I consider Hirokazu Kore-eda to be the greatest Japanese filmmaker working today, the modern Ozu. I say this on the basis of seeing only four of his films, but they are four really good films. (And yes, this poster lists his name with the family name first, Kore-eda Hirokazu. I blame Akira Kurosawa for making me unwilling to invert the order of Japanese names when I will gladly do so for Korean and Chinese names.)But that doesn't mean Kore-eda sometimes doesn't have the golden touch. Or does he?
Today I'm trying to puzzle out whether foreign language films -- specifically Kore-eda's -- don't sometimes contain translations of dialogue that are more expository than they would be in their native tongue.
The film that prompted this question is Our Little Sister, a film he made in a typically prolific period between Like Father, Like Son (2013) and After the Storm (2015), which seems all the more prolific because I actually saw and ranked LFLS with my 2014 films. (Ranked it #2 of the year at that.) I'd always wanted to see Little Sister but it eluded me until this weekend.
Now I should say, Kore-eda's films are expository by nature. By that I mean there is no attempt to be elliptical with the audience. His films, which usually focus on the dynamics of family in modern Japanese society, are straightforward and easy to follow. As it can be difficult to keep track of everyone's relationship to everyone else where extended families are concerned, Kore-eda will go out of his way to remind us of this in the dialogue, and the effort is appreciated.
Even by his standards, though, the dialogue in Our Little Sister seemed unusually expository. I noticed a frequent substitution of a relationship title ("my sister," "your mother") for a character name, even when I thought who was related to who, and how, had been firmly established. For the first time in watching a Kore-eda film, I almost felt like my intelligence was being insulted, ever so marginally. Almost. I respect this filmmaker so much that I can't go any further than "almost."
But what's prompting this post is not moments like that, but moments like this:
"I am in pediatrics, and we try to save lives."
That's a line of dialogue from one doctor to another doctor, and it so happens that these doctors know each other well -- they're dating. I should say, it's my best memory of the line of dialogue, though I'm sure about the first four words, and they are the only ones that matter for the purpose of my argument.
Kore-eda wants to inform us of the medical specialty of the speaker, and that's a fair goal when you are trying to keep the audience up to speed on multiple characters and what they do for a living. But wouldn't this have been much better?
"In pediatrics we try to save lives."
It accomplishes the expository goal but it also doesn't make it seem as though the first character needs to explain to the second character what he does for a living. She knows. She's his love interest. We don't know, which is why you need the line, but my phrasing accomplishes it without the awkwardness.
Since it doesn't seem like Kore-eda to be quite so on-the-nose and to fail to appreciate the dynamics that already exist between these characters, I'm wondering if it is a faulty translation.
I've discussed faulty translations before, but in that instance it was the person in charge of the translation not having a proper grasp of English spelling or grammar. This is different. This is based on an assumption only, and I have no way to prove it.
I'm wondering if the line of dialogue, as written/spoken in Japanese, is more along the lines of my version, but that the person who's translating it failed to grasp the nuance of how to translate it. Oh all the information is there, that's not the problem, but perhaps the sequence of the words makes it seem like the one doctor is telling the other something she already knows, when maybe that isn't what's really happening.
It could also be, I suppose, that this is a literal translation of how it's spoken, but that in the original Japanese, it doesn't come across as repeating information already known. It could be that linguistic custom states you present the information in this order, and the other person doesn't think "Duh, I already know this." Maybe then it requires someone to translate it somewhat less than literally so that the English translation flows as smoothly as the Japanese original.
Look, I really don't know. But I do think that a screenplay can be hurt by a faulty translation, and we would have no idea that it had happened. We would just ding the screenplay.
Our Little Sister is a really nice movie, one that continued to deepen my appreciation of its director, but it's the least essential of his four films I've seen. I note that I've given those four films very positive reviews, but a different star rating in each instance: 5 stars for Like Father, Like Son, 4.5 stars for Shoplifters, 4 stars for After the Storm and now 3.5 for Our Little Sister. I sure hope the trend of giving a different star rating to each film doesn't continue, because that means I will really dislike the rest of Kore-eda's filmography.
The one I should really see, especially as I am considering my favorite films of the decade in time to post my list in January, is I Wish, which I started to watch years and years ago on a night when I didn't have a two-hour movie in me. Realizing that, I stopped it after about one minute. If what I've heard about it is correct, that'll be another 4.5 star or 5 star movie for me.
The success or failure of the nuances of its translation? TBD.
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