美国国家公共电台 NPR When The Wild Rumpus Stops: 'We The Animals'

 

AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:

A debut¹ novel by young Latino writer, "We the Animals," made a splash in literary circles when it was published in 2011. An autobiographical story about preteen brothers and their turbulent home life, it seemed an unlikely candidate for film adaptation, but critic Bob Mondello says "We The Animals" has become a haunting fever dream of a movie.

BOB MONDELLO, BYLINE²: A hot summer in upstate New York, three shirtless boys running wild the way kids do. Jonah's the youngest, the storyteller...

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "WE THE ANIMALS")

EVAN ROSADO: (As Jonah) Us three.

MONDELLO: ...Scribbling³ in his journal about wanting more - more volume...

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "WE THE ANIMALS")

ROSADO: (As Jonah) Us kings.

MONDELLO: ...More muscles, more time with Manny and Joel.

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "WE THE ANIMALS")

ROSADO: (As Jonah) Us brothers.

MONDELLO: The three of them so inseparable they often seem a single organism - bouncing off the walls, tearing across a field, being at the moon, turning every flat object in the house into a drum, and when all of that gets old, huddling⁴ under a sheet, whispering.

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "WE THE ANIMALS")

UNIDENTIFIED ACTORS: (As characters) Body heat, body heat, body heat.

MONDELLO: Childhood is a magical time for these three, and a complicated time, too, as their sons of a mixed race couple who've moved upstate looking for a good life that hasn't really materialized. Dad's Puerto Rican and a nightwatchman. Mom's white and works in a bottling plant. Dead-end jobs struggling to make ends meet was not the plan.

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "WE THE ANIMALS")

RAUL CASTILLO: (As Paps) Shake it, papito, come on.

(LAUGHTER)

CASTILLO: (As Paps) All right. Now shake it like you're rich.

MONDELLO: While mom and dad are crazy at love, they're also fighters - she, protective...

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "WE THE ANIMALS")

SHEILA VAND: (As Ma) This truck - it doesn't even have enough seatbelts to protect your family.

MONDELLO: ...He, rough and tumble, sometimes just rough.

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "WE THE ANIMALS")

CASTILLO: (As Paps) OK. You win. You win.

MONDELLO: Left to their own devices, the boys have to figure out what's happening when, say, dad leaves after one fight that left mom bruised⁵.

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "WE THE ANIMALS")

ROSADO: (As Jonah) Will you get up today?

VAND: (As Ma) How do I look?

ROSADO: (As Jonah) Purple.

JOSIAH GABRIEL: (As Joel) Crazy.

ISAIAH KRISTIAN: (As Manny) Tore up.

MONDELLO: That rates a note and an illustration in Jonah's journal, scribbled⁶ by flashlight after his brothers are asleep and animated⁷ with scratchy pen drawings as the film lets the scenes in Justin Torres' autobiographical novel surface and recede⁸ the way memories do. Filmmaker Jeremiah Zagar is a documentarian making his first fiction feature here, working with youngsters who'd never acted before and creating a dreamlike narrative⁹ where Jonah's carousing¹⁰ merges¹¹ with his fantasies about adulthood¹² and his confusion over things his parents say and do - dad, loving and leaving, mom, loving and clinging.

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "WE THE ANIMALS")

VAND: (As Ma) Promise me you'll stay 9 forever.

ROSADO: (As Jonah) How?

VAND: (As Ma) Simple, you're not 10, you're 9 plus one. Next year, you'll be 9 plus two.

ROSADO: (As Jonah) Why?

VAND: (As Ma) You be telling them that no matter how old you are, you be Ma's baby boy.

MONDELLO: She hugs him close.

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "WE THE ANIMALS")

VAND: (As Ma) I remember your heart inside me, ticking like a bomb.

MONDELLO: Ticking like a bomb, that's quite the image and applies equally well to Jonah at age 9, ticking like a bomb with budding sensual feelings and the realization¹³ that there are ways in which he is not like his brothers. "We The Animals" are about to grow up, grow to be men, grow, in the case of journal-keeping Jonah, perhaps to be a writer who'll capture this summer when things began to change and make it intense, scary, ecstatically lyrical. I'm Bob Mondello.

