Foreign Films

Watching Foreign Films Without

Subtitles WRITTEN BY NOLA HOANG napisów filmów bez zagranicznych Oglądanie

I found Pawel Pawlikowski’s Cold War while scrolling through Netflix looking to waste my time. Post-war setting, award-winning director, mismatched lovers— enough reasons to set out one hour and a half for the film. The first one-minute introduction, that I find acceptable to spoil to you – is fully presented in English. The next minute, the film started. I was hooked. I was thrilled.

Someone started singing, and the subtitle were in German. At first, I moved the cursor to the language options: Polish or German audio and/or German subtitles. Now, this is the first Polish film I have ever watched, and my German is only fluent enough to order a coffee. But I knew, with the experience I had watching films and the reviews I have skimmed through, that I was watching the right one. That it was more than just a good film. And I prayed for five uneasy minutes, that there wouldn’t be too many conversations.

And there weren’t in five minutes. So, I settled and kept watching, despite furrowing my eyebrows every time there was a conversation. I half guessed what the characters were saying, half read their expressions. Passed the first half of the film, I just assumed I could understand Polish. Conversations are harder to translate than the like of novels and essays. There is, I believe, subtle meaning beyond what is said and what is heard in Cold War. Whether I had the white lines running at the bottom of the screen or not, it is certain I would not be able to understand the whole story. But not all great films are in English, and they are not always translated to English, dubbed and subbed to serve the wider audience. I tried to understand as much as I could but eventually, I learnt that what makes a film great, I believe, is not only the conversations. Cold War was beautifully crafted with so much passion and panache that I couldn’t stop watching. If the film was made restrictedly silent, Pawlikowski could still make it great. The performance could still be as real. The emotions could still be as clear. The filming could still be as artful. Everything could be as great, even when the foreign language scares you.