I guess it's so common that nobody bothers.. But to me it always feels a bit strange..
shareAmerican isn't a language
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American is a dialect of English. There are several English dialects from many different countries, and without practice it is sometimes hard for those speaking them to understand each other.
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Last time I checked it wasn't a foreign film either. Having a movie set in a foreign country, but having them speaks English attract a wider audience than foreign films do. In Gladiator they spoke modern English.
I'm an athiest. I swear to God!
It's not a language, but it is a dialect. It's an American movie, and they did a good job of neutralizing the dialect. It didn't sound like any particular brand of the language. You didn't really put much into your argument against it, Kjellgren. Where are you that it is so uncommon for national movies to not be in the native language? I could name you four English speaking American movies that take place in foreign language speaking countries just off the top of my head: Ever After, Schindler's List, Casanova, The Last Emperor (though that last one did have an interesting trick, whenever the Emperor talked to his English tutor he had an accent, when he talked to anyone else he didn't). It happens in the other direction, too. Meschugge is a German movie which takes place quite a bit in New York, yet everyone there speaks German (I could accept that if they had spoken a single word of English, but they didn't).
Yes, there's Europa, Europa and Mel Gibson's experiments, but Rosario's right, even with the amount of money that Passion of the Christ made, it's still considered out of the mainstream.
I'll never forget watching Disney's Cinderella dubbed into German, the wicked stepmother grabs one of the stepsister and says, "Hoer mal zu wann ich Englisch spreche!" (Listen when I speak English to you) The funny thing is that I don't think that's the line in the American version, and of course it, too, was at least originally supposed to be in France!
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Here is where the birds sing! Here is where the sky is blue!
LOL for the Disney's Cinderella. XD
shareAmerica is a continent, not a country, or a language. The language that was being spoken was ENGLISH, and I believe the accent was British
shareEnough nagging about what kind of english it is. We all know how that language can be catagorised so lets drop it. On the film it self, I haven't seen it yet, though I plan to. I do think that it would be best if they made it in their own languages. I have always considered it to be a shame that many movies that do not play in an english speakig country had to be spoken in english all of a sudden. Learn to read subtitles! Der Untergang for example (though not U.S. made) would, in my opinion, not have been that good if it would have been done in english.
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I'm very confused by your argument Tjizzle; it would be best if WHO made it in their own languages? The Americans who made GWPE, or the Dutch where it took place? Der Untergang isn't much of an example since it was a German movie in German and set in Germany. This is an American movie, set in Holland. There's a big difference there. I'm American and love subtitles with the exception that you can miss a lot in people's facial expressions when reading them. I HATE dubbing though (which is very common in Germany). A better example is Europa, Europa which was a French movie that took place in Russia (or at least Eastern Europe where they spoke Russian, forgive my lack of knowledge in historical geography) and Germany and was in (SURPRISE!) Russian and German. It would not have had the authenticity if it was in French, but GWPE wouldn't have had the (already relatively tiny) audience that it did if it was in Dutch.
And Aminta, America is a nickname for the United States of America. The Continent is called North America. Ask any Canadian if they're American and you'll understand. Colin was speaking with a slightly subtler than usual English accent because he's English, but Scarlett was speaking in "neutralized English": Not a british accent, but also not her normal American accent either. It's just like Drew Barrymore in Ever After. Listen to her in that movie and then in any other movie - She's not speaking with a british accent, but she ain't talkin' normal either.
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Here is where the birds sing! Here is where the sky is blue!
So if I was a little unclear, I tend to be kind of 'groggy' (tired etc.) by the time I start posting here. What I meant was, that the language in the films should be that of the place it happens in. So movies of wich the story unfolds in the Netherlands should speak Dutch, and so on. I can't remember if there was any other point I was trying to make, but thats it for the moment :D
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they want to appeal to a wider audience.. plus the movie has a great cast who probably can't speak Dutch. It is sacrificing for the greater good lol
shareAs a Dutchman I wouldn't want to hear an american actor speaking Dutch.
It will most probably sound awfull, and that will anoy me throughout the film.
It is just the same with hearing a Dutchman speak English, most of them have a very strong accent. That anoys me as well. Hearing a Frenchman or German in English has a certain charme to it, but the Dutch sound awfull in English.
It does not bother me that the film is in English, I'm more often bother by American films in wich someone is said to speak dutch, while in fact they are speaking German.
does it matter if they speak british or american english? don't think so, but I hated the way they pronounced the dutch names 'Van raiven' hmm and vermear
shareI hated the way they pronounced the dutch names 'Van raiven' hmm and vermear
Yeah! I was thinking the same thing!
And then they called her "Greet"!
Like in "Seasons Greetings".
Since nobody knows her real name (that of the girl posing), could they not have chosen a name even these english actors could pronounce? Like "Anna" or so?
Griet is short for Margriet (it is still used, for example the Queen's sister has the same name), but it cannot be written in phonetic english, as that sound of the dutch "Gr" is simply not existing in the english language (anymore).
