剑桥风云

如果BBC想感动你，你就很难装酷......

很多哲学家美学家都讨论过贵族精神。俺对英国文化不熟悉，也没有被牛津剑桥的等级含义逼疯过。但看完这片子，抓着头发想一想，俺的一点理解是：

1.他们看起来缺乏野心，或者贪婪。在英国，雄心壮志是一个尴尬的字眼。所以会有Effortlessly Fabulous这个词。

2.他们甚至缺乏专注的兴趣

3.他们不需要工作。所以他们可以做自己喜欢的事。但如果做，就一定要做的很好。

4.他们不能缺乏坚定的信仰。信仰黑白与否无关紧要，但一定要有勇气有能力来维护之。

5.永远不能离开Gentleman's Club.请注意这是绅士俱乐部，不是功利至上的社交网络。这是个传统问题，和道德无关。

6.可以失去生命，但要挽回尊严。


俺想，虽然俺们一辈子都需要工作，养家糊口，但俺按照这些规矩做人，大概也能体味到一点所谓的贵族精神。

同时期的德国，却是贵族体制被摧毁的大变革时期。无论贵族精神与否，贵族和平民中都有令人感叹的故事。世界和历史是多么奇妙。

这片子里对美国人的态度，是不屑一顾，极端鄙视的。

“许多人可能会说，自杀可能是"光荣的"出路……但我认为，恰恰相反，那是一种懦弱的解决方式。”
------ Blunt回忆录

在1930年代中期
对于我和当时的很多人来说
共产主义俄国是
反对法西斯主义的唯一堡垒
在那时
西方国家对德国采取了暧昧的
妥协的立场
我被Guy说服
为了反对法西斯主义
我加入了他的苏联间谍组织
这是一个出于良知的决定
反对的是纳粹
我选择了良心
------ Blunt回忆录



--------------------------------华丽丽的分割线-------------------------------

 

英语底子好的同学可以看这个


 

The True Memoirs of Anthony Blunt
 

Summary:
A year after Guy's death, Anthony remembers his friend - and their folly - as best he can.


 

Notes:
Inspired by slowascent's Yuletide Letter and her love of the seven deadly sins, especially the sin of pride.

 

 

 

Work Text:
August 30th, 1964

Guy went mad a bit, after Julian died. Perhaps I should have seen it then. It was the sort of madness that was too easy to dismiss, and it might have been that I wanted to dismiss it. We four friends had spent many years making excuses for one another, but I had known Guy the longest and excused the most. Friends since the beginning, I suppose I found it harder than most to admit he might be going so terribly wrong. He'd always had his excesses, little foibles and quirks. It is how things begin, isn't it? With Guy it was always matter of degrees, each action seems less harsh in the light of what came before. I wanted to believe that he wasn't off the rails, that it was simply more of his usual. More fool myself, and that is something not easily admitted.

He'd always been a bit madcap, hadn't he? We were so different, he and I, for all that our lives and upbringings had been so similar. It was likely what drew us together, at least it was why I noticed him at Cambridge. When you moved in the same circles as Guy, it was hard not to notice him. Loud and flamboyant, the sort to speak his mind - no, not speak it, for the word speak implies some sort of decorum. Guy shouted it from rooftops and pulpits. Discretion was not his friend. Whereas things in my life were so careful and controlled, compartmentalised, Jackie said the same thing to me so many years later. That I had boxes and found it all too easy to simply shut something away. Shouldn't I have? My compartmentalisation kept us safe, so many times. When Guy went off on his tangents - even when we were both Apostles - I was the one that stood sure and true. I was the one that remained calm when so many simply reacted and acted. The mark of an English gentleman, that deep-rooted stoicism, wasn't it? I epitomised that very thing and always had. I couldn't be any other way. Even when Guy told others he was a friend of Stalin whilst drunk at parties, I would be the one smiling benignly at Guy's little joke. I was always able to pretend it was a joke, but guy never was. He always felt things so strongly. He threw himself into all of it, holding nothing of himself back. I warned him of the danger of it, but Guy was never the sort to listen to such advice.

