A note for those of you with _Let The Right One In_ at home or in your Netflix Queue

[fengshui]

Watch the dubbed version with Narrative Subtitles (subtitles for signs and letters and the like), not the subtitled version. The subtitles have been dumbed-down substantially from the original theatrical screenings: http://iconsoffright.com/news/ ( Read more... )

Comments

My verdict

[once_a_banana]

Yes. Okay, I've watched it now with the dub. I can't be sure, but after sampling the other option I've reached the conclusion that the film is still better in Swedish with the crappy subtitles. It's true that you miss maybe 5% of the lines due to the subtitles simply being missing or incomplete, and the rest may lack certain subtleties or have somewhat misleading wordings (kind of like it is when we watch any anime). But the voice acting in the dub is so bad (with may one exception) that I think any benefit you get from having the complete dialogue is more than erased due to missing all the subtleties of intonation in the original performances. So much of the characters exists in this realm, beyond the specific words they're saying. In the dub they at best lose this connection (along with their lip sync), and at worst are portrayed with horrendously inappropriate voices (e.g. the bully at school). Take all this, and add the fact that the entire sound mix is completely bleached of all its atmosphere, literally, in the dub: they have a cheap M&E with virtually silent environments and crappy, poorly mixed, poorly synced, and just generally incomplete Foley. In the Swedish track the whole film-world comes alive so much better, because they're using many of the original production effects. This seals the deal for me, but I still would've reached the same conclusion based on dialogue considerations alone.

Re: My verdict

[fengshui]

Interesting. So it's a failure of production on both fronts.

Re: My verdict

[once_a_banana]

Bastards!
It also had me reflecting on all the myriad ways a dub of a live-action picture tends to be a crappy deal. With animation, it all just comes down to the writing and the voice acting, and nothing else matters. Everything's a "dub". In an intimate picture like this, every second of every frame tends to have certain sonic signs of the original performance, physical presences, and environment.... and that all gets shot to hell especially in a low-budget hacked together M&E.

Re: My verdict

[fengshui]

Yeah. That's why, as a general rule, I watch subs over dubs. There are a lot of sound cues that only come out when you're really acting a scene that are just hard to catch in the dub studio.