Alright, so today I am going to focus on the Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds film, which I just rewatched. It is a German-American war movie set in an alternate history of World War II where a special squad of Jewish soldiers were tasked to kill Nazis and also taking down Hitler himself. This is a good example of a multilingual film as few languages (English, German, Italian and French) were heavily used throughout the movie. As I mentioned before in my previous entry that when it comes to war films, it worked very well in showing the soldiers from different country in a more believable approach.
From the very first scene, it shows the cruel German Colonel Hans Landa subtly interrogated a French farmer into giving away the Jew's hiding spot. At the beginning the German Colonel was speaking French to the farmer, so it would make him appear to be much more like a friend and welcome by the farmer. Later on as Hans started his interrogation, he politely asked the farmer to speak in English as the German Colonel does not speak well in French...or so it would seem. At the end, we learned that the reason he requested the farmer to talk with him in English so that IF there are Jewish hiding in the farmer's house, they will not understand a word that they speak and will not try to escape. This scene really shows the potential of how the effects of language can be use in a form of communication advantage. For me, the conversation built up tension between these individuals and how they seamlessly switching from French to English, solidify and enrich the realism of the story and the world they lived in. Throughout the movie, German and Jewish mostly will speak in their own native language. Thus, making the characters feel more grounded.
According to José Javier Ávila-Cabrera's article where he cited from Discovering a genre: The polyglot film :
The polyglot film […] is naturalistic: languages are used in the way they would be used in reality.
They define geographical or political borders, ‘visualise’ the different social, personal or cultural
levels of the characters and enrich their aura in conjunction with the voice (Wahl, 2005: 2).
Subtitle and dubbing actually play a very important roles in multilingual films. I will be talking more about it in my next blog.
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References & Resources:
Cabrera, J. (2013). Subtitling multilingual films: the case of Inglourious Basterds. [online] ResearchGate. Available at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/257947990_Subtitling_multilingual_films_the_case_of_Inglourious_Basterds [Accessed 11 Jun. 2016].
Provided me more information of the effects of language in a multilingual environment that is shown in the narratives of the movie.
Hoad, P. (2010). A Prophet shows us a multilingual future for cinema. [Blog] theguardian. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/film/filmblog/2010/jan/28/jacques-audiard-a-prophet [Accessed 11 Jun. 2016].
Helps me understand how multilingualism is used in films.
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