A space western and a blissed-out cosmic high, “The Martian” stars Matt Damon as an American astronaut who, like a latter-day Robinson Crusoe, learns to survive on his own island of despair. At once epic and intimate, it involves a dual journey into outer and inner space, a trip that takes you into that immensity called the universe and deep into the equally vast landscape of a single consciousness. For this accidental castaway, space is the place where he’s physically marooned, but also where his mind is set free — a dynamic that of course invokes moviegoing itself.

《火星救援》（台译《绝地救援》，港译《火星任务》——译注）如同一部太空西部片与充满至福的宇宙飞片，马特•达蒙(Matt Damon)饰演一个有点像当代鲁滨逊•克罗索(Robinson Crusoe)的美国飞行员，学着在自己的绝望孤岛上生存。它既有史诗的宏大，又有亲密色彩；是一段既向外太空探索，同时又深入内心的双重旅程；它带你进入无垠的宇宙，亦深入一个人内心世界同等广阔的图景。对于这个意外被抛弃的人来说，他的身体被围困在外太空，但他的思想是自由的——这样的张力当然值得到影院一观。

Perhaps that’s one reason Ridley Scott keeps returning to deep space. This is the third of his films — after “Alien” in 1979 and “Prometheus” in 2012 — set beyond the dark side of the moon. Hands down it’s also the funniest, loosest and most optimistic of the group, at once an ode to far-out adventuring and to terra-firma home, a sweeping, old-fashioned entertainment and a plaintive portrait of solitude as both a creative necessity and a danger. It also serves as a nice plug for NASA, which has returned the favor by pushing the movie on its website. (On Monday, scientists announced that signs of liquid water could be seen in photographs taken on Mars by a camera on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, timing that suggests NASA certainly has the whole cross-promotion thing down.)

这或许也是雷利•斯科特(Ridley Scott)愿意一再拍摄太空题材的原因之一。这是他第三次让自己的影片走向月球暗面之外的太空――第一次是1979年的《异形》(Alien)，第二次是2012年的《普罗米修斯》(Prometheus)。毫无疑问，《火星救援》也是其中最有趣、最轻松、最乐观的一部，是对远征冒险以及陆上家园的颂歌，是范围宏大的老式娱乐，也是为“孤独”所绘制的悲哀肖像，而这种孤独既是创造的必需，也是一种危险。此外，它还充当了NASA的好广告，后者投桃报李，在自己的官网上宣传这部电影（9月28日，科学家宣布从火星轨道勘测器拍下的照片上有液态水存在的迹象，这个时机的选择表明，NASA确实和这部电影在搞互相宣传）。

Based on the novel “The Martian” by Andy Weir that Drew Goddard has turned into a fast-moving, streamlined script, the movie focuses on Mark Watney (Mr. Damon), who, during a windstorm on Mars, is accidentally left behind by his team. Mr. Scott likes the action to hit hard and fast: One minute Watney is joking with his space buddies — Jessica Chastain leads a crew that includes Kate Mara and Michael Peña — and minutes later he’s been hooked like a fish by some flying metal that knocks him out. Believing him dead, the crew takes off, as does the movie, which soon becomes a tale of two planets with initially competing narratives, one involving Watney’s efforts simply to stay alive and the second centered on NASA’s postdisaster strategizing.

编剧德鲁•高达(Drew Goddard)将安迪•威尔(Andy Weir)的小说原著《火星救援》改编为流畅的快节奏剧本，情节集中在马克•沃特尼（Mark Watney，达蒙饰）身上，他在一场火星风暴之后，意外地被团队留在了火星上。斯科特喜欢让事件来得又狠又快：前一分钟，沃特尼还在和太空船上的伙伴开玩笑——团队由杰西卡•查斯坦(Jessica Chastain)率领，成员还包括了凯特•玛拉(Kate Mara)和迈克尔•佩纳(Michael Peña)——几分钟后，他就像上钩的鱼一样，被什么飞来的金属敲昏了。同伴们相信他死了，就起飞了，从这里开始，电影也进入了高潮，很快就成了两个星球的故事，有了互相竞争的两条叙事线索，一个是沃特尼的求生经历，一个是NASA的灾难处理战略。

After some self-surgery to deal with the rod spearing his gut, along with some anxious stock-taking — he has plenty of tunes but not enough air, water and food to survive for long — Watney gets down to the business of living, including farming. “I’m not going to die here,” he helpfully mutters, helpfully because he talks out loud a lot whether just murmuring to himself or recording a video entry in his growing space log. The log keeps the words flowing in what could have been a fairly quiet movie, creating an animated lively babble that approaches the chummy feel of a video face chat. Watney makes for affably pleasant if worrisome company, and if there isn’t much mystery to him it’s because the purity of his struggle doesn’t leave him, at least, time for deep dives into questions of existence.

