Movies With Subtitles

Il Postino -- one of the many movies I watched last week, was being screened at the Film Chamber, a place whose existence i wasn't aware of till last week! And it is bang in the center of the city! It's this huge place that lies on an arteriole of a lane that branches off Mount road, probably why I had trouble finding the place. I mean I really had to keep an eye out for that tiny street lest I miss the turning. One has to be a member to watch movies here, but my pal and I got in free coz we weren't regulars.
The regulars who came in were 60+ year olds, the kind of crowds one finds at carnatic concerts at the many sabhas of the city. This did strike me as odd , coz' I didn't know old folks watched Italian movies! I didn't think half the crowd capable enough to get to their seats let alone read off the subtitles in the movies! But it was nice to know that the old folks in chennai do stuff other than just nod their heads at kutcheris!
I would write a review with synopsis and all if not for the tiresome research (I could plagiarize from imdb.com, but I'd rather not) involved in assembling one -- procuring a list of actors, directors and comparing their work with others and their own past works. and I find those kind of reviews meaningless. All the charts and name quoting are for those who make a living out of making charts and for those who figure in the charts! For someone not in the film industry, movies are just plain uncomplicated entertainment. And sometimes, thought provoking.

il Postino(The Postman) was a very powerful movie. You can imagine how powerful it must've been if it made such an impression on some one who just read off the subtitles. The story line was fairly simple -- about how a guy serves as the postman to Pablo Neruda, the famous poet who had to flee Chile and take in a tiny island, and how Pablo Neruda influences him. The postman, Mario, always in awe of the poet, more so for the things poets get out of being poets( the women who clamor after them!) requests Pablo to pen down a sonnet for him , the subject of the sonnet being the gal he likes, Beatrice. Pablo refuses, but offers him a fresh notebook, that he personally autographs in front of Beatrice. But try as he might, Mario can only draw a rotund moon in a futile attempt to write a sonnet. Over the months however , Mario learns about how poets are inspired, what metaphors are, and before he knows it, he was dropping metaphors all over the place.
I don't know why but somehow the cadence of the movie reminded me of Oldman & The Sea by Ernest Hemingway which is surprising coz the movie swings from heights of merriment( when Mario finally marries Beatrice), to despair and disappointment(when Mario doesn't hear from Pablo after he returns to Chile, save for an official letter from his secretary asking for the return of his things), to touching and oh-god-sweet( when Mario records the sounds of the island -- the sea, the wind, the church bell... for the poet despite the fact that the poet seemed to care less) to ironic when Mario dies just before the recital of his first poem at a political rally) to downright sadness( when the poet revisits the island and learns of Mrio's death, and listens to the tape Mario was recording at the fatal political meet that captured the excitement, eagerness and ectasy mario felt at having finally written a poem all by himself and the chaotic moments before his death) There was a poem that rolled up at the end of the movie, but I didn't read it coz I was just staring at the screen , unfocused.
I didn't quite relate to the communism and the political bits...it was the story of one man( the post man specifically) which moved me. I don't know why. M aybe it was his naivety, or his unfaltering hopes that 'Maybe tomorrow the poet will write me a sonnet for Beatrice ' or his eagerness to learn how to write poetry, learn how to invent metaphors and his undying efforts at inventing them or his ironic death on the brink of his recital of his first poem. I can't quite capture in words, what that movie did to me. I can't. and maybe that's why it's such a spectacular movie-- one that leaves u speechless and touched.

There was such an unimaginable heavy lull after il Postino, and I'd have loved to dwell a bit on the irony, when the folks at film chamber started screening their next movie - le fate ignorante, a not so powerful movie, but interesting nonetheless. It was a modern day movie about a widow who discovers that her late hubby was involved in an extra marital affair with, not another woman, but another man. It was kind of weird when they showed her hanging out with her late hubby's gay partner who by the by lived with a bunch of other homosexuals, prostitutes and transsexuals. The best part of the movie was the sunday lunches -- the spirit of the queers was magnificently captured in those scenes, so much so that I wish I had pals who were as gay as the gay gays!

Anyway, the thing I was wondering about these international films is this: how much of the real power is lost in the translation coz it didn't seem like much? and why didn't it seem like much?
On post-mortem, both movies did have a pretty strong impact though they were both being read off the screen rather than watched. I still emoted with the postman, with the widow, felt the joy and the pain and all!
What made me do that? Was it like reading a book with background sounds? I suspect that the tone at which the actor delivers his speech does help fine tune the feeling of being ' in' the movie. But am I not missing out on a great deal of visual cues from the actor? Does my eye flint from bottom subtitle to actor's eye? which do i see first? what is the impact of the first on the second? what if i skip the first? or what if i skip the second, would the movie still have the same impact?
I hope to answer these questions by the end of this week. I'll be watching a couple of other international films. Let's see how those turns out!