All entries for Monday 26 February 2007

And the Oscar goes to…

And the Oscar goes to ‘The Departed’!
For a minute I felt speechless in front of the TV. It’s not that I dislike ‘the Departed’, but I do have a weird feeling.
To me, The Departed is simply an Americanized version of 2002 Hong Kong movie Internal Affairs. (By the way, I hate this translation of Internal Affairs, which totally burshed off the original buddist implication of the most unbearable way towards Nirvana.)
Like all the Hollywood production, The Departed has big star power: Jack Nicholoson, Matt Damon, Leonardo DiCaprio, but beside that, it gets from Internal Affairs almost everything that is needed for the making a brilliant movie: the bone structure, the story line, the tension, the cat and mouse chase between characters…And yet I bet very few audiences outside China will actually be interested to see the original play: a tensely structured and beautifully acted picture, and more importantly, a more subtle story with witty ellipses which invites the audience to fill up.
This might be an unfair comment, since I watched Internal Affairs first, and I love the Hong Kong actors. But comparing with the big success and fame The Departed has got, I still felt more credit should have been given to Internal Affairs, as I firmly believe ‘good story makes good movie’.
Tonight in a most unexpected way, I realized what a translation can achieve.
What matters is not what has been translated, but the question of who, and how.
In other words, this is a game of power. And perhaps unfortunately, this is a game we all have to play.

Xiu Wang : 26 Feb 2007 16:50 |  Tags: Translation |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem