“Mamma, ora conosco sempre più persone, ma ho sempre meno amici.”
中文译文：妈妈，我现在熟人越来越多，朋友越来越少。
English translation: Mom, I’m meeting more and more people, but I have fewer and fewer friends.桑德罗（Sandro）
——意大利/法国合拍电影《奇遇》（意大利语：L’avventura）
电影上映时间（Film release dates）1960年5月15日（意大利）
这句话出现在影片的中后段，是桑德罗在与克劳迪娅一同寻找失踪的安娜的过程中，对母亲说出的一句看似随意却含义深远的独白。电影讲述了一个悬疑而又充满哲学意味的故事：安娜在一次游艇旅行中神秘失踪，她的男友桑德罗和好友克劳迪娅在寻找她的过程中逐渐产生了感情，而安娜的失踪最终也未被解决。整部影片贯穿着安东尼奥尼对现代人“情感疏离”和“意义缺失”的深刻观察。桑德罗是一个游走于上流社会、与许多人打过交道的建筑师，他在与母亲的短暂对话中说出这句话时，表面上只是在感叹人际关系的变迁，实则暴露了一个更深层的困境——他身边围绕着越来越多的人，却没有一个真正可以称之为“朋友”的存在。这是安东尼奥尼对“社交繁荣但情感荒芜”的现代社会的精准预言。
This line appears in the middle to latter part of the film, in a seemingly casual yet deeply meaningful monologue that Sandro delivers to his mother while searching for the missing Anna alongside Claudia. The film tells a suspenseful and philosophically rich story: Anna mysteriously disappears during a yacht trip, and her boyfriend Sandro and her close friend Claudia gradually develop feelings for each other while searching for her, though Anna’s disappearance ultimately remains unsolved. The entire film is permeated by Antonioni’s profound observations on the “emotional alienation” and “loss of meaning” experienced by modern people. Sandro is an architect who moves in high society and has interacted with many people. When he utters this line during a brief conversation with his mother, he is ostensibly merely lamenting the changes in human relationships, but in reality, he is revealing a deeper dilemma—he is surrounded by an ever-growing number of people, yet there is not a single person he can truly call a “friend.” This is Antonioni’s precise prophecy of a modern society that is “socially prosperous yet emotionally barren.”
“熟人越来越多”与“朋友越来越少”。——我们生活在一个社交边界不断扩张的时代，工作上的同事、酒桌上的伙伴、社交媒体上的“好友”，都在不断填充着“熟人”这个庞大而松散的列表。但与此同时，那些可以在深夜倾诉、可以毫无防备地暴露脆弱、可以在你落难时毫不犹豫伸出手的“朋友”，却在逐年递减。桑德罗对母亲说的这句话，不是在抱怨“没朋友”，而是在陈述一个更残酷的事实：他认识的人越来越多，但能够抵达他内心的人却越来越少。 这种人际关系的“通货膨胀”，让每一次社交都变成了一种消耗，而不再是一种联结。
在《奇遇》中，桑德罗是一个典型的“现代人”，他辗转于不同的城市、不同的人群、不同的女性之间，他拥有体面的职业和广阔的人脉，但他的情感状态却是悬浮的、无根的。他对安娜的爱模糊不定，对克劳迪娅的追求也带着某种“替代性”的功利——他无法真正地爱一个人，正如他无法真正地拥有一个朋友。“熟人越来越多”是他社交半径的扩张，而“朋友越来越少”则是他情感深度的萎缩。 这两者并非偶然并存，而是互为因果：当一个人把精力都投入到“扩展社交”这个动作中时，他就很难有余力去“维系关系”的本质。桑德罗的困境是结构性的——他不是不想拥有真正的朋友，而是他的生活方式本身，已经不允许“真正的朋友”存活了。
20世纪50年代末至60年代初，意大利经历了快速的工业化和城市化，物质生活显著改善，但传统的社区纽带和亲密关系却在瓦解。人们住进了更现代的公寓，却不再认识对门的邻居；人们有了更多的休闲方式，却在每一次聚会中感到更深的孤独。桑德罗对母亲说出的这句话，正是这种“繁荣背后的空洞”的一声叹息。他什么都有了，却什么都没有真正拥有——这不仅是桑德罗的困境，也是一个正在狂奔向现代化的社会的集体症候。 安东尼奥尼的镜头冷峻而克制，他无意提供解决方案，他只是让桑德罗在某个寻常的午后，对母亲说出这句话，然后让每个听到它的人，在自己的生活中寻找答案。
我们微信里有上千个“好友”，却找不到一个可以放心地把手机递给他看的人；我们在朋友圈分享精心包装的生活片段，却在每一个深夜感到难以言说的孤独。桑德罗在1960年对母亲说的这句话，在今天不仅没有过时，反而比当年更具杀伤力——因为社交工具的发达让“熟人”的扩张速度呈指数级增长，而“朋友”的沉淀速度却跟不上这种膨胀。我们拥有了前所未有的连接，却失去了真正的联结。 电影《奇遇》没有给出答案，但它用一个看似随意的句子提醒我们：在狂奔的人际关系扩张中，别让“朋友”这个词语变得通货膨胀到一文不值。
桑德罗拥有那么多“熟人”，却在最需要一个人的时候独自坐在空地上流泪。克劳迪娅走向他，伸出手想抚摸他的头，却又缩了回去——最终她还是伸出了手，但那个动作的犹豫，恰恰是整部电影关于“人与人之间永远无法真正抵达”的最终注脚。熟人越来越多，朋友越来越少——这不仅是桑德罗的困境，也是安东尼奥尼眼中整个现代文明的困境。
“More and more acquaintances” versus “fewer and fewer friends.”—We live in an era where social boundaries are constantly expanding; coworkers, drinking buddies, and “friends” on social media are all constantly adding to this vast and loosely defined list of “acquaintances.” But at the same time, the number of “friends”—those with whom you can confide late at night, reveal your vulnerabilities without reservation, and who will lend a helping hand without hesitation when you’re in trouble—is dwindling year by year. When Sandro said this to his mother, he wasn’t complaining about “having no friends”; he was stating a harsher reality: while he knows more and more people, fewer and fewer can truly reach his heart. This “inflation” of interpersonal relationships turns every social interaction into a drain rather than a connection.
