Throughout his career, Christopher Nolan has taken on big stories — though especially those of men, their struggles and their wars — and bent them to his virtuosic will. In movie after movie, in darkness and in light, his characters push against the limits of human endeavor and consciousness, testing themselves much like he tests the possibilities of the medium. If the line in his 2006 drama “The Prestige” about how a magician takes something ordinary and “makes it do something extraordinary” sounds like an artist’s statement as well as an article of faith, it is. For Nolan, that something extraordinary is cinema itself.

纵观其职业生涯，克里斯托弗·诺兰一直致力于讲述宏大的故事——尤其是关于男人、关于他们的挣扎与战争的故事，并且凭借他精湛的造诣，将这些故事塑造成自己想要的样子。在一部又一部电影中，无论是在黑暗之下还是在光明里，他的角色都在挑战人类努力和意识的极限，他们不断考验自己，就像诺兰不断考验电影媒介的可能性一样。在他2006年的影片《致命魔术》(The Prestige)中，那句关于魔术师如何将平凡事物“化为非凡”的台词听起来既像是艺术家的宣言，又像是一种信仰的告白，事实也确实如此。对于诺兰来说，那种非凡的事物就是电影本身。

Nolan’s love of movies and commitment to them — to what they can do, what they can be, what they should be — runs like an electric current through his filmography, lighting it, and oftentimes you, up. That passion is in every frame of his monumental adaptation of “The Odyssey,” one of the most Nolan of Nolan spectacles in its thematic concerns, formal playfulness, kinetic thrills and unabashed showmanship. Few directors close the divide between the art film and the blockbuster like Nolan does; fewer still give the audience something to not simply look forward to but also be excited by. Even as he has continued to refine his filmmaking, notably in his narrative experimentation, he always aims to please.

诺兰对电影的热爱和执着——对于电影能做什么、可以成为什么、以及应当是什么的执着——就像电流一样贯穿他的所有作品，它们点亮了作品，也常常会点亮作为观众的你们。这种激情体现在他这部史诗巨制《奥德赛》(The Odyssey)的每一帧画面中。无论是主题、形式的巧妙运用、动感十足的试听刺激还是毫不掩饰的炫技，它都堪称最具诺兰风格的诺兰奇观之一。很少有导演能像诺兰那样弥合艺术电影与商业大片之间的鸿沟；更少有导演能给观众带来不仅值得期待、更能令人心潮澎湃的体验。尽管他一直在不断精进自己的电影创作技巧——尤其是在叙事实验方面，他也始终致力于取悦观众。

It seems inevitable that Nolan would eventually take on “The Odyssey,” one of the foundations of Western literature. And why not? The story is a trippy, far-out blast, and has the kind of sinuous, complex layering that has become one of his signatures. Credited to Homer, the original poem consists of 12,109 lines of nonlinear, nonstop talk and action featuring gods, mortals, monsters, weird doings, hospitality rituals and oceans of blood, tears and wine. Whatever the adaptation, the tale is so ingrained in our cultural DNA that even those who haven’t read the original — or Joseph Campbell on the hero’s journey — will be familiar with it, having seen a movie or two. It’s Luke Skywalker’s path and WALL-E’s, too.

诺兰最终会拍摄《奥德赛》似乎是必然的，它是西方文学的基石之一。为什么不呢？这个故事是一场奇幻而又离奇的狂欢，并且具有那种曲折、复杂的层次感，而这恰恰已成为诺兰的标志性风格之一。这部据传出自荷马之手的史诗原著共12109行，以非线性、一气呵成的的对话和动作交织起诸神、凡人、怪物、怪异事件、待客仪式，以及血海、泪海与酒海。无论怎样改编，这个故事都早已植入我们的文化基因中。哪怕你没读过原著，也没读过约瑟夫·坎贝尔关于“英雄之旅“的理论，只要你看过一两部电影，就对它绝不陌生。它是卢克·天行者之路，也是瓦力之路。

The most striking thing about this film, other than its being the first feature shot entirely in IMAX, is that it exists. It is an anomalous big-studio entertainment that Nolan has filled with stars — Matt Damon is Odysseus! Zendaya is Athena!— and polished to a high gleam, turning a 3,000-year-old poem into a smart, thoughtful film with Old Hollywood allure. It’s a throwback and of its moment, including in how it adjudicates the costs of war. (Who benefits, and who suffers?) Its hero is, to a degree, the cunning, complicated Odysseus who leaps off the page, but he’s been sweetened and made more psychologically legible for contemporary sensibilities. He’s also played by an appealing actor who excels at elevated everymen.

