经济学人244:摇篮将覆 The Cradle Will Rock

 　　The cradle will rock

　　摇篮将覆
　　Lynne Ramsay has crafted an elegant adaptation of a tricky 1 book
　　琳恩?拉姆塞将一本难处理的书精心改编成了一部优雅的作品
　　WHAT is more taboo 2 than a woman who is repulsed 3 by her own child? This is the genius of “We Need to Talk About Kevin”, a remarkable 4 novel from Lionel Shriver (a former literary critic for this paper), which considers the life of a reluctant mother after her teenage son commits mass murder. The story unfurls as a stream of letters from Eva Khatchadourian to her husband as she retraces 5 the steps of their lives together—the happy marriage that morphs into a toxic 6 family, and the haunting event that casts everything in shadow. Yet even as Eva recounts evidence of her son’s malevolence 7 at a young age, the reader is left with a galling 8 question: would Kevin have fared better if his mother loved him more?
　　还有什么能比一个憎恶自己亲生孩子的母亲更令人忌讳的呢？这就是《凯文怎么了》一书的精髓。它是莱昂内尔?施赖弗（本报的前任文学评论家）的一部杰出小说，讲述了一位母亲在自己十几岁的孩子犯下屠杀大罪后勉强度日的生活。故事随着伊娃?卡查度瑞安写给丈夫的一连串信件展开，她追溯了他们共同生活的那些阶段——从一段美好婚姻走向了一个毒性家庭，还有那个让一切都变得灰暗的萦绕于心的事件。然而即使伊娃重新搜集了她儿子幼年时狠毒本性的证据，读者仍然会被一个恼人的问题所困扰：如果他的母亲曾多爱他一些的话，凯文会不会好很多？
　　It takes courage to adapt an epistolary novel for the screen, particularly one as psychologically complex as this one. Yet Lynne Ramsay’s film of the same name, starring Tilda Swinton as Eva, is excellent. The gift of this version is its visual rendering 9 of Eva’s claustrophobic thoughts. With a minimalist screenplay written with Rory Kinnear, Ms Ramsay translates Eva’s clot 10 of dark and messy words into a collage 11 of evocative and mostly wordless scenes. These vignettes shift from the present—Eva living as a social pariah 12, a husk of her former self—to the past, and are jumbled 13 with the non-chronology of memory. As in the book, Kevin’s big, violent moment is left until the end, but the bloody 14 fact of it infects everything that comes before.
　　将一部书信体小说搬上银幕需要很大的勇气，尤其当涉及复杂的心理学，例如本片。然而琳恩?拉姆塞的这部同名电影却很优秀。蒂尔达?斯文顿在片中饰演伊娃。该片的天赋表现在对伊娃的幽闭恐惧症想法那栩栩如生的描绘上。由罗里?金奈尔创作的剧本风格极简。拉姆塞将伊娃那一团团模糊凌乱的文字转化成了一系列场景的拼贴，这些大都无言的场景能够唤起人们的回忆。这些小片段从当前——生活在社会底层的伊娃，仅剩下曾经的自己的一副躯壳——切换到曾经，并被那些不按年月次序排序的记忆搞得错乱拉杂。同书里一样，凯文重要的施暴时刻被留在了末尾，但它那血腥的事实感染了之前的一切。
　　Still, something is lost in witnessing Kevin in the flesh instead of through Eva’s unreliable recollections. In the novel, Eva perceives her son’s cruelty from the start, though it goes unseen by his doting 15 father Franklin (played here by John C. Reilly, everyone’s favourite pushover). On-screen, Kevin is quite obviously malicious 16, first as a nasty little boy and then as a spiteful, ink-eyed teenager. As the latter Kevin, Ezra Miller 17 seethes 18 with ruthlessness, his face impenetrable. Yet he is also distractingly attractive, with cheekbones any starlet would covet 19, making him an awkward choice for such an enigmatic role.
　　尽管如此，在通过本人而非经由伊娃那不可靠的回忆来目击凯文的过程中，某些东西不见了。在小说中，伊娃从一开始就感觉到了儿子的残忍，但它随着宠溺凯文的父亲（由人人都爱的弱敌约翰?C?赖利饰演）而被漠视。在影片中，凯文的恶毒颇为明显，起初是一个险恶的小男孩，然后变成一个目光阴沉的刻毒少年。饰演后者的埃兹拉?米勒爆发出了残忍，他的面部表情不可测知。而米勒同时也令人走神地引力十足。他有着任何小明星都觊觎的颧骨，这使得由他来扮演这样一个谜一般的角色显得不尴不尬。
　　This is not a problem that affects Ms Swinton, who carries this film. Not unlike a praying mantis 20, her odd and otherworldly beauty takes time to notice. Her face, powerful in its spareness, registers emotion with subtle ticks and readjustments. As Eva, she conveys the desolation of a life made meaningless, first by the lonely challenges of motherhood, then by tragedy. Driving in her car to the chirpy strains of Buddy 21 Holly’s “Every day seems a little longer”, her ghost-eyed stare keeps us locked in her nightmare.
　　但这不会对携领全片的斯文顿产生任何影响。她就像一只螳螂，需要时间才能体会出她那奇特脱俗的美。她的脸，瘦弱之中充满力量，将情感投注在微妙的运转与调整之中。她饰演的伊娃传达了生活在丧失其意义之后的荒芜，先是由于身为人母的孤独挑战，接着是因为这出悲剧。她开车步入了不断叫嚣着巴迪?霍利笔下“每一天都变得更加漫长”的语境之内。她那幽灵般双目的凝视也将我们深锁在她的噩梦之中。