In Encounters, Sandro is a quintessential “modern man.” He drifts between different cities, different groups of people, and different women. He has a respectable career and a wide network of contacts, yet his emotional state remains adrift and rootless. His love for Anna is vague and uncertain, and his pursuit of Claudia carries a certain utilitarian “substitute” quality—he is incapable of truly loving anyone, just as he is incapable of truly having a friend. “More and more acquaintances” represents the expansion of his social circle, while “fewer and fewer friends” signifies the withering of his emotional depth. These two phenomena do not coexist by chance; rather, they are mutually causative: when a person devotes all his energy to the act of “expanding his social circle,” he finds it difficult to spare the energy for the essence of “maintaining relationships.” Sandro’s predicament is structural—it is not that he does not want to have true friends, but that his lifestyle itself no longer allows for the existence of “true friends.”
From the late 1950s to the early 1960s, Italy underwent rapid industrialization and urbanization. While material living standards improved significantly, traditional community bonds and intimate relationships were disintegrating. People moved into more modern apartments but no longer knew their next-door neighbors; they had more leisure activities, yet felt a deeper loneliness at every gathering. The words Sandro spoke to his mother were precisely a sigh expressing this “emptiness behind prosperity.” He had everything, yet truly possessed nothing—this was not only Sandro’s dilemma but also a collective symptom of a society racing headlong toward modernization. Antonioni’s cinematography is stark and restrained; he has no intention of offering solutions. He simply has Sandro utter these words to his mother on an ordinary afternoon, leaving it to everyone who hears them to find their own answers in their own lives.
We have thousands of “friends” on WeChat, yet we can’t find a single person to whom we can confidently hand over our phone; we share carefully curated snippets of our lives on Moments, yet every late night we feel an indescribable loneliness. The words Sandro spoke to his mother in 1960 are not only still relevant today but are even more poignant than they were back then—because the proliferation of social media has caused the number of “acquaintances” to grow exponentially, while the number of true “friends” has failed to keep pace with this expansion. We have achieved unprecedented connectivity, yet we have lost genuine connection. The film Encounter doesn’t provide an answer, but it reminds us with a seemingly casual line: Amid the frantic expansion of our social circles, we must not let the word “friend” become so overused that it loses all value.
Sandro had so many “acquaintances,” yet when he needed someone the most, he sat alone on an empty lot, weeping. Claudia walked toward him, reached out to touch his head, but then pulled her hand back—in the end, she did reach out, but that moment of hesitation serves as the film’s ultimate commentary on the idea that “people can never truly reach one another.” The more acquaintances we have, the fewer friends we have—this is not only Sandro’s dilemma, but also, in Antonioni’s view, the dilemma of modern civilization as a whole.
What do you think?
