About the film, Seventh Heaven

Went to watch the film "Seventh Heaven" tonight. It was an Egyptian production. Watched it because I have heard so much about Sufi dancers that I wanted to see it on screen. The last time I saw it was during WOMAD.

The dancer did not disappoint. What was disappointing (a little) was that there were no subtitles. At first, I thought that the director of the film had purposely done it that way. About 10, 15 minutes into the screening, people started to walk out and the screen suddenly went blank and the organiser came to tell us that it was not meant to be like that. That there WAS supposed to be subtitles. Obviously someone had gone to complain.

One of the options that the organiser gave was to move to the other theatre, where any show was being screened. The other option of course, was to get a refund.

Personally, I thought that it would be quite interesting to watch an entire film that was not spoken in your own native language and with no aid of subtitles whatsoever. Haha...I felt that it was artistic to do so. That's the vain me thinking again.

Even though some of the essence is lost, but I still got the gist of it. The funny part was that I started to add in my own dialogue, more American style. Like the part where the dancer's son found out that his girl was two-timing him and he was beaten up by the other guy. He was lying on the floor with blood on his mouth and nose and his girlfriend, who was standing so far away during the fight, came over to talk to him.

I was thinking that the girl must have said something like "I am so sorry...are you OK? Let me take a look..."

Although I did not understand their language, but it sounded part German, part French and part Russian. Everything all mixed together. When they said "thank you", I was very sure that they said "merci".

It also occurred that us people living on this small red dot, are so reliant on subtitles and so used to the norms that anything that is out of the ordinary is not acceptable.

p/s: The "tonight" that I was referring to was Friday. Me night bird lah, so blog at such a time that causes the computer to get 'confused'.