Julian was the first warning, or he should have been. He'd almost gone to him, after that party we were at. Raining. It was already raining Julian had said, the crowd having gone quiet in that convenient way that it did. Inconvenient, actually, where Julian was concerned. That night Guy had been drunker than most nights. An accomplishment when one thinks about it seriously. He'd been so determined to leave the house, to find Julian. To explain to him privately that we hadn't changed. That we were working for Moscow and our rejection of socialism was part of the cover.

I stopped him. I was the one that wouldn't let him go. Perhaps I was the one that made it so hard for Guy when Julian died. Had I let him go that night... There's little time for regret in our lives, if any. I refuse to doubt my decisions then. At the time they were the right ones. Guy couldn't have let Julian know any more than we could have let anyone know. It was the point of it, wasn't it? Distancing ourselves from the movement in order to have more use.

It wasn't a friendship without troubles, even when we were at Cambridge. Guy was brilliant, and if I were utterly and brutally honest, I'd say he was smarter than I was. Yet he squandered it shamefully throwing away a brilliance in a way that always bothered me. There was so much he could have done. There was no doubt he'd have been that much more valuable an asset had he not drank and caroused so. It wasn't like anyone could have altered that. When we were still in school it was the norm, just a bit of boys being boys. Once we had graduated, well, there was never any stopping Guy, nor changing Guy.

I realise now I couldn't have. I never thought it at the time, I thought I had him under control. Yes, he said things no one should, especially one in our position. Guy would get drunk and say the most obscene things. Few ever paid them any mind. He was known as a bit of a drinker and if he declared himself a spy at a party, who would think his words the truth?

Should I have noticed it then? I told myself there was nothing to notice. Guy would be Guy, I excused it over and over, always taking note but doing little. I would say a word here and there, nothing more than suggestions or mild admonishments. They were laughed off. Why wouldn't they be laughed off? I never could have seriously admonished Guy and somehow he knew that.. Too many things we laughed off and brushed away. Pride is such a funny thing, isn't it? Not that I would have called my perceived control of Guy pride, I still have issues with referring to it as such. It seemed so reasonable then. We were friends, friends before anything else, before everything else. Shouldn't a man be capable of keeping an eye on his friends, be capable of keeping them in line? A better friend might have seen that it wasn't the simple thing I told myself it was/ Frankly, Guy was out of control long before I cared to admit it.

So many at school knew what we were, even if I'd never been as open as he was. I refer to the communism, that is, not the homosexuality -- though I am sure many knew that as well, such an ill-kept secret as it was in those days. There was no shame in being a communist, not as a student. Being an anti-fascist was a point of pride for many, and later in life it was seen as a sort of undergraduate rash. It was an ailment that one had the good sense to recover from. We were Apostles the, an informal fellowship of students who gathered for many reasons. Many of us homosexuals, all of us anti-fascists, that sort of movement was nearly expected when we were students. Just as it was expected we would move on from it after college to join the establishment. Only, we never did recover from it, we only seemed to. It was all part of the master plan. One couldn't be an effective spy if one was known to have socialist tendencies. It was logical, sensible, the most useful thing that we could have done: distance ourselves from our own pasts. But it hurt Guy deeply, having to pretend that he'd rejected Communism, especially to Julian.

I would swear it all changed when Julian died. I'd rather not use the word died, it sounds so innocuous, as if he were elderly and passed on in his sleep. Julian was killed, yet another death at the hands of those same fascists we all hated. There were times that it seemed Julian had the simpler and easier task. There was elegance in our roles – an excitement - that didn't exist in Julian's open devotion to the cause. I told myself that. We all did, I'm sure, that we were fighting the longer fight, the more important one. What would have changed for us if we could have done what he did? If we could have been open in our fight against the forces that tried to devour Europe?

He knew, you know. He knew that Julian and I had been together. I knew of his affection for Julian but it didn't stop me. Guy never saw how they would have been the end of each other, fanned flames burning too quickly. Their passion, however different and sometimes misguided, would have been the end of them both. That isn't to say there was anything noble about my affair with Julian. I was fond of him, yes, but never in love. Love was such a dangerous thing. As dangerous as happiness, moreso when they came together. The four of us - any spies really - couldn't afford such luxuries, not and perform our chosen task and be safe.

