Heaven

Last night I watched the movie Heaven for a class. (Class, noun – The only way I can find an excuse to watch movies these days.) I had no idea what to expect as I popped it into my computer – and no, I did not bother to leave my dorm room to find a TV to watch it on. All I knew was that Heaven is a 97-minute movie starring Cate Blanchett.

Now, after seeing Blanchett in several movies (i.e. Lord of the Rings, Benjamin Button, Lord of the Rings, Ponyo, Lord of the Rings), and seeing her live as Hedda Gabbler at the BAM theater in Brooklyn (bragging/squee-ing rights!), I knew she was going to be amazing. And she was. Wow. What a powerhouse of emotion.

How is it that Cate Blanchett manages to make an emotionally damaged homicidal woman beautiful?

What I wasn’t expecting was that the movie’s dialogue would be about 60%* Italian, with Blanchett – an Australian actress, of course – speaking about as much Italian as anybody else in the film. Even more surprisingly, her accent didn’t sound half bad. I mean, I’m no expert, but just sayin’…

Unfortunately for the rest of the cast, Blanchett’s stellar performance as the heroine, Philippa, made everybody else pale in comparison. Although some actors still shined in their own right – especially Remo Girone, who played the hero Filippo’s father and Stephania Rocca as Philippa’s friend, Regina. However, Giovani Ribisi was not so shiny and sparkly as Filippo. He was quite adorable, but he still gave off the air of an actor in a Kuleshov experiment.

But what I liked most about Heaven was the cinematography. The scenery was astoundingly beautiful and many of the images used at the beginning of the film come round cleverly full circle at the end. My favorite scene? Philippa and Filippo (Not a cheezy choice of names at all – wink wink, nudge nudge) sitting under a tree. Almost the entire scene is a series of long shots, with just their silhouettes and the tree against the sunset. The two love birds are perfectly framed by the tree and the audience can tell what they’re doing even without watching extreme closeups as they make out or take of articles of clothing.

*Source – absolutely nowhere. Unless you want to count me pulling this percentage out of my ass.

Subtitles!

My film class requires us to watch The Diving Bell and the Butterfly during the screening this coming Sunday. Now, I watched the movie a few years ago with my family. Not only is it a beautiful film, but it’s French – which of course makes everything ten times better. There was one problem though. Most of my family does not speak French, so we naturally had the subtitles on. Unfortunately, the subtitles were annoyingly distracting. Usually I simply get used to the fact that there is writing on the bottom of the screen and only pay attention to it when I can’t understand a word or two. The premise of The Diving bell and the Butterfly makes the movie’s subtitles uber-awkward, though.

The film is about a man who is completely paralyzed except for one eye. If he wants to say something, somebody has to point to letters on a small chart and he blinks in various patterns to indicate which letters spell out his words and sentences. So a lot of the film is somebody pointing to the chart and saying “J … e … je … s … o …” and so on, and so forth, ad nauseum, ad infinitem, etc. Now, the movie paces this much better than I make it sound. However, add to this the English subtitles trying to spell out the English words instead of the French words and my brain was ready to explode. It probably didn’t help that I was terribly sleep deprived whilst watching the movie.

Ever had that awkward moment in a hallway when you’re trying to pass somebody, but you both move aside in the same direction? That’s what my brain cells were doing during this movie.

While the person on screen was saying “j … e … je,” for example, the subtitles simply said “I … I … I.” This is, of course, the English word for “je,” but I was too tired to make the connection – thinking in two languages is a bit too much for me, even on a good day. So I sat there staring at the screen with my mouth hanging open, thinking, No. She said ‘j’ and ‘e.’ That is nothing like ‘i’ –

“Mum, I think there’s a problem with the subtitles.”

“No there isn’t, sweetie.”

“But -”

“Shusshhh, will you?”

Moral of the story: Either ignore the subtitles or ignore the spoken dialogue.