The nominations won’t be announced until Jan. 15, but it’s safe to say that the greatest filmmaker associated with the 2015 Academy Awards has already received his Oscar, delivered a modest but revealing acceptance speech and flown home to Japan and, perhaps, retirement.
2015年的奥斯卡奖提名要到1月15日才宣布,但是毫无疑问,最优秀的电影人今年已经得到了他的奥斯卡奖杯,他发表了谦逊而又真情流露的获奖致辞后便乘飞机回到日本家中,或许从此就会退休。
Hayao Miyazaki was given an honorary Oscar on Nov. 8 at the Governors Awards ceremony, one that he can put on the shelf next to the statuette he won in 2003 when his masterpiece, “Spirited Away,” was named best animated feature. He got off a sly one-liner about his wife and paid an impish tribute to the Hollywood veteran Maureen O’Hara, a fellow Governors Award honoree along with Harry Belafonte and the French screenwriter Jean-Claude Carrière.
11月8日,宫崎骏在奥斯卡主席奖的典礼上获得终身成就奖,这是他第二次获得奥斯卡奖杯,第一次是在2003年,他的杰作《千与千寻的神隐》获得了最佳动画长片奖。他说了一句关于妻子的玩笑话,并且顽皮地向好莱坞资深演员玛琳·奥哈拉(Maureen O’Hara)致意,她和哈里·贝拉方特(Harry Belafonte)及法国编剧让-克劳德·卡瑞尔亦获得了主席奖荣誉。
Between those two humorous notes, he was serious — honest, elegiac, rueful — on the subjects of animation and his country’s history, which gave his brief remarks something in common with his films. “I think I’ve been lucky because I’ve been able to participate in the last era when we can make films with paper, pencils and film,” he said through a translator. “Another fact of luck is that my country has not been at war for the 50 years that I have been making films. Of course, we’ve profited from wars, but we’re very fortunate that we have not had to go to war ourselves.”
在这两句幽默的话语之间,宫崎骏非常严肃,他诚恳、伤感而悲哀地谈起动画片与日本的历史,这些话题令他简短的致辞有了和他的影片同样的气质。“我觉得自己非常幸运,因为我可以参与到使用纸张、铅笔和胶片制作电影的最后时代。”他借助翻译说道。“另一个幸运之处是,我的祖国在我拍电影的这50年时间里,没有战争。当然,我们从战争中获益,但我们非常幸运,可以不必亲自参与战争。”
Many things contribute to the enchantment of the 11 animated feature films Mr. Miyazaki has made, beginning with “The Castle of Cagliostro” in 1979. Their sheer pictorial beauty, in the lush, painterly style he developed during years of apprenticeship as a hands-on animator for film and television and as a comic book, or manga, artist. Their swooping, beautifully constructed action sequences, breathless scenes of racing, leaping and, always, flight — in vintage airplanes, on broomsticks or mounted atop mysterious beasts. And, of course, the beasts, spirits, demons and familiars themselves, a seemingly inexhaustible menagerie of companions and impediments for his plucky young heroes (who are most often heroines).
宫崎骏共制作了11部动画长片,最早一部是1979年的《鲁邦三世:卡里奥斯特罗城》,这些动画的魅力是由很多因素共同造成的。它们有着纯粹的绘画之美,宫崎骏曾经当过电视和电影动画绘制的学徒,还做过漫画家,他从那时便开始发展出自己丰富的、油画般的风格。 他的影片中,一系列动作有着全面而美丽的结构;赛跑和跳跃的情景令人透不过气,更有乘着老式飞机、女巫扫帚与神秘野兽的打斗场面。当然,那些野兽、神灵、怪物和常见的形象,如同一个无穷尽的小动物园,为他笔下年轻勇敢的英雄们(大部分是女英雄们)充当伙伴和敌人。
None of these things are unique to Mr. Miyazaki, though he conjures them with an unmatched variety and generosity. What makes his films so memorable — from the great ones, like “Spirited Away,” which is a coming-of-age tale, and the ecological fables “Princess Mononoke” and “Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind,” to less profound but still captivating works like “Kiki’s Delivery Service” and the mesmerizing “My Neighbor Totoro” — is something that’s harder to label. You know it when you feel it: the mastery of tone and emotion, embodied in every gesture, expression, movement and setting, that give the films a watchfulness, a thoughtfulness, an unaffected gravity. To watch a Miyazaki movie is to remember what it was like to be a smart and curious child.
