2003年4月，一个巴格达的家庭正在开车回家时，美国海军陆战队与伊拉克军队发生了交火。这家人不幸卷入了这场交火中，其中三名男性不幸遇难。近十年后，两名幸存的女性移民到了美国，并在加利福尼亚州的格伦代尔定居下来。她们决定与当年向她们开枪的海军陆战队员见面。
In April 2003, a family in Baghdad was driving home as U.S. Marines engaged in a firefight with Iraqi forces. The family was caught in the crossfire, and three men were killed. Nearly 10 years after the shattering incident, the two women who survived the attack, having immigrated to the U.S. and settled in Glendale, Calif., sat down with one of the Marines who opened fire on them.
记者德克斯特·菲尔金斯在2012年发表于《纽约客》杂志的文章《伊拉克战争后的赎罪》中讲述了这段经历。文章详细介绍了美国海军陆战队员卢·洛贝洛为与玛格丽特及其女儿诺拉·卡查杜里安取得联系、并寻求她们的原谅所做出的努力。那次交火导致玛格丽特的丈夫詹姆斯以及他们的儿子尼古拉斯和埃德蒙丧生，诺拉的肩膀也受了伤。洛贝洛联系了菲尔金斯，希望他能协助促成这次会面。
Journalist Dexter Filkins told the story of this encounter in the 2012 New Yorker article “Atonement After Iraq.”The piece details the efforts of U.S. Marine Lu Lobello to speak to Margaret and her daughter Nora Kachadoorian and seek their forgiveness for the attack that killed Margaret’s husband James and their sons Nicolas and Edmund and left Nora with a wound to the shoulder. Lobello reached out to Filkins to help facilitate the meeting.
洛贝洛与卡查杜里安一家的这次会面，成为了电影《Atonement》（《赎罪》）的高潮部分。这部电影由里德·范·戴克编剧并执导，目前已在影院上映。为了保护当事人的隐私，电影中他们的真实姓名已被修改：菲尔金斯在电影中被饰演为迈克尔·里德（由肯尼思·布拉纳饰演），玛格丽特被饰演为玛丽亚姆·卡查图里安（由希亚姆·阿巴斯饰演），而洛贝洛则被饰演为卢·达莱桑德罗（由博伊德·霍尔布鲁克饰演）。
Lobello’s time with the Kachadoorians informs the climax of Atonement, written and directed by Reed Van Dyk and now in theaters. Their real names have been changed for the film: Filkins becomes Michael Reid (Kenneth Branagh), Margaret is Mariam Khachaturian (Hiam Abbass), and Lobello is Lou D’Alessandro (Boyd Holbrook).
“我在阅读这篇文章的过程中几乎一直在哭泣，”范·戴克回忆道。当时他们正在多伦多的一家酒店讨论这部电影的拍摄事宜——这部电影的北美首映式就是在多伦多国际电影节上举行的。他是在这篇文章发表的那一年第一次读到它的。“我被文中对战争中那一个事件如何深刻影响所有角色的生活的描述深深打动了；我当时就想：‘这一定会是一部非常精彩的电影。’”
“I cried through most of the article,” recalls Van Dyk, sitting down to discuss the film at a hotel in Toronto, where the film had its North American Premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival. He first read the New Yorker piece the year it was published.
从构思到剧本的创作过程：然而，当时范·戴克还处于职业生涯的初期，根本没有能力亲自制作这部电影。六年后，他凭借以亚特兰大校园枪击事件为灵感创作的短片《DeKalb Elementary》获得了奥斯卡最佳真人短片奖，这一成就让他获得了更多的关注，也让他开始实现自己拍摄长片的梦想。范·戴克说：“在那之后，我立刻拿出了那本《纽约客》杂志（至今我仍然保存着它），并开始着手将这篇文章改编成电影。”
“I found it really touching to see and feel in a very detailed way the impact that this one incident in war had had on all of these characters' lives, and I did remember thinking, ‘Boy, this would be a really beautiful film story.’”
他的第一个挑战是将这篇只有12页的文章改编成一部时长两小时的电影。“你手头有一篇非常精彩的报道，其中包含了丰富的细节和具体的场景描述，”范·戴克解释道，“但原文中还有很多角色并未被提及（尤其是那些没有出现在德克斯特故事中的角色）。这就是我的工作重点所在。这个故事主要围绕三个角色展开，其中两个角色在德克斯特的文章中有所体现；不过德克斯特本身在原文中并不是一个非常突出的角色，所以我必须进一步丰富这个角色的形象（也就是由布拉纳饰演的角色）。”
From concept to screenplay At the time, however, Van Dyk was at the beginning of his career and in no position to make that film. Six years later, he won an Oscar for Best Live Action Short Film for DeKalb Elementary, inspired by a school-shooting incident in Atlanta. That brought attention his way, allowing his feature-film ambitions to begin to materialize. “After that,” says Van Dyk, “I immediately reached for my copy of that New Yorker issue, which I still have, and started trying to make this film.”
