Seediq Bale

Arts & Sciences Arts & Entertainment
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[quote=“finley”]thanks, but I’m slightly disappointed the only support I get is from someone named after a trippy pink cow :wink:

Lars von Trier? What a nutter, but undoubtedly talented, in a “I wonder what happens if I cut this ear off?” sort of way. I haven’t seen Melancholia, but from the writeup it sounds like the sort of film I do like (i.e., pure, implausible story).

It was my lack of attention span that ruined SB for me too. But isn’t that’s why it’s important for directors to follow the rules of pacing, rather than assuming that their genius allows them to override such considerations?

I find it interesting that opinions about SB are so polarized. Seems people either love it or hate it, with little in between.[/quote]

I AM a trippy pink cow. I’m named after a classical musician, irl. Very pretentious.

Watch Melancholia for ten minutes. You ca skip the middle and just watch the ending if you can’t be arsed watching the middle.

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Finley, haven’t you heard the saying ‘A picture is worth 1000 words’?

Well a 90 minute film with a 24fps frame rate is thus worth 129,600,000 words. In contrast, the Complete Works of Shakespeare gives us a puny 884,647 words.

Can’t you imagine how artistic balancing of images, sound, camera movements, editing pace etc can be used to convey very subtle and nuanced meaning in a way that prose can not? (Prose has its own ways). You might personally think that books are better than films, but how can you possibly say “books can convey the subtleties and complexities of real life. A movie cannot”? I mean, don’t you have the imagination to see how they could? How can say the medium of cinema is “only good for a superficial rendering of whatever you’re trying to say”? Why do you think only prose can show deep meaning? Do you feel the same way about paintings and sculpture? Music?

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I think some people just aren’t that visual.

I like the Rocky movies. Elements of oral poetry in there.

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Like its protagonist, SB is bold yet flawed. The gaps in the plot at the end are really a shame. I wish someone would have just provided Wei with a couple more million dollars–or whatever it took to finish the damn job properly!

Guy

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I think I need to see it at a cinema because otherwise, the movie is slow (at least in the beginning, which is only as far as i got) and I cant get into it. But if i am trapped in a cinema then i would be seeing it. Otherwise five mins later Iv turned the tv to something else.

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[quote=“tommy525”]Because perhaps true to life, no one is a hero

Seedig bale sounds different dubbed in german :slight_smile:

youtube.com/watch?v=sR3wbdXG4t0[/quote]

I know they dub anything in Germany, but did they really dub Seediq Bale? I mean if not a lot of people are going to watch it anyway, then why bother, right?

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In terms of pure information, there ain’t a lot in a movie. Modern video compression relies on the fact that most of what flashes in front of your eyes doesn’t make it very far into your brain. Anyway, all I meant was, movies seem to me best suited for a certain sort of entertainment.

Sure you can convey important ideas with them, but a gestalt, an impression. In SB, I simply didn’t give a shit about the characters (either the Seediq or the Japanese). The writer/director hadn’t made me care. I didn’t know who they were, and they didn’t seem to be particularly interesting people anyway. There are loads of people whose lives revolve around drinking and fighting. Why are this bunch particularly important? Undoubtedly there was a reason, but SQ completely failed to tell me what it was. If I’d been reading the story, I would have had time to digest and consider, and there would have been sidetracks and footnotes to explain bits that might flash by in a second or two on the screen.

Exactly. It’s not better. Just different. And I like movies, just not movies that deal with real lives.

Well, I certainly wouldn’t like to attempt a biography through the medium of sculpture, that’s for sure. They always seem to turn out the same: a guy with silly clothes on a horse striking a camp pose with a sword.

:laughing:

I usually can’t skip bits cos I lose track of what’s going on, and I start asking grandpa-like questions: “Who’s that guy?”. “Is he the goodie or the baddie?”. “Why did he do that?”. But I’ll give Melancholia a go.

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finely, If your objection to the movie is that you want movies to be entertaining and not about real people doing real things, then I wonder what’s your opinion on Schindler’s List. I wouldn’t call that movie “entertaining” and it’s about real people doing real things (again, not the kind of real things that people should really see). But it’s a profound movie with a lot to say, in languages I don’t know all that well, and have no trouble watching it once or twice every year.