这些东西并不是宫崎骏所独有的,但他以前所未有的多样化与丰富性使用了这些元素。他有非常宏大的作品:《千与千寻》是关于成长的故事、《幽灵公主》和《风之谷的娜乌西卡》则是生态寓言;还有一些作品虽然没这么深刻,但同样引人入胜,比如《魔女宅急便》和迷人的《龙猫》,这些作品全都如此令人难忘,个中原因很难说清。只要你体会到了就能明白:对基调和情感的把握体现在每个手势、表情、动作和场景里,令他的动画充满观赏性和思想性,以及毫不做作的庄重。观看宫崎骏的电影会让你感觉自己重新成了聪明好奇的孩子。
Even at its high end, in the works of the Pixar studio or the director Henry Selick, the American children’s movie (a category that these days is pretty much congruent with the animated feature film) approaches its young viewers in a different and less rewarding way. There is always a sense of the filmmakers looking across a divide at their audience, trying with various degrees of grace or desperation to create an entertainment for them, to figure out what will keep those allegedly hyperdistracted children from losing interest.
反观皮克斯生产的电影或亨利·塞利克(Henry Selick)导演的作品,即便是在最好的情况之下,美国儿童电影(这个类别目前已经基本上等同于动画片)也是以一种完全不同、效果也不那么好的方式去接近年轻的观众。电影工作者们在审视观众时,总是带着区别对待的观念,刻意以不同程度的趣味或努力程度,努力去娱乐他们,努力想让那些据说特别容易分心的小观众们对影片保持兴趣。
Mr. Miyazaki cares deeply about that young audience, but you get the feeling that he doesn’t waste any time trying to guess what it wants. Like other great directors of films for and about children — Carroll Ballard (“The Black Stallion”) Steven Spielberg (“E.T.”), Alfonso Cuarón (“A Little Princess” and “Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban”) — he inhabits the child’s point of view and directly communicates her joys, her trepidations and, perhaps most important, her endless curiosity.
宫崎骏也非常重视年轻的观众,但你可以感觉到,他并不浪费时间去猜测他们想要什么。有许多导演为孩子们拍出了伟大影片,或拍出了关于孩子们的伟大影片,比如拍了《黑神驹》(The Black Stallion)的卡罗尔·巴拉德(Carroll BAllard)、拍了《ET》的史蒂文·斯皮尔伯格(Steven Spielberg),以及拍了《小公主》(A Little Princess)和《哈利·波特与阿兹卡班的囚徒》(Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban)的阿方索·卡隆(Alfonso Cuarón)。宫崎骏和他们一样,能以孩子的视角看待世界,能直接了解到这个孩子的喜悦与不安,或许最重要的是,能够了解到她无穷无尽的好奇。
With his ability to pass so easily through the membrane between youth and adulthood, Mr. Miyazaki is also able to invest his fairy-tale scenarios with thematic weight. In his public life, he has spoken out on issues including pollution, the dangers of nuclear power, and Japan’s recent swing toward nationalism and militarism. His films, correspondingly, have sent messages — sometimes allegorical, but never unclear — in favor of environmentalism (“Nausicaa,” “Princess Mononoke,” “Ponyo”) and against war (“Howl’s Moving Castle,” “The Wind Rises”).
他能轻易穿透横亘在年轻人与成人之间的隔膜,因此便可以为笔下童话般的情节赋予沉重的主题。在公众生活中,他曾为环境污染、核战争的危险,乃至日本近期的民族主义与军事主义倾向而大声疾呼。他的影片亦传递出同样的信息,有时可能是寓言性的,但一直都是清晰的——诸如支持环保主义的《风之谷》、《幽灵公主》和《悬崖上的金鱼姬》,以及反战的《哈尔的移动城堡》和《起风了》。
The messages are never what the films are about, though. Mr. Miyazaki does not promote outcomes; he explores possibilities. As he says in “The Kingdom of Dreams and Madness,” Mami Sunada’s indispensable 2013 documentary: “You don’t depict fate; you depict will. Even if fate exists.” Like all of us, his characters are born with infinite possibilities and shape their own lives as they close off those options one by one. “To choose one thing is to give up another,” he says.
