His time with them, enjoying both their tranquillity and these moments of youth-like joy, was juxtaposed against an alarming spate of anti-Asian violence that was happening on streets around the Bay Area to grandparents just like his. It was a dissonance that both angered Wang and magnified this time with his grandmothers. Wang took to his camera to make what he thought of as a home video of them, enshrining their routines in “Nǎi Nai & Wài Pó,” a documentary short that was recently nominated for an Oscar and is streaming on Disney+.
和她们在一起的时候，他喜欢她们的安静，也喜欢她们返老还童般的快乐时光，与此同时，湾区一带的街头发生了一连串令人担忧的反亚裔暴力事件，这些暴力事件发生在像她们一样的老人身上。这种不和谐令王湘圣感到愤怒，也令他更加重视与奶奶和外婆的相处。王湘圣拿起摄像机，原本打算是拍一些家庭录像，最终她们的日常生活被记录在了《奶奶跟外婆》(Nǎi Nai & Wài Pó)当中，这部纪录片短片最近获得了奥斯卡提名，目前正在Disney+播放。
“When I walk into the kitchen and I see them there, reading the newspaper or washing the dishes, from a very personal level, I want to remember that image,” Wang said in a video call from his apartment in Los Angeles, where he did eventually move. “I want to remember what it was like to see them do that.”
“我走进厨房，看到她们在那里看报或者洗碗，对我个人而言，我想记住那个画面，”王湘圣在洛杉矶的公寓里接受视频电话采访时说，他最终还是搬到了那里。“我想记住看到她们做这些事情时候的感觉。”
The film, alternately cheeky and humanist, flits between two visual languages, what Wang called “the movie of their lives and the movie that they’re in.” Silly skits that the director constructs for them — arm wrestling, watching “Superbad” — sit alongside quotidian snippets of their inner lives. The film is also philosophical, as his grandmothers reflect on hard pasts and consider the realities of aging.
这部电影在两种视觉语言之间穿梭，时而放肆大胆，时而充满人文关怀，王湘圣称之为“关于她们生活的电影和她们置身其中的电影”。导演为她们设计的那些傻乎乎的活动——扳手腕，看电影《太坏了》(Superbad)——与反映她们内心生活的日常片段并置。影片也有一个哲理层面，他的奶奶和外婆在片中反思艰难的过去，思考衰老的现实。
Wang and his family’s reaction to the Oscar nomination was captured on video and recently went viral: Wang jumping for joy and embracing his grandmothers before they can even process the announcement on the telecast.
王湘圣和家人们对奥斯卡提名的反应被拍摄下来，最近在网上疯传：王湘圣高兴地跳起来拥抱她们，与此同时，奶奶和外婆还没看明白电视上播出的消息。
“You earned it,” Chang said to Wang over a joint video call with Yi from their home in Fremont, Calif. “You believed in us when you pitched the idea of this film.”
“这是你应得的，”张丽华对王湘圣说，当时她和易扬辉一起，在加州弗里蒙特的家中与王湘圣视频通话，“当你提出拍这部片子的时候，你信任我们。”
That moment of exhilaration on nomination morning was one of many in recent weeks for Wang. The night before, he had flown back home for the telecast from the Sundance Film Festival, where his debut feature film, “Dìdi,” had just premiered. Within minutes of the announcement, he was out the door, on his way back to Park City, Utah, where, days later, “Dìdi” would be bought by Focus Features and would also take home an audience award.
除了获得提名的那个上午，最近几周，王湘圣还有许多兴奋的时刻。前一天晚上，他刚刚回到家看公布提名电视转播，此前他参加了圣丹斯电影节，他的长片处女作《弟弟》(Dìdi)在该电影节首映。获得提名的消息宣布几分钟后，他就出门赶往犹他州帕克城，几天后，《弟弟》在那里被焦点影业买下，并获得了一项观众奖。
Those achievements, though, were not integral to the pride he had in his work, Wang said. He seemed earnest; both films are autobiographical and deeply personal, and he had made the movies he wanted to make.
然而，王湘圣说，他对作品的自豪与它们获得的成就无关。他似乎是真心这么认为；两部电影都是自传体的，非常个人化，他拍了自己想拍的电影。
“If I don’t look at my phone, nothing in my day-to-day has really shifted all that much,” he said. “My room is still messy.”
“如果不看手机，我每天的生活其实没有什么变化，”他说。“我的房间还是很乱。”
It’s the grounded attitude of someone who is his grandmothers’ grandson: Throughout “Nǎi Nai & Wài Pó,” his grandmas tell Wang that after he leaves home, and the antics and the camera leave with him, life for them will simply return to its mundane motions.
这种脚踏实地的态度与他的奶奶和外婆一脉相承：在《奶奶跟外婆》中，奶奶跟外婆告诉王湘圣，他离开家后，他的摄像机和那些嬉闹也一同离开了，她们的生活又重新归于平淡。
The film gave him an infrastructure to hear about things he never knew, traumatic pasts that older immigrants tend to rather forget about.
这部电影为他提供了一个基础，让他了解到一些他以前从来不知道的事情，那些老一辈移民往往宁愿忘记的创伤往事。
“You see it in their eyes in the movie; they are painful memories,” Wang said. “There’s a reason they don’t want to talk about it all the time because they’re like, our lives are better now, why would we keep reliving this? But I was very upfront with them of how important it was: You are the owner of your story and we don’t have this recorded anywhere, and if we don’t record this in some capacity, that’s how you lose family history.”
“在电影里，可以从她们的眼睛里看到；那些都是痛苦的回忆，”王湘圣说。“她们不愿意一直说这些是有原因的，因为她们想，我们现在的生活更好了，为什么还要不断去重温这段经历呢？但我非常坦率地告诉她们，这是很重要的：你们才是自己故事的主人，别的地方都没有记录这些事情，如果我们不想法记录下来，你就会失去家族的历史。”
The most powerful sentiment in the film, though, comes from his grandmothers’ attitudes in the face of loss and pain. “Life is short,” Yi said over the video call. “We can only focus on this life. I’m still so happy in such an old age, which is really unexpected. Whether happy or not, we have to live our life, so it’s better to be happy.”
然而，影片中最强烈的情感来自他的奶奶和外婆对失去和痛苦的态度。“人生苦短，”易扬辉在视频通话中说。“我们只能把握今生今世。我这么大年纪还这么开心，真是意外。开心也是一天，不开心也是一天，就选择开心度过吧。”
Lately, Wang’s grandmothers’ days are at least a little less quiet, with the nomination and the film’s Disney+ release. “Can people all over the world see it?” Chang asked Wang in awe.
最近，随着影片获得提名和在Disney+上映，奶奶和外婆的日子至少不那么安静了。“全世界的人都能看到吗？”张丽华惊讶地问王湘圣。
“As long as they subscribe,” he replied.
“只要他们订阅就能看，”他回答。
Both of Wang’s grandmothers plan to accompany him to the Oscars in March. They already have a stylist to get them ready for the ceremony.
王湘圣的奶奶和外婆都打算3月份陪他去奥斯卡颁奖礼。她们已经找好了造型师，为典礼做准备。
“I never thought of going there,” Chang said. “Isn’t this a dream? I often wonder if this is a dream. Actually, I never dreamed of it.”
“我从没想过要去那个地方，”张丽华说。“这不是做梦吧？我经常怀疑这是不是一场梦。我确实做梦也没想过这种事。”
本文最初发表于2024年2月13日。
翻译：晋其角
