


“宮崎駿要退休了。”這條消息有多令人震驚,就有多讓人難過。一直以來,宮崎駿要退隱江湖的傳聞不絕于耳,人們一直不相信,不去相信,或者更準(zhǔn)確地說是不愿相信,因?yàn)檫@位用心在制作動(dòng)畫、帶給無數(shù)人美好回憶的動(dòng)畫大師怎么可以停止創(chuàng)造奇跡。我們習(xí)慣了他勾勒的寧靜世界,聽?wèi)T了他娓娓道來的動(dòng)人故事,更深深地愛上了他創(chuàng)造的那個(gè)完美的動(dòng)畫世界。因此,當(dāng)他宣布《起風(fēng)了》會(huì)是他的最后一部動(dòng)畫電影時(shí),我們心中滿是不舍,盡是離愁。不論宮老是否真的決定退休,且讓我們盡情去享受和品味這份或是最后的盛宴吧。
The news hit the Venice Film Festival like an unexpected death notice: Hayao Miyazaki, the world's most honored creator of animated features1), was ending his movie career.
\"Miyazaki has decided that The Wind Rises will be his last film, and he will now retire,\" Koji Hoshino, who runs the director's Studio Ghibli, announced at a news conference for the new film, which received its European premiere2) here Sunday. Miyazaki—the Oscar-winning spellbinder3) of 11 features, including the international hits Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away, Howl's Moving Castle and Ponyo—is expected to speak about his decision in Tokyo later this week.
Moviemaking, which requires a general's gift for strategy and a foot soldier's courage, is supposed to be a young man's game. Miyazaki is 72, the age by which most CEOs have slipped into wealthy anonymity4), so he deserves a gold watch5) for his sunset years. But filmmakers, like other artists, often keep going as long as they find sponsors for the things they want to show and tell. For filmmakers like Miyazaki, putting their pictures on the screen wasn't a job. It was their life.
But if Miyazaki wants to hang it up, he couldn't have picked a more piquant6) swan song7). The Wind Rises—its title taken from Paul Valéry's poem Le Cimetière Marin (\"The wind is rising! We must try to live!\")—weaves a tender, tragic love story into two volcanic decades of Japanese history, from 1918 to the end of the 1930s. Here are unforgettable images of the great Kanto earthquake of 1923, and the firestorms8) that devastated whole cities and killed perhaps 140,000 people. Here is the Depression9) that destroyed Japan while its government spent millions buying weapons from Nazi Germany.
In his first film intended primarily for grownups, Miyazaki has caused political controversy, in his home country and now abroad. The director's protagonist10), whom he portrays as a visionary dreamer, is Jir Horikoshi, designer of the Mitsubishi A6M \"Zero\" fighter planes that on Dec. 7, in the year of Miyazaki's birth, dropped the bombs on Pearl Harbor.
The movie is really a double biopic11): of Horikoshi, whose life it follows from youth through university to his work at Mitsubishi, with a brief coda12) after World War II, and of the author Tatsuo Hori, whose 1937 novel The Wind Has Risen tells of a tubercular13) girl at a sanitarium14); Hori died in 1953, at 48, of TB15). His life and works inform the character of Naoko Satomi, the young woman who becomes Jir's wife.
Miyazaki has said he was inspired by a quote of Horikoshi's: \"All I wanted to do was to make something beautiful.\" The Wind Rises shows its beauty from its amazing first scene, when the young Jir climbs to the roof of his home and finds a plane parked there. Lured by its colorful avian16) design—white wings, blue feathers, a red tail, pink wheels and a yellow nose—Jir scoots17) aboard this metallic bird for a lovely jaunt18), until shadowed by a huge dirigible19) carrying dozens of military aircraft; the boy falls from the sky and awakes in his bed. The whole film is a series of flights and falls; airy ambitions that crash-dive20) into compromise and tragedy.
Stark21) history and buoyant22) fantasy often link arms in The Wind Rises. An aircraft fan from youth, Jir imagines encounters with Giovanni Caproni, who in 1911 built the first Italian plane. Caproni serves as Jir's spiritual guide, telling the boy that \"The whole world's a dream\". He looks forward to the advent of commercial aviation: \"Instead of bombs, we'll carry passenger\" (but his first attempt, essentially a cruise ship lifted by nine sets of wings, crashes).
When Caproni says \"Inspiration unlocks the future; technology will catch up\", he might be anticipating the untrammeled23) dreams of directors like James Cameron, Ang Lee and Alfonso Cuarón nearly a century later.
