I rented two movies last night, Bandits and Good bye, Lenin!. I didn't realize until I popped the first one in the DVD player that it was only in German. Most DVD's have English as an option if that's the original language of the film. That's okay, I put the German subtitles on so I could read them when the talking got too fast. The funny thing I noticed though was that the subtitles don't say everything. Words are skipped and phrases are changed.
Anyway, I really liked Bandits (Banditen auf Deutsch). It's quirky and Bruce Willis. Which is always a good combination for me (see: Hudson Hawk). I also found that the soundtrack was very good! I'm going to at least buy the DVD (sometime). The funniest part for me though, because of the German voices, was when Cate Blanchett's character is reciting a line from a song in English. The song is Total Eclipse of the Heart, and the line is "I don't know what to do. I'm always in the dark." The funny part is the German actress says "I'm always in ze dark". It's even funnier because the other lines of the song, in English, with the word "the" in them, are said PERFECTLY. It's even funnier to hear the German actor (for Bruce Willis's voice) answer back in English with the rest of the line. Only because it is said so. matter. of. fact. I can imagine this same voice over actor saying "Papers please!" LOL.
Good bye Lenin! was also a very good movie. Very heart warming and funny story about the lengths a son will go to, to protect his mother from the truth. Alex's mother is a strict Party line woman in East Berlin. Just before the Wall falls, she has a heart attack and goes into a coma. Eight months later, she awakens, no knowledge of the Wall coming down, the change in currency, nothing. The doctor says that any kind of shock to her system could cause another heart attack and she would most likely die. So Alex sets up her room as it was before (a tenant has moved in since then), and trys to pretend nothing has happened. He breaks the antenna on the radio so she can't listen to news casts and goes out to find old brands of food. When that doesn't work, he finds old bottles and puts the new brands into the old brand bottles. Eventually she asks for a TV and he sets up one with old DDR TV programs, and even films fake newscasts to explain the little changes that she does see. Very well done movie. I enjoyed it with the German subtitles again. It's a German movie and has no options for English. Which is as it should be. I missed a lot of jokes and didn't understand some parts - either the dialect or words I don't know yet, but I got the general gist of them.
Update (26.02.2004): I did buy the DVD for Bandits a week or so later and watched it in English. Funnily enough, I didn't like the actors real voices because I'd already heard the German voices. But still a good movie. :)
Posted by Jinglelady at January 18, 2004 05:36 PM | Previous Blog | TrackBack