文字难度：★★★☆
Midway through the first hour of Band of Brothers, HBO’s 2001 mini-series about a company of paratroopers during and after 1)D-Day, there’s a scene on a troop ship that’s 2)jam-packed with new recruits on their way to hard fighting in the European 3)theater. “Right now some lucky bastard’s headed for the South Pacific,” one soldier says to another, envious.
美国HBO电视台2001年的迷你剧《兄弟连》讲述了一队伞兵在诺曼底登陆日及之后的种种经历。剧集播放的第一个小时中途就出现了这么个场景:一艘军舰满载着被送往欧洲战场打硬仗的新兵,船上的一个士兵带着嫉妒的语气对另一个说道:“现在就有些走狗屎运的浑蛋正往南太平洋那边去享受呢。”
Now comes The Pacific, an HBO mini-series by 4)Steven Spielberg, Tom Hanks and the rest of the Band of Brothers crew that spends 10 5)grueling hours and almost $200 million showing just how inaccurate that newbie’s idyllic image was. The series follows three real-life Marines from Pearl Harbor to homecoming after 6)V-J Day. There are battles against well-fortified enemies on small islands. There are 7)heroic deaths and random ones; 8)unrelenting rainstorms, tropical diseases, nervous breakdowns.
现在电视剧《血战太平洋》开播了,这部HBO迷你剧由史蒂芬·斯皮尔伯格和汤姆·汉克斯制作,《兄弟连》其余的原班人马为主演,全剧长达10小时——过程艰苦异常,整个制作斥资近2亿美元,剧中表现的正好与上文提到的新兵想象中那一派田园美景截然相反。该剧讲述了三名海军陆战队队员从珍珠港一战到日本投降后回国这段时间里发生的一系列真实事迹。这部电视剧充斥着在小岛上与火力强大的敌人血战的场面,还有英雄般的英勇牺牲和意外阵亡,以及无情的暴风雨、热带疾病和精神崩溃。
That whole story was of a war that many Americans could not fully visualize, then and now. The 9)pivotal moments of the European war featured 10)locales people had heard of and been to—the bombing of London, the liberation of Paris, and so on—and there was a central 11)villain, Hitler, who was known to all. As in Band of Brothers, the enemy is a 12)remote, mostly 13)dehumanized 14)presence—or a15)charging, immediate one that the 16)complicit viewer is only too happy to see shot down, blown up, or stabbed clean through. But the troops sent to try to stop the Japanese from taking over the South Pacific were, for the most part, going to obscure islands.
《血战太平洋》描述的战争,无论是彼时还是当下,都是许多美国人难以完全想象出来的。过去,对欧洲战场的关键事件的刻画主要以人们熟知和到过的地点为背 景——轰炸伦敦、解放巴黎,等等——而且主要敌人就是臭名昭著的希特勒。就像《兄弟连》呈现的那般,敌人要不是一队冷血无情、几乎丧心病狂的士兵,就是那些近在眼前正在冲锋陷阵的寇兵,站在正义阵营方的观众都恨不得看到他们个个给乱枪射死、大炮炸飞、千刀万仞。然而在《血战太平洋》中,那些被派去阻挡日军占领南太平洋的部队,很大一部分去的是一些鲜为人知的岛屿。
How obscure? Before 1940 17)Guadalcanal, site of the first major Allied initiative, had been mentioned by name in The New York Times only about a half-dozen times. Mr. Hanks confessed that he knew nothing about 18)Peleliu before beginning work on The Pacific.
到底有多鲜为人知?盟军首场大型战役发生的地点瓜达康纳尔岛在1940年之前只是被《纽约时报》提到过大约六次。汤姆·汉克斯自己也坦言,在参与《血战太平洋》一剧的制作之前,他对贝里琉岛一无所知。
“All of us knew we had to do the whole war,” Mr. McKenna, the writer, said; this would not be a simple story of a single battle. Eventually the decision was made to focus on three members of the First Marine Division: Eugene B. Sledge and Robert Leckie, both 19)privates, and 20)Sergeant John Basilone, who earned the Medal of Honor on Guadalcanal. Mr. Leckie and Mr. Sledge, who both died in 2001, wrote memoirs that became cornerstones for the series; Sergeant Basilone’s story was well documented in the news media at the time.