除了它是首部完全使用IMAX拍摄的故事片之外，这部电影最引人注目的地方还在于它的存在本身。这是一部打破常规的大制片厂娱乐大片，诺兰在片中集结了全明星阵容——马特·达蒙饰演奥德修斯！赞达亚饰演雅典娜！，并将影片打磨得光芒四射，将一首有3000年历史的史诗变成了一部充满智慧、发人深省且具有老好莱坞魅力的电影。这是一次复古，也切中当下，包括它对战争代价的评判（谁受益，谁受苦？）。它的主人公在某种程度上保留了原著中那个狡黠而复杂的奥德修斯的形象，但为了贴近现代观众的口味，他的形象被柔化，心理转变也显得更加清晰易懂，并且由一位极具魅力、擅长演绎“升华版普通人”的演员饰演。

In outline, the story tracks Odysseus, who has been missing in action for two decades, having gone astray in the wake of the Trojan War. (For more on that, see: “The Iliad.”) He’s now a lost amnesiac. His absence has wreaked havoc on his family, leaving his wife, Penelope (Anne Hathaway), and their adult son, Telemachus (Tom Holland), bereft. Nolan dedicates far more of his version to Odysseus’s magical wanderings than the poem does. But true to the poem, Nolan insistently circles back to the family that Odysseus left behind, reminding you of the agonies of the domestic front that are often devalued or ignored in male-driven fantasies.

故事大致追随着奥德修斯的经历，他在特洛伊战争后迷失了方向，已经失踪了20年。（更多相关内容请参阅《伊利亚特》）。如今，他是一个迷失的失忆者。他的缺席给家庭带来了毁灭性的打击，让妻子佩涅洛佩（安妮·海瑟薇 饰）和已成年的儿子忒勒玛科斯（汤姆·赫兰德 饰）陷入失去亲人的悲痛之中。与原著史诗相比，诺兰在影片中将更多篇幅投入到奥德赛的奇幻漂泊之中。但忠于原著的是，诺兰始终不忘回溯奥德修斯留在家乡的家人，提醒着观众在男性主导的幻想中经常被贬低或忽视的家庭一方的痛苦。

The casting of Damon helps shift the story into a more familiar movie register, as do some of Nolan’s other choices. He’s populated the story with many of the poem’s supernatural support team, including Cyclops (Bill Irwin), a giant with a single, hauntingly baleful eye, and Calypso (Charlize Theron), a goddess who evokes a 1960s James Bond vixen and keeps Odysseus as a sex prisoner. Athena periodically pops in to cast a sorrowful gaze on the proceedings, and while Zeus is invoked, he remains offscreen. Nolan’s Odysseus is the hero sung of in the poem’s opening line, but he’s less godlike and his multitudes — warrior, leader, lover, husband, father, trickster, liar — are contained in a sinewy, leathery, fallibly human man.

由达蒙担任主演有助于将故事转换到更令人熟悉的电影基调中，诺兰的其他一些选择也是如此。他让原诗中许多超自然的配角出现在故事中，包括独眼巨人（比尔·欧文 饰），他拥有一只令人毛骨悚然的邪恶眼睛；以及卡吕普索（查理兹·塞隆 饰），这位女神让人联想到20世纪60年代詹姆斯·邦德系列电影中的妖艳女郎，她将奥德修斯作为性奴囚禁起来。雅典娜偶尔会突然出现，用忧伤的目光注视着这一切，而宙斯虽然被提及，却始终没有出现在银幕上。诺兰的奥德修斯是原诗开篇所歌颂的英雄，但他没那么像神，他的多重身份——战士、领袖、情人、丈夫、父亲、骗子、说谎者——都凝聚在一个肌肉发达、皮肤粗糙、会犯错误的凡人身上。

