贝尔法斯特

Belfast: Kenneth Branagh on an autobiographical drama “50 years in the making”

Kenneth Branagh tells us about the genesis of his Oscars-tipped new tale of a childhood during the Troubles, which received its European premiere at this year’s festival.

作者：Lou Thomas

译者：覃天

校对：易二三

来源：Sight & Sound（2021年10月16日）

【本文首发于《虹膜》公众号】

Belfast is Kenneth Branagh’s 18th film as director and his most personal to date. Set in the Northern Irish capital at the start of the Troubles, the semi-autobiographical film is a moving and elegant coming-of-age tale focusing on nine-year-old Buddy (Jude Hill) and hisfamily.

《贝尔法斯特》是肯尼思·布拉纳导演的第18部电影，也是他迄今为止最具个人风格的一部作品。这部半自传体的影片以1969年北爱尔兰的教派骚乱为背景，讲述了九岁的巴迪（裘德·希尔饰）和他的家人之间优雅、动人的故事。

It’s August 1969 when Buddy’s street in a Protestant neighbourhood erupts into violence. Catholic homes are attacked by loyalists and cars are blown up. Barricades are erected at the end of his street, with British troops soon mobilised to the area to man checkpoints. Buddy’s father (Jamie Dornan) returns home from his job in England only to be harassed by a soldier and local thugs keen to enlist his sons in carrying messages andmore.(【译者的说明和补充，请忽略，只是为了提醒自己】影片中，当巴迪妈妈被士兵拦下，询问自己的丈夫是做什么职业的时候，她说：“He’s a joiner.”这里的“joiner”指的是木匠这个职业，同时也有“参与者”的意思。下一句士兵就在问她，她的丈夫有没有参加什么革命活动，有双关语之意。)

1969年8月，巴迪家所在的新教徒居民区爆发了暴力事件。天主教家庭遭到新教忠实、偏激信奉者的攻击，汽车被炸毁。士兵在居民区街道的尽头竖起了路障，英国军队很快在该地区设置了检查站。巴迪的父亲（詹米·多南饰）是一名在英格兰工作的木匠，他先是在检查站被一名士兵拦下，后来则一直被当地的一名暴徒骚扰，激进的暴动分子热衷于让他的两个孩子加入他们的「帮派」。

Soon his thoughts turn to shipping his son, daughter and wife over to the safety and opportunities of the mainland. For Buddy’s mother (Caitríona Balfe) and the whole family – including the pair likely to stay behind, granny (Judi Dench) and pop (Ciarán Hinds) – leaving Belfast will be heartbreak. Is it better to stay behind and tough it out in dangerous times or leave everything that you’ve ever known for a betterlife?

在这样危险的环境里，他开始计划带着妻子和儿女移民加拿大。对于巴迪的母亲（凯特瑞娜·巴尔夫饰）和整个家庭——包括可能会留下来的奶奶（朱迪·丹奇饰）和爷爷（塞伦·希德饰）来说——离开贝尔法斯特将是一件令人心碎的事。是挺过这段最难捱的时期，还是抛弃熟悉的一切，奔向远方的新生活？

Branagh has assembled a fine cast who give it their all on screen, from young newcomer Hill to national treasure Dench and the ever-reliable Hinds. The film’s riot sequences have an energy and danger to them, but it’s the film’s emotional honesty and humour that make Belfast a dead cert for big awards.He even manages to work in references to his beloved Tottenham Hotspur and the club’s Northern Irish captain of the ’60s, DannyBlanchflower.（这一句有些突兀，未翻译）

布拉纳召集了一批优秀的演员——新人演员裘德·希尔、英国国宝级的演员朱迪·丹奇和永远忠厚可靠的塞伦·希德。这部电影的暴乱场面对他们来说了既危险，又是一种考验，但正是电影的真诚与幽默使得《贝尔法斯特》曾为了各大电影节的有力竞争者。

Aside from brief colour bookends portraying modern Belfast, the film is captured by cinematographer Haris Zambarloukos in lustrous monochrome. It also features nine lively songs (eight classics and one new recording) from Belfast native Van Morrison, so looks and sounds the parttoo.

肯尼思·布拉纳和摄影师哈里斯·杰姆巴里克斯用充满光影感的镜头，黑白色调拍摄了这部电影，记录了如今十分现代化的贝尔法斯特的过往。电影中出现的九首优美的歌曲则由贝尔法斯特本地歌手范·莫里森（Van Morrison）演唱。

Having begun writing on 23 March 2020 (the day Boris Johnson announced the firstCOVID-related lockdown), Branagh spent eight weeks on the script, but as he explains: “I showed the film to Christopher Nolan and he said, ‘Yeah, yeah. Eight weeks and 50 years.’ On the whole things come out quickly if they’ve been brewing for a longtime.”

