There’s a clever bit in the latest “Hunger Games” in which Katniss Everdeen, the boundary-smashing butch goddess of dystopian cinema, acts in a propaganda video. The idea is for Katniss, who’s both the spark of a revolution and its flinty strength, to rouse the masses with a heroic scene. Slicked up in lipstick¹ and a Joan of Arc breastplate, she delivers her lines — “with energy,” the video director hopefully instructs her — but the scene needs tweaks. Eventually, they get it right, and the video ends with a call to “join the fight,” an exhortation² that’s clearly addressed to more than one audience. It’s a funny, self-aware moment, given how extreme the stakes have become in this fascinating and strange pop epic³.

在反乌托邦电影《饥饿游戏》(Hunger Games)的最新一部里，有个很聪明的片段，片中打破边界的男性气质女神凯特尼斯·伊夫狄恩(Katniss Everdeen)出演一个政治宣传录像。凯特尼斯是革命的火种与发起革命的力量，宣传录像的创意是让她用英雄气概来激发民众。她涂上口红，穿上圣女贞德式的铠甲，说出自己的台词——“带点活力”，录像的导演满怀希望地提示她——但这一幕还需要稍作调整。最后，他们拍好了，录像在结尾处号召大家“来战斗”，这番演讲显然针对的不止一个人。由于这部精彩奇异的流行史诗片中，情节已经变得非常激烈，这场戏就显得更有趣，是个很有自我意识的时刻。

Each “Hunger Games” movie makes so much noise — it’s where the deafening⁴ clamor of commerce meets the roar of true fan love — that it’s a wonder you can detect the human heartbeat under the tumult⁵. But it’s there, thumping⁶ and sometimes racing⁷ in a franchise⁸ that, more than most industrial movies and even putative⁹ indies, speaks to both its audience and its time. There’s heart in the vague yet stirring liberation story that comes to the fore¹⁰ in this chapter and that’s echoed in real-life struggles around the world. And it’s there, of course, in Katniss, the backwoods savior who, as played with guileless appeal by Jennifer Lawrence, is mounting an attack on the forces of oppression.

每一部《饥饿游戏》上映时都很喧闹——震耳欲聋的商业炒作再加上粉丝的狂热真爱——然而在众声喧哗中，你还能捕捉到人类的心跳，这简直就是个奇迹。但它就在那儿，在这部商业大片里砰砰跳动着，有时还很激烈，和大多数业内电影相比，甚至和所谓的独立电影相比，这部影片向观众与时代同时发出自己的声音。这个模糊却令人不安的故事关乎自由，有着自己的核心。系列进行到这一部，这个核心开始浮现出来，与现实世界中的真实斗争相呼应。凯特尼斯由富于狡黠魅力的詹妮弗·劳伦斯(Jennifer Lawrence)饰演，这个来自边远地区的救世主自然也在这一部中开始同压迫势力作战。

These forces include anyone who has ever doubted the appeal of female-driven stories, which, considering that 85 percent of the top-grossing movies from 2013 have male leads, means most of the people making films. But there’s more here than gender¹¹ equality. Last year, the second installment¹², “The Hunger Games: Catching¹³ Fire,” topped the year’s box office. It’s easy to see why. “Mockingjay Part 1” returns to the series backdrop: a totalitarian country — Panem, a stand-in for any number of nations — that rose from the ashes of a postapocalyptic North America. Katniss has surmounted¹⁴ her station as a slave by emerging victorious¹⁵ from the annual gladiatorial games that pit (usually child) combatants against one another. Her very survival has made her an existential threat to Panem.

这些压迫之中，也包括那些不相信女性为主的故事可以吸引观众的人们。要知道，2013年，85%的卖座电影都是由男性主导的，也就是说，大多数电影都是以男性主导的。但还有比性别平等更重要的东西。去年，《饥饿游戏》的第二部，《饥饿游戏：星火燎原》(The Hunger Games: Catching Fire)夺得了年度票房冠军。原因显而易见。目前这部《饥饿游戏：嘲笑鸟（上）》(Mockingjay Part 1)回归了这个系列的背景：从末日后的北美废墟上建立起的集权国家施惠国(Panem)，它是很多国家的象征。凯特尼斯战胜了自己的奴隶身份，在一年一度的参赛者（通常是孩子）自相残杀的游戏中取胜。她的生还令她成为对施惠国的重大威胁。

The “Hunger Games” books and movies have always invited different readings, including as an allegory for the agonies of adolescence¹⁶, but on screen, those interpretations¹⁷ have receded¹⁸ as the series has unfolded, and the story’s focus has sharpened. When the curtain rises on the third movie (the full, unwieldy title is “The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1”), the games are over, and the subject of the series — war — has been revealed. Though, of course, it’s been there all along, as Amy Davidson wrote in The New Yorker on the eve of the first movie’s release in 2012: “America has been at war for a decade now; is it really a coincidence that the biggest movie of the year is the first in a trilogy in which torture, terror, asymmetric¹⁹ warfare²⁰ and the manipulation of public opinion all play a role?”

