外媒看中国:《一步之遥》用力过猛

Maverick actor-director Jiang Wen continues to jab at Chinese history with a satire about the fallout of an over-the-top beauty contest in '20s Shanghai.

不按常理出牌的导演，同时也是演员的姜文，用20世纪20年代上海言过其实的一起选美比赛的改编电影，继续在中国历史上猛敲了一记。

"We should struggle less at home, and expand more ashore," says a character during Gone With The Bullet's first section, in which a Chinese diva triumphs over her US and European counterparts in a rigged beauty pageant in Shanghai. Director Jiang Wen, who co-penned this film with eight other screenwriters, has certainly walked the talk in this line: Gone with the Bullets is an extraordinary mélange of seminal stylistic tropes from abroad, a two-hour-plus journey taking in nods to newsreels, silent slapstick, musicals, film noir and even New Hollywood - not to mention the specific pastiches of The Godfather, Chicago, The Italian Job and even the Bogart-Bacall whistle moment in To Have And Have Not.

“我们不能在家里挣扎，而要去开拓更多的天地，“《一步之遥》第一部分的一个角色这么说道，这位国人女星在上海一场内箱操作的选美大赛中，击败了她美国和欧洲的竞争对手。导演姜文，和他的八位编剧真的是言出必行：《一步之遥》是外国创意体裁隐喻非凡绝伦一锅炖，两个多小时的电影向资讯片，喜剧默片，音乐剧，玄色电影，甚至是新好莱坞电影致敬——且不说《教父》，《芝加哥》，《偷天换日》甚至还有《江湖侠侣》里比歌的吹口哨场景。

But a mish-mash of references a masterpiece does not make. Unlike his brilliantly barbed, sensitively structured and meticulously multi-layered 2010 hit Let the Bullets Fly, Gone With The Bullets - described as the second installment of a trilogy of gun-slinging satires set in tumultuous, 1920s China - is a sprawling, episodic spectacle reading less like a j'accuse of social malaise, and more like a record of a self-styled auteur's ego going completely into overdrive, as he indulges in shaping his lead character (played by himself) as a misunderstood and victimized idealist, while unleashing a torrent of supposedly clever bites at the hands who feed him.

但是这部致敬杰作的混合物没有任何意义。不像他才华横溢的佳作《让子弹飞》（2010年）里绝妙的讽刺，敏感的结构和一丝不苟的多层次构架，《一步之遥》——作为其子弹三部曲的第二部——用吵吵闹闹喧嚣不堪构起一部讽刺诗集，20世纪20年代的中国——笨拙的前行，插话式的场景看起来不太像是社会疾病的抨击，更像是自封为电影导演的自负到彻底失控的一次记录，因为他沉浸于塑造他的主角（他自己饰演）成为一个被误解的，受到伤害的理想主义者，他用释放才华激流的方式在饲养他的这群人手上狠狠咬上了一口。

And the hands have seemingly bitten back, as Jiang has finally gone one step too far with his misanthropy, a trait which used to amuse with his more skilful portrayal as the masses as self-seeking and unwashed in his previous outings like the second-world-war drama Devils on the Doorstep and Let the Bullets Fly.

看上去他是咬回去了，而姜文在他愤世嫉俗的道路上终究是做的太过了，他越发灵巧地刻画了追逐私利，愚昧不堪的大众人群——一如他之前的二战电影《鬼子来了》和《让子弹飞》里那样，是他带有取乐意味的特质。

Jiang's character in the film, Ma Zouri, carries a similar life trajectory to Yan Ruisheng, a middle-class man who plotted the murder of a prostitute in Shanghai in 1920.

姜文在电影中的角色马走日，原型就是阎瑞生——这个中产阶级男人在1920年于上海密谋杀害了一名妓女。

What makes Yan's case legendary is not the crime itself, but its fallout: the case at once scandalized and mesmerized the city's chattering classes, with the man's trial and subsequent execution leading to entrepreneurs staging plays, stand-up comedy shows, musicals and even making a film out of the incident. It's perhaps ironic that Jiang is to mock those transforming the so-called Yan Ruisheng affair into entertainment by, well, making a film which transforms the incident into a film comprising scenes reminiscent of stage plays, stand-up comedy and a musical.

让阎瑞生案名声大噪的不是因为这起犯罪本身，而是其附带后果：上海那些爱好八卦的中上级阶层马上被这个案件震惊和迷住了，由于这个案子，阎瑞生的审讯和随后的死刑被改编成企业家编排的舞台剧，单口相声表演，音乐剧甚至是电影。也许讽刺的就是，姜文想要嘲笑这些所谓的，把阎瑞生一案变成娱乐笑料的改编，将这起案子编成了由怀旧的舞台剧，单口相声和音乐剧的杂烩电影。

Now that Jiang has committed an auteur's inevitable ego-driven project about himself and his history - Ma's recollections of a Gallic romance mirrors the director's eight-year marriage with a Frenchwoman, while the materialistic Wanyan Ying and the artistic Wu Liu (played by his own wife) could be seen as Jiang torn between commerce and culture - maybe it's time for Jiang to step off his pedestal, cast his cynicism aside and engage with the real crossfire beyond his own comfort zone, and to reveal the state of mind a population who think they are calling the shots, but are actually only being stood there to be shot at.

如今的姜文已经证明了一位电影导演对于其自身和他的历史，会有无可避免自尊心驱逐计划——马走日法国式的浪漫回忆映射了他和一个法国女人八年的婚姻，而唯物主义者完颜英和艺术家武六（由他妻子饰演）可以被视为姜文在商业利益和文化追求上的进退维谷——也许是时候让姜文从他的基座上走下来，把他的玩世不恭扔到一边，离开他的安全领域去加入真正的火线战争，如揭露某些人的心理状态——那些自认为在发号施令，实际上却在站在那被射击的人。