In the age of digital animation (and live action), Miyazaki has remained faithful to the hand-drawn technique—the Disney style—that predated24) Pixar's CGI. Indeed, his human figures are abstracted into giant-eyed doll faces and stiff legs, as if walking clumsily on stilts25). Even the adult Jir looks like any anime26) child; and when he stumbles to the ground, his hands and feet make no visible impression on the grass.
Most of the director's grace goes into the landscapes: rural vistas27) rendered in the most delicate pastels28), like the watercolors Naoko paints during Jir's courtship of her. In a hard land heading to a war, Miyazaki makes sure the views are fascinating. His perfect metaphor for a Japan straddling29) the old world and the new: the planes Jir designed are pulled onto the practice field by teams of oxen.
The elegiac30) paint-brushing extends to Jir's visits to Germany, to gauge31) their military-aircraft ingenuity against his, and to his development of the Zero prototype. And when the significant consequences of Jir's creations might be introduced, Miyazaki leaves the Mitsubishi factory to concentrate on the Jir-Naoko love story. Jir stays home to comfort Naoko in her illness, telling her, \"In a one-hand slide-rule contest, I'd finish first\"—because, while working away, he always holds her hand. Their devotion is heart-strong and constant; as Naoko says, \"I've loved you since the wind brought you to me.\" But this last half-hour of the two-hour film might have addressed the impact of the Jir Zero. It was a beautiful machine that helped tyrannical32) Japan dream of conquering the world.
Whatever its political implications of a movie that glamorizes33) and elegizes34) the makers of war, The Wind Rises shows Miyazaki at his most confident. The film betrays no hint of sapping35) energy, let alone senility36); it is vigorous, subtle, daring and gorgeous. May his announced retirement be a brief, dark whim. May he go on enchanting and challenging moviegoers for years to come.
宮崎駿這個(gè)世界上最負(fù)盛名的動(dòng)畫創(chuàng)作大師就要結(jié)束他的電影生涯了(編注:本文寫于2013年9月2日)。這則消息猶如一道突如其來的死亡通知,迅速傳遍威尼斯電影節(jié)。
“宮崎駿已做出決定,《起風(fēng)了》將是他最后一部電影,他現(xiàn)在就要退休了。”宮崎駿導(dǎo)演所創(chuàng)辦的吉卜力動(dòng)畫工作室的負(fù)責(zé)人星野晃志在《起風(fēng)了》新聞發(fā)布會(huì)上宣布說。這部新片在歐洲的首映式已于周日在這里(譯注:威尼斯)舉行。宮崎駿這位極具吸引力的奧斯卡金像獎(jiǎng)得主一共執(zhí)導(dǎo)了11部動(dòng)畫長(zhǎng)片,其中就有風(fēng)靡全球的《幽靈公主》《千與千尋》《哈爾的移動(dòng)城堡》和《懸崖上的金魚姬》,預(yù)計(jì)他將于本周晚些時(shí)候在東京公布他的決定。
