Film Angst

We saw Ang Lee's Lust, Caution.

For me, it was a mildly interesting period piece. It tracks a Chinese resistance movement which targets corrupt Chinese officials working with the Japanese in Japanese occupied areas of China. This all happens just before WWII.

So I'm reading the subtitles and following along. The sex scenes are pretty explicit and intense. That's fine, that's cool. The hosiery is great and I always like that. Anyhow, I'm reading along and all of a sudden the whole audience erupts into laughter. I'm thinking, I missed something, because I'm not laughing. I'm not even smiling.

So I'm paying closer attention, reading carefully, and this happens again. I missed something funny again, it went right over my head. I failed to see the humor.

So I begin to wonder what's going on. I usually sit about two or three rows back from the front. So I tactfully and slowly turn around to watch people react to the movie. Well what do you know, most of the people in the audience are Chinese.

So its unfortunate, but something really essential about the movie got lost in the translation and the subtitles. They left out the humor. I mean I'm sitting there mildly entertained, and the rest of the audience is laughing.

Finally at the end of the film, there are people in the audience sobbing uncontrollably, and I'm not even sad.

So this brings up lots of questions in my mind. Do you have to culturally and physically identify with the characters of a film in order to fully experience the emotional tone of the story. What exactly is missing in the Chinese to English translation, perhaps in all literature, because this is a high budget movie and I'm assuming very smart people did the translations. Has seven years of watching the Bush administration destroyed my sense of humor especially surrounding all things Chinese.