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Subtitles

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I am currently sitting here, watching the ending of a little known Spanish horror film called Zombie Flesh Eater. It's taken 4 hours to go through an 89 minute DVD for one simple reason: the dubbing.

There is an inherent problem when dubbing is used in any film. The original performances of the actors is completely changed with the addition of voice over work. This, in turn, compromises the director's original artistic intent by changing the impact of the performances he coached and the scenes he shot. This can potentially ruin the impact of a film, reducing it from entertainment to nothing more than a ridiculous joke.

Subtitles help reduce this problem immediately. You may not necessarily understand the language being spoken, but you can connect the performances with the emotion of a scene, helping to create the desired impact by the actor. In turn, the screenwriter's words are carefully translated to bring the story to life as close as possible to the original language. These efforts pay off in showing the film to a much wider audience in the way the director intended the film to be seen.

Subtitles can be problematic for people at first. There is the initial barrier of trying to keep up with the written word while watching a visual medium. The standard white subtitles don't always stand out enough on screen to be read. Even worse, some movie theaters actually cut off the four edges of the shot to fill up as much of their screen as possible, cutting off the dialogue completely from the bottom.

With practice, however, subtitles become second nature to the viewer. The beauty of the original film is preserved, and anyone who sees it will feel a stronger connection with what was trying to be accomplished.

I can only imagine how well some of the scenes in often mocked foreign horror films, like Zombie Flesh Eater, would work if given a proper treatment with subtitles. Pan's Labyrinth's subtitled wide release in America showed how successful this process can be in a genre film. Subtitles should truly become the standard procedure for international cinema.

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