安妮·海瑟薇饰演佩涅洛佩，汤姆·霍兰德饰演忒勒玛科斯。

It goes without saying that this is very much a man’s story, and essentially about his twinned inward and outer journey home. Nolan wrote the screenplay and has largely retained the poem’s kinked narrative arc. He has compressed sections, jettisoned others and omitted many characters, a necessity given the event-packed original, which in its English-language translations, runs well over 500 pages. Even with these liberties, his version is recognizable in its sweep, fragmentation and multiple story lines, starting with Odysseus’s palace on the island of Ithaca. There, Penelope is weaving and reweaving the same cloth to fend off suitors like Antinous (Robert Pattinson) and Polybus (Corey Hawkins) who, eager to take her husband’s place, have camped out at the palace eating and drinking through its provisions.

毋庸置疑，这在很大程度上是一个男人的故事，本质上讲述了他内心与外在的双重归乡之旅。诺兰亲自编写了剧本，并很大程度上保留了原诗曲折的叙事弧线。他压缩了部分内容，抛弃了一些部分，并省略了许多角色——考虑到原著内容十分丰富，英译本超过500页，这种取舍也是必然之举。尽管做了这些自由处理，他的版本在广度、碎片化结构和多重故事线方面依然清晰可辨，故事从伊萨卡岛上奥德修斯的宫殿开始。在那里，佩涅洛佩正在一遍又一遍地编织和拆解同一块布，以抵挡安提诺乌斯（罗伯特·帕丁森 饰）和波吕玻斯（科里·霍金斯 饰）等求婚者。这些人渴望取代她丈夫的位置，他们驻扎在宫殿里，吃喝挥霍着宫殿的物资。

Shortly after the film opens, after Nolan has taken the lay of this troubled land and made fast introductions, Telemachus clandestinely sets sail to learn the truth about Odysseus’s fate and it’s on. From the instant that Nolan cuts from a high-angle extreme long shot of Telemachus’s ship on the water to a similarly distant shot of Odysseus walking through the shallows on Calypso’s beach, the filmmaker has announced himself with a flourish. With one edit, two elegant images and a pair of men separately on the move, Nolan has connected the father and the son visually and narratively, while also suggesting the presence of the divine. In movies, these shots are called God’s-eye views; here, they’re unmistakably Nolan’s.

电影开场后不久，在诺兰展现了这片动荡土地的局势并进行了快速的背景介绍之后，忒勒玛科斯便秘密起航，去探寻奥德修斯命运的真相，故事就此展开。诺兰将镜头从俯瞰特莱马科斯船只的高角度超远景切换到奥德修斯在卡吕普索海滩漫步的类似远景，那一瞬间，导演便以一种华丽的姿态宣告了自己的存在。通过一次剪辑、两个优雅的画面以及两位各自行动的男人，诺兰在视觉和叙事上将父子二人联系在一起，同时也暗示了神明的存在。在电影中，这类镜头被称为“上帝视角”；而在本片中，它们无疑是“诺兰视角”。

从左至右依次为：凯弗斯（吉米·冈萨雷斯饰）、奥德修斯（达蒙饰）和欧律洛科斯（希梅什·帕特尔饰）。

From here on in, the filmmaker is in his groove. Individually, Odysseus and Telemachus push the story forward as they head toward self-discovery and each other, but they also steer it into the past. Nolan is in his cinematic wheelhouse here and he slips among the time frames fluidly, folding in flashbacks of Odysseus in Troy languishing on its beach with comrades (Elliot Page, among them) and building the wooden horse that will doom the enemy. Like the film, the horse is elegant and massive — posed on its hind legs, it looks fashioned from the ribs of ship — larger than life and holding more than it seems. It’s a totem of Odysseus’s genius and cruelty; it’s also an emblem of Nolan’s filmmaking, imposing in its beauty and scale.

