革命電影：打天下易拍，治天下難演

Revolution, Without All the Messy Parts

【By TERRENCE RAFFERTY／張佑生譯】

“We only won the war,” Commandante Ernesto Guevara says a couple of hours into the movie that bears his memorable nickname, “Che.” “The revolution begins now.”

「我們只打贏了戰爭，」指揮官厄內斯托•格瓦拉在以他令人難忘的暱稱「切」為名的電影開始後幾個小時說：「革命從現在開始」。

Not in this picture, though. Steven Soderbergh’s ambitious new film, opening in the United States this month and elsewhere this winter, consists of two parts (each running 131 minutes). The first is set in Cuba, where Guevara helped Fidel Castro overthrow the dictator Fulgencio Batista in a long guerrilla campaign that ended in December 1958; the second takes place in Bolivia, where Guevara went in 1966 to start a revolution that he hoped would spread throughout Latin America (he was Argentine by birth) and where he died a year later. What’s missing in the film is the very revolution whose beginning he has so solemnly announced.

片子裡卻不是這樣。史蒂芬索德柏有強烈的企圖心，本月在美國、今冬將於他處上映的新片，分上下兩部，片長各131分鐘。第一部背景在古巴，格瓦拉協助卡斯楚在漫長的游擊戰於1958年12月落幕後推翻獨裁者弗爾亨西奧•巴蒂斯塔；第二部背景在玻利維亞。格瓦拉1966年到當地發起一場革命，希望革命散播到整個拉丁美洲（他在阿根廷出生），一年後在當地喪命。他非常鄭重宣布展開的革命，在電影裡不見蹤影。

This is odd but somehow not surprising, because movies about revolutions do tend to focus on the fighting and to ignore the duller, often grimmer business of actually governing in a revolutionary way.

這實在很怪，但從某種角度來看並不令人意外，因為革命電影確實比較傾向聚焦得天下的戰鬥面，忽略比較乏味，往往也比較無情的治天下實際面。

Guevara’s revolution-beginsnow statement is something he really said, and it was stirring enough to reappear, paraphrased, as the wisdom of an Algerian insurgent in Gillo Pontecorvo’s classic 1966 “Battle of Algiers.” “It’s hard enough to start a revolution, even harder to sustain it, and hardest of all to win it,” says one of the more intellectual leaders of the militants in that film. “But it’s only afterward, once we’ve won, that the real difficulties begin.”

格瓦拉確實說過革命現在開始之類的話，這句話振奮人心到足以重複出現和被重新詮釋，像吉洛•彭泰柯沃1966年的經典作品「阿爾及耳戰役」裡一名起事者的名言。「發動革命難，持續革命更難，贏得革命最難，」電影裡一名比較有智慧的好戰分子領袖表示。「但是，事後，我們贏了以後，真正的困難才開始。」

Both Guevara and his North African counterpart are, of course, absolutely right: what happens after the battles have been won is indeed the most difficult part of the strange, inherently improvisatory process of revolution — so tricky that many leaders, Mr. Castro among them, manage to maintain power only by declaring a kind of eternal state of revolution. And because this strategy is neither dramatically nor humanly very satisfying, the movies have rarely shown much interest in the internal dynamics of revolutionary governments .

格瓦拉與在北非和他同樣搞革命的人，說得當然一針見血：革命是個怪異、本質上必須隨機即興發揮的過程，最困難的部分發生在打勝仗之後：困難到許多領袖，包括卡斯楚在內，只有靠宣布某種不斷革命狀態，才能繼續掌權。由於這套策術的戲劇性和人性面都難令人滿意，電影對革命政府內在變遷的動能始終未曾多加著墨。

But weirdly, Richard Fleischer’s much maligned 1969 “Che!,” with its ridiculous exclamation point, does make at least an attempt to deal with the first few years of the Castro regime, to examine the peculiar relationship between the Maximum Leader, Fidel, and the ideological hardliner Che, and even to acknowledge Guevara’s complicity in the orgy of executions that accompanied the new government’s ascension to power.

怪的是，李察•費力雪1969年飽受譏評，掛個荒謬驚嘆號的電影「切！」，起碼還嘗試處理卡斯楚政權最初幾年的施政，檢視「最偉大領袖」卡斯楚和意識形態強硬派切（格瓦拉）之間獨特的關係，甚至承認，在新政府奪權過程中伴隨而生的瘋狂處決潮中，格瓦拉是共謀。

Naturally, you never see anything of that sort in films made under the auspices of the revolutionary regimes themselves, for which art exists only to perpetuate the heroic mythology of the struggle. That’s as true of Cuba in the past half-century as it was of the Soviet Union in the 70-plus years between the Bolshevik revolution and perestroika, though the early Soviet filmmakers did a much, much better job of mythologizing their cause.

