A Really Elaborate Game of Charades

I'm still very much into the no-tv-for-a-month thing (August 25th... piece of cake), but I've decided to allow myself one movie per week. This week's selection was Babel, which Oliver was crafty enough to download. I knew a bit about it beforehand, had heard it dealt with barriers of communication and the isolation they can bring with them. The movie even plays out in four different languages, which really adds to the mix/confusion.

About 5 minutes in, we were both confused. Where were the subtitles? Oliver checked the settings and everything was in place - apparently Babel doesn't come with subtitles. This made sense actually, and added to our sense of alienation/miscommunication. I even started to get into it, saying things like "what an original idea. I have no idea what three-fourths of the characters in this movie are saying. What a great way for the filmmaker to drive the point home!"

So of course I had to go and read reviews of the film - find out more about this "revolutionary" technique. Strangely though, no one mentioned it. Huh. Odd.

About to close the window on Review #4, I saw a footnote: "2006. 198 minutes long. Filmed in English, Arabic, Spanish and Japanese WITH ENGLISH SUBTITLES."

Two thoughts:

1. Oh my lord how stupid are we? We watched an entire movie without subtitles and didn't think anything was wrong with that? Who does that? What about those occasional scenes where the camera focused in on the faces of characters having what appeared to be serious discussions? I guess I just chalked that up to bad editing - "that scene where the detective questions the gun dealer... yeah that was way too long. There wasn't even anything going on; they were just... talking."

2. Oh my lord we actually understood it. Maybe we're actually brilliant interpreters of body language and subtleties of facial expression. We had no idea what anyone was saying but we still absolutely knew what was going on, who was connected with who, why characters were doing what they were doing etc. (And the movie held our interest too. I'm actually sort of at a loss for words here.) I'm tempted to download another movie and just turn the sound off.