I should have seen it. I should have seen it after Julian's death but I wouldn't allow myself to. Pride, hubris, call it what you will. Perhaps even something so much simpler: the loyalty of four friends to one another. Beyond any cause or any devotion, those friends were the things that I had to keep safe and that I held to be most important. Do you know I believed it? I believed that I, Anthony Blunt, could keep us safe. I thought that I could protect each of us against the world. What an utter fool I was. There was nothing and no one that could protect us from ourselves, we were always our own worst enemies. Guy and Donald were both problems, but it was Guy that mattered most to me. Kim and Donald; Guy and myself. It was how things had always been and how they would always be.

I never knew if he was hurt by Jackie's defection, as it might have been called. Jackie wasn't as important to Guy as Julian had been. I always felt that he was more a distraction to Guy, something to keep him occupied when he couldn't be bothered venturing out to one of his less than reputable locales. Perhaps that alone should have warned me away. Once his distraction was gone - once his distraction was mine - he became ever the more on edge. I've said already how brilliant he was. Brilliant and mad -- no, lost is a better word then mad. Guy needed our cause, he needed to believe. Julian, to him, had been an ideal, the personification of a concept and a belief. Not only someone he loved, but his beacon in an otherwise dark world. What Guy felt he should be and how he should be. When Julian was killed it all changed. He clung to the cause, wrapping himself in it as one would a blanket on the coldest of nights.

I should have seen. I should have seen and I should have stopped it, long before I became so tired. There is a part of me that believes, still, this end could have been avoided. If I had acted earlier or made more of an effort that we could have all been safe. Guy deserved more than a warm coat and a sad life lived out away from the country he loved so. I never wrote him once he'd been exiled. The letters might have been intercepted after all. I couldn't have, and maintained my own secrets. Sad that those secrets that in the end were made public. In the end, we were all betrayed. When we became agents at Cambridge, we were such idealists, and we believed. It was exciting. Did I ever say that? There was this whiff of adventure that came with being a spy. It was a life that I could never have imagined otherwise. A life I could never have had otherwise. When did it stop being such an adventure? When did watching over my friends become such a task and a trial? The years took their toll. I would say that it was inevitable, but I am not fond of admitting inevitability. I'm not fond of admitting my own faults, nor am I fond of admitting my own part in our downfall. Yet fond or not, it is there. My hubris led us as much to our downfall as their excess did.

Silly, isn't it? To think that we shared secrets that changed the world, and yet it was the simplest things that affected us. Julian's death. Jackie. Stalin making a pact with Hitler in order to buy himself time. The last... Were it not for Kim and myself, I think we would have lost Guy then. He would have self-destructed or done something truly foolish. He was always on the edge, you realise. When I heard of what he did in Washington, driving drunk, appearing at that dinner at Kim's house, I knew just how far Guy had gone. That he'd lost his belief in some way, and had gone over the edge, seeking his own downfall. Only his self-destruction would pull in those associated with him. It would pull in Donald, Kim and myself.

Or it may have been that he was already gone long before Washington and that even to this day I'm fooling myself. I'm letting that same pride colour my memories. It's a difficult thing see things clearly that are in the past. Our visions are filtered to show the events in the light they find most favourable. In some ways our memories are like paintings. They are creations of our own mind that relates to the world but does not truly reflect it. We see that world in the painting through the filter of the artist with our own perceptions layered atop that. A difficult thing to consider when it's something as personal as our own own past. Am I remembering correctly, interpreting the events the way they occurred? Or have my perceptions shaped my very memories? Do I remember things the way I wish them to be? I can no longer tell.

好几年前，和一个朋友聊天，他是基督教徒，问他耶路撒冷还有什么别的含义，是因为这首诗：
 And did those feet in ancient time
        Walk upon England's mountains green?
    And was the holy Lamb of God
        On England's pleasant pastures seen?
    And did the Countenance Divine
        Shine forth upon our clouded hills?
    And was Jerusalem builded here
        Among those dark Satanic mills?

