冷戰時的社會主義烏托邦科幻片

To the Polish author Stanislaw Lem, creating science fiction was itself a form of time travel. “What the science-fiction work presents belongs to one time (most often the future), whereas how it tells its story belongs to another time, the present,” he once wrote. “Even if imagination succeeds in rendering plausible how it might be, it cannot break completely with the way of apprehending events that is peculiar to the here and now.”

對於波蘭作家斯坦尼斯拉夫·萊姆(Stanislaw Lem)來說，創作科幻小說本身就是一種時空旅行。“科幻小說的工作就是呈現出屬於某個時刻的東西（通常是未來），然而講故事的方式卻屬於另一個時刻——那就是現在，”他曾經這樣寫道。“就算想象力成功地把另一個時空演繹得活靈活現，它也不可能完全脫離此時此地理解事物的獨特方式。”

Inevitably, the “here and now” ages into “there and then,” and the distance between those two points can be more disorienting than any wild flight into the universe. That’s one of the thoughts that arises for a viewer of the unfamiliar titles in Strange Lands: International Sci-Fi, the Film Society of Lincoln Center series starting Friday that runs the gamut from space-age sex farce to dystopian nightmare and travels to such lost worlds as Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union.

他口中的“此時此地”已經不可避免地流逝而去，成了“彼時彼地”，兩個時空之間的距離或許比宇宙中的激戰更加令人困惑。自週五開始（8月22日——譯註），林肯中心電影協會推出“奇異之地：國際科幻電影展映”(Strange Lands: International Sci-Fi)，內容涵蓋了太空時代的性鬧劇到反烏托邦夢魘，也兼顧捷克斯洛伐克與蘇聯這些失落的世界，當觀衆看着那些陌生的片名時，關於“此時此地”與“彼時彼地”的思考便會涌上心頭。

These Cold War rarities do more than serve as kitschy time capsules, they represent traditions of sci-fi filmmaking as storied, if not as well budgeted, as Hollywood’s.

這些“冷戰”期間的罕見影片不僅是刻奇的時光膠囊，它們就算不像好萊塢電影一樣由大筆資金製作，但也同樣著名，代表了科幻電影的傳統。

The series wanders throughout Europe, but is tellingly weighted toward the former Soviet bloc. With its bent toward theoretical worlds and systems, the genre lent itself extremely well to expressions of socialist utopia, especially after the cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, the first person to orbit Earth, fueled dreams of a Communist galaxy. Such tales often involved assorted comrades banding together to solve interplanetary conundrums, invariably sacrificing self for the sake of society and the universe. In East Germany, the state-run studio DEFA produced seven movies in this mode, two of which appear in the series.

這個展映系列貫穿整個歐洲，但顯著偏重前蘇聯地區的電影。科幻類型的電影傾向於展現理論中的世界和體系，因此特別適合表現社會主義烏托邦。俄國宇航員尤里·加加林(Yuri Gagarin)進入太空繞地球一週後，更是促進了蘇聯對於共產主義銀河系的夢想。這樣的故事通常是講述各種各樣的同志們聯合在一起，去解決星際間的各種問題，爲了全社會，爲了全宇宙，免不了要有自我犧牲。東德的國營電影製片廠DEFA製作了七部這種類型的電影，其中兩部會在這個影展系列中放映。

In one, “Eolomea” (1972), a slew of rocket ships goes missing outside an international space station, prompting the leggy scientist Maria Scholl (Cox Habbema) to investigate with the aid of a onetime paramour, the wiseacre navigator Daniel Lagny (Ivan Andonov). With a space-lounge soundtrack, Ms. Habbema’s killer mod attire (like a turtlenecked pantsuit and a skimpy yellow bikini), and Mr. Andonov’s insouciant charisma, the film is very much of its post-’60s moment, or at least aspires to be. The real conflict winds up having little to do with missing spaceships, but instead requires Lagny to choose between scientific progress and the nostalgic pull of earthier concerns. The rogue is tamed for the common good in the end, but his wistfulness hints that even behind the Iron Curtain, space dreams had become as defined by David Bowie’s “Space Oddity” as by the Gagarin triumph.

