which creates a mystery around Alfred Borden, hides crucial information while hinting at it, invites us to sympathize with Borden’s adversary Robert Angier (another widower by violence), and then shifts our sympathies back to Borden when we learn how the thirst for revenge has unhinged Robert. To achieve the unreliable, oscillating narration of The Prestige, Nolan has polished his film’s stylistic surface with considerable care.

《致命魔術》則展現了更為精準的控制技巧。在觀看兩位主角的戲份，以及很多閃回片斷和重復的事件時，我們很容易會跟丟情節。在本片中諾蘭沒有用黑白畫面來區分單獨的故事。他更多是依靠觀眾自己能跟上故事的脈絡，不過他運用了畫外音以及故意重復或是有意調整的場景設置來引導觀眾適應反復出現的空間和情景。在本片中諾蘭對單鏡頭的剪切處理依循的邏輯很簡單明了，那就是寄望觀眾的記憶力跟上劇情的發展。

關于這些風格策略，我在另一篇文章以及《電影藝術》第7章都做過討論。總體而言，他們都是服務于劇情發展的需要，而《致命魔術》的劇情圍繞著Alfred Borden建立起了謎團，把關鍵信息隱藏起來，但又不時暗示其存在，讓我們對Borden的對手Robert Angier產生同情(他的妻子也死于非命)，然后當我們發現復仇心切的Robert已經喪失理智時，諾蘭又把我們的同情心轉移回到Borden身上。為了在《致命魔術》中展現這種來回搖擺，捉摸不定的敘事效果，諾蘭對其影片的風格外衣做了精心打磨。

Midcult auteur?

中產階級文化的作者導演？

Trying to specify Nolan’s innovations, I’m aware that one response might be this: Those innovations are too cautious. He not only motivates his formal experiments, he over-motivates them. Poor Leonard, telling everyone he meets about his memory deficit, is also telling us again and again, while the continuous exposition of Inception would seem to apologize too much. Films like Resnais’ La Guerre est finie and Ruiz’s Mysteries of Lisbon play with subjectivity, crosscutting, and embedded stories, but they don’t need to spell out and keep providing alibis for their formal strategies. In these films, it takes a while for us to figure out the shape of the game we’re playing.

We seem to be on that ground identified by Dwight Macdonald long ago as Midcult: that form of vulgarized modernism that makes formal experiment too easy for the audience. One of Macdonald’s examples is Our Town, a folksy, ingratiating dilution of Asian and Brechtian dramaturgy. Nolan’s narrative tricks, some might say, take only one step beyond what is normal in commercial cinema. They make things a little more difficult, but you can quickly get comfortable with them. To put it unkindly, we might say it’s storytelling for Humanities majors.

我在本文中一直試圖明確指出諾蘭電影中的革新之處，不過我知道有人讀了前文以后或許會如下反應：這些革新都太過于謹慎了。他為自己影片中的形式實驗賦予動機，但他甚至做得有些過頭了。《記憶碎片》中可憐的Leonard，他不光對每個他遇到的人訴說自己的失憶問題，他其實也是在對我們一再重復解釋，而在《盜夢空間》中，盜夢機制被不斷地闡釋，這就好象是做了太多的道歉。像Renais的《戰爭結束》或者Ruiz的《秘境里斯本》這樣的電影也對主觀性，交叉剪輯以及故事疊加進行把玩，但他們不用將這些形式策略都點明，也不必時刻為這些策略尋找借口。在這些電影中我們需要花點時間才能弄清楚導演和我們玩的把戲。

我們現在似乎處在Dwight Macdonald很早以前對中產階級文化所劃定的范疇：這種庸俗化的現代主義把形式實驗做得太平易近人了。Macdonald所舉的例子之一是《我們鎮》，這部戲劇隨和易懂到了有些討好觀眾程度，講述的亞洲主題故事帶有簡化版的布萊希特風格（20世紀德國著名劇作家/戲劇導演）。有人或許會說諾蘭的敘事技巧只比常規商業片向前多邁了一步。這種敘事技巧會讓故事顯得稍微不那么易懂，但你很快就會樂在其中。如果要說得不客氣點，我們不妨說這是為“人文專業”的學生打造的敘事方式。

Much as I respect Macdonald, I think that not all artistic experiments need to be difficult. There’s “light modernism” too: Satie and Prokofiev as well as Schoenberg, Marianne Moore as well as T. S. Eliot, Borges as well as Joyce. Approached from the Masscult side, comic strips have given us Krazy Kat and Polly and Her Pals and, more recently, Chris Ware. Nolan’s work isn’t perfect, but it joins a tradition, not finished yet, of showing that the bounds of popular art are remarkably flexible, and imaginative creators can find new ways to stretch them.

盡管我尊重Macdonald，但我不認為所有的藝術實驗都必須艱澀難懂。同樣還有“輕現代主義”的存在：Satie, Prokofiev以及Schoenberg (以上為現代音樂家，譯注)，在文學領域有Marianne Moor以及T.S.Eliot, Borges以及Joyce。在大眾文化的范疇，我們能看到像《瘋貓》以及《波利和她的伙伴》這樣的優秀漫畫,更近一點還有Christ Ware的漫畫作品。諾蘭的作品并不完美，但也屬于這一路延續下來的傳統之列，這表明了流行藝術的界限非常地靈活，而具有想象力的創造家們總能找到拓展其疆土的新方法。

參考資料

[1]原文：http://www.davidbordwell.net/blog/2012/08/19/nolan-vs-nolan/

[2]參考翻譯：http://select.yeeyan.org/view/222670/313752