Feb 1st 2007 BERLINFrom The Economist print edition
German films are riding on a wave of critical and commercial acclaim as directors find that they can make people laugh—to everyone's surprise
近年来德国电影的好成绩取决于一波又一波评论界的好评和商业上的认可，一些德国导演发现他们也可以给人们带来欢笑，这多少有些让人觉得出乎意料。
“WHEREVER I go in the world”, says Dieter Kosslick, director of the Berlin film festival, “there is a real sense of excitement about German films.” This optimism has been growing ever since “Good Bye Lenin!” became a hit in 2003, grossing $80m, most of it overseas. Wolfgang Becker's reunification tale, about a woman who falls into a coma just before the Berlin wall comes down and wakes up eight months later, had a bittersweet magic to it: a small human story illuminating a massive historical event. Virtually no German films were being sold abroad at the time, so its success came as a surprise. Audiences and critics outside Germany were amazed that German storytelling could be so light.
柏林电影节主席迪特•克里斯克（Dieter Kosslick）说：“我所到世界各处，都可以感受到那里对于德国电影真实的激动之情。”自从 2003年《再见列宁》获得八千万美元的票房收入（大部分是海外市场），成为大热门以来，这种乐观主义的思想就日渐抬头。该片讲述的是一位居住在东德中年女子在柏林墙倒塌前不久陷入昏迷，然而却在八个月后苏醒。沃夫冈•贝克尔（Wolfgang Becker）这个关于东西德统一的故事，带酸甜苦辣的特质：一段关于人性的叙述，却阐述了重大的历史性事件。实际上，当时德国电影还没有海外市场，所以它的成功着实让人大吃一惊，外国的观众和评论界都惊讶于德国电影也能够有如此轻快的叙事。
“Good Bye Lenin!” was also a strong contender in the Berlin film festival's main competition. Four years on, the festival, which runs from February 8th-18th, includes two new German-language offerings: “Yella”, directed by 46-year-old Christian Petzold, and “Die Fälscher” (“The Counterfeiters”), about a money-printing scam at the end of the war, directed by Stefan Ruzowitzky, an Austrian film-maker.
《再见列宁》当时也是柏林电影节竞赛单元的有力竞争者。四年后的今天，于2月8日至2月18日举办的第57届柏林电影节，也包括了两部新的德语影片：四十六岁的克里斯蒂安•佩佐德（Christian Petzold）拍摄的《耶拉》（Yella），还有一部关于二战末期纳粹印刷英镑伪钞阴谋的电影《伪钞制造者》(The Counterfeiters)，由一名澳大利亚导演史蒂芬•罗兹威斯基所拍摄。
German films do not automatically make the grade in this most important of European festivals (which is more accessible to the general public than its more glamorous rivals, Venice and Cannes). When German films appeared to be promoted beyond their worth, before and immediately after reunification, critics were invariably disparaging and audiences bored. The glory days of the 1960s and 1970s, when directors such as Werner Herzog and Rainer Werner Fassbinder were at their best, had vanished.
德国电影并不是自动的挤身于欧洲各大重要的电影节。无论是在威尼斯电影节还是嘎纳影展，与其说是面对众多优秀的竞争者，不如说是获得更多在公众面前曝光的机会。在东西德统一前后不久，当德国电影的提升似乎超越了它的价值本身之时，评论界恶评如潮，观众也厌倦了。处在沃纳•赫尔佐格（Werner Herzog）和赖纳•维尔纳•法斯宾德（Rainer Werner Fassbinder）鼎盛时期辉煌的1960年代和1970年代，已经不复存在。
Then, in 2004, the year after “Good Bye Lenin!”, Hamburg-born Fatih Akin, of Turkish parentage, won the festival's Golden Bear award for “Gegen die Wand” (“Head-On”), a bleak, violent tale about Turkish-German cultural crossover. “It was a fantastic kick for the industry to have ‘Head-On’ win,” says Mr Kosslick.
《再见列宁》公映之后的2004年，出生于德国汉堡的土耳其裔导演费斯•阿金以《勇往直前》获得了柏林电影节金熊奖。影片是关于土耳其人和德国人之间文化跨界，充满凄凉和暴力的故事。克里斯克先生说：“《勇往直前》的获胜对于德国电影工业来说是一个绝好的刺激。”
Verena Lüken, a film critic at the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, one of the country's leading papers, notes that today's films squarely address those contemporary issues that matter most to Germans: migration, identity, social marginalisation and history. “The question asked by the new generation in these films is not the inevitable ‘Was my grandfather a Nazi’ but, say, ‘Was my grandfather an Anatolian?’”
