There are many good movies from the UK in my opinion, but today I would like to talk about two that I like in particular: Hot Fuzz and Snatch.
Hot Fuzz is a mystery comedy movie about an over-achieving police officer from the city, who is transferred to a small country town because his colleagues in the city are jealous of him. After moving to the town, there are a series of murders that he is trying to solve, but as he is from the city and is a very serious person, he finds it hard to get along with the other police officers in the town, who are all lazy and way too relaxed.
I really like Hot Fuzz because there are a lot of ways in which the story connects things that happen in the beginning and things that happen towards the end (such as repeating dialogue or references to events that occurred before).
Once, I tried watching Hot Fuzz with a group of Japanese people. These Japanese people did not speak much English, so we were watching the movie in English but with Japanese subtitles. I personally find this movie really funny, and I was laughing at it, but the others didn’t understand the funny parts and wondered when the movie was going to become funny. I was shocked that they did not find the movie funny at all, but that experience helped me realize something. I realized that British humor does not translate well into Japanese.
American movies seem to translate quite well into Japanese. I think Japanese people often laugh at American humor, even when they’re just reading the subtitles. However, this is different with British movies, in my experience. There’s something different about British humor that is difficult to express with the Japanese language. If Japanese people can understand and enjoy British humor, that makes me very happy.
Another example of a British movie that I think doesn’t translate so well into Japanese is the movie Snatch (another one of my favorite British movies).
Snatch is a gangster comedy movie, that follows many different characters, who are all linked together by the story of the movie. Honestly, I think it can be a little difficult to understand what’s going on in the movie, especially by just watching it with subtitles. I think it’s a really funny movie, though, and it’s a great example of British humor in my opinion.
Part of the comedy of this movie comes from the tone of the characters’ voices, and the way they speak (such as with their accents). That is something difficult to catch with just subtitles. It’s like how with me, when I watch Japanese movies, I might not catch someone’s accent or region-specific language (for example the difference between how people from Tokyo speak and how people from Osaka speak, which might add to the comedy of the movie).
I wonder if this is something that can be overcome by studying language more, or if it’s about growing up with the culture of that country. Do American or Australian people appreciate British comedy in a similar way that the British do?
I hope that through language study and learning about different countries’ cultures, we can appreciate different kinds of humor.
Thomas
Vocabulary
over-achieving (adj.) – describes doing better than expected in your studies or work
murder (noun) – the crime of killing somebody deliberately
lazy (adj.) – unwilling to work or be active; doing as little as possible
repeating (adj.) – doing or produce something again or more than once
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