2020年3月23日，布拉纳开始写作《贝尔法斯特》的剧本，而英国首相鲍里斯·约翰逊也刚刚宣布了封城的消息，布拉纳花八周写完了剧本，就像他告诉我们的那样：「克里斯托弗·诺兰看完了电影和我说，你用八周，写完了五十年。」如果这些童年往事在我的脑海中待的时间足够长，那么把它写出来并没有多难。

The shoot took place in August and September the same year mostly on specially built sets in theUK, partly to avoid travel andCOVIDcomplications, but also because “we thought about recreating 1969, finding the real places, they didn’t really exist, or you had to demodernise them in a majorway.”

电影拍摄于同年的8、9月，剧组为了避免工作人员交叉感染和疫情的复杂局面，在专门搭建的场景完成了拍摄。但布拉纳也提到：「我们想过重现1969年的景观，找到真实的贝尔法斯特，不过真正符合我记忆中的地方已经不复存在，所以我不得不以一种现代化、主流的方式来展现我的故乡。」

On the day of Belfast’sUKpremiere at theBFILondon Film Festival, Branagh was on lively form as he sat down to discuss making the film, shoplifting and how his love of westerns influenced thepiece.

在《贝尔法斯特》在伦敦电影节首映当天，肯尼思·布拉纳和我们聊了聊这部电影、童年在甜食店偷巧克力的经历以及他对西部片的热爱如何影响了这部电影。

Belfast is a really personal story. Why did you choose to writeit?

I think it was, as Mr Nolan suggested, 50 years in the making. The leaving of Belfast was definitely the most critical life event for me, because it was wrapped up in violence and disruption. It resulted in a profound change. Life was really never the same again for me. It affected many, many people in profound ways that reverberate to thisday.

How to write about it was the thing that eluded me. I’ve done much writing over the years, plenty of it in the bottom drawer – screenplays and novels that are ongoing pieces of work. But this one, I think the lockdown itself made me introspective about the story in a period when we were enduring our ownlockdown.

As soon as that violent event happened, the street was sealed off, barricaded either end. You had to check in and check out. You’re suddenly signing yourself into your own street – a quite bizarre experience. Police and soldiers were present in ways that you’d never understood before, and friends and neighbours weregone.

Eventually, of course, we left and were removed from that situation where it takes a village to raise a child. We had benefited from that large communal experience of life, many cousins, many siblings from my parents. The beginning of the lockdown made me look inward and this lockdown unlocked thatone.

问：《贝尔法斯特》讲述了一个十分私人的故事，你为何选择将它写下来？

肯尼思·布拉纳：我认为，正如诺兰所说，我们用很短的时间，展现了过去五十年里贝尔法斯特的变迁。离开贝尔法斯特在我的人生中绝对是一个重要的转折点，因为当时它正处于暴力和混乱之中。这导致了一场深刻的变革。对我来说，生活真的再也不是原来的样子了。它以深刻的方式影响了许多人。

但是如何把这些记忆里的事情写下来一直困扰着我。这些年来，我写了很多东西——剧本，小说，正在写的一些构思，不过都压在了箱底，但这一次，封城的那段时间让我想起了贝尔法斯特的故事。

1969年，贝尔法斯特暴乱发生时，街道都被封锁，街巷两头都设置了路障。你进出必须经过检查。需要获准才能进入了自己住的街道——这是一种相当奇怪的经历。警察和士兵以意想不到的方式出现你面前，朋友和邻居也不见了。

当然，最后我们这些老街坊都离开了贝尔法斯特，摆脱了那种需要邻里互相照顾，才能把一个孩子养大的穷日子，不过这种集体性、社区性的生活，以及那些人的经历给让我受益良多。疫情的封锁开始让我看向自己的内心，它撬开了我的童年记忆。

How close is what we see on screen to what actuallyhappened?

Well, it’s through the eyes of a nine-year-old boy. So he was already seeing things, perhaps like the images of his parents, more glamorously than realistically. I think my parents were pretty glamorous. Few people are as good-looking as Caitríona and Jamie, but my mum and dad certainly had some electrical zing between them. They’re definitely in a passionate relationship of great ups anddowns.