當然，在由革命政權贊助的電影中，你絕對看不到任何這類內容，對這些政權，藝術只是為了讓奮鬥的英勇神話永垂不朽而存在。過去半世紀的古巴，布爾什維克革命與重建開放之間70多年的蘇聯，都是如此；不過，早年蘇聯導演把革命理想變成神話，遠比古巴成功。

Sergei Eisenstein’s first two films, “Strike” (1924) and “The Battleship Potemkin” (1925), are, despite the crudeness of their propaganda, fiercely exciting as cinema, full of eloquent compositions and startlingly inventive editing . Mr. Castro’s Cuba never enjoyed that sort of cinematic renaissance .

賽吉•艾森斯坦頭兩部電影「罷工」（1924）和「波坦金號戰艦」（1925），儘管絲毫不掩宣傳意圖，卻是非常精采的電影，洋溢流暢的構圖和創意驚人的剪輯。卡斯楚的古巴從未享受過這種「電影復興」盛事。

This would probably have been the case in the French Revolution too, had the movies been invented in time for the likes of Robespierre to lop off the heads of pesky auteurs. And although France is at this point definitively postrevolutionary, it’s still uncommon to see a French film that does justice to the bloodbath in which the republic was born. The most penetrating movie about the French Revolution, “Danton” (1983), was directed by a Pole, Andrzej Wajda.

假如電影在羅伯斯比之流將討厭的導演砍頭的時代問世，法國大革命相關電影可能也會淪為相同的下場。雖然法國目前無疑處在後革命時期，持平反映法蘭西共和國誕生時血流成河的法國片仍屬罕見。對法國大革命最具洞察力的電影「丹頓事件」（1983），導演安德烈•華依達是波蘭人。

So it could be a while before we get the whole story of Guevara, Mr. Castro and the Cuban revolution; and when we do, it’s sure to come from outside Cuba. Probably not from Hollywood, which hasn’t had much success with this piece of history, the most notable attempt being Sydney Pollack’s expensive flop “Havana” (1990).

因此，我們可能還要好一陣子才能看清格瓦拉、卡斯楚和古巴革命的全貌：而且當我們看見時，必然不是來自古巴。可能也不是來自好萊塢，好萊塢處理這段歷史，始終不是很成功，最知名的嘗試是薛尼•波拉克代價高昂的失敗之作「哈瓦納」（1990）。

You can get a little more of the sad story from Julian Schnabel’s moving “Before Night Falls” (2000), about the persecution of the gay Cuban novelist and poet Reinaldo Arenas, and more still from Nestor Almendros’s blistering documentaries “Improper Conduct” (1984) and “Nobody Listened” (1987).

從朱利安•施納貝爾有關同志古巴小說家兼詩人雷納多．阿里納斯的「在夜幕降臨前」（2000），你可以獲悉更多一些古巴革命的悲慘真相，從納斯托•艾爾孟德羅斯的「行為不檢」（1984）和「無人傾聽」（1987），可以獲知更多內情。

But that’s if you’re interested in something like the truth . Revolution is, in many people’s minds, more about ideals, wild hopes, romance; too many facts, and the world looks impossible to change.

但那是說，如果你有興趣了解真相。在許多人心目中，革命大多與理想、狂想、浪漫事蹟有關；涉及太多現實，看起來就不可能變天了。

關鍵字句

革命（revolution）和演變（evolution）迥然不同，前者是驟變（sudden violent change），後者是漸進（gradual development）。革命與理想（ideals）、狂想（wild hopes）有關；若顧慮太多現實（facts），就別想變天了（the world looks impossible to change）。

中國古諺有「馬上得天下，未必能馬上治天下」的說法，以革命為主題的電影聚焦在打天下的一面（tend to focus on the fighting），迴避治天下的實際面（business of actually governing in a revolutionary way），這一面比較無聊（duller），往往也比較無情（grimmer）。

歷史的發展不隨個人意志移轉。以改革為出發點，有時會產生革命的意外結果。文中提到的perestroika 是1980 年代中期開始，當時的蘇聯共黨總書記戈巴契夫楬櫫的兩大口號之一，另一個是glasnost。前者意指經濟和政府機構的重建，perestroika and glasnost 說的是「重建與開放」，最後竟造成蘇聯解體和東歐民主化。

意指延續存在的perpetuate 在本文與英雄神話（heroic mythology）連用時，解為「永垂不朽」。美國黑人民權運動家馬丁路德金恩博士在《邁向自由》（Stride Toward Freedom）一書中的名言：He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetuate it.

【2008-12-16/聯合報/G9版/UNITED DAILY NEWS】