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I found out about this Russian film only recently and wondered if anyone here had seen it and what they thought of it. Even though parts of the premise sounded a bit... overused, some of the images intrigued me.
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My friend Alex and I went to see Night Watch, a decision we made based off the trailers, which looked cool. Truth be told, I didn't see more than 10 minutes of it before falling asleep, and I slept through the whole movie only to wake up at the credits. Alex, however, saw it all and said it was "fairly awful," and "didn't make any sense," and "had some serious plot issues." Visually, some of the effects were nice, he said.
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I remember reading a few reviews on imdb.com by Russians that said they didn't think anyone outside a Russian audience would really understand the movie. There were inside jokes/references that just wouldn't translate. I had hoped they were wrong: some of those images looked awesome.
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The culture barrier can sometimes be insurmountable for books or movies. Yet I've seen foreign films I've loved. I recently caught a movie entirely in German ("The Harmoninsts.") No dubbing, just subtitles, even the songs were in German...but I loved it enough to go out and round up two CDs worth of songs by the artists.
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Sounds like the writers didn't know how or possibly want to reach a wider audience.
Some things can reach across any cultural barrier. Some things can't. Tone does, tricksy word choice can't.
Did you know that the tones of voice used by a mother talking to her baby are the same in any language? Interestingly, it is the same way most people talk to their pets.
I'm a total layman on this subject and all my conclusions are derived from too much time reading on my owne and watching cable TV late into the night. To my undereducated mind, culture is merely shared context.
Like gravity, where every atom in the universe exerts some tiny amount of influence on ever other, every person shares some contextual understanding with every other person. The more context they share, the more culturally alike two people are. That there are some natural or convenient demarcation lines leads to the idea of seperate cultures.
Demarcation leads to barriers and toll booths which, of course, have to be staffed by bureacrats.
I will stop typing now. I look forward to a lively discussion.
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