Learning German through film

Most of the movies shown here are from America. Most all of them are dubbed in German. I don’t like the dubbed movies. There’s something wrong when you see German coming from Bill Murray or Johnny Depp. It just doesn’t work.

Sometimes we get movies in the original English and less often English with German subtitles. Someone told me that Germans generally don’t like reading subtitles and would rather have the dubbed versions.

I noticed the theater closest to me was showing “Babel” (Brad Pitt, Kate Blanchett), with subtitles. This movie would have been ruined had it been dubbed. It has several interconnected story lines, taking place in the U.S., Mexico, Morocco, and Japan, with the native languages spoken. To dub the entire film in German would be absurd.

It’s not one of those “easy” movies to see. But it’s quite powerful. And quite fitting for where I am right now, because one of the themes is how our perceived cultural differences come between us – language being one of those differences. So it was fitting also that the subtitles were in a foreign language. Even though I’ve learned a fair amount of German, I realize the perception of being different is still very much apparent.

It occurred to me that seeing films with German subtitles is a great learning tool. You see many of the same words over and over, and for me that commits them to memory. I learned the words for “rifle” (Gewehr), “bleed to death” (verbluten), and “shoot” (schießen) among quite a few others (you should get some sense of the intensity of the movie).

I figure getting a language lesson helped offset the 9 Euro (almost $12) ticket price.