When Real Life Mixes With Movie Storylines
真實生活與電影情節交織
By Eric Hynes

In a dark apartment in Tokyo, a lonely woman is transported to the snowy vistas of Minnesota. She gets lost in the fuzzy images on her TV, fast-forwarding, rewinding and pausing, searching for clues and meaning. When the worn-out tape is snarled in her VCR, she pulls the unspooled mess into her face and inhales reverently.
在東京一棟黑暗公寓中，一個孤獨的女子被送到明尼蘇達州的雪地。她迷失在她電視的模糊畫面中，快轉、倒帶、暫停，尋找線索和意義。當老舊的磁帶在她的錄放影機纏在一起，她將脫離卷盤的一團磁帶拉扯到臉上，深吸了一口氣，心中虔誠無比。

It’s not long before she is on a plane headed to America, hunting for the money that Steve Buscemi buried in “Fargo,” the 1996 film that she scrutinizes as if it were real. As playfully asserted by the new film “Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter,” a fantasia inspired by an urban myth, the title character played by Rinko Kikuchi, has the power to make something real out of something fake – to remake and refashion the movie in her own image. It’s just the latest exploration of how modern humans have adapted their imaginations and identities in response to the recorded image.
不久後，她登機飛往美國，尋找史蒂夫布希米在1996年電影《冰血暴》中埋藏的錢財。她鉅細靡遺觀賞這部電影，彷彿電影情節真的存在。新電影《久美子的奇異旅程》是一部靈感來自城市神話的幻想片，電影玩笑般指出，菊地凜子飾演的主人翁有化假成真的能力，以自己的影像改造與改變電影。新電影提供了另一最新探討：面對錄製的影像，現代人會如何調整自己的想像與身分。

Reality wasn’t what the David and Nathan Zellner were after with the deadpan “Kumiko.” The idea for it started with a news item about a Japanese woman, whose body was found in a Minnesota field in 2001. Rather than sort through the facts of the case, the brothers were more intrigued by the Internet speculation that followed the discovery – talk that centered on rumors of an intercontinental quest for the treasure in “Fargo.”
透過面無表情的「久美子」，大衛和納森．澤爾納並非想探索真實。電影源自一則日本女性的新聞，2001年，有人在明尼蘇達州的田野發現她的屍體。兩兄弟並未梳理案件的真相，他們更感興趣的，是屍體發現後網際網路出現的一項猜測，內容主要是《冰血暴》中埋藏的錢財已引發洲際尋寶熱的謠言。

“There wasn’t a tremendous amount of time before it was debunked, but it was just enough to let people’s imaginations run with it,” David Zellner, 41, said. “I think you can link it to the history of storytelling, the way fables are derived from some element of truth that’s then built upon over generations.”
41歲的大衛澤爾納說：「這件事沒多久就被拆穿，但歷時之久適足以讓人們發揮想像力。我認為你可以把它和說故事的歷史聯結起來，類似某則寓言最初只是來自真相的某個元素，後來在數個年代中添增了枝節。」

Born and raised in Colorado and now living in Austin, Texas, the Zellners remember collaborating with their father on Super 8 stop-motion animations when they were in preschool, and then making movies with a VHS camera in the 1980s. “Like a lot of young kids do, we emulated things we’d already seen – you know, lots of terrible spoofs of blockbusters,” David said.
澤爾納兄弟出生和成長於科羅拉多州，現居德州奧斯汀，他們記得讀幼稚園時曾在《超級8》定格動畫中與父親合作，其後在1980年代以一部VHS攝影機拍攝電影。大衛說：「和許多小孩子一樣，我們模仿我們看過的東西。你知道的，許多賣座電影的恐怖瞎搞。」

The Zellners’ story resembles that of the Angulo brothers, the subjects of the documentary “The Wolfpack,” which won the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival. But whereas the Zellners’ movie love was just part of a rangy upbringing, movies were the Angulo boys’ most significant connection to the outside world.
澤爾納兄弟的故事與安古洛兄弟類似，安古洛兄弟是紀錄片《狼群》的主題人物，該片獲日舞影展評審團大獎。然而澤爾納兄弟愛電影只是寬廣的養成教育的一部分，對安古洛兄弟而言，電影卻是與外在世界的最重要連結。

Largely confined to their New York apartment by an overprotective father, the six brothers obsessed over movies they could watch on VHS and DVD, and eventually took to elaborately re-enacting them. In the documentary, they’re shown transcribing dialogue by hand, making costumes and props from household items, and transforming their cramped apartment into an endlessly adaptable movie set.
六個兄弟多半時間被過度保護他們的父親關在紐約的公寓中，對在VHS影帶和影碟上觀看的電影著迷不已，最終並開始精心重拍。在這部紀錄片中，他們以手抄寫對白，以家庭用品製作服裝和道具，將狹小的公寓改成永無止盡、一改再改的電影布景。

“Sometimes it takes them weeks to make a single costume,” the director Crystal Moselle, 34, said by phone.
34歲的導演克里斯托．摩塞爾在電話中說：「有時候他們花了好幾星期才做成一件服裝。」

These homemade emulations call to mind “Be Kind Rewind,” Michel Gondry’s 2008 film in which a New Jersey town bands together to remake famous movies after the stock of a beloved video store has been ruined.
這些自製的模仿作品讓人想到米歇爾．岡瑞2008年的電影《王牌自拍秀》。片中一個新澤西城鎮的民眾因心愛錄影帶店的庫存被毀，決定合力重拍一些知名電影。

It’s telling that in all of these cases, the obsolete VHS format provides fodder for new creations. “It would be much less interesting if she pulled out a USB stick, or a Blu-ray disc, and just had to dust it off to get it to work,” Nathan Zellner, 39, said.
所有這些例子都在告訴我們，過時的VHS格式可以成為新創作的素材。39歲的納森澤爾納說：「如果她只是抽出隨身碟或藍光光碟，或只要撣掉灰塵就能觀看，會無趣得多。」

Asked if they hid treasures for fans who may follow in Kumiko’s steps, David said they were too busy to do such a thing. “But if we did,” he added, “we wouldn’t tell anyone about it.”
問到他們是否替想跟隨久美子腳步的影迷藏了寶藏，大衛說，他們太忙，沒空做這種事。他說：「就算真的藏了，也不會告訴任何人。」

原文參照：
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/15/movies/life-or-movie-kumiko-the-treasure-hunter-and-the-wolfpack-blur-lines.html

2015-03-31聯合報/G9版/UNITED DAILY NEWS 王麗娟譯 原文參見紐時週報十二版右