I was reading this interview with Gael Garcia Bernal when he made this response to one of the questions:
"...Every time I see a film [that takes place] in Mexico, with people speaking English, I just think, "Why?" If they can speak in Spanish, why do you have to compromise the culture and language? The fact of doing it in English just makes it very lame and naive."
'Yes!' I thought. Why do they do that? I watched Frida a few days ago, and I found it disconcerting to hear all these people speaking in accented English while supposedly living in Mexico. At one point they go to New York, and they are still speaking English, but I wonder, 'Is she actually speaking Spanish while everyone around her is speaking English, and no one actually understands each other?' Regardless of that annoyance, it seemed to miss something because it was in English. It lost credibility, it lost sincerity, it lacked something vital to a culture: language.
'Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon,' 'Hero,' 'Amilie,' and 'Y Tu Mamá Tambien' have proven that enough of the American population is willing to 'brave' a subtitled movie for it to do well, so I really hope more directors will direct films in different languages. I think I'm also pretty excited at the possibility of more foreign films making it to US theaters. They come with their own flavor and style, and I really love that diversity.
4 comments:
Is the movie subtitled? I couldn't tell from the previews I've seen.
That made me laugh so hard in xXx. The Czechs would speak Czech when surrounded by English people, but would speak English when alone.
Also pissed me off royally (bad pun) in The Prince and Me. Danes who speak with British accents? And no Danish to be seen anywhere? And the movie wasn't even filmed in Denmark! Pulease.
So there's my rant for today.
It's a bit of a tangent, but I still get upset that Hollywood remakes films that are perfectly awesome in whichever country they came from. Per my usual examples, they recently remade Taxi, which was a perfectly enjoyable french film, but isn't even available on DVD in the U.S. And then they went and remade Shall We Dance? with Richard Gere and J-Lo, generic Hollywood stars if I've ever seen them, and in the process lost all the cultural peculiarities that made it such a fun and interesting movie from Japan.
Down with ridiculous anglo-cizing, and down with horrendous anglo-remakes. Up with world cinema, and the intricacies of language and culture.
Completely off topic, but if you ever want to watch some really good German films, check out Tuvalu and Advertising Rules!. Two of my favorite movies in the last couple years.
How much do you want to bet that in 10 years, they're going to remake Amelie with fancier computer graphics and the latest Jennifer Love Hewitt-type Hollywood ingenue?
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