沃特尼给自己做了点外科手术取出插在腹部的金属杆，还焦虑地做了一番存货清点——他有足够的小曲，但却没有足够长时间维生的空气、水和食品，于是沃特尼开始着手求生的工作，包括务农。“我不会死在这儿，”他喃喃自语，他的自言自语是有帮助的，因为他大声说了很多话，无论是对自己说，还是用录像机录下来，作为太空视频日志。有了这份日志，才有不少台词加进来，否则这会是一部相当安静的电影。这些话创造出活泼的对话气泡，有点像视频对话的亲密感。沃特尼虽然忧虑，但装出亲切快活的样子，如果说他身上没什么神秘色彩，那是因为他的斗争实在太纯粹，至少让他没有时间去深入思考存在的本质问题。

Although Watney is isolated at first, with no means of communicating with Earth, the parallel narrative means that he’s never truly alone, unlike, say, Crusoe (before Friday) or Tom Hanks’s character in “Cast Away” (before Wilson), whose profound isolation is critical to how you experience them and their stories. Like these other marooned souls (including the 1964 “Robinson Crusoe on Mars”), Watney is physically and psychologically apart, but even before he pings Earth with his big news, you know people are mourning him. The Earth scenes interrupt these solitary interludes with other faces and voices, keeping the narrative jumping, but they also assert that no matter how lost and seemingly forgotten, no one is alone because to be human fundamentally is to exist with other people. We are social, therefore we are.

尽管沃特尼一开始与世隔绝，没有和地球联络的通讯工具，但平行的叙事线表明，他从未真正孤独，不像“星期五”出现之前的鲁滨逊，或是《荒岛余生》(Cast Away)中汤姆•汉克斯(Tom Nanks)饰演的角色（在威尔逊出现之前），他们极度孤独的状态，对于你如何感受他们与他们的故事来说，显得至关重要。正如其他那些孤立无援的灵魂――包括1964年的影片《鲁滨逊太空历险》(Robinson Crusoe on Mars)――沃特尼的身心是割裂的，但就算在他把自己的大新闻发送给地球之前，你也知道，人们在为他哀悼。地球上的场面不时介入到沃特尼孤独的片段中来，不同的面孔和声音让叙事一直保持跳跃；这些情节主张，不管一个人是多么迷失，而且看似已被遗忘，但没有人是孤独的，因为身为人类，最基本的就是要与他人共存。我们之所以存在，是因为我们是社会动物。

Gradually, the two stories become one as Watney and everyone else gets to work. At NASA, various brainiacs take hammers and tongs to physics at both the Johnson Space Center and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, where supernerds take on the logistics of a rescue mission. The movie gently thumps several issues: It’s unambiguously on the side of science and rationalism with glints of manifest destiny, American can-do-ism and a little flag-waving folded in. It is also about willing yourself out of the lonely room — call it Mars or your head — and into the world, however inhospitable, so you can breathe the air and drink the water (Watney learns to make both) and yearn for others. It’s a moving testament from the 77-year-old Mr. Scott, whose art comes in all shades of dark.

渐渐地，两个故事合二为一，沃特尼与其他人开始努力了。在NASA，各种各样的聪明人抄起工具，在约翰逊航天中心干体力活；而在喷气推进实验室(the Jet Propulsion Laboratory)，超级书呆子们开始筹备救援的后勤工作。电影温和地处理了若干主题：它坚定地站在科学与理性一方，与此同时也展现了一些命运、美国的积极进取精神与一点狂热爱国主义。它还关乎 自愿走出孤独房间——不管那是火星，还是你的内心——走进外面的世界，不管这个世界是多么的不友好，这样你才能呼吸空气，喝水（这两样沃特尼都学会了自己动手做），渴望他人。这是77岁的斯科特的一份感人的遗嘱，他的艺术已经进入重重暗影之中。

Here, by contrast, he seems almost giddily attuned to the buzz of human endeavor. The NASA scenes with their friendly, familiar faces — Chiwetel Ejiofor, Kristen Wiig and Jeff Daniels — unfold with charming predictability with corrugated brows, hushed and raised voices, acres of glowing screens and warehouses of space stuff. The vibe is of serious, smart people doing serious, smart work for the good of the rest of us. Mr. Ejiofor’s enormous, pleading eyes signal how grave the situation is, while Ms. Wiig’s prickly warmth and Mr. Daniels’s Daffy Duck mouth-flapping keep the whole thing from getting too heavy. Mr. Scott is a brilliant assembler of casts, and he knows how to organize groups so they seem to naturally fit, and can bob and weave in unison with his roving cameras.

