全文翻译自洛杉矶时报12月14日文章
原题：
Feng Xiaogang's stirring 'Youth' follows a Chinese military arts troupe through history
作者：Justin Chang
译者：
冬天毛
《洛杉矶时报》（Los Angeles Times）是美国发行量最大的报纸之一，创刊于1881年12月4日，其主要发行地区为加利福尼亚州。
（维基百科）
正文：
An early sequence in Feng Xiaogang’s elegiac epic “Youth” shows a dance number being rehearsed by a People’s Liberation Army arts troupe in southwestern China.
在冯小刚的悲歌史诗《芳华》开头的一组镜头中，中国西南部某人民解放军文工团的成员正在排练一段舞蹈。
As 1970s propaganda floods the soundtrack (“We are armed with Mao Tse-tung thought!”), the performers run through their precisely synchronized movements with practiced skill, and not even the litany of harsh criticism they receive from their leader can dispel their contentment and fierce concentration.
伴着电影配乐中铺天盖地的70年代宣传口号（“我们用毛泽东思想武装自己！”），表演者们行云流水、整齐划一地完成动作，即使被领队连番呵斥，也丝毫无碍她们的全神贯注和志得意满。
Feng’s camera, gliding around the room with a freedom that increasingly seems to evade his characters, zooms in on a few faces within these elaborate formations: a haughty accordionist, Hao Shuwen (Li Xiaofeng), and a beautiful dancer, Xiao Suizi (Elane Zhong), who serves as the movie’s narrator. But the true protagonists of the story, Suizi points out, are a young man and a young woman watching the performance quietly from the sidelines.
冯的镜头自在地划过整个房间，对他的人物们似乎愈发闪躲起来，并随着这轮精巧的动作而聚焦在了其中的几张面孔上：一位神色傲慢的手风琴手郝淑雯（李晓峰饰），以及一位美丽的舞者，同时也是这部电影的旁白萧穗子（钟楚曦饰）。但此时穗子指出，故事的真正主角是在场边静静观看表演的两名青年男女。
Liu Feng (Huang Xuan), a dancer, is well liked for his kind, helpful nature, while He Xiaoping (Miao Miao), a new recruit from Beijing, is eager to prove that she belongs in this elite company. These two onlookers are unambiguously the noblest characters on-screen, and their selfless sense of virtue seems to directly anticipate the grievous suffering they will endure over the course of this decades-spanning drama.
生性仁厚、乐于助人的舞者刘峰（黄轩饰）深受人们爱戴，而来自北京的何小萍（苗苗）初来乍到，殷切地想要证明她也是这个精英群体的一员。这两位旁观者无疑是片中最高尚的角色，而他们在这场横跨数十年的剧作中所遭受的深重苦痛，似乎也正是因为他们的无私品质而早早降临。
“Youth,” which runs a steadily absorbing 136 minutes, is in no hurry to reach its melancholy destination. Nor is it in a rush to puncture the warm, happy bubble of its characters’ privilege. There’s never any doubt that these young men and women are, by dint of their talent and their connections, being spared the worst horrors of the Cultural Revolution.
136分钟的《芳华》不紧不慢地走向它忧伤的结局，每一分钟都引人入胜。而且，它也没有急于马上戳破剧中角色那温暖而欢快的特权泡沫。自始至终都毫无疑问的是，这些青年男女们凭借着他们的天分和背景，得以回避了文革的恐怖。
But outside fears and pressures have a way of intruding nonetheless, and the seemingly innocuous gossip and backbiting that fuel the film’s first half are shown to have startlingly grave consequences in the second.
然而外部世界的恐惧和重压还是找到了侵入的方式，推动了电影前半部分的那些看似无害的闲言碎语和暗地中伤，最终在电影的后半部分中造成了惨重的后果。
Xiaoping desperately tries to fit in while hiding some shameful details about her family, namely that her father has been deemed an enemy of the Communist Party and thrown into a reeducation camp. But her secrecy earns her the bullying contempt of the other girls in the troupe, including Shuwen and a pretty but superficial singer, Lin Dingding (Yang Caiyu). Liu Feng, meanwhile, has long nursed a crush on one of the girls and pays a steep price for it, running afoul of a rigid system devoted to stifling every wayward thought and impulse.