制作電影本應(yīng)該是年輕人的游戲,因?yàn)樗粌H需要具備將軍的戰(zhàn)略才華,還需要具備步兵的勇氣。宮崎駿已經(jīng)72歲了,大多數(shù)這個(gè)年紀(jì)的老總們都已選擇隱退去享受富貴了,因此他也理應(yīng)享受如此待遇。但和其他藝術(shù)家一樣,電影制作人只要還能為自己想要展現(xiàn)和表達(dá)的東西找到贊助商,通常就會(huì)一直做下去。對(duì)像宮崎駿這樣的電影制作人來說,把自己的繪畫作品搬上銀幕并不只是一份工作而已,那是他們的生命。
但如果宮崎駿真要收山,再?zèng)]有什么比《起風(fēng)了》更為動(dòng)人的收山之作了。《起風(fēng)了》取名于詩人保羅·瓦勒里的詩作《海濱墓園》(“起風(fēng)了!我們必須努力活下去!”)。影片將一個(gè)凄婉、悲慘的愛情故事融入日本二十多年(從1918年至20世紀(jì)30年代末)的動(dòng)蕩歷史,從中可以看到那些令人刻骨銘心的畫面,如1923年的關(guān)東大地震以及徹底摧毀了數(shù)座城市、奪去了大約14萬人生命的震后大火;也可以看到就在經(jīng)濟(jì)大蕭條摧毀日本之際,日本政府卻斥資數(shù)百萬向納粹德國(guó)購買武器。
宮崎駿在他的這部首次以成人為主要受眾的影片中業(yè)已引起了政治爭(zhēng)議,先是在他的祖國(guó)日本,現(xiàn)在則蔓延至國(guó)際社會(huì)。宮崎駿把影片的主人公堀越二郎描寫成一個(gè)天馬行空的夢(mèng)想家。堀越二郎是三菱A6M“零式”戰(zhàn)斗機(jī)的設(shè)計(jì)師,正是這種戰(zhàn)斗機(jī)在宮崎駿出生那年的12月7日轟炸了珍珠港。
這部電影其實(shí)是一部雙重意義上的傳記片:對(duì)于堀越二郎來說,該片描述了他從少年到步入大學(xué)再到進(jìn)入三菱公司工作的人生歷程,以及他在二戰(zhàn)之后的簡(jiǎn)短結(jié)局;而對(duì)于原著作者堀辰雄來說,他于1937年問世的小說《起風(fēng)了》講述的是一個(gè)罹患結(jié)核病、生活在療養(yǎng)院的女孩的故事;堀辰雄本人因肺結(jié)核死于1953年,年僅48歲。他的人生經(jīng)歷和作品情節(jié)在主人公里見菜穗子身上得以體現(xiàn),這位年輕女子成了堀越二郎的妻子。
宮崎駿說讓他深受啟發(fā)的是堀越二郎的一句話:“我唯一想做的就是制造出美麗的東西。”《起風(fēng)了》從令人驚艷的第一幕開始就向觀眾展示了它的美麗:年少的堀越二郎爬上自家的房頂,發(fā)現(xiàn)一架飛機(jī)停在那兒。他立刻被那色彩斑斕的鳥形設(shè)計(jì)所吸引——白色的翅膀、藍(lán)色的羽毛、紅色的尾巴、粉色的輪子、黃色的鼻子——二郎迅速跳上這只金屬大鳥,開始了一場(chǎng)愉快的短途飛行,直到被一架裝載了幾十架軍用飛機(jī)的巨大運(yùn)載飛船所追蹤;年少的二郎從天上掉了下來,然后從床上驚醒。整部電影充滿了飛翔與墜落的片段,空中飛行的夢(mèng)想墜毀在妥協(xié)和悲劇中。
在《起風(fēng)了》這部電影里,赤裸裸的歷史往往和天馬行空的奇思妙想攜手并進(jìn)。堀越二郎自幼便對(duì)飛機(jī)有著濃厚的興趣,幻想著可以見到1911年為意大利制造出第一架飛機(jī)的喬瓦尼·卡普羅尼。卡普羅尼成了二郎的精神導(dǎo)師,他告訴二郎:“夢(mèng)想有多大,世界就有多大。” 卡普羅尼期待商業(yè)航空時(shí)代的來臨:“我們要運(yùn)載的不是炸彈,而是乘客。”(但他的第一次嘗試實(shí)質(zhì)上就是用九對(duì)機(jī)翼將一艘游輪吊起,結(jié)果以墜毀而告終。)
卡普羅尼在說“只要靈感打開未來之鎖,技術(shù)將會(huì)迎頭趕上”這句話時(shí),他所期望的也許就是將近一個(gè)世紀(jì)之后詹姆斯·卡梅隆、李安和阿方索·卡隆等導(dǎo)演所表現(xiàn)出的無拘無束的夢(mèng)想。
在數(shù)字動(dòng)畫(和真人電影)的時(shí)代,宮崎駿仍舊忠實(shí)于手繪技術(shù)(即迪士尼畫風(fēng))——該技術(shù)比皮克斯動(dòng)畫工廠的計(jì)算機(jī)成像技術(shù)(CGI)要早。實(shí)際上,宮崎駿創(chuàng)造的人物都被抽象成這樣:眼睛很大,娃娃臉,雙腿僵硬得仿佛在笨拙地踩高蹺。甚至是成年后的二郎看起來也還是像個(gè)動(dòng)畫中的孩子,當(dāng)他跌倒在地上,他的手和腳都沒有在草地上留下明顯的印記。
宮崎駿導(dǎo)演的手繪之美大多呈現(xiàn)在了風(fēng)景中,用最柔和的色彩來渲染鄉(xiāng)村景色,就像二郎向菜穗子求愛時(shí)菜穗子畫的水彩畫一樣。宮崎駿把一片即將面臨戰(zhàn)爭(zhēng)的荒原的景色拍得十分精彩動(dòng)人。二郎設(shè)計(jì)的飛機(jī)被成群的牛拉到訓(xùn)練場(chǎng)上,這也是對(duì)日本處在新舊兩個(gè)世界之間的一個(gè)完美隱喻!