For Germans and german speakers: Gr in dutch sounds as ch in Nacht, Wacht, Tracht, or Woche. So it would be Chiet (only for german readers!!).
About the other characters' names: since the story is "imagined" (made up), their names were also made up. So why not take some names for them these english actors could pronounce? Instead of making fools of them by having them say "Vermear", "van Raiven" and "Greet". Well, at least Pieter they could not screw up...
I totally agree with you. I am German and now living in the US, and I am often annoyed about this matter. We are watching many european movies in their original languages, but once in a while also american movies like this (about a european issue), and this movie should really have been in its original language.
I actually speak dutch, so I have trouble to believe that this whole scenery takes place in english.
Even worse when I see Nazi movies from the US, they pretend to be german and are speaking english, and often they even have english signs in the streets and at buildings... Or they try to make german signs and then screw up the spellings... I cannot take them seriously.
I understand they took Johannsen because she looks similar to the unknown girl, but I am sure they would have found one girl in the Benelux who would have the looks and speak dutch or flemish. The rest of the people are all made up for the book, so it would not have mattered at all how they would have looked like. Any dutch/flemish actors would have been acceptable for the job, since their characters were all made up (imagined) anyway.
NORTH America is a continent, America is a country.
shareSuper_aminta, America is both a country and TWO continents.
shareI guess they did it so they could use more famous actors, but it does feel strange to hear them speak English, especially with all the Dutch names they can't really pronounce.
shareI thought it was better to have them speak English. But it was funny that they couldn't pronounce the names right.
"Everything I do, I do it for you."
Erm, they would be speaking English, not American.
The bulk of the cast is British, only Scarlet is American.
I don't think as many people would have watched it had it been filmed in dutch, they wanted to appeal to the large film audiences, therefore it wasn't released as foreign language film.
Hah! American. I'm sure it was an honest mistake, but funny none the less :)
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The director is English too
shareFirst, as everybody else here has been saying, the movie would not have gotten the audience it did had it been released in Dutch, and second, it would have been a bit of a kerfuffle having to translate this AMERICAN book (Tracy Chevalier is an American and wrote the book in English, if I'm not grossly mistaken) into Dutch.
Anyway, if you really wanted to have it as realistic as possible they would have to be speaking a really old dialect of Dutch (book takes place in 16th centaury) so even the Dutch would have trouble understanding them (Pretty Mel Gibson-y, eh?).
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No but, yeah but, no but, yeah but, no. But yeah. But no.
I hate when people whine about how a film should be in the language when the film is set. It's a STORY, it doesn't have to be perfectly accurate in every way. Dutch from that time is very different to modern Dutch anyway. People moaned about this with Memoirs of a Geisha too, saying it should be Japanese. But its an American book by an American writer. So suck it up. A beautful film is a beautiful film, no matter what country makes it and what language its in. I love some subtitled films, but I feel you miss out on part of the story by reading subtitles all the time.
This film is based on a book in English by an American writer. If it was a Dutch book, then by all means film it in Dutch. But translating the book would be annoying, and wouldn't benefit the film in the end.
So its in English. Big deal. More people can understand it. If you don't like when a film is in English, don't watch it. But you'll miss out on some amazing films.
Just to throw in two bits that no-one else has so far:
It's about more than just market appeal, or the difficulty of finding actors who can believably fumble through the language, though that's the larger part of it. It's also about the limits that this ideal of language naturalization would place on screenwriters.
For example, I speak fluent American standard English and semi-fluent Tokyo standard Japanese, but I'm interested in many different time periods and cultures. What if I wanted to write a screenplay about, say, the tale of Boadicea? Or a story set in fifteenth-century Italy? Or modern China? Should I spend years studying ancient (and incompletely preserved) Celtic languages, or fifteenth-century Italian, or modern Chinese (Mandarin or Cantonese, for that matter), just to write one screenplay?
Or should I write it in English, then entrust it to a translator who may not have the same artistic vision or tone in mind for the dialogue that I do, or even any real talent with realistic dialogue at all? (As one studying to be a translator, I can say honestly that the ability to translate accurately and the ability to translate artistically are two entirely different things.) And all for the sake of an audience that will be largely or completely unfamiliar with the dialogue, and presumably just reading the English version (hopefully the one I wrote and not someone else's back-translation from the translation) in the subtitles anyway?
Or is it permissable, when there is no specific artistic reason to go to that trouble and expense, to simply write my story in the vernacular that I'm most comfortable, familiar, and skilled with? The principle of suspension of disbelief isn't that hard to extend to the language in which a film is written and performed, especially when that language is the viewer's native tongue; and it gives the screenwriter license to take on any place and time in human history.
You've made a good point: this could indeed be one of the reasons to have the actors speak English. But I still feel that (especially as a Dutchman) choosing English-speaking actors instead of Dutch-speaking actors has a serious impact on the believability of this film.
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