Wednesday, August 20, 2008
Stockholm Diary #12: Movies
James asked about movies in yesterday's comments section, and luckily my cousin was able to answer his queries, but anyone coming to Sweden hoping to discover the next Bergman will be very disappointed. The listings for the closest multiplex show the following films are playing today:

"Batman: The Dark Knight"
"Don't Mess with the Zohan"
"Hancock"
"Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull"
"Kung Fu Panda" (dubbed or subtitled)
"The Love Guru"
"Mamma Mia"
"The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor"
"Sex and the City"
"Space Chimps"
"Star Wars: The Clone Wars"
"The X-Files: I Want To Believe"

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On occasion a Swedish film will play at a festival or special screening in San Francisco and I'll look it up on IMDB.com and invariably there will be some comment about how it sucks because all Swedish movies suck. ("I don't know what's wrong with us Swedes. It's as if our taste in movies descends to the pits of hell when the origin of the movie is Swedish." -IMDB user "mooshpit" on "Paradiset," a film I saw and thought was quite OK.) Lukas Moodysson, who made the popular and beloved films "Together" and "Show Me Love" (both released in the U.S.), made the extremely dark "Lilya 4-Ever" and the darker "Hole in My Heart" instead of becoming the next great popular Swedish director. Moodysson is currently making a film in English called "Mammoth," which got some press in the States earlier this year because it's the movie Heath Ledger's ex, Michelle Williams, was working on when he died.

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On Friday a big Swedish movie will finally be released here to compete with the American blockbusters: "Arn: The Kingdom at Road's End," the sequel to last year's "Arn: The Knight Templar." (The films are based on popular novels by Jan Guillou.) The first film grossed $10 million in Sweden, according to IMDB, but it didn't even come close to the success of the year's biggest box office success, "Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End."

One of the biggest disappointments for me is that when films are released here, the titles are given only the most literal translations -- for instance, "Natt på museet" for "A Night at the Museum." I assume the thinking is that young cinemagoers grew up learning English in school and watching American TV shows and movies, there's no need to put any effort into coming up with a new title. Even "Space Chimps," which presumably is aimed at the very youngest age group, wasn't renamed, say, "Rymd-apor" -- it's simply called "Space Chimps."

I used to get lots o'laughs from the crazy titles American movies were given here, but those days are over. A good example of the contrast: Doris Day's classic "Pillow Talk" was renamed "I Hate You, Darling" ("Jag Hatar Dig, Älskling") when it was released here almost 50 years ago, but the modern film it inspired, Renee Zellweger's "Down with Love," was just called, you guessed it, "Down with Love." Some titles were quite clever: "Agent 007 Sees Red" was originally "From Russia With Love." And some created their own sort of branding: Mel Brooks' "The Producers" was released here as "Springtime for Hitler" ("Det våras för Hitler"), which led to a dozen similarly titled follow-ups: "Det våras för" Frankenstein ("Young Frankenstein"), rymden ("Spaceballs"), sheriffen ("Blazing Saddles"), stumfilmen ("Silent Movie"), värdshistorien ("History of the World, Part 1"), galningar (crazy people -- "High Anxiety"), etc. Even Joan Rivers' forgettable "Rabbit Test" was dubbed "Det våras för kaninerna" (rabbits), and I'm pretty sure Brooks had nothing to do with that one.

Learn more about Swedish title translations by taking this quiz.
posted by 125records @ 8:36 AM  
3 Comments:
  • At 8:58 PM, Blogger 2fs said…

    A moose bit my sister once.

    (Sorry - given the topic I couldn't resist...)

     
  • At 11:06 PM, Blogger yellojkt said…

    What did the Swedes do to deserve Space Chimps?

     
  • At 6:52 AM, Blogger Joe said…

    What did any of us do to deserve Space Chimps?

     
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