其一是1972年的《厄洛米亞》(Eolomea)，片中有許多太空船在某國際空間站外失蹤了，有着一雙美腿的科學家瑪利亞·修爾（Maria Scholl，考克斯·哈比瑪[Cox Habbema]飾）在自以爲無所不知的領航員丹尼爾·拉尼（Daniel Lagny，伊萬·安多諾夫[Ivan Andonov]飾）幫助下進行調查，兩人曾經有過一段情緣。哈比瑪穿着殺手般的太空衣（有點像高領連褲套裝和暴露的黃色比基尼的結合），安多諾夫則有着無憂無慮的魅力，這部片子還有太空風格的電子樂配樂，很像後60年代風格，至少是努力達到這樣的效果。最後衝突真正的解決和那些消失的太空船沒什麼關係，但是需要拉尼在科學發展與對地球懷舊式的顧慮之間做出選擇。最後這個無賴的傢伙順從了普遍利益，但是他的惆悵暗示着，就算在鐵幕的那一邊，對太空的夢想一方面由加加林的勝利所塑造，另一方面也受到大衛·鮑伊(David Bowie)的《太空怪人》(Space Oddity)影響。

Four years later, DEFA produced even groovier and loonier entertainment. Like an extended, very special episode of “Star Trek,” “In the Dust of the Stars” (1976) follows the spaceship Cynro as it responds to a distress signal from the planet TEM 4. Except there’s no evidence of trouble; in fact, TEM 4 is a land of endless partying, with citizens go-go dancing to swanky wah-wah funk and getting high from aerosol breath fresheners. But it soon becomes apparent that the partyers are actually colonizers, and that the native people have been exiled underground and enslaved.

四年後，DEFA製作了更精彩、更瘋狂的片子。1976年的《在星塵之中》(In the Dust of the Stars)就像是《星際迷航》(Star Trek)的延伸，像是它的特集。影片跟隨太空船辛諾號，它應答着TEM 4行星上發出的悲傷信號。而在TEM 4上卻沒有任何麻煩的跡象，那裏上演着無窮盡的派對，人們伴着時髦的放克樂跳搖擺舞，空氣裏的噴霧清新劑讓人飄飄欲仙。但是，影片很快就表明，這些開派對的人其實是殖民者，本地人被流放到地底，遭受奴役。

While there’s little nuance to the film’s anti-imperialist, anti-American allegory (the most prominent slave is even outfitted in Native American garb), it offers a more sophisticated dilemma, which is still relevant: whether to arm the TEM 4 insurgency — and commit to an extended and deadly embroilment on foreign turf.

雖然這部影片也是反帝國主義和反美寓言（最顯眼的一個奴隸甚至穿着美洲土著人的服飾），它也帶來了一個更復雜的困境，到如今仍然有意義：是否要武裝TEM 4行星上的起義者，是否要在外星勢力範圍上掀起擴大的，致命的動亂。

Shoddily ambitious, exhilaratingly awkward and truly bonkers, “In the Dust of the Stars” seemed to aim for a certain cultural moment but instead landed fascinatingly far afield.

《在星塵之中》有着惡劣的野心、歡快的笨拙和真實的瘋狂，似乎是旨在捕捉一個特定的文化時刻，但卻奇異地落在了遙遠的地方。

Mr. Lem, who was the most influential sci-fi writer in Europe during the era (and who’s represented in the series by Edward Zebrowski’s relatively realistic adaptation of his first novel, “Hospital of the Transfiguration”), wrote of how the horrors of the 20th century defined all approaches to the genre. “In the postwar years, there seemed to be only this choice, between hope and despair, between a historically untenable optimism and a well-justified skepticism that was easily apt to turn into nihilism,” he said.

