With the ongoing expansion and sophistication of global cinema and television, it’s hard to imagine anyone in the English-speaking audience would blanch at watching something of high quality that was made in another language because of an aversion to reading subtitles. Repertory movie theaters may serve a niche market with international programming and, as such, don’t necessarily expect box-office numbers in the same league as those of studio action films that have a built-in fan base. And streaming services have had overseas hits in the United States, such as the nail-biting Korean TV series Squid Game, providing subtitles in English — and multiple other languages. None of it changes the fact that, for many intelligent and otherwise discerning folks, subtitles are a turn-off.
There are enough viewers opposed to subtitles that most streamers offer a dubbed track option, presumably so people can enjoy a foreign movie or TV show in their native tongue. You don’t get to hear the actual voices of the actors on screen as they deliver the dialogue with singular intent and nuance; instead, their lines are translated into another language, recorded by an actor of that particular nationality, and the speech is synced up to the mouth of the original performer. Unfortunately, the results have long been uneven, as the translations — sometimes requiring more words and longer phrases — may need to be spoken faster to fit the screen actor’s delivery. Furthermore, the voice actor’s interpretation might not fit the tone and physical expression of the performer being dubbed. The ensuing disconnect can be inadvertently funny.
The practice of dubbing has long been an object of derision on the part of dedicated cinephiles. It even provided fodder for the vaunted SCTV comedy ensemble on an episode of their NBC show in the 1980s with a brilliant sketch that lampooned the clumsy English dub of a steamy Italian movie. Still, if someone decides to venture onto unfamiliar turf while watching at home, they might be more likely to endure a dubbed film or TV program. It’s fair to wonder if the anti-subtitling attitude is a function or consequence of chauvinism — a kind of linguistic nationalism. More likely, it’s laziness on the part of those who don’t want to read as they watch. For whatever reason, some consider subtitles an annoyance, which in turn prevents them from fully experiencing much of the truly laudable storytelling.
When the voice actor’s interpretation might not fit the tone and physical expression of the performer being dubbed, the ensuing disconnect can be inadvertently funny.
A Hole and a hunt
One of the most addictive offerings now on Netflix is Detective Hole, a nine-episode adaptation of author Jo Nesbø’s The Devil’s Star — one of his novels about insightful, self-destructive Oslo, Norway police detective Harry Hole (pronounced “Ho-leh”). Scripted in Norwegian, the series stars Tobias Santelmann (Kon-Tiki) as the stolid Harry and Swedish-American actor Joel Kinnaman (The Suicide Squad, RoboCop, Apple TV’s For All Mankind, AMC’s The Killing) as Harry’s fellow policeman and nemesis Tom Waaler.
The cops are pitted against one another in a complex case involving a serial killer who appears to be targeting women in Oslo and taking out criminals in the process. Like quite a few Scandinavian crime shows, Detective Hole is a cleverly plotted, seriously moody crime drama that would satisfy any American fan of the genre who is willing to read subtitles, because the bulk of the series is in Norwegian (with some Swedish). It would be almost criminal to witness a dubbed version of the repartee between Santelmann and Kinnaman when they face off as Harry and Tom over the course of the series.
Why miss out on the excitement and the Gallic je ne sais quoi of the spring-loaded six-episode miniseries The Hunt (Traqués),
(Apple TV), simply because it’s in French? Developed by Cédric Anger from Douglas Fairbairn’s novel Shoot and the movie of the same name, The Hunt is set in Southeastern France near the Alps and involves two groups of small-town hunters caught up in a wilderness firefight and its vengeful aftermath. With French acting luminaries Benoît Magimel, Mélanie Laurent, and Damien Bonnard leading the ensemble, a bundle of tormented relationships, and bursts of gang violence in a scenic rural locale, The Hunt is a hell of an outing, especially if you embrace its Frenchness and swing with the subtitles.
‘Bait’ and switch
Even shows that are mostly in English can include swaths of foreign language in the interest of verity. Bait (Prime Video) is a darkly comic U.K. series created by and starring England’s Riz Ahmed, so good in the recent modern take on Shakespeare’s Hamlet.
Reflecting his real-life family’s Pakistani roots, Ahmed plays middling London actor Shah Latif, who, despite his ethnicity, is in the running to play the new James Bond. The potential for a nontraditional casting of Agent 007 sparks a media furor and throws Latif’s more traditional Muslim relatives and the Islamic community at large into tumult, which leads to his surreal descent into self-examination and recrimination. For all the shenanigans involved, Bait does try to ground and legitimize Latif by surrounding him with family and friends that reflect South Asian culture. So a number of characters on the show speak Urdu or Hindi almost as much as they talk in English and that requires subtitles — like it or not.
Monarch: Legacy of Monsters (Apple TV) — an episodic science-fiction spinoff of the Monsterverse-branded Godzilla and King Kong movies made by Legendary Pictures — is primarily an English-language project as well, but it includes various scenes requiring subtitles. Recounting the exploits of the clandestine monster-tracking organization Monarch, the series stretches in time from the 1950s to today, travels to exotic destinations on and below the surface of Earth, and features a handful of significant figures with roots in Japan. That means Japanese is spoken in certain circumstances (as is Spanish in one significant stop along the way) and accordingly subtitled. Monarch just concluded its second thrill-packed 10-episode season with a cast headlined by Kurt Russell and his son Wyatt as a daring military man and researcher at two points in his life and Emmy-winner Anna Sawai as a driven San Francisco teacher and daughter of a Monarch scientist. It’s the best thing to come out of the Monsterverse, other than the buoyant feature-length adventure Kong: Skull Island, and it ought to be seen as intended.
Reading as you view the action shouldn’t be much more difficult than walking and chewing gum at the same time. And the rewards are plentiful.