这是一个独特的故事，需要用一种独特的视角来呈现战争题材。值得注意的是，范·戴克的电影中几乎没有真正的战争场景——它只是以伊拉克战争中的一个具体事件为切入点，来探讨战争中以及战争结束后人们的人性。大多数战争电影往往试图强化社会的分裂与对立，而《Atonement》则更关注人们在冲突中那些出人意料的团结与互助行为。
His first challenge was turning a 12-page article into a two-hour film. “You have this wonderful reportage to work with, and all of the texture and specificity that comes with that,” says Van Dyk. “Then there are all the rooms that Dexter wasn't in. That's where my job comes in. There were three people that the story is centered around, two of whom come to life in Dexter’s article. He’s not much of a character in his own piece, so I had to flesh out this character that Branagh plays.”It’s a unique story that requires a unique take on a film about war. For one thing, there are hardly any actual scenes of war depicted on screen. Van Dyk’s film uses a single event from the Iraq War as an opportunity to explore the humanity in, and aftermath of, conflict. War movies often seek to enforce the lines of division, but Atonement is more interested in the unexpected ways in which people come together. Van Dyk was keen to explore the humanity in the story, not only from the American perspective, as we so often see in Hollywood films, but from the Iraqi one, too.
范·戴克渴望探索故事中的人性，不仅从美国人的视角出发——这在好莱坞电影中屡见不鲜——也同时从伊拉克人的视角切入。
“I’m accustomed to seeing Iraqi characters in most Western films about war through sniper scopes. That wasn’t something I was interested in,” he says. Instead, the director wanted to centralize the voices and people that are typically marginalized in American films. “As a writer, I want to know my characters as deeply as I can, and I want to have love for them. The real pleasure of writing was getting to know this Iraqi family, who lived a very different life than I did, and I worked really hard behind the scenes to make that feel real.”The real-life meeting The real Lobello first reached out to Filkins in March 2012 on Facebook, saying that he had been trying to get in touch with him for a decade. “You could ease my PTSD,” he added. The two began communicating, and Filkins learned that Lu wanted him to help connect with the Kachadoorians so that he could atone and apologize for the tragedy that transpired that day.
“我习惯了在大多数关于战争的西方电影中，透过狙击镜看到伊拉克角色。这不是我感兴趣的东西，”他说。相反，这位导演希望将那些在美国电影中通常被边缘化的声音和人物置于核心位置。“作为一名编剧，我想尽可能深入地了解我的角色，并对他们怀有感情。写作的真正乐趣在于认识这个伊拉克家庭，他们的生活与我截然不同，我在幕后付出了巨大努力，让这种真实感得以呈现。”
Filkins had previously reported on the Kachadoorians in Iraq, but later lost touch with them. Thankfully, Lobello had already found them, via Facebook.
现实中的会面现实中的洛贝洛早在2012年3月就通过Facebook联系了菲尔金斯，称自己十年来一直试图与他取得联系。“你可以缓解我的创伤后应激障碍，”他补充道。两人开始交流，菲尔金斯得知卢希望他帮忙联系卡查多里安一家，以便洛贝洛能为当天发生的悲剧赎罪并道歉。
He asked Filkins to facilitate the meeting, hoping he could bridge the gulf between them.
菲尔金斯此前曾在伊拉克报道过卡查多里安一家，但后来失去了联系。幸运的是，洛贝洛已经通过Facebook找到了他们。他请菲尔金斯促成这次会面，希望他能弥合双方之间的鸿沟。
The Kachadoorians were not hesitant to meet Lobello. “If he is asking for forgiveness, then we will give him forgiveness. God ordered us to forgive. He forgives us, so we must forgive others. Even people who killed our dears,” Margaret said.
卡查多里安一家并不犹豫是否要见洛贝洛。“如果他请求宽恕，我们就宽恕他。上帝命令我们要宽恕。他宽恕了我们，所以我们必须宽恕他人。即使是杀害了我们亲人的人，”玛格丽特说。
The meeting took place on a Saturday in July 2012. Lobello was deeply anxious going in, and immediately burst into tears upon meeting Margaret and Nora. Margaret comforted him with a pat on the back. The conversation that followed was tense. As Filkins describes it, the day ended with a sense that a true resolution would never be reached, though progress had been made. While forgiveness was granted, forgetting is impossible, and resentment lingers. There are no easy answers when it comes to grief and war. But something extraordinary did, in fact, happen in the room, just as Van Dyk recreates in Atonement.
会议于2012年7月的一个星期六举行。洛贝洛走进去时内心万分焦虑，一见到玛格丽特和诺拉便立刻放声大哭。玛格丽特轻轻拍了拍他的背，安慰他。随后进行的谈话气氛紧张。用菲尔金斯的话说，那一天结束时，人们感觉真正的和解永远无法实现，尽管事情已经取得了一些进展。宽恕得到了，遗忘却不可能，怨恨依然挥之不去。
面对悲痛与战争，从来没有轻易可行的答案。然而，房间里确实发生了一件非同寻常的事，正如范戴克在《赎罪》中所重现的那样。这位电影制作人解释道：“他们开始在彼此身上看到自己。”
Explains the filmmaker: “They begin to see themselves in each other.”