萊姆是當時歐洲最有影響力的科幻作家（在這個影展裏有愛德華·贊布羅斯基[Edward Zebrowski]根據他的第一部小說《變臉醫院》[Hospital of the Transfiguration]改編的電影，風格比較現實主義），他曾寫過，20世紀的種種恐怖是如何影響了科幻小說的方方面面。“在‘二戰’之後的歲月裏，似乎只有這一種選擇，不是希望就是絕望，不是從歷史角度而言根本站不住腳的樂觀主義，就是有理有據，很容易就變成虛無主義的懷疑主義，”他說。

Emerging from Czechoslovakia in 1967, Jan Schmidt’s “The End of August at the Hotel Ozone” veers definitively toward nihilism.

1967年，簡·施密特(Jan Schmidt)在捷克斯洛伐克推出的《沒有男人的八月末》(The End of August at the Hotel Ozone)無疑傾向於虛無主義。

In that film, decades after a devastating nuclear holocaust, a small band of women roams the landscape looking for food and kicks. A fierce matriarch is the only one who remembers the old world, and the only one with any sense of morality, but she’s got dwindling sway over the anarchic marauders, who shoot a dog and behead a snake for sport. So bleak is the outlook that hope (an old man, who may be the last on Earth) and grace (a gramophone that plays only “Beer Barrel Polka”) are introduced just so they can be summarily squashed.

在影片中，摧毀一切的核災難已經過去十幾年了，一小羣女人在山野漫遊，尋找食物和刺激。一位兇猛的女族長是唯一一個還記得舊世界的人，也是唯一一個有道德意識的人，但她漸漸開始支配一羣無政府主義掠奪者們，她們開槍打死一隻狗，砍掉一條蛇的頭，只是爲了尋開心。所以畫面非常黯淡，片中出現希望（一個老年男人，或許是地球上的最後一個男人）和優雅（一個留聲機，只會放《啤酒桶波爾卡》這一首曲子）的跡象，只是爲了被簡單地摧毀。

Gorgeously shot and devastatingly well told, the film echoes the hopelessness of certain World War II narratives of the era (“Ivan’s Childhood,” “Diamonds of the Night”) while damningly projecting it onto the future. State authorities balked at the film’s bleak outlook, delaying its release, and nearly half a century later its apocalyptic imagery still has the power to shock.

這部影片有着精彩的攝像和令人震驚的敘事，和《伊萬的童年》(Ivan’s Childhood)、《夜之鑽》(Diamonds of the Night)等同時期“二戰”敘事影片中的絕望相呼應，與此同時又充滿譴責地將這種敘事投射到未來。國家當局害怕電影中慘淡的景象，延遲了它的發行，過了幾乎半個世紀，它那末日天啓版的想象力仍然令人震撼。

As for Mother Russia, the series includes two wildly different films from the glasnost era that nevertheless both find fantastical visions not in the future or in faraway lands, but in an infinitely warped present.

至於“俄羅斯母親”，這個影展中也收錄了兩部風格非常不同的影片，來自戈爾巴喬夫的“公開化”(glasnost)時代，兩部影片都有幻想的成分，它們不是發生在未來或是遙遠的國度，而是發生在一個被扭曲的當代。

In the cheeky epic “Kin-dza-dza!” (1986), a Muscovite goes out to buy macaroni only to find himself accidentally teleported, alongside a bewildered Georgian student, to a distant desert land. They’re helped and hindered along the way by a pair of scheming, talentless buskers who fly about in a rickety old capsule and speak a language that’s dominated by the catchall word “koo.”