在这里， 相比之下，斯科特似乎极其适应人类 努力的杂音。NASA的工作人员们有着友善、熟悉的面孔——切瓦特•埃加福特(Chiwetel Ejiofor)、克里斯汀•韦格(Kristen Wiig)与杰夫•丹尼尔斯(Jeff Daniels)——一切都很迷人，不出人意料：蹙起的眉头、急切而提高的声音， 大量闪烁的屏幕，堆满航空器材的仓库。气氛很严肃，聪明的人为了我们大家，正在做聪明、严肃的事情。埃加福特那双充满恳求之情的大眼睛表明情况有多么严重，而韦格毒舌的温情与丹尼尔斯达菲鸭式的唠叨让整部影片不那么沉重。斯科特很擅长选角，他知道该怎样把人们组织起来，让他们看上去自然而般配，在他 流动的镜头里和谐一致地跳跃行走。

Unlike some advertising directors who transitioned to filmmaking, he has always been a good director of actors, though it’s instructive that he uses performers who are either forceful enough screen presences or strikingly beautiful enough (usually both) to stand up to his lush visual style, who can meet the challenge of his meaningfully complex sets and natural vistas. When the film works, the bold drama of his visuals and the dramatic boldness of his stories flow together, becoming all of a narrative piece. Some of these pieces resonate with other meanings, like the red-rock buttes in “Thelma & Louise” and the similarly rust-colored formations in “The Martian” that are suggestive of John Ford’s Monument Valley films. Sometimes here, Mr. Scott seems to be returning to his own work, which may be why you can see Susan Sarandon (Louise), with her protuberant gaze and thin-skinned tremulousness, in Mr. Ejiofor. And of course Mr. Scott loves tough women, so it’s no surprise that Ms. Chastain and Ms. Mara are on board.

和许多由广告导演转行而来的电影导演不同，斯科特擅长指导演员， 这得益于他总是采用那些在银幕上很强势，或是非常漂亮的演员（通常两者兼备），配合他丰富的视觉风格；置身他片中那些意味深长的复杂背景和大自然中的远景，这些演员都显得非常合衬。如果电影拍得好，他那些视觉效果中大胆的戏剧性，以及故事中戏剧性的大胆会融汇在一起，成为叙事的一部分。有些部分还会和其他意义发生共鸣，比如《末路狂花》(Thelma & Louis)里的红色岩石山岗，类似的是《火星救援》里锈红色的岩石层，让人想起约翰•福特(John Ford)在纪念碑山谷拍下的那些电影。在这部片子里，斯科特有时候似乎回到了自己早期的作品，所以你可以在埃加福特身上看到苏珊•萨兰登（Susan Sarandon，《末路狂花》里的露易丝）的影子——那眼珠凸起的凝视与削瘦面孔上的颤抖。当然，斯科特一直热爱坚强的女人，无怪乎操纵台上出现查斯坦与玛拉的身影。

“The Martian” has sweep but not the vanity that creeps into many large productions, turning them into bloated vehicles for directorial self-aggrandizement. Mr. Damon’s Everyman quality (he’s our Jimmy Stewart) helps scale the story down, but what makes this epic personal is Mr. Scott’s filmmaking, in which every soaring aerial shot of the red planet is answered by the intimate landscape of a face. There’s a touch of Cecil B. DeMille in his cinematic DNA (for better and occasionally for worse), though, like many who saw “2001: A Space Odyssey” during their esthetically formative years, there’s even more Stanley Kubrick. But Mr. Scott is very much his own artist, one whose reputation as a visual stylist has at times obscured that his great, persistent theme is what it means to be human.

《火星救援》涉及范围广泛，但并不是像许多大制作那样空虚，只是导演自我膨胀的傲慢工具。达蒙身上的那种普通人特质（他是我们的吉米•斯图尔特[Jimmy Stewart]）有助于让片子低调一些，但斯科特的拍摄方式让这部史诗充满个人色彩，所有火星在太空中的镜头都配合着人类面孔上的亲切表情。斯科特骨子里有一丝塞西尔•B•戴米尔(Cecil B. DeMille)的感觉（大多数时候很好，偶尔也很糟），不过，正如大多数在审美形成期间看过《2001太空漫游》(2001: A Space Odyssey)的人一样，他受斯坦利•库布里克(Stanley Kubrick)影响更深。但是斯科特是一个有自己风格的艺术家，视觉大师的声誉有时会令人忽略了他一直都在表述一个宏大的主题——生而为人的意义。