Saturday, August 3, 2013

French Cinema & American Films



As long as you can see to read the words, and aren’t distracted by what’s happening long enough to read them, subtitles can actually accentuate the authenticity of a movie. Something about foreign words coming from the actors mouths bracing the ear in unusual ways lends truth and sensation to the experience. 

The romance of a sensually spoken stream purring from a lover’s lips. The harsh clash of angry and confusing sylabuls being forcefully executed. The awe inspiring newness and bewilderment of a fresh environment for someone in a stunningly ancient land. Hollywood has finally realized the value of using genuine language …

Movies like Babel, could never have stirred the senses, evoked the confusion and fear or blasted away the naivety most Americans are securely insulated in, without the bazaar sounds coming from strangely familiar faces. Every nuisance from tense, desperate, suffering, thrilled people, all looking curiously American around the edges, or specifically not, but reminding us in a severely profound way that America contains but a drop in the bucket of humanity and we are just ants on an ant hill surrounded by a cornucopia of other living things all bent towards the grave, reaching for the heavens, seeking a molecule of happiness.

(unfinished...more to follow...)

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