在頑皮的史詩片《外星奇遇》（Kin-dza-dza!，1986年上映）中，一個莫斯科人外出去買意大利麪，卻被意外地進行了心靈傳送，和一個困惑的格魯吉亞學生一起被送到遙遠的沙漠。一路上，一對狡猾而又無能的賣藝人坐着一個破破爛爛的膠囊狀物體飛行，有時幫助他們，有時阻撓他們，他們的語言主要是一個含義甚廣的詞——koo。

The stunted, deceptively nonsensical narrative evokes Samuel Beckett, while the bric-a-brac visuals borrow heavily from Terry Gilliam’s pop surrealism. But the sense of giddy pointlessness is Russian to the core. The film’s ultimate joke is that when given the opportunity to return to normal Soviet life, the two men keep choosing to dither in this absurd purgatory.

這種遲緩、帶有迷惑性的胡言亂語讓人想起薩繆爾·貝克特(Samuel Beckett)，而片中的小古董畫面又大量借鑑了特里·吉列姆(Terry Gilliam)的波普超現實主義。但是那種輕佻的無意義感則是徹底的俄羅斯風格。影片的終極玩笑是：兩人雖然得到機會可以重返現實的蘇聯，他們還是選擇在這個荒誕的煉獄裏彷徨。

In “Days of Eclipse” (1988), meanwhile, an early feature from the visionary director Alexander Sokurov (“Russian Ark”), there’s little to distinguish between what’s real and imagined, past and present, wished for and feared. An adaptation of the brothers Arkady and Boris Strugatsky’s celebrated novel “Definitely Maybe,” the film never establishes what would normally pass for a science-fiction conceit, instead charting the wearied mind of Malyanov (the improbably beautiful Aleksei Ananishnov), a young doctor working in a sweltering Central Asian village.

1988年的《日蝕的日子》是亞歷山大·索科洛夫(Alexander Sokurov)的早期作品，這位富於幻想的導演的代表作是《俄羅斯方舟》(Russian Ark)。在《日蝕的日子》裏，真實與想象、過去與現在、希望與恐懼之間很難區分。影片是根據阿爾卡季(Arkady)和鮑里斯·斯特魯加茨基(Boris Strugatsky)兄弟的著名小說《確實也許》(Definitely Maybe)改編，影片的故事沒有設定爲科幻電影的典型概念，而是記錄了疲憊的馬亞諾夫(Malyanov)，一個在悶熱的中亞村莊工作的年輕醫生的故事，這個角色由美得驚人的阿里克賽·安納尼斯諾夫(Aleksei Ananishnov)飾演。

Mr. Sokurov shoots the film through an alien’s eyes, pondering the strangeness of a lobster, a lizard, a little boy and a talking corpse, all while indiscriminately toggling between color and sepia-tone black and white, ground-level and overhead shots. He’s not just making something fantastical of the real world, he’s also disorienting our very perception of it through the tools of filmmaking.

索科洛夫通過一個外國人的視角拍攝這部電影，思索着一隻龍蝦、一隻蜥蜴，一個小男孩與一具會說話的殭屍有多麼怪異，與此同時隨意地在彩色與墨色調的黑白之間切換，在與地面齊平的拍攝角度和與頭頂齊平的拍攝角度之間切換。他並不只是讓現實生活中的東西變得奇異，也通過電影工具扭曲了我們對現實世界的感知。

“In the early days of film, the celluloid medium was itself science fiction,” Sonja Fritzsche writes in the forthcoming book “The Liverpool Companion to World Science Fiction Film.” She is referring to the work of silent cinema artists like Georges Méliès and Fritz Lang. With “Days of Eclipse,” Mr. Sokurov tapped into that formative past to reaccess a way into the future — a way that’s still infinitely, exhilaratingly strange.

“在電影藝術早期，電影膠片這種媒介本身就是科幻的，”索尼婭·弗裏切(Sonja Fritzsche)在即將出版的新書《世界科幻電影的利物浦同伴》(The Liverpool Companion to World Science Fiction Film)中寫道。她指的是喬治·梅里埃(Georges Méliès)和弗裏茨·朗(Fritz Lang)等默片明星。在《日蝕的日子》裏，索洛科夫利用具有重大影響的過去，重新發現一條進入未來的道路——這條道路至今無窮無盡，充滿令人興奮的奇異。