《死靈魂》：記錄中國(guó)勞改營(yíng)幸存者的苦難記憶

“Well, I guess I’ll start at the beginning.”

“好吧，我從頭開(kāi)始說(shuō)。”

The opening words spoken in Wang Bing’s film “He Fengming: A Chinese Memoir” are humble ones. But what follows is a record of cataclysmic times in postwar China, recounted by Ms. He, a survivor of forced labor camps. She methodically speaks of how it happened, how she was separated from her husband, all while seated in her cluttered, dimly lit, utterly ordinary home.

王兵的電影《和鳳鳴》有著謙虛的開(kāi)場(chǎng)白。但接下來(lái)，是一份戰(zhàn)后中國(guó)災(zāi)難時(shí)代的記錄，講述者是勞教幸存者和鳳鳴。她坐在雜亂、昏暗、再普通不過(guò)的家中，有條不紊地?cái)⑹鲆磺惺侨绾伟l(fā)生，她又如何與丈夫分離。

The result is by turns shattering and sedate — a testimony that one critic called “both a cry of pain and a sigh of relief.”

后來(lái)她時(shí)而精疲力盡，時(shí)而鎮(zhèn)定自若——一位影評(píng)人說(shuō)，她的證詞“既是痛苦的吶喊，又是如釋重負(fù)的嘆息”。

“He Fengming” screened at Cannes in 2007, the same year as “4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days” and “No Country for Old Men.” Now Mr. Wang returns to the festival with a work that gives voice to more living veterans of history like Ms. He. “Dead Souls,” his new documentary, has its world premiere this week, clocking in at 8 hours 15 minutes.

《和鳳鳴》于2007年在戛納放映，同年該電影節(jié)還上映了《四月三周兩天》(4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days)和《老無(wú)所依》(No Country for Old Men)?，F(xiàn)在，王兵重返戛納，帶來(lái)了一部作品，令更多和鳳鳴這樣飽經(jīng)歷史滄桑者能夠發(fā)聲。他的新紀(jì)錄片《死靈魂》時(shí)長(zhǎng)8小時(shí)15分鐘，于本周在全球首映。

“The only objective is to obtain, from their memories, the knowledge of the people who can no longer speak of what they went through,” Mr. Wang said in an interview.

“唯一的目標(biāo)就是通過(guò)他們的記憶，去了解那些不能再談起自己經(jīng)歷的人們，”王兵在接受采訪時(shí)說(shuō)。

The subjects of “Dead Souls” were condemned in the Communist Party’s “anti-rightist” campaign in the 1950s. Like Ms. He, they were imprisoned, enslaved and starved in “re-education” camps like Jiabiangou in the Gobi Desert.

《死靈魂》的拍攝對(duì)象在1950年代共產(chǎn)黨的反右運(yùn)動(dòng)中被打?yàn)橛遗?。像和鳳鳴一樣，他們?cè)谖挥诟瓯谏衬畩A邊溝那樣的“勞改”營(yíng)地忍饑挨餓，遭受監(jiān)禁和奴役。

“Dead Souls” is only the latest film in an ambitious, outsize oeuvre that seems to take Frederick Wiseman as the benchmark for capturing the experience of a nation.

王兵的作品全都雄心勃勃、規(guī)模龐大，似乎以弗雷德里克·懷斯曼(Frederick Wiseman)為標(biāo)準(zhǔn)，力圖刻畫(huà)一個(gè)國(guó)家的體驗(yàn)，《死靈魂》是其中最新的一部。

Mr. Wang’s previous works include his gargantuan chronicle of obsolescent factories and their workers, “West of the Tracks,” which The New York Times called a “nine-hour masterpiece.” His 14-hour installation “Crude Oil” tracked the process of oil extraction. “Mrs. Fang,” his most recent, is a comparatively brief (86 minutes) but devastating elegy of an older woman’s final days.

王兵之前的作品包括他為幾座即將拆除的工廠及其工人拍下的宏大編年史《鐵西區(qū)》，《紐約時(shí)報(bào)》稱(chēng)其為“九個(gè)小時(shí)的杰作”。他14個(gè)小時(shí)的作品《原油》跟蹤石油開(kāi)采過(guò)程。 他的近作《方秀英》比較短(86分鐘)，是關(guān)于一位老年女性人生最后幾天的悲哀挽歌。

Mr. Wang sits at the pinnacle of the Chinese documentary groundswell that arose with the country’s social and economic upheaval in the 1990s. Last year, he won the Golden Leopard at the Locarno film festival, bestowed by a jury led by the filmmaker Olivier Assayas. His work has premiered in Berlin, Venice (garnering another prize), and Documenta (which has also commissioned projects of his), with retrospectives at the Centre Pompidou and the Harvard Film Archive.