1 debut   

n.首次演出，初次露面

参考例句：

• That same year he made his Broadway debut, playing a suave radio journalist.在那同一年里，他初次在百老汇登台，扮演一个温文而雅的电台记者。
• The actress made her debut in the new comedy.这位演员在那出新喜剧中首次登台演出。

2 byline   

n.署名；v.署名

参考例句：

• His byline was absent as well.他的署名也不见了。
• We wish to thank the author of this article which carries no byline.我们要感谢这篇文章的那位没有署名的作者。

3 scribbling   

n.乱涂[写]胡[乱]写的文章[作品]v.潦草的书写( scribble的现在分词 )；乱画；草草地写；匆匆记下

参考例句：

• Once the money got into the book, all that remained were some scribbling. 折子上的钱只是几个字！ 来自汉英文学 - 骆驼祥子
• McMug loves scribbling. Mama then sent him to the Kindergarten. 麦唛很喜欢写字，妈妈看在眼里，就替他报读了幼稚园。 来自互联网

4 huddling   

n. 杂乱一团, 混乱, 拥挤 v. 推挤, 乱堆, 草率了事

参考例句：

• Twenty or thirty monkeys are huddling along the thick branch. 三十只猴子挤在粗大的树枝上。
• The defenders are huddling down for cover. 捍卫者为了掩护缩成一团。

5 bruised   

[医]青肿的，瘀紫的

参考例句：

• his bruised and bloodied nose 他沾满血的青肿的鼻子
• She had slipped and badly bruised her face. 她滑了一跤，摔得鼻青脸肿。

6 scribbled   

v.潦草的书写( scribble的过去式和过去分词 )；乱画；草草地写；匆匆记下

参考例句：

• She scribbled his phone number on a scrap of paper. 她把他的电话号码匆匆写在一张小纸片上。
• He scribbled a note to his sister before leaving. 临行前，他给妹妹草草写了一封短信。

7 animated   

adj.生气勃勃的，活跃的，愉快的

参考例句：

• His observations gave rise to an animated and lively discussion.他的言论引起了一场气氛热烈而活跃的讨论。
• We had an animated discussion over current events last evening.昨天晚上我们热烈地讨论时事。

8 recede   

vi.退(去)，渐渐远去；向后倾斜，缩进

参考例句：

• The colleges would recede in importance.大学的重要性会降低。
• He saw that the dirty water had begun to recede.他发现那污浊的水开始往下退了。

9 narrative   

n.叙述，故事；adj.叙事的，故事体的

参考例句：

• He was a writer of great narrative power.他是一位颇有记述能力的作家。
• Neither author was very strong on narrative.两个作者都不是很善于讲故事。

10 carousing   

v.痛饮，闹饮欢宴( carouse的现在分词 )

参考例句：

• During the next nine years he alternated between service in several armies and carousing in Paris. 在那以后的九年里，他时而在几个军队中服役，时而在巴黎狂欢作乐。 来自辞典例句
• In his youth George W. Bush had a reputation for carousing. 小布什在年轻时有好玩的名声。 来自互联网

11 merges   

（使）混合( merge的第三人称单数 )； 相融； 融入； 渐渐消失在某物中

参考例句：

• The 2012 Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded to Mo Yan"who with hallucinatory realism merges folk tales, history and the contemporary". 2012年诺贝尔文学奖得主为莫言，他“很好地将魔幻现实与民间故事、历史与当代结合在一起”。
• A device that collates, merges, or matches sets of punched cards or other documents. 一种整理、合并或比较一组穿孔卡片或其它文档的设备。

12 adulthood   

n.成年，成人期

参考例句：

• Some infantile actions survive into adulthood.某些婴儿期的行为一直保持到成年期。
• Few people nowadays are able to maintain friendships into adulthood.如今很少有人能将友谊维持到成年。

13 realization   

n.实现；认识到，深刻了解

参考例句：

• We shall gladly lend every effort in our power toward its realization.我们将乐意为它的实现而竭尽全力。
• He came to the realization that he would never make a good teacher.他逐渐认识到自己永远不会成为好老师。