It’s very hard to achieve objective truth, but this is also at 50 years’ distance through the eyes of a kid who loved films. Westerns gave you good guys and bad guys and a way of understanding how justice might be metedout.

But there’s a large part of it that is based on the evidence. To give us quite an extreme example, I did get involved with looting that supermarket and my mother did drag me back there to redeliver the box of washing powder, which was a tipping point. It was absurd, and she realised that I had been fallen prey to the madness, the fervour of the mob in full flow and that something probably had tochange.

问：电影中的现实和你记忆中的现实差得远吗？

肯尼思·布拉纳：电影中的现实是通过一个九岁男孩的眼睛来展现的。因此，他已有初步观察事物和人的能力，比如他父母的形象，这比现实更迷人。我觉得我的父母很有魅力，扮演他们的詹米·多南和凯特瑞娜·巴而夫真的很英俊、漂亮，我父母的感情中肯定有电光火石的部分，是爱情和激情陪伴他们走过那么多的岁月，走过人生的大起大落。

呈现客观、真实的生活并非易事，但我希望通过一个热爱电影的孩子的眼睛，展现五十年的生活。西部片教会了我们如何辨别好人与坏人，以及一种理解伸张正义的方式。

但这其中有很大一部分是基于历史事实的。举一个影片中极端的例子，我确实参与了那家超市的盗窃，我母亲确实把我拖回商店，让我把洗衣粉放回去，我当时的做法是荒谬的，她意识到我已经沦为那些狂热的暴徒的牺牲品，可能有些事情终将发生改变。

Did you ever shoplift a Turkish Delight, as we see young Buddy do in thefilm?

Yes, and it was really as absurd as that. A less successful crime team there could not have been. It was as instant as happens in the film. And I don’t know why. I was genuinely astonished. I thought the Stasi were watching us when that policeman showed up. The guy running the shop, they knew everybody. It was down the bottom of the street on the corner; it was not like it was five streets away. We weren’t that smart. So yes, I was visited by a very sort of gothic authority figure in that policeman. Although they all seemed that way to me, as you can tell from the presentation of the preacher. It felt like all the authority figures were phenomenallyscary.

问：你有没有像片中的那个小男孩一样，偷过「辛格先生家」甜食店的甜点？

肯尼思·布拉纳：是的，现在看来我的做法真的很荒谬。电影中的偷店行为几乎是在一瞬间发生的，我也不知道为什么自己要那么做，我被自己的所作所为震惊了。当那个警察出现的时候，我以为史塔西（译者注：德语「国家安全」的缩写，自1950-1990年，史塔西被认为是世界上最大的情报和秘密警察机构之一）在监视我们。开店的店主认识贝尔法斯特的所有人。它就在街道尽头的拐角处，和我们住的地方隔得不远。我们对此没有那么敏感。所以，事后当那名警察来我家找我时，我觉得他身上有一种阴森恐怖的气息。尽管在我看来，警察都是如此，正如你能从电影中传教士的传教中可以感受到的那样，我觉得所有的权威人物都非常可怕。

There are references to Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (1968), John Wayne westerns and even Star Trek. Presumably these were quite important to you when you were growingup?

They were sort of ritualistic points. Star Trek was always on at that stage. This was ‘69, so two years after the original series was made. It would play on a Saturday tea-time. And at that time we always visited my granny. As the bit of childminding while they talked grown-up things, we would watch Star Trek. Fifty years later, I did a Shakespearean play reading with William Shatner and I couldn’t get the image of him being on the telly out of my mind as he was playing Falstaff. He was very, very generous aboutit.

The westerns were so exotic. I loved the graphic nature of the images, particularly John Ford westerns on television. I was seeing big colour pictures, like The Searchers (1956), in black and white on the television at that time. But The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962), which features here, was one where you had Wayne, James Stewart, Lee Marvin, Lee Van Cleef. These were all larger than life figures. Some of whom I felt like I was seeing in the world aroundme.

In fact, our villain, if you like, Billy Clanton, takes his name from one of the members of the gang who fought at theO.K.Corral against Doc Holliday and Wyatt Earp. And Colin Morgan, who’s wonderful in the part, very much reminded me of Jack Palancefrom Shane (1953), another movie villain, very memorable with the raven, black, glossy hair. These were men’s men in a man’s world. They were an incredible hunk of machismo that dominated thatworld.