那種傷感的畫風(fēng)一直蔓延到堀越二郎的德國(guó)之行(二郎去那里考察德國(guó)軍用飛機(jī)比自己的設(shè)計(jì)精巧之處)和二郎研發(fā)“零式”戰(zhàn)斗機(jī)的原型之時(shí)。當(dāng)我們以為宮崎駿接下來會(huì)展示堀越二郎的創(chuàng)造所帶來的重大影響時(shí),宮崎駿卻將鏡頭從三菱公司移開,聚焦于堀越二郎和菜穗子的愛情故事。在菜穗子生病期間,堀越二郎留在家中安慰她,他告訴菜穗子:“如果舉辦一場(chǎng)單手計(jì)算尺測(cè)量比賽,我會(huì)是第一個(gè)完成的”——因?yàn)楣ぷ鲿r(shí)他總是緊握她的手。他們的愛是如此的堅(jiān)定而恒久,就像菜穗子說的:“自從風(fēng)把你帶到我身邊,我就愛上了你。”可在這部長(zhǎng)達(dá)兩小時(shí)的電影的最后半小時(shí),電影本來是可以展現(xiàn)二郎設(shè)計(jì)的“零式”戰(zhàn)斗機(jī)的威力的——這種美麗的機(jī)器幫助殘暴的日本夢(mèng)想征服世界。
不管其政治含義如何,是否是一部美化戰(zhàn)爭(zhēng)發(fā)動(dòng)者、為戰(zhàn)爭(zhēng)發(fā)動(dòng)者唱挽歌的影片,《起風(fēng)了》展示了宮崎駿正處于自信的巔峰。電影絲毫沒有顯現(xiàn)出宮崎駿功力減弱的跡象,更談不上他寶刀已老。影片依舊朝氣蓬勃、溫婉細(xì)膩、無畏無懼、精彩動(dòng)人。希望宮崎駿宣布退休只是一時(shí)頭腦發(fā)熱、心血來潮。希望在未來的歲月里,他依然能夠給電影愛好者帶來快樂,帶來挑戰(zhàn)。
1.feature [?fi?t??(r)] n. 動(dòng)畫長(zhǎng)片,故事片
2.premiere [?premie?(r)] n. 首次公演
3.spellbinder [?spel?ba?nd?(r)] n. 能使聽眾入迷的演說家
4.anonymity [??n??n?m?ti] n. 匿名;無名
5.gold watch: (工作多年的員工退休后常常被給予的)感激,謝意
6.piquant [?pi?k?nt] adj. 刺激有趣的;引人入勝的
7.swan song: (詩人、音樂家等的)最后作品(或言行等)
8.firestorm [?fa??st??m] n. (原子彈爆炸等引起的)風(fēng)暴性大火,此處指關(guān)東大地震后所引發(fā)的大火。
9.the Depression: 大蕭條,指1929~1939年發(fā)生的全球性的經(jīng)濟(jì)大衰退。
10.protagonist [pr??t?ɡ?n?st] n. (小說、故事等中的)主人公
11.biopic [?ba???p?k] n. 傳記片
12.coda [?k??d?] n. (文學(xué)作品或戲劇等的)尾聲,結(jié)局
13.tubercular [tju??b??kj?l?(r)] adj. 【醫(yī)】(有)結(jié)核病的
14.sanitarium [?s?n??te?ri?m] n. 療養(yǎng)院,休養(yǎng)所
15.TB: (= tuberculosis)結(jié)核(病);肺結(jié)核
16.avian [?e?vi?n] adj. 像鳥的
17.scoot [sku?t] vi. 急走,飛奔
18.jaunt [d???nt] n. 遠(yuǎn)足;(短途)旅行
19.dirigible [?d?r?d??bl] n. 飛船
20.crash-dive: (飛機(jī))俯沖墜毀
21.stark [stɑ?k] adj. 無修飾的;無掩飾的
22.buoyant [?b???nt] adj. 輕松愉快的;懷有希望的
23.untrammeled [?n?tr?mld] adj. 自由自在的
24.predate [pri?'de?t] vt. 在日期上早于(或先于)
25.stilt [st?lt] n. [常作~s]高蹺
26.anime [??n?me?; ??n?m?] n. <日>動(dòng)畫片
27.vista [?v?st?] n. 遠(yuǎn)景
28.pastel [?p?stl] n. 柔和的淡色彩
29.straddle [?str?dl] vt. 跨越;跨立于
30.elegiac [?el??d?a??k] adj. 挽歌(體)的;哀傷的
31.gauge [ɡe?d?] vt. 精確地測(cè)量
32.tyrannical [t??r?n?kl] adj. 專橫的,殘暴的
33.glamorize [?ɡl?m?ra?z] vt. 使有魅力;美化
34.elegize ['el?d?a?z] vt. 以挽歌哀悼(或頌揚(yáng))
35.sap [s?p] vt. 使傷元?dú)猓幌模ňΦ龋?/p>
36.senility [s??n?l?ti] n. 衰老