Subtitles 2: The Reckoning

Sometimes, the crowd is wrong. That lone, piping, contrarian voice is the one you ought to listen to. I was reminded of that last night.

Even before the Oscar buzz, I had been interested to see Slumdog Millionaire. Several friends had seen and liked it, and some recommended that I see it. One friend did warn me, by email, that a good portion of the film was in Hindi. But three or four others shrugged it off, saying that the subtitles were only in passing, and that much of the film was not subtitled.

"You'll understand what's going on," they assured me.

I should have been suspicious of this. It's the same language that people used to get me into Fellini films. But I went with the crowd.

Sure enough, more than half of the first half of the film is subtitled. Worse than that, the parts that are subtitled are the parts of the film that actually forward the story. I had no idea which young child was playing the main character as a boy. I had no idea that he and the other boy were brothers. I knew there was some kind of awful treatment going on, but not why or for what purpose. I did figure out what had happened, but not until the second half of the movie, which is completely in English.

It's hard for me to define where the line is between films that rely too heavily on subtitles for me to understand them, and films that have subtitles but do not depend on the viewer to read them. I will say this, though: Slumdog crosses the line, and Gran Torino does not.

For various other reasons, I think Torino is a much better film anyway. Apparently, the Academy disagrees. Maybe, in this case, I am that lone, piping voice in the wilderness. Or maybe I just don't like Bollywood.