In the Pursuit of a Haunting and Timeless Truth

追寻一段永世难忘的史实

Pauline Kael

波琳·凯尔

Louis Malle's Au Revoir les Enfants" (or "Goodbye, Children") is set in Occupied France in 1944, when Malle was an eleven-year-old at a Catholic boys' boarding school near Fontainebleau that sheltered several Jewish boys. The Gestapo learned they were there, and sent the ones they found to Auschwitz , and the headmaster to a work camp c4J One of the Jewish boyswas in Malle's class, but Malle didn't get to know him well and didn't realizethat he was Jewish. For the dramatic purposes of the movie, he has conceived a close friendship between his alter ego, the fairhaired Julien Quentin(Gaspard Manesse), and the dark boy who is using the false name Jean Bonnet (Raphael Fejto). Malle has every right to fantasize and invent, but I'm puzzled by the kind of fantasizing he does here. The First half of the film is so hushed and enervated that I kept peering into the schoolyard looking for signs of life. It's full of wealthy boys at play; they're even there on stilts,battling and falling down. But their games-which might clue us in totheir ruling-class assumptions and their snobbery and the limits of their understanding-are shown at a distance. The camera is so discreet it always seems about ten feet too far away, and the boy who plays Julien is directed so that he never engages us; we can't look into him, or into anyone else.

路易·马尔执导的《再见，孩子们》以1944年的法国被占区为背景，当时他11岁，在枫丹白露附近一所天主教办的寄宿男校上学。学校藏下了好几个犹太孩子。盖世太保探知他们的下落，把搜出来的送往奥斯维辛，校长发配劳动营。孩子当中有一个就在马尔班上，不过马尔跟他不熟，也没看出他是犹太人。在电影里，为求得戏剧性的效果，马尔虚构了自己的化身—金发少年朱利安·昆廷（加斯帕德·马内斯饰）——和化名让·博内的深肤色男孩（拉斐尔·费日托饰）之间的亲密友情。马尔有充分的权利进行想象和虚构，但我对他在这里做出的这种想象大惑不解。影片的前半部抑闷不张，软弱无力，我禁不住朝校园里不断张望，寻找生气。满园都是富家子弟在玩耍；他们还踩起了高跷，互相打斗又摔倒在地。但是，他们的嬉戏——本可以向我们揭示一下他们身上那副统治阶级的装腔作势、那份势利眼和见识短浅——都拍成了远景。摄影机太小心谨慎了，总像是远了十来英尺；饰朱利安的小演员让导演导得毫不动人；我们看不到他的内心活动，也看不到别人的。

As the story is presented, Julien, who is quick, grasps almost at once that this new boy, Jean Bonnet, is an impostor, who isn't really Catholic; Julien catches Jean standing by his bed at night, praying silently, with two lighted candles, and Julien rummages in Jean's books and discovers that his realname is the German-sounding Jean Kippelstein. Julien is the only boy in the class who offers Jean friendship; the others play tricks on Jean and gang upon him, because he's different-he's not one of them. Julien, who knows how different Jean actually is, keeps his discovery to himself. He and Jeanare the two brightest boys in the class; they both love to read, and they become best friends. This is a rather moist fantasy of Julien's virtue; it's eventually mixed with a fantasy self-accusation of guilt. When the Gestapo chief comes into the classroom asking for Jean Kippelstein, the scared, nervous Julien involuntarily turns and looks at his friend-it's a Judas kiss ,but an unintentional one. And Jean exonerates him: when he is packing his gear to go with the Gestapo men, he tells Julien that it didn't matter, that the Nazis would have caught him anyway.

烛，立在床边默默祈祷；他翻看让的课本，发现他的真名叫让·基普尔斯坦，听音是个德国姓。朱利安是班上惟一待他友好的同学；别人都捉弄他，合伙欺负他，因为他不一样——跟他们不一路。朱利安明知这不一样的真情，把亲瞍所见藏在心底。他和让是班上两名最聪明的学生；他俩都喜欢读书，还成了最要好的朋友。这里是说朱利安的善良，想象中很有几分伤感；到最后更添了一层，想象他因负疚而自责。只见盖世太保的头子走进教室，来要让·基普尔斯坦，张皇失措的朱利安不由自主转过脸去看了看他的朋友——岂不正是犹大之吻，但并非存心所为。让并不记恨他：他收拾好东西跟盖世太保走，一面对朱利安说没什么，反正纳粹会抓到他的。