从此以后，这位电影人便渐入佳境。奥德修斯和忒勒玛科斯各自推动着故事向前发展，他们在通往自我发现和彼此相遇的道路上前行，同时也引导着故事回溯过往。在这里，诺兰如鱼得水地驾驭着电影，他流畅地穿梭在不同时间框架之间，融入了奥德修斯在特洛伊的闪回片段——他与战友们（包括艾略特·佩吉饰演的角色）在海滩上备受煎熬，并且建造那匹将令敌人覆灭的木马。这匹马以后腿站立，看起来像是用船只龙骨制成。就像这部电影一样，它显得优雅而又庞大，超乎现实，蕴含着超越表象的深意。它是奥德修斯天才与残酷的图腾；也是诺兰电影制作的象征，以其美感和恢弘气势而令人敬畏。

In some of Nolan’s movies, his virtuosity can seem like an end in itself, which makes the characters feel more like props, clever but instrumental. “The Odyssey” is also about a man trying to discover who he is, which means he must understand what he’s done. When the Trojans drag the horse off the beach, Nolan emphasizes the intense physical effort needed to haul this colossus. Here, as when Odysseus and his crew are flung about their ship during storms, Nolan turns a mythological tale into cinematic realism with creaking wood and straining rope, the grunts and cries of men. He brings characters who can seem exotically distant nearer to us, humanizing people, including those Odysseus will soon help slaughter.

在诺兰的一些电影中，他的精湛技艺似乎本身就是一种目的，这使得角色感觉更像是道具，聪明却只是工具。《奥德赛》也是关于一个试图发现自己是谁的男人，这意味着他必须理解自己做过什么。当特洛伊人把木马拖离海滩时，诺兰强调了拖动这个庞然大物所需的巨大体力劳动。奥德修斯和他的船员在风暴中东倒西歪，诺兰用嘎吱作响的木头和拉紧的绳索、男人们的闷哼和呼喊声将一个神话故事变成了电影现实主义。他将那些看起来充满异国情调般遥远的角色拉近我们，赋予人们人性，其中包括那些奥德修斯很快将协助屠杀的人。

As the saga hops and skips across time and space, characters enter and exit, some making a stronger impression than others. A few, like Samantha Morton’s enraged proto-feminist pig herder, Circe, and Jon Bernthal’s tough-talking King Menelaus, skew distinctly modern, which can feel like a sop to the audience. Others zip in and out so fast they scarcely register, including Menelaus’s wife, Helen, and her sister, Clytemnestra (Lupita Nyong’o, doing what she can with little). Clytemnestra’s husband, King Agamemnon, cuts a threatening figure if only because his black armor and helmet suggest a Homeric Darth Vader. It’s a minor role that becomes smaller once the armor is off, revealing a pale Benny Safdie flashing his rear.

随着这部史诗跨越时空的跳跃式发展，角色们登场又退场，一些角色留下的印象要相对深刻一些。少数角色——比如萨曼莎·莫顿饰演的愤怒的、具有早期女权主义色彩的养猪人喀耳刻，以及乔·博恩瑟饰演的说话强硬的墨涅拉俄斯国王——明显带有现代感，这让人感觉像是在迎合观众。其他角色来去匆匆，几乎没留下什么印象，包括墨涅拉俄斯的妻子海伦以及她的妹妹克吕泰涅斯特拉（两者都由露皮塔·尼永奥饰演，她在戏份寥寥的情况下已尽其所能）。克吕泰涅斯特拉的丈夫阿伽门农国王显得颇具威胁性，哪怕只是因为他的黑色盔甲和头盔让人联想到荷马史诗版达斯·维达。这是一个小角色，一旦脱下盔甲就变得更加微不足道，露出了脸色苍白的本尼·萨夫迪，还露了一下臀部。

The performances are uniformly good, though Damon’s Odysseus is tamped down and notably devoid of charisma, as if he were as hollow as the wood decoy. In action-adventure terms it’s a counterintuitive choice even if it serves Nolan’s tricky, more non-triumphalist ends. One upshot, though, is that few of the actors, Damon included, manage to hold you with the same emotional force that Nolan’s filmmaking does. Both Holland and especially Hathaway have bracingly strong moments, but his character has too little presence and hers remains shrouded in mystery, which Nolan expresses by filming her behind a latticed screen or the threads on her loom. Mother and son are sympathetic; they’re also routinely upstaged by Pattinson’s wildly enjoyable flop-sweating suitor whose demise you hunger for.

