English Accents


Getting tired of watching these period pieces with characters speaking perfect English grammar tempered with vague Eastern European/British sounding accents. Now the TV show The Americans manages the whole language thing far better with at least the occasional scenes with characters speaking Russian.

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Thank God they don't do thick, terrible accents in this movie, like they did, for instance, in "Child 44", which I had to watch in French (I am bilingual, luckily) in order to understand what the characters were saying.
This one is pretty good in terms of the spoken English. When it's too butchered in order to seem like the characters speak English with Russian accents the danger is that their English might get incomprehensible.
So, again, this one is fine in this respect. ;-)

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I don't agree. Full on fake accents, easily fake E. Europeans accents are going to be a very poor experience. When they are done they become an affectation
they are terribly distracting from the actual elements to the story and of the film.

And your example of the American's is invalid. The main characters in the Americans are supposed to have no accents.

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uh, I did say at least there are some scenes where they speak Russion. They being other characters than the leads who are like you said, supposed to have no accents.

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Yeah, am I missing something? I'm sitting here watching this movie, with a bunch if people
with UK accents, but they are all supposed to be russian??
It took me totally out of the movie. Why couldn't they just get russians who spoke
english? Was it about cost? I'm not asking for subtitles or anything but at least be
somewhat realistic.

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In order to be realistic, they would need to be speaking Russian for much of the film, and then the target audience would be unable to understand anything that was being said without subtitles. I don't mind reading subtitles for a foreign film, but when a film is being targeted to an English-speaking audience, it would be more than peculiar to have it be largely in a different language.

Considering that we are supposed to be pretending in our heads that they are speaking their native language of Russian when they speak in English, I see no reason why the actors shouldn't be native English speakers. It's more important that they be comprehensible and that they be good actors than that they have authentic Russian accents.

People sure pick some insignificant, minor details to gripe about when it comes to talking movies on IMDb.

_____
Strip away the phony tinsel of Hollywood and you find the real tinsel underneath.

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uh, don't think its that minor given that some people replied; but yes, its definately not the be all and end all.

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The English accents in this is ridiculous because people of different nations all speak the same - so for example to try and work out what is going on in the first scene at the diplomatic event in the US is a nightmare... i mean who is the guy with him in his room... is he Russian? is he American? the only person speaking in a very distinctive US accent is not even working for the US... who is who? At first i didn't even realise he was meant to be Russian.

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