小萍急切地想要融入集体，同时也在掩盖着她耻辱的家世——她的父亲被视作党的敌人，并扔进了再教育劳改营。然而，行事躲闪使她成为了文工团中其他女孩轻视和欺凌的对象，包括淑雯和另一个漂亮却肤浅的歌手林丁丁（杨采钰）。与此同时，因为久恋其中一个女孩，刘峰触犯了那个全力压制一切任性思想和冲动的体制，并为之付出了昂贵的代价。
Adapted by Yan Geling from her own novel, “Youth” is also informed by Feng’s own past experience as a member of a military cultural troupe. That may account for the simmering intensity of feeling that seems to underscore even the story’s most casual moments: With more nostalgia than prurience, Feng revels in the idyllic pleasures of a hot shower or a group swim, his camera ever attentive to the unrequited desires ricocheting among his characters.
《芳华》是由严歌苓改编她自己的小说而成，同时也融入了冯自己以前作为军队文工团成员的经历。这或许解释了电影的那股近乎沸腾的强烈情感，连故事中最不经意的瞬间都概莫能外：无论淋浴还是游泳的镜头都难称挑逗，冯在其中挥洒着的是怀旧的诗情画意，他的镜头永远关注着在他的角色之间往复的那不得回报的欲念。
Before long, however, the golden hues of Luo Pan’s cinematography give way to forest greens and blood reds, as Mao’s death and the fall of the Gang of Four usher the drama forward to the frontlines of the 1979 Sino-Vietnamese War. Both Liu Feng and Xiaoping find themselves caught up in the conflict, which Feng orchestrates with the same overblown action-movie virtuosity he demonstrated in earlier war films, including “Assembly” and “Back to 1942.”
然而没过多久，随着毛的死和四人帮的倒台，剧情被带到了1979年中越战争的前线，罗攀镜头下的金黄色调也让位于丛林的绿和鲜血的红。刘峰和小萍都身陷这场冲突，而冯在对战争场景的安排上表现出了和他以前战争片（包括《集结号》和《1942》）同样夸张的动作片艺术风格。
Equally at home with epic tearjerkers and glossy romantic comedies, Feng is often described as the Chinese equivalent of Steven Spielberg, a designation that can make him sound like a subtler filmmaker than he really is. The intensity of the carnage here overwhelms and ultimately destabilizes the movie, which is partly (but only partly) by design. The tracking shots that so gracefully navigated dance floors and theater stages feel markedly different when staged in the heat of battle, at times becoming little more than showcases for Feng’s undeniable technique.
无论是催泪的史诗故事，还是光鲜的浪漫喜剧，都是冯的拿手好戏，故而人们常用中国版史蒂芬·斯皮尔伯格这个说法来形容他，但实际上他的风格并非那么细致微妙。这一段的血腥杀戮淹没了整个电影的基调，也最终动摇了这部电影的稳固性，这在一定程度上（并非完全）是刻意为之的。同样是跟拍镜头，在穿越舞池和舞台时何其优雅，而在激烈的战争场面里却给人截然不同的感受；冯的技术自然不可否认，但这样炫技有时是有点过了。
Amid all the blood and the bullets, as well as the relentless emotional assault of the musical score, the director just barely manages to keep his characters in his sights, lurching forward in time to catch up with them and their former comrades in the ’90s after the troupe has disbanded. If our understanding of the losses these characters have suffered feels incomplete, it’s hard to come away entirely unaffected as these men and women look back at their young adulthood and the whirlwind of historical change against which it played out.
在漫天的血浆和子弹中，以及在配乐的连番情感轰炸下，导演对角色们跟得并不紧密，在文工团解散后便跌跌撞撞地追着他们和旧日的同志一起跳跃到了90年代。如果我们不能全面了解这些角色所痛失的一切，那么当看到这些男女回顾他们的青年时代，以及作为其背景的历史风暴时，是很难不感到一丝造作的。
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‘Youth’
《芳华》
In Mandarin with English subtitles.
中语英字
Not rated
未分级
Running time: 2 hours, 16 minutes
放映时间：2小时16分钟
Playing: AMC Atlantic Times Square 14, Monterey Park
上映：蒙特利公园市大西洋时代广场14号AMC影院
全文到此结束
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