    Bring me my bow of burning gold:
        Bring me my arrows of desire:
    Bring me my spear: O clouds, unfold!
        Bring me my chariot of fire!
    I will not cease from mental fight,
        Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand
    Till we have built Jerusalem
        In England's green and pleasant land.
耶路撒冷是一个地名不是么，怎么能在英格兰的“绿色美好大地”上建立呢？朋友说它指的可能是天堂。
后来有了Wiki就容易多了。对William Blake的注解下可以找到Milton: a Poem，然后可以看到这样的解释：The Christian church in general, and the English Church in particular, used Jerusalem as a metaphor for Heaven, a place of universal love and peace，一点没错。
The Cambridge Spies 用这首歌（hymn really）开篇，中间又有出现。而容易让人印象最深的片断，几个人离开剑桥之前，Guy脱光衣服站在桥边跳下之前喊道：I love this country, this sceptered f**king isle, this wonderful, foolish England! 几句话和Blake的词句道出的是同样的意思。他们缺少“因为我爱这土地爱得深沉”一类文字。
The Cambridge Five的故事太多精彩复杂，还有不可思议的比各种书（有很多很多）和电影都更精彩复杂的真实历史，不可思议同时也就让人浮想联翩。关于故事，一个叫Russel Aiuto的人写的很全，也非常有趣。他同时也提到：But such day-dreaming tends to glamorize these four very different, very questionable men. It is an exercise that unnecessarily exhalts them and, at the same time, trivializes their very serious crimes. But it is a temptation difficult to resist. 认定了Cambridge Five的间谍行为是严重的罪行，但是又不偏不倚地，在后面段落里谈起“没有秘密的世界是和平的”的观点。
四个人都是剑桥Apostles society的成员，Apostles - 使徒，已经毕业的成员可以申请成为Angels - 天使。实际是一种知识辩论协会。这些名字让人想起Dan Brown。有一些前辈Apostles是后来的Bloomsbury Group，有电影里Julian提到的他的aunt Virginia Wolf，但是在一战前的事了。当然还有E.M.Forster。Forster的Maurice让我觉得像Guy。Another Country是更同志类型的电影吧，主角确实是Guy。也是他，开始“发展”Donald的时候有段台词说，他父亲死的时候他得到了一种自由。会有一种自由，特别是如果死去的是你深爱的人。那个Establishment，他们是其一部分同时也是他们的一部分的国家体制和阶层，是他们要摆脱的深爱的亲人。所以让人怀疑内心的动机是自由，而非任何主义。
肯定不是为了物质回报，他们是分文不取的叛国者。Kim Philby第一次执行秘密任务的时候，拒绝了给他的钱，腼腆不知道该如何解释。编剧似乎有意让Guy是那个在听似胡言乱语中道出理想的，而让Kim代表了典型的绅士。在维也纳被警察拦住的时候，Kim说他去不会有事的，他有英国护照，还有“straight back and stiff upper lip”。剑桥间谍事发后舆论批评出现这样的事根本原因是英国政府很长时间都以一种“old boys' club”的态度运行，没有人质疑这些人，很大程度因为他们被无条件地认为是“自己人”。那个俱乐部也是绅士俱乐部，有无数的弊端，但同时，在那些年代里，也演出了一种绅士的世界和历史，行为标准是straight back and stiff upper lip，游戏规则是荣誉大于一切，或者说功利的目的并非大于一切。像《钢琴家》里面纳粹军官的善意。
BBC把这故事拍得很得体，演员都多少有传说中四个人的气质，但说实话刚看半天都没分出来谁是谁。感动有限，舒缓节奏中点滴的情感，没有什么足以压迫心头的，只是看了个故事。可故事本身，那个藏在拍出来的影片或者写出的书背后的真实历史，无限精彩的可能性已经很吸引人。还有时代，现今在迅速消亡的绅士规则，他们有选择向往另一种理想another country，真心感到有意义，这样的选择消亡得更早。只在光影世界中。