“我们都很清楚必须把整个战争展现出来,”编剧麦肯纳先生说,也就是说这不会只是讲述某一场战役的简单故事。最后剧组决定着重描写美国海军陆战队一师的三个成员:尤金·B·斯莱奇和罗伯 特·莱基,两人都为海军陆战队的二等兵,以及曾在瓜达康纳尔岛战役中获得荣誉勋章的中士约翰·巴齐隆。在现实生活中,斯莱奇和莱基已在2001年逝世,他们的回忆录成为了该剧的创作基石;至于中士巴齐隆,当时的新闻媒体也曾详尽地报道过他的事迹。
“We love the truth,” said Mr. Goetzman. “We think that’s where the best stories come from. You just can’t make up things that are any more exciting or any more compelling than what’s actually happened in this world.”
“我们热爱真相”葛茨曼先生(编者注:《血战太平洋》的编剧之一)说,“我们认为真人真事才是最好的故事素材。你不能硬是编出一些比事实更紧张刺激或者更扣人心弦的情节。”
Combining the three men’s stories allowed Mr. McKenna and the other writers to take full advantage of the mini-series format, exploring their characters in a way that a standard two-hour war movie doesn’t allow. “What war movie have you ever seen where the main character was in a mental institute for half an episode?” Mr. McKenna said of a fate that 21)befalls the Leckie figure. “And yet that’s a big part of war.” The physical and mental 22)toll that the Pacific war took on the men who fought it is the mini-series’s defining feature.
麦肯纳先生和其他编剧充分利用了迷你剧特有的形式,把三名战士的故事在其中穿插、拼接起来,以一般两小时标准长度的战争电影做不到的方式来挖掘人物内心。“你看过哪部战争片会用上半集时间来描述男主角呆在精神病院里的?”麦肯纳在提及到降临到莱基这个人物身上的厄运时这么说,“但是那是战争所包含的一大部分。”展现太平洋战争对参战官兵的身心摧残是该迷你剧的显著特点。
“If Band of Brothers was an examination of what we thought the Greatest Generation went through as a group, then this was more an examination of the personal cost to the individual,” said Tony To, who served as a co-executive producer on The Pacific and directed Part Six. That meant creating an even more expansive 23)canvas than in Band of Brothers, in terms of both time and geography, to show the accumulation of pressures physical and psychological. It also meant few shortcuts.
“如果说《兄弟连》审视了我们脑海中‘最伟大的一代人’所经历过的事情,那么《血战太平洋》则是更进一步探讨了个人牺牲给个体带来了什么,”《血战太平洋》的监制之一、第六集的导演托尼·图如是说。那意味着《血战太平洋》在展现其时代和地理背景这些方面要比《兄弟连》更宏大,这样才能展现出参战官兵日积月累的身心重压,也意味着拍摄过程毫无捷径可走。
For instance, Mr. To said, 500 coconut trees were brought to Australia, where 24)the bulk of the filming was done, to create a particular setting; a less-25)conscientious production might have shot the actors in front of a blue screen and added the trees later. “We wanted the environment they were acting in to be as close as it could be to the actual experience,” Mr. To said, “so that they weren’t acting the experience, but actually experiencing it.”
例如,图先生说,为了制造某一种背景,剧组要求把五百棵椰子树运到主要的取景地澳洲;如果让一些没那么严谨的剧组来拍摄的话,他们可能会让演员先在蓝屏前表演,拍完主要部分后再用电脑技术把椰子树给“添”上去算了。“我们想尽量让演员身临其境,”图先生说,“这样他们就不会觉得是在表演,而是真的在经历整个过程。”
If you want to watch The Pacific, it will repay you with a brutal but 26)eloquent story that’s finally less about how men fight and die than what happens to them when they fight and survive. It will show you how character and sheer, unfair randomness combine to produce cruelty or decency. And it will make you feel deeply for the men who return, 27)tentatively coming back to peaceful towns, exploring their souls like men checking their body parts after a 28)mortar explosion, anxiously feeling themselves out to see what’s still there.
如果你想看《血战太平洋》,那么该剧会向你讲述一个残忍但不失说服力的故事,这个故事的重点不是人们如何战斗怎样阵亡,而是他们在苦战中、幸存时的身心变化。《血战太平洋》会向你展现性格与不公的命运——完全由其决定——结合而产生的或残酷或体面的结局,使你不禁同情那些归国的战士,这些战士迟疑不决地回到安宁的城镇,细细探究自己的心灵,就像受到迫击炮轰炸后不安地触摸查看自己的肢体是否还健全。