不过,这些信息从来不是他的影片的核心。宫崎骏从不宣传成果,只是探索可能性。2013年,在砂田麻美重要的纪录片《梦与狂想的王国》中,宫崎骏说:“你无法描绘命运,你只能描绘意志,就算真的有命运存在。”和我们大家一样,他笔下的角色也是从一出生就拥有无穷无尽的可能性,之后他们摒弃了一个又一个的选择,塑造自己人生的形状,“选择一样东西就意味着放弃另一样东西,”他说。
For her documentary, Ms. Sunada embedded herself with Mr. Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli, the animation studio he founded with his colleague and mentor Isao Takahata and the producer Toshio Suzuki. The film provides an intimate view of a man whose disarming, sardonic humor and modest manner don’t hide the tremendous demands he places on his young staff of animators and technicians or the way he feeds on their energy.
砂田麻美在这部纪录片中深入探索了宫崎骏的人生,以及他与同事兼导师高畑勋和制作人铃木敏夫联合创建的吉卜力工作室。影片以亲切的视角拍出了他那令人放下戒备,同时又充满讽刺的幽默感;他虽然态度温和,却对年轻的动画师和技术员工们有着极高的要求,同时吸取着他们的能量。
Of course he places even greater demands on himself, and anyone tempted to sentimentalize him as a head-in-the-clouds fabulist will be set straight by Ms. Sunada’s depiction of his working method, disciplined to the point of regimentation, machine-like in the service of the magical. While workers one-third his age chat or stare into space, Mr. Miyazaki (who will turn 74 on Monday) strides past in his printer’s apron, headed to the next task.
当然,他对自己的要求更高。如果有人带着伤感之情,想把他描述为一个想入非非的寓言家形象,看了这部纪录片肯定会打消这种看法。砂田麻美在片中记述了他的工作方式,强调纪律到了严格控制的地步,像机器一样为动画中的魔法王国服务。当年纪是他1/3的员工们闲聊或发呆的时候,宫崎骏(周一他就74岁了)穿着画师的围裙,大步走过去,开始做下一项工作。
Mr. Miyazaki has announced that “The Wind Rises,” released in 2013 in Japan, will be his last feature film, and in his Oscar speech and in “The Kingdom of Dreams and Madness” there are indications that he’s had enough. The darkness that is often present in his films but never overwhelms them, emerges when he talks to Ms. Sunada about “cursed dreams” and he tells her: “How do we know movies are even worthwhile? If you really think about it, is this not just some grand hobby? Maybe there was a time when you could make films that mattered, but now? Most of our world is rubbish. It’s difficult.”
2013年,《起风了》在日本上映时,宫崎骏宣布这将是自己的最后一部动画长片,在他的奥斯卡奖获奖致辞和《梦与狂想的王国》中,有迹象表明他已经心满意足。他的影片中经常出现黑暗,但黑暗从未压倒一切,然而在他与砂田麻美谈起“被诅咒的梦想”时,这种黑暗再度浮现出来,“我们怎么知道这些电影是有价值的?如果你真的好好去思考,它也许只是一个宏大的嗜好呢?也许过去曾经有那么一个时刻,你可以拍出真正的好电影,但是现在呢?我们的的世界充斥着垃圾。太困难了。”
Difficult, requiring punishing discipline and ruthless focus, but as he has continually shown, not impossible. When Ms. Sunada filmed the 2013 news conference at which Mr. Miyazaki announced his retirement, he confided to her that he hoped to work for another 10 years. Whether that means short films, comic books or a return to features, whatever he makes is sure to matter.
诚然,拍出好电影很困难,需要严格的纪律与艰苦的专注,但正如他长久以来向世人所证明的,这并非不可能做到的事情。2013年,当砂田麻美拍摄宫崎骏宣布退休的新闻发布会时,他向她保证,自己希望继续工作10年。不管是拍短片也好,创作漫画书也好,抑或回归动画长片也好,他所创作的东西肯定是举足轻重的。