饥饿游戏》的小说与电影总会带来不同解读，有些人认为它是青春期痛苦的寓言。但在电影银幕上，随着系列慢慢展开，故事的焦点日益清晰，其他解读也就渐渐黯然失色了。当第三部电影的帷幕拉开时，“饥饿游戏”已经告终，系列故事的真正主题——战争——浮现出来。当然，这个问题一直存在，正如艾米·戴维森(Amy Davidson)在该系列第一部于2012年上映前夕在《纽约客》上写的那样，“到如今美国已经打了十年的战争；今年最受欢迎的电影只是三部曲中的第一部，而整个三部曲恰巧是关于折磨、恐怖、不对等的战争与操纵民意的，这真的是一种巧合吗？”

More than two years later, the off-screen battlegrounds have shifted, but Ms. Davidson’s take remains²¹ as valid²² as ever. And “Mockingjay Part 1” is indisputably a war movie, from tearful start to unsettling end. Its director is Francis Lawrence, who did the honors in the second one, and he does a serviceable job again of pulling the parts together. If you haven’t seen the earlier movies, you may get a little lost; it doesn’t matter. If you’ve watched them and forgotten certain details, it also doesn’t matter. “Mockingjay Part 1” is streamlined, blunt and easy. The Capitol, the base of Panem power, is after Katniss, who is squirreled away in a part of the country, District 13, once thought to have been destroyed. Led by President Alma Coin (Julianne Moore, equal parts iron and silk), District 13 is now leading the charge against the Capitol.

过了两年多以后，屏幕之外的战争开始改变，但是戴维森的话仍然生效。毋庸置疑，《嘲笑鸟（上）》是一部战争电影，从悲哀的开头到令人不安的结尾都是如此。导演弗朗西斯·劳伦斯(Francis Lawrence)也拍了该系列的第二部，在新片中，他再度尽职地把各个部分连在一起。如果你没看过早先的两部电影，看这部电影时可能会觉得有点糊涂，不过这没关系。如果你看过，但是忘记了细节，这也没有关系。《嘲笑鸟（上）》流畅、直率而轻松。施惠国的权力部门是“国会”，它正在追捕凯特尼斯，而凯特尼斯则逃到这个国家的另一个部分：13区，这里曾经被认为已遭摧毁，目前由艾尔玛·科恩总统（茱莉安·摩尔[Julianne Moore]饰演，既铁腕又温柔）率领，是反抗国会的主要力量。

One of the pleasures of big-ticket blockbusters is that the smart ones (Harry Potter, most obviously) often come stuffed with the best acting²³ talent money can buy. The script for “Mockingjay Part 1,” credited to Peter Craig and Danny Strong, gets the job done, but the performers matter far more than the words they deliver. When Ms. Moore sits around a table with Jeffrey Wright (as Beetee, a tech whiz) and Philip Seymour Hoffman (Plutarch, a strategist), you’re both watching a scene and seeing how great actors can give emotional and psychological specificity to blather about the art of war and the fate of a people. Hoffman, who looked so uncomfortable in “Catching Fire,” is here loose, funny and stingingly real.

观看票房大片的乐趣之一在于，那些聪明的大片（最明显的就是《哈利·波特》[Harry Potter]）当中，经常充满高薪能够聘请到的最杰出的演员。《嘲笑鸟（上）》的剧本由彼得·克莱格(Peter Craig)和丹尼·斯特朗(Danny Strong)撰写，他们写得不错，但演员的发挥比台词更精彩。摩尔坐在桌边，身边是杰弗里·怀特（Jeffrey Wright，饰演技术天才比提），以及菲利普·塞默·霍夫曼（Philip Seymour Hoffman，饰演战略家普鲁塔克），你既能看到一场精彩的戏，也能看到优秀的演员是怎样为那些关于战争艺术与人类命运的胡说八道赋予情感和心理上的特质。霍夫曼在上一部《星火燎原》(Catching Fire)中显得很不自在，到了这里就显得放松、有趣而且极为真实。

There are a fair number of those war room scenes, which makes the movie feel far more claustrophobic than its antecedents. To an extent, since the rebel leaders are strategizing from a bunker, the sense of entrapment²⁴ works for the story, as do the physical limitations presented by District 13, which is underground and organized around a dimly lit, multilevel atrium that looks like a repurposed silo. Yet you grow antsy in District 13, both because it’s such a dreary²⁵ militarized world — created for maximum defensiveness²⁶, and that’s it — and because it locks up Katniss, who was made to roam. It’s a relief when she steps outside, even to go hunting with her best friend, Gale²⁷ (Liam Hemsworth), whose moony, lovesick shtick has become a drag.