首先抒发一下形而下的东西：这片子最吸引我的就是tom hollander，他演的Guy Burgess 是至今为止看到过最喜欢的一个...他在戏里...实在是迷人到我见犹怜，若我是男人，定要去跟他搞基（啊这是怎样一种可怕的择偶观）

然后是形而上的东西：

其实我对所谓的贵族精神、兄弟会、布鲁姆斯伯里文化圈就像对外星球上的元素周期表一样缺乏了解的兴趣，那其实是一个和我们完全无关的世界不是么。剑桥太美，若是我，这种从一个庭院到另一个庭院再到另一个庭院的生活真真不错，我情愿在那里读一辈子书不出来。

只是我真羡慕这种人生，不用工作也可以生存，可以做自己最喜欢的事，而且一旦做了，就要做到最好，活着可以没有安全感，但是一定要有信念...啊这是怎样单纯又浓郁的人生。当然我这样的格局，很难理解剑桥出来的人怎么会为了人类大同的理想选择做叛国者，帮助苏维埃背叛英格兰...大概只有太祖那句最高指示可以解释：知识越多越反动。

当然像我们这样生活在一个拥有最先进生产力的天朝的兵蚁，生活的原则往往残忍而简单，那就是“搵食不易，事事小心”。你没有选择的权利，你只有不选择的权利。

BBC的剧通常有一种质量保证，尤其是对文艺型的片。于是乎BBC很自然地把Cambridge Spies拍得文艺腔十足，不去评价好坏，至少是种风格。
本来是冲着Toby Stephens去的，结果看到BBC美男一箩筐……进而对Tom Hollander的演技大赞，对Samuel West也不能自已了。感叹一句，这到底是个男色经济时代。
讲正题。

先声明，我对G片没有特别倾向，给剑桥风云五星绝对讲得出道理。
人和人之间的情感绝对讲级别。你跟隔壁班级某同学的情感如果设定为0，跟自己班的可能是1，跟前后桌的是2，跟同桌的是3，跟好朋友的可能是4，跟爹妈是5，跟那个老给你不及格的老师可能是-100（只是个比方）……随后，你跟爱人的级别多少？跟同志的级别多少？跟挚友的级别多少？跟“主义”的级别又是多少？他们说，“友情高于一切”。什么是“一切”？Kim说老婆是他的“一切”，于是友情就高过了“一切”。“如果要我选择背叛国家或背叛朋友，我希望自己有勇气去背叛国家”——不是所有朋友都能值得Guy说这句话，唯有那种同理想共生死的兄弟才够得上。光凭这一点，这片子就够感人。

BBC不仅善于改编剧本，还善于挑演员。在我看来，主演四人中有三个都在超常发挥。列举几个我脑袋里“喀”不掉的镜头：
Toby Stephens：对着他的共产党老婆说“我不爱你”，那眼神真作孽；在和Anthony一起看到斯大林与希特勒结盟的新闻后，那个失落和惶恐的神情；知道Anthony想要退出时，满脸的愤怒和失望……他的戏多而不滥。
Samuel West：被兽医召唤那次，怕死型“抖霍”，却还本能地数落一下墙上的画，然后继续“抖霍”；两次与女王的交谈都很风趣，表情是紧张与暗喜交织；对Donald把秘密透给老婆一事发飙，面无表情地爆发摔杯子，把Donald吓得半死……他有很多种不同的严肃表情。
Tom Hollander：在Julian走过时完全被吸引的眼神，魂都游出来了；知道Julian死讯后欲哭无泪、“奥闷痛”到极致；去买领带时一副“知识分子里的流氓”腔调；去莫斯科前跟Anthony借书那一幕我十年八年都忘不掉……我学的就是他骂人的痞样。

看到他们在Dining Hall里吃饭的情景，让我想起自己披着gown在high table上跟先生们共同进餐的情景，还有不远处那个叫Trinity的college。原来是那样复古。

我个人万分喜爱他们在剑桥毕业那段。Good bye the old days——带着愤怒、志气、理想和友爱，他们出卖国家，却不出卖灵魂。