I started to watch this movie till the point where germans of world war 2 all speaking in english, even the children. Sorry but you're doing this wrong.
shareI think it is to get the English audience understand what they are saying,
shareBecause it was made by the BBC? I have enjoyed WWII films with subtitles, Downfall, for example, but those were not made by the BBC. This was shown to a class of high school students today at the school where I teach and even they understood that.
share[deleted]
It's because they made the movie for an English speaking audience of course. I would love it myself if it was in German, I personally prefer movies set in different times and countries to be in the native language, but this was for English audiences, and if you can't handle it then maybe movies aren't for you.
"NOBODY expects the Spanish Inquisition!!"
The answer is quite simple... we are looking at the story from the inside of a German family... if we spoke German we would understand in the same way we as English speakers understand the dialogue here. The story is enhanced by our understanding.
shareWhy the fuzz? I'm from a country that always had subtitled movies and it's great because it's one of the many ways to learn/absorb the language. I pity Germans, Italians, Spanish people etc who synchronize the films. Mush is lost with that voiceover treatment. And as to the accents, come on it's become a kind of tradition to subtly accentize english to become other language. Of course the comedy genre has the most valuable examples, for example TV series Allo Allo.
shareI watched many movies subtitled too and I will keep doing it.. It only takes 2-3 seconds to read 2 sentences and you can switch back to the screen again.. I just hope someone makes a movie about the USA/UK with terrible foreign accents to get the point across.. Read subtitles isn't even that much of a problem, I even refuse to watch dubbed movies because they change the spoken words and are just a plain insult to whoever made the movie.
Let's start a petition to beg Uwe Boll to make a movie about the murder of JFK and the American civil war using Mongolian, Vietnamese and Russian accents please..
So we can understand them.
shareWhen I saw this in the theater, I thought 'wow even an American accent would have been better' considering the irony of Nazis speaking perfect BBC english whilst they fight the Tommies. Granted, the Americans too but a British accent just strikes at you.
Cause it's PG 13 and some children may be unable to keep up with the subtitles I guess. Would be the same in all countries.
shareRecently watched Generation War http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1883092/ a ww2 TV show made in Germany where everybody is german and speak the german language, it is a bit hard to come back to this movie.
The pure british accent makes things surreal and make me go "wtf", to be honest. If it was a few years ago perhaps I'd enjoyed it, but now it is hard... Perhaps I'm just too old for its target audience now!
Sorry, but I don't think it has anything to do with age. The "pure british accent" that you take exception to is the result of it being a british film done with british actors. Comparing it to a TV show made in Germany, which uses german actors speaking german is meaningless.
Films are almost always done in the language of their target audience, and just because some Italian, French or German films are shown with subtitles in English-speaking countries doesn't mean that American or British film makers should be scouring the local theaters for someone who can act and speak another language when a story is set in another country. Dr. Zhivago was done in English, not Russian. Schindler's List was done in English. I'll have to double check, but I doubt that there's a complete Latin sentence in Ben Hur.
I'm willing to be proven wrong though. Can anyone point to a film produced and directed by American or British film makers that's done in a foreign language for the sake of realism?
Babel
Killing Zoe
Apocalypse Now
Inglorious Basterds
Those just sprang to mind but there are so many more....
Unfortunately the language and the slightly contrived ending stopped this film from being anything special for me. It was so jarring and destroys the 4th wall.
The Pianist is a great film but stops itself from being brilliant due to the language. It loses authenticity.
It's really a shame that the natural language isn't used in a lot of American/English cinema. Pandering to the audience like that for the sake of authenticity is such a bizarre concept.