白蘭度在《馬龍 聽我說》中訴說一生風雲

When Marlon Brando died in 2004 at 80, more than a few obituary writers decided he hadn’t been a contender, after all. For them, this brilliant actor had devolved into as much a loser as Terry Malloy, his punch-drunk boxer in “On the Waterfront,” who is sold down the river and, with a face battered by fights and the pain of a brother’s betrayal, famously eulogizes himself: “I coulda been a contender, I coulda been somebody, instead of a bum, which is what I am.” Those who dismissed Brando reviewed his life as if it were some kind of movie, one with a strong opening act, a bewildering middle and a disappointing conclusion deserving of a collective thumbs down.

2004年80歲的馬龍·白蘭度(Marlon Brando)去世時，不少訃告作者認爲，他終究不是一個奪冠熱門。在他們看來，這位聰明的演員墮落成了一個失敗者，就像《碼頭風雲》(On the Waterfront)裏被他打得頭暈眼花的拳擊手特里·馬洛伊(Terry Malloy)。馬洛伊遭到兄弟出賣，他帶着臉上的拳傷和心頭的創傷，卻還稱讚自己道（這句話很出名）：“我本應該是一個奪冠熱門，本應是一個大人物，而不是現在這樣的膿包。”那些否定白蘭度的人像評價某種電影那樣評價他的一生——說它開場宏大，中間部分讓人迷惑，結尾令人失望，應該遭到一致否定。

That’s the straight world’s take on Brando — call it the revenge of the mediocre on genius — and one reason it’s such a blast to hear the man himself talking about that life in the documentary “Listen to Me Marlon.” The movie is almost entirely narrated by Brando, largely through snippets of audio recordings that he made over decades. Although it opens with a bit of text about the recordings, it doesn’t explain how the British director Stevan Riley and his collaborators got their hands on them. The press notes state that the recordings were “uniquely gifted” to the production company for the movie; a recent article in The Los Angeles Times suggests a more commercially expedient reason: The actor’s estate, Brando Enterprises, “decided it was time” for a flick to introduce him to a new generation.

那是正統世界對白蘭度的看法——就當那是庸衆對天才的報復吧——那也是人們在聽白蘭度本人在紀錄片《馬龍，聽我說》(Listen to Me Marlon)中講述自己一生時感到震驚的一個原因。這部紀錄片幾乎完全由白蘭度講述，主要由他幾十年來的錄音片段組成。雖然開頭的一點文字介紹了錄音的情況，但是沒有解釋英國導演斯特萬·賴利(Stevan Riley)和他的合作者們是如何拿到這些錄音的。出版說明上說，這些錄音是“專門贈與”該製片公司以製作這部電影的。《洛杉磯時報》(The Los Angeles Times)不久前的一篇文章道出了一個從商業角度講更合理的原因：白蘭度的資產白蘭度公司(Brando Enterprises)“認爲現在是時候”拍一部紀錄片來向新一代介紹他。

Whatever the motivations, the movie gives you the opportunity for its loquacious title subject to pour his thoughts into your ears for some 100 babbling minutes. This was a cat who could rap, as his longtime friend and former roommate James Baldwin might have said. The movie is stuffed with boldface names like Baldwin, who (with his pal Norman Mailer) first encountered Brando in Greenwich Village in the mid-1940s. “I had never met any white man like Marlon,” Baldwin later said. “He was obviously immensely talented — a real creative force — and totally unconventional and independent, a beautiful cat.” Baldwin said that Brando was “contemptuous of anyone who discriminated in any way,” adding that the actor, a professional seducer, made him feel that “reports I was ugly had been much exaggerated.”

不管動機是什麼，這部紀錄片讓白蘭度有機會用100分鐘的時間喋喋不休地向你傾訴他的想法。就像他的老朋友、前室友詹姆斯·鮑德溫(James Baldwin)可能會說的，他是一隻會說唱的貓。片中充滿了大人物，比如鮑德溫。20世紀40年代中期，鮑德溫（和好友諾曼·梅勒[Norman Mailer]）第一次在格林尼治村遇見白蘭度。“我從沒遇見過像馬龍這樣的白人，”鮑德溫後來說，“他顯然極具才華，很有創造力，絕不因循守舊，非常獨立，像一隻美麗的貓。”鮑德溫說，白蘭度“鄙視任何有歧視觀念的人”。他補充說，身爲演員的白蘭度極其善於誘惑人，以至於讓鮑德溫覺得“那些說我長得醜的人是在誇大事實”。

There’s not enough of the nonconformist likes of Baldwin in the movie, but then it seems impossible to cram an existence as fully lived as Brando’s — which reaches from his Nebraska childhood to California, New York, Tahiti and beyond — into a few hours. That said, you get a sense of that life because, for a celebrity who became known as a recluse in his later years, Brando played the public relations game for a very long time, as the many interview clips show. Some of these are available online, including a 1955 “Person to Person” profile by Edward R. Murrow, which was shot soon after Brando won his first Oscar, for “On the Waterfront.” It’s a thoughtful interview, as far as these things go, and Brando plays along nicely, even when his abusive father, Marlon Sr., whom he loathed, bigfoots into view.