问：《贝尔法斯特》中出现了《飞天万能车》（1968）、约翰·韦恩的西部片甚至是《星际迷航》的电影片段，它们对当时还是孩子的你影响很大吗？

肯尼思·布拉纳：它们在某种程度上带领我进入电影圣殿的作品。《星际迷航》是我童年的重要记忆。那是1969年，也就是原版电视剧制作两年后。它会在周六的下午茶时间播放。那时候我和家人总会去看望我的奶奶。当他们谈论大人的事情时，我会看《星际迷航》。50年后，我和威廉·夏特纳一起完成了一部莎士比亚戏剧的朗诵，我无法摆脱他在《星际迷航》上扮演的詹姆斯·科克的形象。他很开心我还记得。

西部片则带有强烈的异域风情。我喜欢西部片犹如绘画般美丽的画面，特别是电视上放的约翰·福特的西部片。《搜索者》（1956）是一部伟大的、色彩恢弘的西部片，但我当时在电视上看的是黑白版。《双虎屠龙》（1962）给我的印象同样很深，里面有熠熠生辉的约翰·韦恩、詹姆斯·斯图尔特、李·马文和李·范·克里夫。这些西部片中的人物都显得高大伟岸，其中一些角色让我觉得他们好像就在我身边。

《贝尔法斯特》中那个反派的名字——比利·克兰顿来自于经典的西部片《龙虎双侠》（1957）中帮派成员。科林·摩根将这个反派演得很好，他让我想起了《原野奇侠》（1953）中的反派杰克·帕兰斯，他有着令人难忘，光泽的黑发。作为西部片的主角，他们太有男子气了。

Perhaps the most significant postwar event of Britain and Ireland, certainly untilCOVID, is the Troubles. To what extent did you feel pressure to do justice to real-lifeevents?

I knew that I was going to be looking at this through the lens of a nine-year-old’s vision. Often we’d put the camera where he would be, by barbed wire or seeing things through heat haze or through the bars of a staircase or whatever. Once he has been unsettled, the ground has literally been pulled from underneath his feet and there are no longer paving stones, there’s just sand. All the paving stones are piled up at the end of the street. Then I think, he becomes the viewer. In that sense, it allows the film to not be overtly political in as much as he’s hearing it and trying to put things together in snatches. Ninety per cent of the pieces of archive news footage are real. And they’re all time accurate as well in terms of when they appeared in terms of thetimeline.

问：可能从二战后到现在，对英国和爱尔兰来说最有标志性的历史事件就是北爱尔兰的暴乱了。你怎么看现实生活中的政治问题？

肯尼思·布拉纳：就像我刚刚说的，我知道我将通过一个九岁孩子的视角来看待这件事。我们经常调整摄影机的视角，要么通过带刺的铁丝网，要么透过夏天的热浪，或者通过楼梯的栏杆来拍骚乱。细心的观众会发现，每当局势变得动荡不安时，男孩脚下的路都是由沙子铺成的，而不是沥青路，所有的沥青都被堆在街道的两端。小男孩好像变成了这场暴乱的旁观者，从这个意义上来说，这样的视角让《贝尔法斯特》不带有非常明显的政治色彩，或者给人一种历史的拼凑感。电影中百分之九十的历史影像素材都是真实的，它们在影片中对应的历史节点也都是准确的。

You’ve worked with Judi Dench many times over the years. Could you tell us about your collaboration on thisfilm?

I went to see her. She can’t read scripts easily anymore because of her eyesight. I had to read it to her – the whole thing – and act everything out. That was a bit nerve-racking, but also began to tell me that the whole thing would be quite an emotional experience for me. And Judi, who has a lot of Irish blood, was quick to understand the character and this matriarch’s pillar-like position at the centre of things, often observing things in the film. Often set back in frames, looking over walls and window panes, just reminding people, “I’m not deaf back here, you know, just in case you’re thinking of ignoring the silly old women who just do the housework. I think you’ll find we run theplace.”

She knew the suburban warrior that was underneath this person in terms of surface appearances to the men of thatstory.

She has a very good relationship with her own grandson and that understanding of the way sometimes deep relationships jump a generation, she got. When she first came in, the first thing she did was to make a beeline for young Jude Hill. For her it was all built around that boy, that performance, and also [the fact] that it would be that young boy’s energy and life prospects that she eventually devotes this act of sacrifice to at the end, just giving them, in a way, permission to go, and buying theheartbreak.