Also, perhaps I should be ashamed for saying this, but the only name I remember from that movie is Oskar Schindler… despite having watched it more than 10 times…

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Not exactly. I suppose it was just that SB was fundamentally very ambitious - the fall of an entire culture, over a few decades - and the movie tried to do it through the eyes of one (rather unsympathetic) character, in a tediously linear fashion. For me, it just didn’t work. Since I’m not a “cinephile”, I’m struggling to analyze why; just giving it my best shot.

I disliked Valkyrie for similiar reasons. While I was aware that the characters involved were doing something heroic, some of them came across as buffoons, even though I understood (intellectually) that they weren’t; they were just up against a fearsome reality. OTOH I think the director of Valkyrie did a much better job of putting a complex situation onto the screen than Wei did with SB. I haven’t seen Schindler’s List.

I think that rather proves my point that a movie doesn’t convey as much as we think it does. We get the emotions, so we think it must have been ‘deep’, but we really don’t get the facts.

Anyway, it’s only my opinion. If you guys liked SB, that’s great.

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[quote=“finley”]Not exactly. I suppose it was just that SB was fundamentally very ambitious - the fall of an entire culture, over a few decades - and the movie tried to do it through the eyes of one (rather unsympathetic) character. For me, it just didn’t work. Since I’m not a “cinephile”, I’m struggling to analyze why; just giving it my best shot.

I disliked Valkyrie for similiar reasons. While I was aware that the characters involved were doing something heroic, some of them came across as buffoons, even though I understood (intellectually) that they weren’t; they were just up against a fearsome reality. OTOH I think the director of Valkyrie did a much better job of putting a complex situation onto the screen than Wei did with SB. I haven’t seen Schindler’s List.[/quote]

I think Seediq tried to make Mona not the traditional hero because its target audience (average brain washed Taiwanese) already have that image in their heads. They may not know a single thing about the Seediq or Mona Rudao, or any of the other people involved in the event, but they all know Mona Rudao is a Han Chinese hero for fighting the evil Japanese.

The movie tried to restore the fact, that Mona is not a Han Chinese hero, if a hero at all. However, when culture collide with one side having a superiority complex trying to “civilize” others, then all anyone can do is trying to do right by what they know. The choices they make are limited by their view of the world, and for the Seediq, when they are faced with the doom to their civilization, they wanted to go down according to their own custom. It’s about wanting the audience to not look at history with a right/wrong, black and white perspective.

[quote=“finley”]

I think that rather proves my point that a movie doesn’t convey as much as we think it does. We get the emotions, but we don’t get the facts.

Anyway, it’s only my opinion. If you guys liked SB, that’s great.[/quote]

I don’t think the movie was about having us remember the names or that kind of fact. Do you remember any Navi name from Avatar? I sure don’t, heck I don’t even remember the main character’s names right now, and I don’t think that means Avatar wasn’t done well. It probably just means I am bad with names, or these movies have names hard for me to remember.

Schindler’s list was about letting people know that everyone can make a choice to be compassionate and not throw one’s own humanity in the garbage even when it is hard. People can be in a machine that forces them to turn a blind eye and just do as ordered, but we always have a choice. That for me is the important message from that movie, so regardless if Schindler was actually the hero historically, or if the story was factual, or it’'s black and white and slow as snails, it did its job well.

It’s a similar kind of deal for me in terms of Seediq Bale.

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Haven’t watched this movie, but with you on the general principle, Finley. Maybe it’s because I grew up without a TV in the house, but I find I have an incredibly short attention span for movies and TV. It has to really grab me, and do so quickly. I find I’ve watched the first ten minutes of tons of movies, and only a few all the way through.

