A couple of days ago I was watching "Aftershocks," a Chinese film by Feng Xiaogang. It's not a bad film, and is as good an essay on the Chinese family as most. Near the end of the movie, however, I had an unexpected and unpleasant experience. Our heroine, Deng, tells her stepfather that she has moved to Canada, marrying a Canadian lawyer 16 years her senior. Suddenly we are on the familiar streets of Vancouver as her husband Alexander returns home.
Their dialogue is as follows:
Deng: Hey, you're back so early. What happened?
Alexander: Something very bad.
Deng: Did anything happen to Diandian?
Alexander: No, I called her, she's coming home now... Honey, let's go inside.
This would be terrible writing whatever the case, especially in a decently written movie like Aftershocks. What makes this scene absolutely unbearable, however, is the intonation of the husband. He speaks with a screechingly unnatural, mechanical voice that sounds halfway between a radio public service announcement and HAL from 2001: A Space Odyssey. As an English speaker, and someone who has actually heard Canadians speak, it made my skin crawl.
Perhaps this can be chalked up to a Chinese director hiring an extra who looked right for the part, not realizing what was going in English. David F. Morris, credited for the part of Alexander, definitely doesn't seem to be a known actor. If this is the case, it seems a little short sighted that the producers of a movie that grossed 660 million yuan didn't check things out a little closer.
I expect, however, that there may be other forces at work.
I watched another Chinese movie recently (great listening practice) called Yip Man 2, about the continued highly fictionalized adventures of Bruce Lee's mentor. While the English language script was a little better than Aftershocks, I noticed that all of the British actors spoke unnaturally slowly and took long awkward pauses between sentences. My guess is that both of these movies are intentionally catering to Chinese audiences, who mostly speak only a little English. Instead of writing or speaking in real English, I suspect that movies are giving audiences a simplified version that makes them feel good about understanding what's going on.
Beyond language, there is a slightly sinister subtext about a Chinese woman being brought away from her homeland by a middle-aged, wealthy and somewhat dehumanized white man - in a movie about family, he is conspicuously absent from the climactic reunion. I begrudge this a little less, however, because rich, elderly men making off with marriageable women is actually something of a legitimate complaint in this country.
I just wish they would leave my language alone.
Their dialogue is as follows:
Deng: Hey, you're back so early. What happened?
Alexander: Something very bad.
Deng: Did anything happen to Diandian?
Alexander: No, I called her, she's coming home now... Honey, let's go inside.
This would be terrible writing whatever the case, especially in a decently written movie like Aftershocks. What makes this scene absolutely unbearable, however, is the intonation of the husband. He speaks with a screechingly unnatural, mechanical voice that sounds halfway between a radio public service announcement and HAL from 2001: A Space Odyssey. As an English speaker, and someone who has actually heard Canadians speak, it made my skin crawl.
Perhaps this can be chalked up to a Chinese director hiring an extra who looked right for the part, not realizing what was going in English. David F. Morris, credited for the part of Alexander, definitely doesn't seem to be a known actor. If this is the case, it seems a little short sighted that the producers of a movie that grossed 660 million yuan didn't check things out a little closer.
I expect, however, that there may be other forces at work.
I watched another Chinese movie recently (great listening practice) called Yip Man 2, about the continued highly fictionalized adventures of Bruce Lee's mentor. While the English language script was a little better than Aftershocks, I noticed that all of the British actors spoke unnaturally slowly and took long awkward pauses between sentences. My guess is that both of these movies are intentionally catering to Chinese audiences, who mostly speak only a little English. Instead of writing or speaking in real English, I suspect that movies are giving audiences a simplified version that makes them feel good about understanding what's going on.
Beyond language, there is a slightly sinister subtext about a Chinese woman being brought away from her homeland by a middle-aged, wealthy and somewhat dehumanized white man - in a movie about family, he is conspicuously absent from the climactic reunion. I begrudge this a little less, however, because rich, elderly men making off with marriageable women is actually something of a legitimate complaint in this country.
I just wish they would leave my language alone.
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