加利福尼亚州圣拉斐尔——要找到对科技巨头埃隆·马斯克颇有微词的人并不困难，而这些人中有很多都出现在新纪录片《马斯克》中，该片讲述了他如何崛起为政界和商界的重要人物。更令人惊讶的是，影片中一些他旗下员工（包括仍在为他工作的人）也发表了不利的言论。这部纪录片将于周五在洛杉矶和纽约上映，其中一些最尖锐的场景，是马斯克的手下在行使权力或讨论他们已为他完成的工作时，被视频或音频记录下来的画面。
SAN RAFAEL, Calif. — It’s easy to find people with bad things to say about tech magnate Elon Musk, and plenty of those people show up in “Musk,” a new documentary about his rise to political and corporate power. What’s more surprising in the film are the unflattering statements by some of his own employees, including ones who still work for him. Some of the harshest scenes in the film, which opens Friday in Los Angeles and New York, are ones in which Musk’s lieutenants were recorded on video or in audio as they wielded power on his behalf or discussed what they had already done for him.
警告：本文包含纪录片《马斯克》的剧透。影片中有特斯拉高级工程师阿肖克·埃卢斯瓦米的一段视频证词，他在其中承认，2016年他协助制作的、关于该公司自动驾驶能力的著名宣传视频，并未真实反映当时特斯拉的技术水平。此外，还有负责马斯克个人事务的贾里德·比奇尔的音频片段。在一次与网络名人艾什莉·圣克莱尔的通话录音中，她刚生下了她与马斯克所生的孩子，而马斯克则在通话中强硬地讨论子女抚养费的安排。
Warning: This article includes spoilers for the documentary “Musk.”There are clips of Ashok Elluswamy, a high-ranking Tesla engineer, acknowledging in a videotaped deposition that an infamous hype video he helped put together in 2016 about the company’s self-driving capabilities was not an accurate representation of Tesla’s technology at the time. There are also audio snippets from Jared Birchall, who handles Musk’s personal matters. He is heard on a recording of a phone call with online influencer Ashley St. Clair, shortly after she had given birth to a child she and Musk conceived, in which he plays hardball on child support arrangements.
这两起事件此前都曾被媒体报道：路透社于2023年报道了埃卢斯瓦米证词的转录内容，而《华尔街日报》则在去年报道了比奇尔与圣克莱尔的通话。不过，这些视频和音频似乎都是首次公开，使这部纪录片的声音来源超越了常见的批评者，甚至让熟悉马斯克复杂故事细节的观众也感到意外。纪录片导演亚历克斯·吉布尼在片中表示，他和团队花了三年多时间研究特斯拉和SpaceX的首席执行官马斯克，不仅收集了历史采访和难以寻觅的影像资料，还建立了一个包含马斯克语录的数据库，这些语录贯穿整部影片。
Both incidents were documented in the media: Reuters reported in 2023 on the transcript of Elluswamy’s deposition, and The Wall Street Journal reported last year on Birchall’s phone call with St. Clair. But the video and the audio appear to be newly public, giving the documentary a mix of voices beyond the usual critics and creating moments of surprise even for a viewer who is familiar with the ins and outs of Musk’s complicated story. Filmmaker Alex Gibney says in the documentary that he and his team spent more than three years researching Musk, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, pulling together not only archival interviews and hard-to-find footage but also a database of quotes from Musk that are peppered throughout the film.
55岁的马斯克并未参与这部纪录片的制作，他还对其予以严厉批评。他在社交平台X上称该片是一篇“恶意抹黑之作”，并指责导演吉布尼“毫无诚信可言”。马斯克、特斯拉、SpaceX以及埃卢斯瓦米和伯查尔均未回应置评请求。这部时长近四小时的影片全面梳理了马斯克的生平经历：详细讲述了SpaceX与特斯拉的发展历程、他育有的14名子女的情况，以及他与唐纳德·特朗普总统时断时续的合作关系——包括马斯克成为特朗普2024年竞选活动的最大捐赠者这一事实。
Musk, 55, did not participate in the documentary, and he has panned it, saying on X that it is a “hit piece” and that Gibney has “zero integrity.”Musk, Tesla, SpaceX, Elluswamy and Birchall did not respond to requests for comment. The nearly four-hour film is a comprehensive tour through Musk’s life story, with deep dives into the growth of SpaceX and Tesla, his fathering of 14 known children and his on-again, off-again alliance with President Donald Trump, including his becoming the biggest donor to Trump’s 2024 campaign.