片中像鮑德溫這樣不墨守成規的人不夠多，但是想用幾個小時講述白蘭度豐富的人生（從在內布拉斯加州的童年到加利福尼亞州、紐約和塔希提島等）似乎是不可能的。儘管如此，這部紀錄片能讓你對他的真實人生有一點了解。白蘭度在晚年以離羣索居而聞名，但他玩公共關係這個遊戲很長時間了，這一點能從很多采訪片段中看出來。你能在網上看到其中一些片段，包括1955年他接受愛德華·R·默羅(Edward R. Murrow)的《面對面》(Person to Person)節目採訪時的片段，當時，白蘭度剛憑藉《碼頭風雲》獲得第一個奧斯卡獎。總的來說，那個採訪很有深度，白蘭度一直友好地配合，甚至在他十分厭惡的曾虐待他的父親老馬龍闖入採訪時，他依然保持克制。

While its subject means that “Listen to Me” is easy to like, Mr. Riley’s shaping of Brando’s words can make the movie, every so often, difficult to fully embrace. Mr. Riley’s handling of the fatal 1990 shooting of Dag Drollet by Christian Brando, Brando’s son, is especially unfortunate, and the use of some tabloidlike news material sleazes up the movie a touch. (Mr. Drollet was the boyfriend of Brando’s daughter Cheyenne.) Mr. Riley’s use of a disembodied, floating Brando head created from digital scans that the actor made in the 1980s is initially amusing, but it’s a needless distraction, as are the cutaways to murkily lit, messily appointed rooms that are actually re-creations of those in his Mulholland Drive mansion.

雖然這部紀錄片的主題意味着，你應該很容易喜歡上它，但是賴利對白蘭度話語的塑造常常讓你覺得很難完全接受它。1990年，白蘭度的兒子克里斯蒂安·白蘭度(Christian Brando)槍殺了白蘭度女兒夏恩(Cheyenne)的男友達格·德羅萊(Dag Drollet)。賴利對這一事件的處理尤爲失敗。另外該片還選用了一些小報式的新聞材料，拉低了影片的檔次。賴利用白蘭度在80年代進行的數碼掃描做出了沒有身體的、漂浮的白蘭度頭像，這東西一開始讓人覺得挺好玩的，但它沒什麼必要，而且會分散觀衆的注意力。白蘭度穆赫蘭道宅邸裏燈光昏暗、佈置凌亂的房間的剖面模型，也同樣沒有必要。

Brando doesn’t need that kind of embellishment, and neither does this movie. As his admirer James Dean probably knew all too well, Brando was a true rebel, partly because he thought being a star was absurd and partly because, as clip after clip shows, he always had a cause, whether it was civil rights, black power, Native American sovereignty or his own independence. At its most satisfying, “Listen to Me Marlon” brings you close to a man whose legacy seems to have been tarnished less by his widely reported (and misreported) actions than by an entertainment press that punishes those who refuse to play the game. Brando found the game ludicrous. But he played along until he didn’t, and while he occasionally suffered the consequences, along with too many fools, his work outlasts it all.

白蘭度和這部紀錄片都不需要那種裝飾。就像他的愛慕者詹姆斯·迪恩(James Dean)可能非常清楚的，白蘭度是真正的叛逆者，一個原因是，他覺得當大明星很荒誕可笑，另一個原因是，就像那一段段視頻展示的，他總是在爭取某種權利，不管是公民權利、黑人權利、美國原住民的自治權，還是他自己的獨立。最令人滿意的一點是，《馬龍，聽我說》能讓你近距離地瞭解這個人。玷污他的精神遺產的不是被廣泛報道（或錯誤報道的）的他的劣行，而是那些懲罰拒絕服從遊戲規則者的娛樂媒體。白蘭度覺得這個遊戲很荒唐。剛開始他配合，後來他就不配合了。雖然和太多傻瓜一樣，他偶爾要承受這樣做的不利後果，但他作品的生命力將比所有這一切更長久。