Sunday 4 October 2009

Languages - the other kind

A few days ago, Adriaan and I checked out Inglourious Basterds. It wasn't really what I was expecting (what was I expecting?) but it was well done overall and I enjoyed it. Christoph Waltz was the highlight for me: the cunning Col. Hans Landa was just plain interesting to watch. The movie kept me engaged right up until he finds the shoe (I'll leave it at that so as not to give anything away), at which point things seemed to go steeply downhill and the movie stopped feeling like it was going anywhere. It never really recovered.

The most rewarding part for me, though, was watching a movie with three spoken languages and understanding just about all of it. I was particularly keen to see the movie in the Netherlands where the absence of dubbing and my inability to read the subtitles left me free to take it in without distraction. Anyone know any other German/French/English movies that are worth seeing?

7 comments:

Niko said...

Hmm, there's a nice German-English-Dutch movie: Black Book. Lots of dutch, though, which I don't understand well enough to cope without sub-titles.

Julian Fitzell said...

I would definitely need subtitles for the Dutch... :)

steven said...

you forgot about the Italian (which Christoph also spoke).

Julian Fitzell said...

Indeed... now how did I understand that? A combination of context, dutch subtitles, and just not, I guess. :)

Clarco said...

Not german-english, but still several languages:

"L’auberge espagnole"

More different languages (arab, spanish, english, japanese)

"Babel"

Julian Fitzell said...

Thanks, Claus. I've seen those two. I actually saw Babel while in Germany (in OV). This was back when I was only starting with German and I remember having to lean over during many of the non-English scenes to get clarification on the German subtitles. :)

Unknown said...

If you haven't seen it yet, Bon Cop Bad Cop is pretty great English/French...