德国最主要的报纸《法兰克福汇报》的影评人维雷娜•吕肯（Verena Lüken）表示，今日的德国电影直接诉诸于当代德国人最主要的议题：移民问题、身份认同、社会边缘和历史问题。“在这些影片中，新生代不再质问‘我的祖父是纳粹吗？’这样难以避免的问题，而是‘我的祖父是安纳托利亚人吗？’（土耳其的主要民族，译者注）。”
Ms Lüken remembers being tired by German fare throughout the 1980s and 1990s. Now, she says, people like her are glad to be able to “leave behind this really bad impression we had then. German critics sit up when they hear critics in France or England praising German movies.”
吕肯（Lüken）女士会常常回忆贯穿1980年代到1990年代间德国的那段演进历程，一些德国人却对这些遭遇有所厌倦了。现在，她说像他这样的人乐于能够“把我们曾经拥有过的这些实在糟糕印象抛在脑后。当听到法国或者英国对于德国电影的赞誉，德国影评人也高兴得坐不住了。”
Ever since “Good Bye Lenin!” and “Head-On”, German cinema has grown in confidence. More films are being made. Film schools in Cologne and Berlin are thriving. Directors such as Valeska Grisebach and Benjamin Heisenberg, both under 40 and not known outside Germany, are being praised for films of genuine originality. And a new three-year fund, worth euro 60m ($77.5m) a year and open to anyone making a feature film in Germany with a budget of at least euro 1m, has also just been established by the Ministry of Culture.
自《再见列宁》和《勇往直前》以来，德国电影的成长自信满满，更多的新片正在制作中，科隆和柏林的电影学院也呈现勃勃生机。瓦勒斯卡•格里泽巴赫（Valeska Grisebach）和本杰明•海森堡（Benjamin Heisenberg），两位在德国之外并不出名的40岁以下的新晋导演，评论对他们真诚的创新力也赞誉有嘉。德国政府文化部刚刚设立了一个新的三年导演基金，每年6000万欧元（7700万美元），向任何在德国拍摄电影长片的导演提供至少100万欧元的预算资金。
German film-makers have discovered that if you make your film entertaining and surprising, as happened with “Good Bye Lenin!”, you can succeed at the box office. Some are stories about very ordinary lives, as in the urban, edgy work of Andreas Dresen and Mr Petzold. Mr Dresen's “Sommer vorm Balkon” (“Summer in Berlin”), about two young women in dead-end jobs, lacks plot or any obvious action, but it works at another level: the idiosyncratically drawn characters, involved with unsuitable men, are impossible not to like. The film has an easy charm, something always expected of French films, but rare in German ones.
德国的导演们发现，如果你拍的电影像《再见列宁》一样充满娱乐性并让人惊奇，你就能在票房上有所斩获。这些影片有些讲述的是非常普通的都市生活，例如安德烈斯•德雷森（Andreas Dresen）和佩佐德的新锐风格的作品。德雷森的影片《阳台前的夏天》（Summer in Berlin），情节围绕两个苦于处在没有前途的工作中的两个女性展开。影片缺乏情节性，但却致力于另一层面的展现：愁眉苦脸的人物角色，和并不相配的男人陷入情感纠葛，叫人不得不喜欢。影片有一种法国电影轻松悠闲的迷人气质，然而却是一部罕见的德国电影。
Mr. Petzold's “Gespenster” (“Ghosts”), also set in a summery Berlin, is more sinister. A girl in care, Nina, is spotted by a French woman who believes her to be her baby, stolen years before from a supermarket trolley. We learn that the woman is ill, in long-term, traumatic mourning for her loss. Nina, also befriended by a sassy kleptomaniac called Toni who takes her on a thieving spree, is no one's daughter.
