Writer's Block: Subtitles please

[nineveh_uk]

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I see English-language LJ is showing its nationality again.

My favourite foreign (that is, non-British) film – and probably my favourite film, certainly in terms of the number of times I’ve seen it, – is “Babette’s Feast”. No, no American remake, thanks. I cannot possibly imagine it working, notwithstanding that the original story was first published in the Ladies’ Home Journal. It seems to me that the community’s isolation in the story is an essentially northern European isolation – a shift to a Norwegian community somewhere in the Midwest wouldn’t cut it.

However if an English-language setting were required, I think a British re-make set in the Hebrides could work very well. The Wee Frees and Inner Mission aren’t exactly the same, but they are certainly close enough in the "Down with this sort of thing!" stereotype for the translation to work. France would still be France, the Swedish general could easily be an English general, and a lottery inherently scandalous.

Comments

[ellid.livejournal.com]

I don't think they remade that one, thank God....

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

Babette, a hot young French exchange student, arrives in a Nebraska town. Life will never be the same again!

[azdak.livejournal.com]

One of my favourites is The Lives of Others, which should definitely be given an American remake, because let's be honest, it's kind of inaccessible at the moment. For a start they should cut all that crap about art. And the hero should write screenplays, not theatre plays, because what kind of danger to the state could theatre possibly be? And the turning point when the Stasi villain realises he can't go on like this has to go - who the hell wants to watch a guy cry silently while he listens to a symphony, for chrissake? And not even a good symphony, like maybe Beethoven, something you recognise from an aftershave commerical. It would be so much more powerful if he breaks down listening to the hero give a speech about the importance of freedom and how you can never break the human spirit. And at the end he and the hero should embrace and there should be a heart-warming speech about how much they owe each other. Oh, and can we do something about the background? Because all those dull blues and greens and fugly apartments get really tedious to watch. Also, it would be way better if the villains wore Nazi unforms. I mean, Nazi, Stasi, what's the difference, except for the snazzier uniforms and the cool deaths heads?

Maybe this time it would win an oscar. I mean a real oscar, not a crap little "Foreign Film" oscar.

[caulkhead.livejournal.com]

Also, it would be way better if the villains wore Nazi unforms

Ah, that would be Taking Sides. Complete with Beethoven symphony - the really recognisable one, too.

[azdak.livejournal.com]

Oh my God - you're absolutely right!

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

The plot doesn't make any sense anyway. What happened to the first amendment?!

[antisoppist.livejournal.com]

Goodbye Lenin. I can't see an American remake really working for that either.

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

I suppose something could be done with a sort of alternative history of Quebec separatism: "The mother is dying on the night of the referendum. They can't bear to tell her it was lost, so now they have to pretend there is a new Quebec nation".

[pellegrina.livejournal.com]

It's a pity because I was intrigued by the possibilities of "translating" Life on Mars to American, because I just barely remember the mid-1970s and it would have been interesting to see what changes were made because of the differences between Manchester 1973 and whatever US setting they could have chosen. (Hint: NOT CALIFORNIA.) Unfortunately they didn't bother with that, and the rent-a-hunk they had playing Sam Tyler was just embarrassing: it ended up looking like they had raided Starsky and Hutch's costume closet but not really thought about the settings. A well done adaptation could for example have had an original episode about Vietnam etc.

[dichroic.livejournal.com]

Now I'm picturing them running around shouting "Nae King, nae Quin, nae lord, nae master! We wilnae be fooled again!"

(In other words, thank you for the Pratchett insight. I hadn't realized the Wee Free Men were a reference to anything!)

[sam-t.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure you can really draw too strong a comparison (although there may be something in a determination to be independent). It may be intended to raise a smile through cognitive dissonance, though.