这部影片再次印证了马斯克是如何频繁地成为公众讨论与流行文化的焦点人物：从2021年他主持《周六夜现场》节目，到次年他混乱地收购推特；从他推出的聊天机器人Grok自称“机械希特勒”，到特朗普第二任期伊始他挥舞电锯的画面，影片快速呈现了马斯克人生中的种种高光与低谷时刻。 “我愿意称它为一部‘精炼紧凑’的四小时影片，”制片人杰西·迪特在周三于加利福尼亚州马林县举行的米尔谷电影节放映会上说道。
The film is a reminder of how often Musk has put himself at the center of public discourse and pop culture, and it moves swiftly through the highlights and lowlights: from his 2021 hosting gig on “Saturday Night Live” and his chaotic purchase of Twitter the next year to his Grok chatbot’s embracing the identity “MechaHitler” and his wielding of a chain saw early in Trump’s second term. “I like to call it a ‘svelte’ four-hour film,” producer Jessie Deeter said at a screening Wednesday at the Mill Valley Film Festival in Marin County, California. (The film has a 10-minute intermission, but it is still roughly the length of the 1962 epic “Lawrence of Arabia.”)
（该片设有10分钟的中场休息，但整体时长仍与1962年的史诗巨作《阿拉伯的劳伦斯》相当。）那场放映会的上座率约为90%，现场最热烈的掌声出现在一段反马斯克的片段中：一位前联邦政府工作人员讲述了自己去年为何选择辞去特朗普政府职务，而不愿为马斯克领导的政府效率部效力。眼下正值对马斯克而言可能具有关键意义的时刻：外界纷纷猜测，若民主党在中期选举后掌控国会，或许会对其展开调查。
At the screening, which was about 90% full, the biggest applause came during a moment of anti-Musk defiance, as a former career federal employee explained why they quit the Trump administration last year rather than cooperate with Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency. The film lands at another potentially pivotal moment for Musk, amid speculation that Democrats may investigate him if they take control of Congress after the midterm elections.
民意调查显示，马斯克依然是个极具争议性的人物：尽管特朗普周四还在白宫对他表示赞赏，但大多数美国民众对他持负面看法。
Polling shows that Musk remains deeply divisive, with a majority of Americans holding unfavorable views of him even as Trump honored him at the White House on Thursday.
这部纪录片表明，马斯克涉足政坛并非新鲜事：档案视频显示，早在2024年他支持特朗普之前，马斯克就已经与共和党前加州州长阿诺·施瓦辛格以及已故的加州民主党参议员黛安·费恩斯坦等政要交往密切，并从中获得了回报，例如特斯拉的低排放积分。推动这部纪录片向前发展的部分原因在于其跨类型的叙事方式：某些片段宛如政治惊悚片或法律悬疑剧，而其他片段则像电子游戏模拟、科幻奇幻或名人八卦剧。
The documentary demonstrates that Musk’s dabbling in politics is nothing new: Archival videos show that, years before he endorsed Trump in 2024, Musk was rubbing elbows with politicians such as former California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican, and the late Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., and getting benefits in return, such as low-emission credits for Tesla. Part of what drives the documentary forward is how it crosses genres: Parts of it feel like a political thriller or a legal whodunit, while others are like a video game simulation, a science fiction fantasy or a celebrity tabloid drama.
