I was annoyed by the lack of subtitles of the Norwegian and German spoken. I even turned on subtitles on my set, but all that they said was "Norwegian/German spoken." I did read the following in the trivia section:
"Most of the Norwegian and German was not scripted, but made up by the actors during filming and is gibberish."
That, to me is poor,lazy film making and no excuse. Nor is it an excuse to say, as one poster did, that it was so the viewer could feel what it was like to not understand what was being spoken. Yet another poster said the words weren't important but the tone and expressions of the speaker were what was important.
Again, not an excuse, just poor,lazy film making.
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fentress
8 years ago
I love the movie. One of my all-time favorites. But I can see your point. You would think especially in today's international world that they would bother to speak the dialogue in the real language.
On an aesthetic level, I don't really mind hearing the foreign dialogue without titles. I can chalk it up to the fact that I get the gist of the scene from the face and body language. They're telling me as much as I need to know. I don't know German or Norwegian so I can't tell anyways. But it takes something away from the movie just knowing that they aren't actually saying anything.
From what I gathered listening to the DVD commentary, I think they originally intended to do the language authentically but came up against deadlines and didn't get their act together in time.
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