1990年代正值中國(guó)社會(huì)和經(jīng)濟(jì)動(dòng)蕩時(shí)期，中國(guó)紀(jì)錄片隨之迅速高漲，王兵的作品居于其巔峰。去年，他在洛迦諾電影節(jié)(Locarno film festival)獲得由電影人奧利維耶·阿薩亞斯(Olivier Assayas)領(lǐng)導(dǎo)的評(píng)審團(tuán)頒發(fā)的金豹獎(jiǎng)。他的作品在柏林電影節(jié)、威尼斯電影節(jié)(他在該電影節(jié)獲得另一獎(jiǎng)項(xiàng))和國(guó)際藝術(shù)文獻(xiàn)展(也是其多個(gè)項(xiàng)目的委約方)首映，并在蓬皮杜藝術(shù)中心和哈佛電影資料館做過(guò)回顧展映。

“Wang brings us inside the world he is chronicling so thoroughly that, if we watch it in one go, we are apt to lose track of what things outside are like,” the critic Luc Sante wrote of Mr. Wang’s “epic and intimate” cinema.

“王兵帶我們進(jìn)入這個(gè)他正在全面記錄的世界，如果一口氣看完，簡(jiǎn)直會(huì)讓人忘記這個(gè)世界之外的事情，”評(píng)論家呂克·桑特(Luc Sante)這樣評(píng)價(jià)王兵那些“宏偉而又私密”的電影。

“‘Fengming’ stands alongside first-person precedents like Shirley Clarke’s ‘Portrait of Jason’ (1967) and Errol Morris’s ‘The Fog of War’ (2004) in its ability to wrest powerful effects from the deceptively simple setup of a lone raconteur,” the critic Ed Halter wrote. Other admirers include the filmmakers Jia Zhangke, Arnaud Desplechin and Pedro Costa.

“《和鳳鳴》與雪莉·克拉克(Shirley Clarke)的《杰森的畫(huà)像》(Portrait of Jason, 1967)、埃羅爾·莫里斯(Errol Morris)的《戰(zhàn)爭(zhēng)迷霧》(The Fog of War, 2004)等先例一樣，使用第一人稱(chēng)敘事，因而能夠從一個(gè)孤獨(dú)的故事講述者看似簡(jiǎn)單的環(huán)境中制造強(qiáng)有力的效果，”評(píng)論家艾德·霍爾特(Ed Halter)寫(xiě)道。王兵的仰慕者還包括電影人賈樟柯、阿諾·德斯普利欽(Arnaud Desplechin)和佩德羅·科斯塔(Pedro Costa)。

For his part, Mr. Wang can sound very modest about his continuing document of Chinese history.

王兵在談起自己對(duì)中國(guó)歷史的持續(xù)記錄時(shí)很謙虛。

“In China, my life is like that of all the other normal Chinese,” Mr. Wang said. “I am one of the many from the normal class. So I filmed these people.”

“在中國(guó)，我的生活跟其他普通中國(guó)人沒(méi)什么兩樣，”王兵說(shuō)。“我是普通階層的一員。所以我拍了這些人的生活。”

Mr. Wang was born in the north of China in 1967, after the events chronicled in “Dead Souls.” Initially studying photography, he went on to the Beijing Film Academy, part of the same generation as Mr. Jia (who also has a film at Cannes this year). Mr. Wang gorged himself on the directors Antonioni, Bergman, and Tarkovsky (partly thanks to a professor who brought thousands of videotapes from abroad), with Pasolini close to his heart.

王兵1967年出生在中國(guó)北方，那時(shí)，《死靈魂》中記錄的事件剛發(fā)生。他先是學(xué)習(xí)攝影，后來(lái)又去北京電影學(xué)院學(xué)習(xí)，與賈樟柯是同一代(賈今年在戛納電影節(jié)上也有影片參與角逐)。王兵如饑似渴地欣賞安東尼奧尼(Antonioni)、伯格曼(Bergman)和塔爾科夫斯基(Tarkovsky)等人的作品(這要部分歸功于一位教授從國(guó)外帶回來(lái)的成千上萬(wàn)盤(pán)錄像帶)，尤其喜歡帕索利尼(Pasolini)。

“West of the Tracks,” with its view of Chinese heavy industry in decline, put a spotlight on Mr. Wang in 2003. The film announced an artist with a mission to catch major epochs and small moments before they disappeared.

