babeling
Did anybody see Babel in the theater? If so: Were there subtitles?
I did not like the film at all. Granted, I've been in a difficult-to-please state of mind, but a film that features children in peril, psychosexual adolescent angst, immigration issues, and xenophobia and still manages to arouse no feeling in me whatsoever is likely missing something. Yes, the acting was solid (especially the Japanese teenager and the Moroccan father)-everything was solid about it, and that's part of the problem. It felt calculated to address Big Issues In Small Ways, and ugh.
That said: The DVD did not automatically put on subtitles, so we watched the film without them. We assumed this was "correct," or rather how the director intended (again, calculated-wow, jeez, and you named it Babel? You're a fuckin' genius!) but in reading reviews of it today, I'm wondering if our assumption was correct, as no reviews I read made mention of the convention, and the reviews mentioned details that only a far more eagle-eyed viewer than I (or speaker of Japanese) would have caught. So I'm curious to know if this was the director's intent. And if it was, I'm officially saying that the emperor has no clothes. And this isn't some sort of English-language imperative on my part: I watched Titus Andronicus in fucking Romanian and saw the beauty in it; this was just tiresome.
ETA: An interview with Cate Blanchett at Cannes indicates that, yes, there were supposed to be subtitles. I thought that elucidation might make me dislike the film less; I was wrong. It does make me less pissy at the director for the length of the conversations toward the end of the Tokyo storyline, however. (But pissier at Paramount. The DVD was set up so that the subtitles were optional, as they would be for any film. I admit I may be looking to put the blame somewhere, though. But C and I discussed it after unintentionally switching on the DVD subtitles; we both decided that it was intended to be without subtitles. So. I suppose it was an interesting, albeit accidental, exercise in filmmaking as Esperanto, because we certainly understood most of the film, save for a couple of points in the Tokyo storyline.)
That said, apparently the subtitles were supposed to make the whole thing even more Babel-esque, because the audience knows more than the characters; there are frequently characters in the film that aren't understanding one another, supposedly. See, the subtitles are the sixth language.
What an a-hole, I say.
I did not like the film at all. Granted, I've been in a difficult-to-please state of mind, but a film that features children in peril, psychosexual adolescent angst, immigration issues, and xenophobia and still manages to arouse no feeling in me whatsoever is likely missing something. Yes, the acting was solid (especially the Japanese teenager and the Moroccan father)-everything was solid about it, and that's part of the problem. It felt calculated to address Big Issues In Small Ways, and ugh.
That said: The DVD did not automatically put on subtitles, so we watched the film without them. We assumed this was "correct," or rather how the director intended (again, calculated-wow, jeez, and you named it Babel? You're a fuckin' genius!) but in reading reviews of it today, I'm wondering if our assumption was correct, as no reviews I read made mention of the convention, and the reviews mentioned details that only a far more eagle-eyed viewer than I (or speaker of Japanese) would have caught. So I'm curious to know if this was the director's intent. And if it was, I'm officially saying that the emperor has no clothes. And this isn't some sort of English-language imperative on my part: I watched Titus Andronicus in fucking Romanian and saw the beauty in it; this was just tiresome.
ETA: An interview with Cate Blanchett at Cannes indicates that, yes, there were supposed to be subtitles. I thought that elucidation might make me dislike the film less; I was wrong. It does make me less pissy at the director for the length of the conversations toward the end of the Tokyo storyline, however. (But pissier at Paramount. The DVD was set up so that the subtitles were optional, as they would be for any film. I admit I may be looking to put the blame somewhere, though. But C and I discussed it after unintentionally switching on the DVD subtitles; we both decided that it was intended to be without subtitles. So. I suppose it was an interesting, albeit accidental, exercise in filmmaking as Esperanto, because we certainly understood most of the film, save for a couple of points in the Tokyo storyline.)
That said, apparently the subtitles were supposed to make the whole thing even more Babel-esque, because the audience knows more than the characters; there are frequently characters in the film that aren't understanding one another, supposedly. See, the subtitles are the sixth language.
What an a-hole, I say.