这种战略室里的戏有好几场，使得这部电影和前作比起来多了几分幽闭恐怖的气息。在某种程度上，这也是由于叛军领袖是从一个燃料库开始推行战略的，在故事中有陷阱的感觉；而13区又位于地下，围绕着光线昏暗的多层天井，看上去很像核武器的发射井，使人觉得身体受到限制。置身13区，你会感到愈来愈不安，因为它是一个阴沉的军事化世界——有严密的防御——而且也因为它困住了天生自由自在的凯特尼斯。当她走出这个世界，甚至只是和她最好的朋友盖尔（利亚姆·海姆斯沃斯[Liam Hemsworth]饰）去打猎，都会令人松一口气。另外，盖尔忧郁、害相思病的气质已经成了累赘。

The war scenes are more of a relief — stuff blows up, etc. — which is complicated. François Truffaut is said to have observed that there’s no such thing as an antiwar movie because all war movies make combat look fun, which isn’t true, even if many turn death into easy-to-consume spectacles. “The Hunger Games” has never been antiwar, and while some object to a fiction in which adults send children to slaughter²⁸ one another, what’s truly appalling²⁹ is that this isn’t a grotesque³⁰ fantasy but a bitter truth of human civilization. The scene in the first movie of combatants racing into the start of the games to kill and die is shocking only because it acknowledges that truth.

战争场面更是让人松了一口气——充满爆炸等场面——它很复杂。据说弗朗索瓦·特吕弗(François Truffaut)曾经说过，根本就没有“反战电影”这种东西，因为任何战争片都会让打斗看起来很有意思，但这不是真的，甚至有很多电影会把死亡变成可以轻松消费的奇观。《饥饿游戏》从来就不是反战的，尽管有人讨厌一部讲述成年人让孩子自相残杀的小说，但令人震惊的是，它并不是一个怪诞的幻想，更像是人类文明的苦涩真相。第一部电影中，参赛者从游戏一开始就自相残杀，有人杀戮，有人死去，这一幕非常惊人，只是因为它说出了真相。

That shock lingered, but the ugliness of those deaths was mitigated³¹ by Katniss, whose very individuality, her grit³², roughness and decency³³, serve as a rebuke³⁴ to the Capitol. In her struggle to keep herself alive along with her other love interest, the insufferably dull Peeta (Josh Hutcherson, still miscast!), Katniss personalizes — humanizes — the fight. That humanity is crucial to her evolution as a classic charismatic revolutionary hero. She’s the one who embodies³⁵, articulates and justifies³⁶ the battle and breaks collective chains, even as she’s being folded into District 13’s militaristic operation. Plutarch and the rest of the rebel leaders understand that, but when they make that first propaganda video, they get it wrong because, by writing the script for her, they also silence her.

这种震惊萦绕不去，但死亡的丑陋被凯特尼斯的个人气质缓解了，她坚毅、强悍，正直，就像是对国会的一种斥责。她和另一个喜欢她的人，乏味至极的皮塔（乔什·哈切森[Josh Hutcheerson]饰演，他到现在还没适应角色！）一起，为生存而战斗，在这个过程中，她令斗争变得个人化——变得人性化了。她渐渐成长为一个富于古典个人魅力的革命英雄，在这个过程中，人性非常关键。她是这场战斗的象征，阐明了它的意义，令它正当化，她打破了集体主义的枷锁，甚至当她被困在13区的军国主义制度中时也是如此。普鲁塔克和其他叛军领袖都能理解她，但当他们拍摄第一部宣传录像时，他们就错了，因为他们要给她写台词，这同时也是在压制她的声音。

“Mockingjay Part 1” doesn’t silence Katniss, but in some respects, it sidelines her. She still has plenty to say and do, though not enough, partly because, in chopping the last book into two movies (“Part 2” lands next year) and by embracing the blockbuster imperative³⁷ — big bangs and action — the filmmakers lose sight of her. That’s most evident with a rescue that Katniss doesn’t physically³⁸ participate in. The rescue happens midway through the final book, but it’s been turned into the movie’s culminating set piece, one that Katniss — like you — witnesses unfold on screen. It’s perfectly³⁹ watchable in a generic⁴⁰, action-flick way. Yet as Katniss Everdeen stands gaping⁴¹ at the rescue, with widening and watering eyes, it’s hard not to feel that for the first time in this series, the filmmakers are treating her just like, well, the girl.

嘲笑鸟（上）》并没有压制凯特尼斯的声音，但在某些方面令她有些弱化。她仍然有很多东西可以说、可以做，但还不够充分，部分是因为，电影把小说系列的最后一本书拆成了两部影片（《嘲笑鸟（下）》将在明年上映），而且片中还有不少流行大片元素，比如大爆炸和动作戏——拍片人没有重点关注她。特别是一段凯特尼斯没有亲身参与的营救戏。在小说中，这场营救发生在中段，但它却成了这部电影的高潮，凯特尼斯和你一样，旁观着这场戏在银幕上展开。如果你把影片当成动作类型片，那么这一幕很精彩，但当凯特尼斯·伊夫狄恩站在一边，眼泪汪汪地看着这场营救的时候，人们不禁会感觉拍片人只是把她当做一个普通女孩，这种感觉在这个系列中还是第一次出现。

“The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1” is rated PG-13 (Parents strongly cautioned). War violence and torture.

饥饿游戏：嘲笑鸟（上）》被标记为PG-13级（强烈建议家长指导观看）。有战争暴力和折磨。