还有一些场景更接近恐怖片，尤其是当吉布尼讲述涉及特斯拉驾驶辅助软件的碰撞事故中那些血腥细节时。例如，他引用了2019年一起事故的行车记录仪视频：当时一辆开启“自动驾驶”的特斯拉在佛罗里达州闯了红灯，导致一名行人死亡——陪审团裁定特斯拉对此事故负有33%的责任，并命令其赔偿2.43亿美元。片中接受采访的人物之一、科幻作家兼科技活动家科里·多克托罗，在衣领上佩戴了一个断头台胸针，进一步加剧了影片的阴郁氛围。
Other moments are closer to a horror film, especially as Gibney narrates some of the graphic details of collisions involving Tesla’s driver-assistance software. He includes, for example, dashcam video from a 2019 crash in which a Tesla on “Autopilot” ran a stop Florida and killed a pedestrian — a crash for which a jury found Tesla 33% at fault and ordered it to pay $243 million in damages. One of the people interviewed in the film, science fiction author and tech activist Cory Doctorow, adds to the grim feeling by wearing a guillotine pin on his lapel.
随后，纪录片再次聚焦于死亡问题：吉布尼试图计算马斯克去年推动解散美国国际开发署所造成的人道主义代价。在非洲及其他地区营养不良儿童的画面之间，拜登政府时期的美国国际开发署负责人萨曼莎·鲍尔表示，这些削减措施冻结了面向全球贫困人口的某些食品计划，并指责这些削减可能导致1400万人死亡。（这一数字基于去年发布的一项预测，估算未来五年内可能发生的死亡人数。）
Later, the documentary lingers again on death, as Gibney tries to tally the human cost of Musk’s drive last year to dismantle the U.S. Agency for International Development. Between shots of malnourished children in Africa and elsewhere, Samantha Power, who was a USAID administrator during the Biden administration, says the cuts froze some food programs for the world’s poor and blames the cuts for 14 million potential deaths. (The number is based on a projection published last year estimating possible deaths over the following five years.)
在影片的呈现中，这些统计数据与画面所揭示的恐怖，与马斯克持续痴迷的目标形成了鲜明对比：为了未来尚未出生的世代可能受益，而向更深的太空探索，包括前往火星。
In the film’s rendering, the horror of those statistics and images stands in stark contrast with Musk’s ongoing obsession: traveling deeper into space, including to Mars, for the potential benefit of future, unborn generations.
影片中有部分内容既没有证据支持，也没有加以解释。吉布尼助长了一种阴谋论，称马斯克利用其星链互联网卫星星座干预了2024年的选举——这一毫无根据的说法早已遭到独立事实核查机构的批评。他还对星链卫星和特斯拉车辆可能收集数据表示担忧，但并未提出超出模糊推测之外的观点。影片试图探讨的一个更为紧迫的问题是：在多年的公众关注之下，马斯克是否发生了变化，变化又有多大？
A few parts of the film are presented without evidence or explanation. Gibney boosts a conspiracy theory that Musk used his Starlink constellation of internet satellites to meddle in the 2024 election — an unfounded idea that independent fact-checkers have long criticized. He also raises concerns about potential data collection by Starlink satellites and by Tesla vehicles but does not go beyond vague theories. A more pressing question the film wrestles with is whether or how much Musk has changed over his years in the public spotlight.
影片反复呈现了年轻时期的马斯克：他不仅外貌不同，头发更稀疏、体型也更瘦削，而且谈论的话题也与如今不同，其中包括“石油依赖”——这正是特斯拉发展早期的一个动机。马斯克的另一位熟人、前SpaceX工程师吉姆·坎特雷尔在影片中表示，马斯克的变化可能没有人们想象的那么大。“成功让他得以毫无保留地展现自己真正的想法，”他说。
The film repeatedly shows a younger Musk who is not only physically different, with thinner hair and a slighter build, but also speaking about different issues from those he addresses now — including “oil addiction,” an old motivation behind growing Tesla. Another of Musk’s associates, former SpaceX engineer Jim Cantrell, says in the film that Musk has changed less than some people may imagine. “Success has allowed him to take the lid off what he’s really thinking,” he says.