佩佐德的影片《幽灵》就显得更加凶险，故事同样发生于夏日的柏林。被收养所收容的女孩尼娜被一个法国女人所认出，她坚信尼娜就是她多年前在超市手推车里被人拐走的女儿。长期处在失去女儿的哀痛之中，使得这个女人的精神有点问题。尼娜并不是她的女儿，而是受到有盗窃癖的无赖托尼的照料帮助，并且和他进行了疯狂的盗窃活动。
Here Mr Petzold taps into a compelling German theme: that of emptiness, of something missing, of one generation trying, and often failing, to connect with another. His film is a little similar to an earlier masterpiece, Wim Wenders's “Paris, Texas” (1984), only on a much smaller budget and with an unnerving naturalism.
佩佐德在影片中挖掘了一个引人关注的德国主题：空虚、缺失，还有令人难以接受，常常无法与他人沟通联络的一代人。他的影片有一点像一部早几年前的大师作品——维姆•文德斯的《德州巴黎》（1984），只有非常少的影片预算，并且有着令人感到心力交瘁的自然主义风格。
These deliberately modest films, belonging to what is loosely termed the “Berlin school”, rub shoulders with more conventional, full-scale location movies. Many of them are made by Constantin Film, a Munich production company. One such was Oliver Hirschbiegel's 2004 “Der Untergang” (“Downfall”), about Hitler's last days, the most talked-about German film in decades.
这些审慎保守的影片，属于未曾严谨定义的“柏林学派”，手法传统，且全部外景拍摄，其中很多都是由慕尼黑的康斯坦丁影业公司制作。例如奥利弗•西斯贝格（Oliver Hirschbiegel）2004年拍摄的关于希特勒最后日子的《帝国的覆灭》，这也是最近十年来被谈论最多的德国电影。
Hoping for an Oscar 期盼奥斯卡
But the film that is currently causing the biggest stir is “Das Leben der Anderen” (“The Lives of Others”), about Stasi surveillance of an East Berlin writer set five years before the fall of the wall. It has already picked up numerous European prizes and has just been nominated for an Oscar for best foreign film. While its rookie director, Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, struggled for eight years to get it made, there is little else about this wonderful film that is ostentatiously heroic. Quiet and poignant, it is also starkly authentic: this is how the GDR, with its bugging, wanton bureaucracy and petty cruelty, must have been.
不过，当前引起最大轰动的电影则是《他人的生活》（The Lives of Others），情节设定在柏林墙倒下的五年前，关于东德斯塔西情报机关窃听一名剧作家的影片。该片已经获得了众多欧洲电影奖项并且刚被提名为奥斯卡最佳外语影片。尽管影片是由新晋导演弗洛里安•亨克尔•冯•多纳斯马（Florian Henckel-Donnersmarck）拍摄，但是他历时八年才完成这部美妙的电影，并不是一部过于卖弄的影片。影片充满安静且令人心酸的调子，非常真实可信：原东德民主共和国情报机构的窃听活动，恣意的官僚和十分残酷的暴行，符合当时东德的环境。
Sebastian Koch is magnetic as Georg Dreyman, the lead. Martina Gedeck, Dreyman's compromised actress-girlfriend Christa-Maria, is engrossing and Ulrich Mühe (pictured), as the repressed, intruding Stasi officer who finally saves Dreyman through calculated acts of misinformation, is magnificent. The film is a real piece of authorship, chilling yet entirely believable.
饰演片中主角格奥格•德莱曼（Georg Dreyman）的塞巴斯蒂安•考奇（Sebastian Koch）的表演很具有吸引力。马蒂娜•戈黛特（Martina Gedeck）饰演片中德莱曼的女友克里斯塔-玛丽娅（Christa-Maria），在片中是一位演员，也同样引人入胜。乌尔里希•穆埃（Ulrich Mühe）扮演被压抑已久，专断的斯塔西情报人员，他最终通过一些有计划的错误信息的行动救了德莱曼，也同样让人印象深刻。这部影片是一部真正的“作者影片”，风格冷冽却完全真实可信。
If “The Lives of Others” wins its Oscar, as did another German film in 2002, “Nirgendwo in Afrika” (“Nowhere in Africa”), it will confirm a return to form for German films of substance and broad appeal. If it does not, no matter, Films as good as this will go on being made. People everywhere want to see them.
若《他人的生活》如同2002年的《情陷非洲》（Nowhere in Africa）一样在奥斯卡获奖，那么可以确定的是，将会重新形成德国电影在世界影坛的重要地位和广泛的吸引力；就算没获奖，这样优秀的德国影片同样会被继续的拍摄出来，世界各地的人们都翘首以待。
