Foreign Film Viewing

The Seventh Seal by Ingmar Bergman 1957 (Sweden)

            A knight returning from the Crusades finds his homeland Sweden being ravaged by the plague.  He meets Death and challenges him to a chess game, inevitably only postponing his own death and preventing Death from finding a family with a small child.

Ojos Que No Ven (What Your Eyes Don’t See) by Beda Fejioo 1999 (Argentina)

            Murder mystery in the publishing industry of Buenos Aires; the story and the acting aren’t that great.  Reminiscent of a 1990’s Cinemax movie or a Lifetime movie with sex and subtitles.

Unfortunately, I watched Ojos Que No Ven first.  The plot, the murder of a magazine publisher and then an employee of the magazine, was thin, and the acting matched.  The lead investigator seemed to be a portrayal of a stereotypical American police officer; poor diet, out of shape, and did a lot of yelling at lower-ranking officers.  The ending had a little bit of a twist, but overall, it was a poor selection on my part.

Fortunately, I also rented The Seventh Seal.  Watching this one was like watching an actual movie.  The action and expressions of the actors meshed with what the subtitles conveyed.  There was dark humor and even some uncomfortable effects.  I’m not sure if I watched it as man’s questioning of the meaning of life, but I was able to understand the storyline well.

Both movies were in a foreign language and I think the most glaring realization I had was how much translation matters.  In the Argentinian film, the translation was clearly made by a native Spanish-speaker, as there were many misplaced exclamation points and the grammar wasn’t always correct.  The subtitles distracted from the movie.  Bergman’s film had a better flow with the subtitles; they made sense in English which was why the movie was so well-received world-wide.  However, I learned after I watched it that Sweden was never really all that impressed with the film; that in actuality the film in Swedish was very philosophical and “out there”.  The translator that composed the subtitles may have been a native English-speaker and made the words more relevant.  (Bergman wasn’t really recognized for his accomplishment in Sweden until his death when the Swedes were overwhelmed with the outpouring of grief from his worldwide audience.)  Subtitles can either make or break a foreign film watching experience.

(A friend of mine maybe said it best when she stopped by my house the night I was watching these films and asked “Why couldn’t you find a foreign film in English?”)