Just wondering.I get the basic premise -the character speaks with German accent so we should accept that he is German. As if we couldn't figure it out ourselves. Seems like a lot of bother for no apparent reason .I'd prefer if their either speak regular or in native language.
Again I get why but don't get why this is expected. You then get some jarring performances. (child 44 comes to mind)
it's a stupid american tradition. they don't do it in other countries.
share"Anthropoid" is not a Hollywood studio production.
Nice try.
It is not stupid if it encourages the suspension of disbelief, and it does.
Besides, other countries are stupid.
I was born in the house my father built
Only stupid people can find believable a foreign character speaking English WITH foreign accent when they are supposed to be speaking their own tongue. Yeah, it's utterly stupid.
shareIt is not stupid if it encourages the suspension of disbelief, and it does.
Why on Earth would Czechs be speaking English with dodgy eastern European accents?
There are only two ways of solving this problem satisfactorily
1) have the actors speak English with their own accents (and we imagine they are speaking Czech)
2) have them speaking Czech and use subtitles
I find 2) preferable, but 1) is perfectly acceptable as a solution.
I hate it so much. And it is not only in Hollywood movies. I have recently seen War & Peace and I was so angry with those accents. I would be ok with them talking just in English or with Russian accent. But I hate, when somebody speaks pure English, then somebody speaks Russian and then somebody speaks in English but with Russian accent and they all play Russians. like... no! And then I was just completely confused, because French sometimes spoke in English and sometimes in French. Sometimes Russians spoke in French language to communicate with some French people and vice versa, but then they were all speaking in English again. I was so perplexed because then I didnt know whether they understand each other or not.
shareChild 44 was bad regardless of the accents but they still made it a chore to sit through.
What's missing in movies is same as in society: a good sense of work ethic and living up to ideals.
Yes, but whose "ideals" and what "society"? The white American middle class? The elitist German professionals? The English who want to conveniently forget they trashed most of the world to be build their empire and now when descendents are getting uppity, they're horrified?
If we're going to go by Hollywood ideals, that would be whitewashing, ethno- and egocentricism, and stereotyping.
Yeah.
"I understand English very well...." Magua, The Last of the Mohicans
The "English" who trashed the world eh? blah blah blah
One thing that gets right on my nipple ends is ignorant ill-educated tools who use "English" as a synonym for "British" and in doing so diminish Scots, Welsh and Irish members of the BRITISH empire who, in your words "trashed the rest of the world".
England is merely the southernmost region of the United Kingdom. Go look at a map.
actually one thing that annoy the British is people saying ‘the English this or that...’.
Many of the soldiers who actually in your view trashed the world were Irish, Scottish or Welsh. As to getting uppity - well depends who you mean, but if you mean getting horrified at people whose mind set appears to be stone age or medieval and that therefore throwing gay people off buildings is Ok - or that white women are fair game (or the fault of the West), personally I think stopping them is a good idea. Clearly in all these I am not referring to all Muslims etc anymore than I would say that all white Americans are racist boors
Agree with you. A common trend I've noticed is British actors substituting other European actors using a not-so-convincing accent. American actors do it too, K-19 the Widowmaker with Harrison Ford comes to mind.
The only two movies I can think of off the top of my head that did away with accents entirely are Where Eagles Dare and The Beast of War. In both films it's pretty obvious that the Germans are "speaking" German and the Soviets are "speaking" Russian even though the main actors speak plain American English. I wish more films did this, it's far less distracting and prone to fewer inconsistencies.
This implies that you would have preferred hearing Sean Connery in his Scottish accent when playing a Russian in Hunt for Red October. A lot of people, myself included, found this risible.
I think what matters most is that once a decision has been made regarding how this problem is going to be tackled, that it be done consistently in that production.
Mixing American and English accents in a drama set in ancient Rome for example, is distracting. (And no, the common US practice of giving villains in these productions RP accents is not an acceptable exception.)
In short, I think it is ok either way as long as the actors are consistent in their accents. The problem with Anthropoid is that the accents are all over the place even though they are trying for Czech and Slovak accents. I assume the 'native' actors get it right, but Dornan in particular is all over the map.
There is no point to "fake" accents in period movies (why you picking on only period movies), but few of us are as perfect as you are.
shareI thought that it was sort of common knowledge why they do "fake" accents in movies? Well... Here's my two cents after reading everyone's comments.
Most people have forgotten that the Film Imdustry is indeed an ARTISTIC industry. Unfortunately, it's also a business and sometimes... Ok almost all of the time, money is a bigger concern. But it doesn't mean that Directors and Writers (actors too) are not doing their job because in some aspect they're artists and they do it because they love being able to make a living using their imagination... I guess no one... Ever came to this conclusion? Not even once? Okay, I have done some films myself. Clearly nothing big, and fancy but enough for me to win scholarships, so my stuff can't be that bad. Anyways, it's an artistic goal to make a movie. You have to be able to balance technology, and the natural world to make it work. Tell a story by just one shot of your camera. You basically need to have excellent photography skills for it to work out for you. Photography... Also a line of art. As for the actors, if I were to do a film that is based elsewhere and I was determined to capture the realism of it all, yes, I'd like my actors to fully immerse themselves into, not only the character, but the surrounding environment of the character... Hence the local accent of the environment. That's why they are.... Wait for it.... Actors... Gasp... Who da thunk?!
Now of course there are going to be actual locals who catch that the accent is not real. It's too thick, it's too muffled, that's not how we pronounced our R's, maybe over in Brooklyn they do, but here in Long Island no... Just an example. I know, I'm from NY, and when I see movies where the actors aren't really New Yorkers, or even movies based in surrounding cities like Boston and Jersey, most of the time I do catch it, (unless it's the Italian crew of course I.e. De Niro and Pescie etc) I also don't care either way... It's a movie... And the actors are doing their job. If you're not born in a place and grown up here, you also don't know the true feeling of calling that place your home or at least something close. The actors can only go so far with that. Also when I was growing up (born in the 70s grew up in the 80s) that was always one of the fun things about movies... Picking up those kinds of things. Now people don't have fun with it, people just complain. Which seems to be the common American motto these days...Don't know why... It's really not a big deal unless the actor is particularly bad at the accent.
Leo doing a African Accent in Blood Diamond... I thought it was pretty good, a friend of mine from SA said he noticed too much mistakes, but to him the movie did its job and he didn't mind the accent. So sorry if this comes off as snobbish (I have never used that word but I assume we can't curse) it's just as a small filmmaker myself I don't understand what's not to understand...? It's a movie... A movie is full of a big crew of people who basically get paid a lot to play pretend... To use their imagination. So... They PRETEND to be Czech. I quote Ari Gold from Entourage
"And Hilary Swank won an Oscar pretending she has a d**k, that's what actors do... They pretend"
Huh... I should've used that quote in the first place. I didn't need to explain all this. Aw oh well. I already wrote it.
Excellent, Hoht!
share