演员们的表现可圈可点，尽管达蒙饰演的奥德修斯被刻意压抑且明显缺乏魅力，仿佛他和那个木制诱饵一样是中空的。就动作冒险片而言，这是一个反直觉的选择，即使它服务于诺兰那微妙的、较少凯旋主义色彩的目的。但结果就是，包括达蒙在内，几乎没有哪个演员能像诺兰的视听语言那样打动你。赫兰德和海瑟薇（尤其是）后者都有令人振奋的强烈表演时刻，但儿子的角色存在感太弱，母亲的角色则始终笼罩在神秘之中，诺兰通过隔着格子屏风或织布机上的线来拍摄她，以表达这种神秘感。这对母子令人同情，但他们也常常被帕丁森饰演的那个紧张流汗、疯狂讨好人的求婚者抢尽风头，你会迫切地渴望看到这个求婚者走向灭亡。

The imprint of “The Odyssey” on Nolan’s work can be startling, which, for all this movie’s spectacle, makes it uncharacteristically personal. There are echoes from his filmography throughout, including in the poem’s story and its telling (all that cross cutting!), in how it boldly leaps across time and space, in its doubling and its focus on identity. When Odysseus asks Calypso who he is, he recalls Guy Pearce’s existential search in “Memento” (2001), Nolan’s breakout about another amnesiac. Like Odysseus, Leonardo DiCaprio’s character in “Inception” (2010) struggles to reunite with family and uses a token to help anchor him.

《奥德赛》在诺兰作品中留下的印记可能令人吃惊，尽管这部电影场面宏大，却也因此显得格外个人化。片中处处回响着他以往作品的余音：从故事本身到叙事方式（全是交叉剪辑！），以及它如何大胆地跨越时空、它的双重性和对身份的关注。当奥德修斯问卡吕普索他是谁时，让人想起盖·皮尔斯在诺兰成名作《记忆碎片》（Memento，2001年）中存在主义式的探索，那是关于另一个失忆者的故事。和奥德修斯一样，莱昂纳多·迪卡普里奥在《盗梦空间》（Inception，2010年）中的角色也努力与家人团聚，并使用一个信物来帮助自己定位现实。

After watching “The Odyssey” again, I flashed on something that Martin Scorsese once said about another film: “The emotion is the emulsion.” Nolan’s gifts are excessively obvious, and even when his characters don’t stir you, his filmmaking does. Among other qualities, he doesn’t know how to make an ugly image and this one is filled with rapturous beauty. Nolan employs beauty strategically, using it to seduce viewers into stories that can seem needlessly byzantine to some — especially by impoverished mainstream industry standards — more the province of the art house than the multiplex. Nolan asks us to dream bigger. His “Odyssey” is a classic in every sense, a transporting affirmation of the art and a work of pure cinema.

在再次观看《奥德赛》之后，我脑海中闪过马丁·斯科塞斯曾经谈论另一部电影时说过的话：“情感就是感光乳剂。”诺兰的天赋显而易见，即使当他的角色无法打动你时，他的电影技法也可以。他有许多特点，其中一个是怎么拍也拍不出丑陋的画面，而这部电影充满了令人狂喜的美感。诺兰策略性地运用了美，用它来诱惑观众进入对某些人来说似乎繁复如拜占庭迷宫般的故事——特别是按照如今贫瘠的商业主流标准来看，这些故事本该属于艺术影院，而非商业多厅影院。诺兰要求我们敢于做更宏大的梦。他的《奥德赛》在任何意义上都是一部经典之作，是对这门艺术一次引人入胜的确认，也是一部“纯电影”。

The OdysseyRated R (absurdly) for violence and some language. Running time: 2 hours 52 minutes. In theaters.

《奥德赛》（The Odyssey）。评级：因暴力和部分语言被（荒唐地）评为R级。片长：2小时52分钟。院线上映中。