问：朱迪·丹奇是你共事多年的朋友了，可以谈谈你和她在这部电影中的合作吗？

肯尼思·布拉纳：我为了这部电影跑去找她，可惜的是，她年事已高，她的视力已经看不了剧本了。我不得不把整个剧本读给她听，然后把一切都演出来。这很消耗经历，但也让我知道，筹备和拍摄《贝尔法斯特》对我来说将是一次相真情流露的经历。朱迪·丹奇也有爱尔兰血统，她很快就理解这个角色在影片中的地位，这是一个默默观察着身边人的角色。她经常坐在窗边，看着外面的世界。她的存在仿佛是在提醒人们：「我不聋，我只是不想让你忽视那些做家务的老妇人，到最后你会发现，我们才是这里的主人。」

她和孙子的关系很好，他们之间的爱并不受年龄的限制。当朱迪·丹奇第一次出现的时候，她做的第一件事就是直奔裘德·希尔，她生活中的一切都和他有关。结果，她的付出最终换来的却是孙子和子女的离开，他们走向了美好的生活，只留下她自己。

How did you and your cinematographer create the look of thefilm?

We knew that we wanted to be framing often from the boy’s point of view but also to include many elements of performance. There’s a scene at Christmas time when Buddy has just been told that he’s going to have to leave Belfast. Jude is in the corner of the frame, right-hand foreground, his brothers behind him and the two parents are right in the back, deep background. We were inspired by a certain kind of Wellesian shot, deep focus in the background, the talk going on there, but the subject of the talk very much alive in theforeground.

Jude had done his breakdown scene earlier in the morning and actually fell asleep during this piece. So we had to tell them to be very quiet in the background as parents would be, when an overstimulated, over chocolate-tised kid isasleep.

Otherwise, we were always looking for the graphic. Frankly, we were trying to find our own Monument Valley, the John Ford world. We were looking for those in the cranes and in the wide shots of the city and in the sense of concrete and buildings being very present to a nine-year-old. And we were trying to find that poetic quality that the photography of Cartier-Bresson gives, where there’s a poetic dimension to finding ordinary people, if you can call anybody ordinary, staring into a middle distance that is telling you something about theirlives.

We had this possibility of punctuating it with the incredible sort of infusion of colour that ’60s widescreen movies certainly gave this imagination. It literally blew my mind first time I saw Yellow Submarine (1968) or these sort of the films, which I later found out had probably been produced on stimulants in some way, shape or form. But psychedelic was definitely what it feltlike.

In my imagination, a boy living in a place on the same latitude as Reykjavik – so pretty grey and pretty cold – that punch of colour from going to the cinema was something we thought could make a really strong tension in the film. It’s an escape route. It’s the direction, to some extent, that my life was headedanyway.

问：你和摄影是如何创造出这部电影的视觉风格的？

肯尼思·布拉纳：我们一开始就知道我们想要从男孩的视角来拍，但也要包括许多表演的元素。电影中有一幕，那是圣诞节，裘德扮演的巴迪刚刚被告知他将不得不离开贝尔法斯特。裘德的位置在画面的一角，在右边前景处，他的兄弟和父母则在他的身后。这个镜头的灵感来自于奥逊·威尔斯式的运镜——深焦镜头使得背景处的谈话清晰明了。

在拍这场戏的那天早上，裘德刚刚拍完暴动的戏份，他睡着了。我们告诉他要在背景处保持安静，就像和自己父母相处时那样。

坦率来说，纪念碑谷是约翰·福特西部片中标志性的景观，而我们也一直想为《贝尔法斯特》找到独特的视觉风格。我们试图通过吊臂和全景镜头的拍摄来构建男孩的视点。我们还试图找到布列松影片中的诗意，在他的影片中，普通人的生活也可以是一种诗意的维度，通过镜头，每个普通人似乎都准备向你倾诉他们的生活。

《贝尔法斯特》中出现的那些影像都是彩色的，60年代的宽银幕电影肯定给了我们这种想象力。当我第一次看《黄色潜水艇》（1968）这类电影时，我真的很震惊，后来我发现这些电影某种程度上就像视觉的致幻剂，它们对童年的我来说就像梦境一样美丽。

在我的构想中，贝尔法斯特的纬度和雷克雅未克的纬度相同，那里灰暗、寒冷，我童年正是在这里度过了漫长的时光，我之所以选择赋予影像色彩，是想突出它们的意义。它们可以带我逃离寻常的生活，我不知道的是，它们也让我终身与电影相伴。

原文链接：https://www.bfi.org.uk/london-film-festival/interviews/belfast-kenneth-branagh