相识几天后，洛贝洛收到了诺拉发来的 Facebook 消息。她说，他来访时自己感到很开心，仿佛多了“第三个兄弟”，也成了“妈妈的第三个儿子”。
Several days after meeting, Lobello received a Facebook message from Nora. She said she felt happy when he came to visit, and that she felt she got “a third brother,” and “the third son to my mom.”
面对相互矛盾的真相。为了捕捉那次相遇的情感深度与强烈冲击，范戴克在创作《赎罪》的多年间进行了广泛研究。他尽可能多地采访了与真实事件有关的人，包括洛贝洛和卡恰多里安一家。他采访了许多海军陆战队员和伊拉克平民，并与摄影指导乔纳·彼得一同前往巴格达。这次旅行改变了他根据电影对这个国家原有的认识。
Holding conflicting truths In order to capture the emotional depth and intensity of that encounter, Van Dyk conducted extensive research throughout his years writing Atonement. He spoke to as many people involved in the real events as he could, including Lobello and the Kachadoorian family. He spoke to countless marines and Iraqi civilians and traveled to Baghdad with his director of photography, Jon Peter. The visit challenged his perception of the country based on what he’d seen in cinema.
他说：“我发现这里色彩斑斓、充满活力，而大多数电影所呈现的那个国家则更像世界末日般的景象。在进行场景设计和拍摄时，突出这种丰富性对我们很重要。”他还从伊拉克作家以及战后归来的海军陆战队员所写的书中汲取灵感。纪录片也发挥了关键作用。他称阿巴斯·法德尔的纪录片《家园：伊拉克零年》是“关于伊拉克战争最好的一部记录，当然是从平民视角出发的记录。它成了我们所有人的参照点。”
“I found it rich with color and rich with spirit, when most films posit the country as something more apocalyptic,” he says. “It was important for us to highlight that richness when we were working on the design and how we were shooting.”He drew further from books written by Iraqi authors, and marines who’d come back from war. Documentaries also played a key role. He credits the documentary Homeland: Iraq Year Zero by Abbas Fahdel as “the best document of the Iraq War, certainly from the civilian perspective. It became a reference point for all of us.”
拍摄战争段落时，《雷斯特雷普》是一份重要参考。范戴克指出，《杀戮方程式》影响了他对杀人者所承受的心理和精神影响，以及这段经历所带来的道德后果的思考。
Restrepo was an important reference when it came to filming the war sequence, and Van Dyk notes that The Act of Killing influenced the way he thought about the psychological and spiritual effects of men who have killed, as well as the moral implications of that experience.
范戴克在拍摄《赎罪》期间与卡恰多里安一家渐渐熟络起来。他与这一家待在一起的“时间多得数不清”，两家还经常共进晚餐。“每次见面都像要聊上五个小时。”范戴克说，正是在其中一次拜访中，他突然顿悟，并因此着手修改电影剧本。“我们有一次交谈时，玛格丽特谈到洛贝洛时说了一句话，后来被写进了电影：‘我有时看着他，看到的是我的儿子；有时看着他，看到的却是夺走我儿子的那个人。’我觉得这句话极其动人地呈现了她那天所经历的一切的复杂性，也让我意识到这部电影必须同时承载她对他的这两种想象。”
Van Dyk became close with the Kachadoorian family while making Atonement. He’s spent “too many hours to count” with them, and they regularly have dinner together. “Every visit is like a five-hour hang,” he says. It was during one of those visits that Van Dyk had a breakthrough moment that prompted him to revise the movie’s script. “In one of the conversations we had, Margaret said something about Lobello that ended up in the movie: ‘Sometimes I look at him and I see my son, and sometimes I look at him and I see the man who took my son.’ I thought it captured very poignantly the complexity of her experience on that day, and I think it was teaching me too that the film had to hold both visions she had of him.”
正如范戴克所说，《赎罪》“对媒体向我们输送的、关于其他国家的宏大叙事提出了反驳”。这部电影的最终目标，和许多伟大电影作品一样，是让观众有机会将同理心延展到那些在日常生活中可能永远不会遇见的人身上。
As Van Dyk puts it, Atonement “pushes back on the larger narrative we’re absorbing from the media about other countries.”The film’s ultimate aim, like so many great works of cinema, is to give the audience an opportunity to expand their empathy for people they might never encounter in their daily lives.
“如今很少有机会去弥补过去做过的事，”范戴克说，“这正是这个故事与其他许多战争故事如此不同的原因。所有人最终
“It’s rare that there are opportunities to make amends,” says Van Dyk. “Thats what makes this story so different from other stories that unfold during a war. Everyone got to sit down together again. I think there’s something powerful about people willing to hold space with others who were on a completely different side of war, let alone forgive someone.”