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[quote=“tommy525”]
Seedig bale sounds different dubbed in german :slight_smile:
youtube.com/watch?v=sR3wbdXG4t0[/quote]

cringe The first half of the dubbed trailer must sound familiar to a zillion of WW2 movies, no? Only difference being that the German blabbering bad guys wear different kind of uniforms and have slightly different facial features :stuck_out_tongue:

Anyway, the funniest part is the comments for me. Some seemingly neo-nazi guy from Germany with Japanese roots rants about how evil those savages were, killing the occupying Japanese. Several people ridicule him, as this is the traditional way to deal with idiots in Germany. Thus said “Japanese” goes on to curse the other posters “Jewish grandmother should die of cancer”. :popcorn: Only thing I’m wondering is if I should bother being a good German citizen, and report this guy’s punishable offences at other places to the authorities… After all it wasn’t too hard to google that jerk’s full name and address :smiley:

They indeed didn’t bother much, as far as I can tell from this trailer. The dubbing sounds as shitty as many others, plus its always strange how most actors in most movies seem dubbed using same few dozen voices. I am bad with remembering actor names, but I think I recall Mona Rudao is dubbed using the voice normally dubbing some rather famous actor mostly known for action movies.

Well, dubbing sucks. period. I am very happy that most Taiwanese DVDs allow me to watch the original language plus English and Chinese subtitles. Great :thumbsup:

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haha yes i spent some time in Germany back in the day. And I would often see movies, but it was all dubbed in german with no subtitles. So I basically had to invent the plot and the dialog as the movie rolled on.

After awhile I got pretty good at it.

The problem in Taiwan is when they have a non english movie and the subtitles are only in Mandarin.

Then I am lost as well.

Saw an italian movie that was in Italian and the subtitles were in Mandarin. I was sunk on that one, back to inventing the plot and the dialog.

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Ever wanted to see Seediq Bale in German? Don’t matter if it’s a Japanese or Seediq character speaking, everyone would be speaking German. No more subtitles!

Forget about Seediq Bale, it should be called Echtes Deutsch!

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When I saw it years ago at the Cultural Center here in Taitung (our local movie theater had burned down) I went outside during the break and saw an old-timer with one of those 4-wheeled electric scooters that had run out of charge. It was pissing down, and as he said he lived fairly close, I volunteered to push him. I ended up pushing him for blocks. When I finally got him home, I ran all the way back to the theater, glowing with the knowledge that I’d been a real life hero. My wife crapped on me for being late, and said I should have abandoned him after the first block.

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“Echte Männer” or “Echte Menschen” would be the translation of Seediq Bale ^^

LOL how cringeworthy :face_vomiting: somehow many German dubs have an abysmally crappy feel to them: The dialogue text feels completely unnatural, and the voices are extremely overacted. Plus it feels like it’s the same few dozens voice actors over and over again.

With very few exceptions (like life of Brian), I very much prefer the originals.

There was one similar era movie though which had German voice in the original: “1895 in Formosa” had one scene where Japanese soldiers were exchanging a few words with each other in German, presumably having been trained there. So you had two Japanese in Taiwan, talking German, with English subtitles explaining what’s happening. Very international.

extra-Cringe though is a German police series dubbed into mainland Chinese: alarm für Cobra 11 :rofl:

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How does that make you feel about your wife? yikes…kind of a…ya…no?

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I’ve always kind of admired that, even if it meant when I lived in Germany I couldn’t understand a thing when I went to the movies. I also watched a lot of Nickelodeon in German.

In a way, it keeps admiring German actors active.

Although, I just found it especially funny when they dubbed everything in Seediq Bale because the movie was made in such a way so that no one person can go through the whole thing without reading subtitles, even in Taiwan.

I mean if there are Seediq people who are very skilled in Japanese, then maybe, but chances are there are less than a dozen people that like in the world.

I was kind of expecting the movie to just dub the Seediq dialogues in German since they are the main characters, or just Japanese in German so that Seediq dialogues can be left unchanged.

There are scenes in the movie where people from both sides attempt to communicate but couldn’t because of the language barrier. Man, I’d love to see those scenes in the German dub. How are they going to pull it off when all of they are speaking German?

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Made me wary of ever getting in a situation where it was to her advantage to discard me.

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Maybe they do it like in band of brothers, where one soldier us translating the speech if a surrendering German commander to English for his fellow Americans: they simply changed the dialogue completely.

Back to Seediq Bale: yeah, dubbing only the main character group would help understand what’s going on in that movie tremendously. Unfortunately, I think in German dubs that simply us not done. No subtitles, almost ever. And yeah, lots gets list in translation.

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