In the finest scene of the movie, Jean shakes hands with the boys near him just before he's taken away; it's a well-brought-up young boy's leavetaking,and nothing has prepared you for it. But throughout Lrean is used as an aesthetic objea-spiritual, sensitive, foreign . He's often shot in profile, with his lips parted, and in one scene he goes to Mass with the other boys and tilts his face, open-mouthed-almost yearning-to receive the holy wafer, whichm is denied him by the Reverend Father, the headmaster. Is the boy merely seeking acceptance by the other boys-is he just trying to pass as one of them-or is something else implied? The whole movie seems padded and muted, it's designed to make you understand that Julien is stricken by the horror of what happens to his friend. But nothing in it comes into clear focus-not the boys' attitudes, not even the images (and certainly not a lengthy sequence in which the two boys are on a treasure hunt in Fontainebleau Forest).

影片有一场精彩之至。让即将被人带走，他与身边的同学一一握手；一个很有教养的少年跟人话别的做派，事先未做任何铺垫。但让自始至终都用来充当一个审美的对象——超凡脱俗，有灵性，希罕。他往往拍成双唇微启的侧面形象，有一场戏是他随同学去做弥撒，他仰起脸，张着嘴——几乎是渴望着——去领神父大人即校长并没有赐给他的圣饼。这孩子是否只求同学收下他——只求把他当自己人，还是其中别有寓意呢？整部影片显得沉闷压抑，意在要你理解朱利安因见朋友惨遭不幸而深感痛心。不过，影片中一切都看不真切——同学的态度如此，就连图像也如此（两个孩子在枫丹白露森林里寻宝的那一长段穿插，自然也是如此）。

Malle has said that this is the most personal and important film of his career,and I believe that he thinks that. I also believe that he's wrong. If "Au Revoir"is very personal to him, this may be because as an adult he has felt stricken by the recognition that he wasn't stricken then, and it may involve his feelings of guilt over his own family's safety and prosperity-everything that the film barely touches on.

马尔曾说，这是他导演生涯中最富自传色彩也是最重要的一部影片。我认为他是这样想的。我又认为他并没有说对。如果说他自认《再见》一片极富于自传色彩，那也许是因为他成年后认识到当年未感痛心，因而一直深感痛心，其中也许还夹有他自己的家庭当年安富尊荣因而每每内疚于心——这一切在影片中倒是甚少触及。

Malle has said of "Au Revoir." "I reinvented the past in the pursuit of a haunting and timeless truth." Maybe that's why I felt as if I were watching a faded French classic, something I dimly recalled. In pursuit of haunting and timeless truth, Malle has gone back to the anti-Nazi movies of the forties,and polished and formalized the actions until he's turned melodrama into polite reverie.

对《再见》马尔说过：“我这样旧事新编，是在追寻一段永世难忘的史实。”难怪我觉得像是在看一部退了色的法国经典片，依稀中似曾相识，恐怕就是这个缘故。马尔在追寻永世难忘的史实中回到40年代那些反纳粹的电影，他对剧情加工润色，自成一格，终于把情节剧变成了文雅的幻想曲。

Yes, it gets to you by the end. How could it not? But you may feel pretty wom down-by how accomplished it is, and by all the aching, tender shots of Jean. He's photographed as if he were a piece of religious art: Christ in his early adolesence. There's something unseemly about the movie's obsession with his exotic beauty-as if the French-German Jews had come from the far side of the moon. And does he have to be so brilliant, and a gifted pianist, and courageous? Would the audience not mourn him if he were just an average schmucky kid with pimples?

不错，你看到剧终正是这般感受。岂有他哉？但你也许会感到疲惫不堪——就为它技法如此精湛，就为让有那么些凄楚动人的镜头。他摄下的形象犹如一件宗教艺术品：少年时期的基督。影片一味醉心于他的异族情调之美，总不那么妥当吧——仿佛法德两国的犹太人都是来自天外的月球。再说，他难道就非如此光彩照人不可吗，又有弹钢琴的天赋，又能临危不惧？他若只是个普普通通、呆头呆脑的孩子，长一脸雀斑，观众难道就不哀其不幸了吗？

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