王兵2003年的作品《鐵西區(qū)》展現(xiàn)的是中國(guó)重工業(yè)的衰落，這部作品引起了人們對(duì)他的關(guān)注。該片宣告了一名藝術(shù)家的誕生，他的使命是在大時(shí)代和小瞬間消失之前將它們記錄下來(lái)。

“Dead Souls” is no different. Shot from 2005 to 2017, it covers most of China’s provinces and entailed visits to more than 120 survivors of re-education camps. Mr. Wang’s goal was to preserve memories before they disappeared, in the vein of Claude Lanzmann’s monumental “Shoah.”

《死靈魂》也是如此。該片拍攝于2005年至2017年，覆蓋了中國(guó)的大部分省份，包括對(duì)120多名勞改營(yíng)幸存者的采訪。王兵的目標(biāo)是在這些記憶消失之前將它們保存起來(lái)，它與克洛德·朗茲曼(Claude Lanzmann)的不朽之作《浩劫》(Shoah)一脈相承。

“What happened in the Jiabiangou labor camps was a page unknown in the Chinese history,” Mr. Wang said of the project, which at an early stage was titled “Past in the Present.” “Of course, it’s not only a tragedy of China, but also one of the numerous terrible catastrophes in human history.”

“在中國(guó)的歷史上，夾邊溝勞改營(yíng)里發(fā)生的故事是不為人知的一頁(yè)，”王兵在談起該片時(shí)表示。該片原名《現(xiàn)在的過(guò)去》(Past in the Present)。“當(dāng)然，它不只是中國(guó)的悲劇，也是人類(lèi)歷史上眾多可怕的災(zāi)難之一。”

Hard-hitting subject matter can sometimes be a problem for filmmakers facing censorship in China, but this does not seem to have been an obstacle for Mr. Wang.

對(duì)于面臨審查制度的中國(guó)電影制作人來(lái)說(shuō)，題材的批判性太猛有時(shí)可能會(huì)遇到麻煩，但這似乎并沒(méi)有給王兵帶來(lái)阻礙。

“I’ve been free to shoot my films in China,” he said, explaining that the low commercial value of his work kept him from submitting them for theatrical release there. (“Mrs. Fang” will screen at next month’s Shanghai International Film Festival.)

他說(shuō)，“我可以在中國(guó)自由地拍攝紀(jì)錄片。”他解釋?zhuān)淖髌飞虡I(yè)價(jià)值很低，所以沒(méi)有申請(qǐng)?jiān)谟霸悍庞?《方繡英》下個(gè)月將在上海國(guó)際電影節(jié)上放映)。

“Dead Souls” finds Mr. Wang again embracing the immersive approach that has yielded memorable results: the touching and magical fireside moments with migrants in “Ta’ang,” or the unnervingly free wanderings of children left to fend for themselves in “Three Sisters.” It’s a form of cinema that begins to feel more like living with the people on screen than merely watching them.

王兵在《死魂靈》中再次采用沉浸式的拍攝手法，拍出了一些令人難忘的畫(huà)面：《德昂》中與移民在爐邊的感人而神奇的瞬間;或者《三姊妹》中無(wú)依無(wú)靠的三個(gè)孩子令人不安的游蕩。這種電影形式讓觀眾感覺(jué)更像是和屏幕上的人一起生活，而不僅僅是看著他們。

For those ready to commit the time and attention, “Dead Souls” will be an oasis of focus amid the many distractions of Cannes.

對(duì)于那些準(zhǔn)備投入時(shí)間和精力的人來(lái)說(shuō)，《死靈魂》將會(huì)是戛納電影節(jié)諸多令人分神的活動(dòng)中的專(zhuān)注力綠洲。

With his typical cool understatement, Mr. Wang said: “I don’t have particular expectations from the audience. I hope this film can hold the content of the stories I shot. In other words, there is a lot of content in this film. That’s why it’s long.”

王兵以典型的冷靜低調(diào)的口吻表示：“我對(duì)觀眾沒(méi)有特別的期望。我希望這部影片能承載得起我拍攝的那些故事。換句話說(shuō)，這部影片里有很多內(nèi)容。所以它才這么長(zhǎng)。”