Moving Hands

So, yes, this is another post about me going to movie theatres. I feel that it could apply just as well to any public screening of a foreign film, though.

Recently, I was browsing the website of a local arthouse theatre chain that frequently screens foreign films.
I clicked through their films, trying to figure out what would be the best candidate for a movie night, a complicated process that involves several criteria:
-Is the film produced by an English-speaking country (Ireland, non-Quebec Canada, Britain, etc)? If so, toss.
-Does the film’s plot heavily involve a “meeting between different cultures”? If so, toss.
-Is the film produced by a director whose native language is not English, but his or her goal is to “reach as large of an audience as possible”? Is so, toss.
And so forth.
It’s a long list, but it doesn’t end there: my next step is usually to cull my finalists and look at the list of languages on the film’s imdb.com page. Protip: If “English” shows up anywhere on that list, it’s a good bet that you should toss it unless you have very strong reasons to believe that you won’t end up miserable after the movie because you couldn’t follow the plot.

…Then I noticed that the website indicates whether a film was “fully subtitled” or “partly subtitled.”
…JOY!
Suddenly, I could simply toss my list of criteria straight out of the window! Now I can simply go to a “fully subtitled” film if I choose to splurge on a night out.

“But Max,” you may now be protesting, “Wouldn’t all foreign films be subtitled? I mean, they talk in a language I can’t understand, so I read the English words just like you do!”

Well, as it turns out, the answer is no, not always.

Let me illustrate my point with an event that occurred in 2004.

I had a very good friend who lived up in the city, which was 40 minutes away. Since she lived in the city and enjoyed movies, this provided me with an excuse to see her and watch foreign films at the arthouse theatre.
We would see each other maybe once a month or so and watch a random foreign film. I loved the ritual of our companionship: we would watch the movie, she would drive me to her home, her mom would feed us dolmades (and cookies and tea and maybe lasagna…), we would talk about the film that we had just seen and catch up on the minutiae of our daily lives, then I would drive home after her mother told me to be very careful in the snow.

One day, we decided to watch Walk On Water, an Israeli film.
We knew nothing about it besides the fact that it was Israeli, but we figured it would be interesting enough.

Well… As it turns out, the plot centers upon Israeli tourguides who are guiding German tourists on a tour through the country.
I can still remember the pivotal scene for me, the scene that forever altered my perception of the accessibility of foreign films: The tourists and guides are driving over the rocky landscape in a jeep. The Israeli guides ask in Hebrew: “Do you speak Hebrew?” The German tourists shake their heads to indicate that they do not understand and ask in German: “Do you speak German?” The Israeli guides shake their heads and ask in English, “Do you speak English?” The German tourists reply in English, “Yes, we do.” All parties chuckle and, with great relief, begin jabbering on in this language that all parties can understand.

…Except for me, who suddenly found myself lost without subtitles.

As it turns out, subtitles in foreign films that are screened in the US are intended for hearing English speakers who simply need a way to understand the language that is being spoken onscreen. If this need is eliminated via a character who speaks English, it is no longer necessary to show subtitles.

Back to 2004. I’m sitting there, watching this whole movie that I can’t understand, trying to piece together bits of the plot from the few subtitles and the visual language. But, even today, I could not tell you what the film was about. 95% of it turned out to be spoken in English.

My friend and I continued to be friends for a long time after that, even after we went to colleges on opposite sides of the US. (I’m not even sure I should be using the past tense to refer to this friendship, actually.) But I don’t recall ever having watched another film at that arthouse with her – after that experience, I became distrustful of foreign film screenings because I had learned the hard way that they would not always be subtitled. From that point onward, we stuck to DVDs at her house or my house.

So… This is why I really appreciate the fact that my local arthouse theatre tells the audience whether a film is fully or partly subtitled.
I think that this should be a standard policy for every public screening of foreign films. Libraries, arthouse theatres, radical bookstores, etc. It would also be really awesome if all DVDs were labelled in this manner too.

-~-~-~

Notes:
-Although hearing people sometimes joke that they wish they had subtitles for that one Scottish/Irish/whatever film that starred characters who spoke English with such a thick accent that “it was like watching a movie in a different language!”, I’ve found that screenings of heavily-accented English-language films are very rarely subtitled in the US.
Most of the time, if there is a problem, lines of dialogue are simply redubbed for its US release. Example: Trainspotting.

-I have heard of similar things happening in other countries – for instance, francophone countries do not subtitle the French spoken in foreign films because of course the entire audience is hearing and they all speak French. Example: I was once told that the French DVD for L’Auberge Espagnole sold in Quebec does not subtitle the French-language voiceover.