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Posted by dgates on 06/08/07 01:28
On Thu, 07 Jun 2007 12:07:14 -0500, Allen <allen@nothere.net> wrote:
>Also, a chance for a rant: I hate dubbed movies. Although I am
>monolingual, I would much rather see a subtitled one than a dubbed one...
I too have had the experience where I enjoyed a subtitled movie more
than its dubbed counterpart. John Woo's "Hard Boiled" comes to mind
where, the method chosen by the dubbing people to differentiate the
voices of the two main characters was to give one guy a distinct
Australian accent! :-o
However, and I guess I'd better be ready to take the heat on this
one... I don't really like either option!
We talk a lot about directors' intentions when it comes to letterboxed
vs. pan & scan, but they certainly didn't intend for us to be spending
the better part of the movie looking down at the bottom of the screen
and reading, word for word, a printout of dialogue that is supposed to
be heard (while watching the visuals).
I rented Jacques Tati's "Playtime" from Netflix recently. The opening
scene is clearly supposed to be one where we're studying everything
with our eyes and not paying much attention to the details of a wife
quietly nagging her husband about his business trip. However, once
the subtitles were on, there was this enormous "weight" added to her
words. I couldn't help but read every one of them, and they became my
focus.
Perhaps I'm too left-brained in this way, but words printed at the
bottom of the screen always seem "important" to me in a way with which
the the visuals have a hard time competing.
Darn, I had another, more recent example, but I can't quite remember
what. It was a scene where you clearly were supposed to be watching
some beautiful, possibly complex visuals while the dialogue sort of
just washed over you. I've got the sense that it might have been some
colorful, maybe psychedelic, purely visual kind of "trip," while maybe
a woman's voice is adding some soothing type words. Something where
the details of the words weren't the emphasis of the scene at all, and
just sitting there, spending more time focusing on the text than on
the images just felt wrong to me.
If I'm remembering correctly, I decided that this movie would be
better watched with the English dub track than with the subtitles.
And I hope that, even though I can't remember the title, I've conveyed
the idea well enough that people will be able to think of their own
analogous examples.
I suppose the ideal solution is to offer the viewer both choices. Or
you could make a case that the director should have some input on what
he thinks is the best way to convey what's important to him in the
movie.
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