::A Geek in Korea::

My wife and I had an altogether shitty day today. We went to go see the early evening showing of Pan’s Labyrinth and missed the sale of tickets for the movie by five minutes. They couldn’t sell us tickets after the movie had started for ten minutes because we would miss the advertisements and safety regulations…or something. Whatever the reason, we had two hours to wait around for the next viewing. We walked around and killed some time before the next show. No big deal, except the whole "wasted lots of our time" thing was a real annoyance.

Next viewing, we were purchasing snacks for the film. We disliked the "Squid, Popcorn, Soft Drink" set we got last time because the peanut butter roasted squid was stale and nasty. I’m the only one that likes the taste of the squid anyway, so if I wasn’t going to eat it, it was best to move on to something else. We decided to get a "Churro, Popcorn, Soft Drink" set instead. I don’t know how this snack store is told to operate, because they make excellent popcorn, have cold drinks, but then hand me a cold stale Churro. If I’m going to eat a long stick fried donut covered in sugar, the thing needs to be warm. I complained and got a less disgusting Churro for my troubles, but everyone looked at me like I was a maniac for deserving a refund after I had tasted the food. How else could I have known how bad it was going to be?

Anyway, we finally sit down for the movie and I come to the realization that, "Hey, all the credits are in Spanish. That’s an interesting stylistic—shit. This movie is entirely in Spanish. With Korean subtitles." While this made the movie more difficult, it was much easier than my last subtitle debacle in French. Since I’ve forgotten the majority of my high school Spanish education, the audio was nearly useless. Unless they were talking about something easily, like greeting each other or talking about books or mornings, I really didn’t know what they were saying.  I tried reading the Korean subtitles, but I had the same problem. As long as the speakers were using simply declarative sentences, I was pretty good. As soon as they delved into more complicated motives for actions, or were talking about things they weren’t doing, I needed my wife to help in the translation. Still, the movie wasn’t that complicated that I couldn’t follow it.

It’s like a fairy tale in construction, so having such rich visuals helped keep my interest. It’s a fantastic film, and even thought I watched in a language I don’t understand anymore with help from subtitles in a language I barely understand enough in, and had my wife translating scenes in my ear, I felt I got a lot of the story and didn’t walk away as confused as I have watching English language movies in the past. I’d recommend the film, but I’d see it in a language you are more comfortable with if possible.