Anachronistic dialogue...

You must be trolling. No one who could write with your vocabulary would construct such a stupid argument.

I didn’t realise my posts were inflammatory or disruptive, but that you feel my argument is “stupid” doesn’t mean that they were — and, by the way, I’m not the one who’s just called another poster a dumbass, a twat, a total moron, stupid, a dumb fvck and an idiot who should go back to being a dishwasher. 

The characters in the movie were not speaking English, you dumbass. They're speaking Portuguese. The actors are speaking English so that the audience can understand what they are saying. What the audience hears is a translation but the characters themselves are speaking Japanese and Portuguese. This is even stated explicitly IN the movie. Comprende so far?

I know that, and I’ve already said so, not only here—Even though Rodrigues speaks in English ... it’s accepted that he’s Portuguese, not English, as are the film’s other priests—but also on another Silence thread:

Some characters, such as Japanese villagers and samurai, speak their native language but with English subtitles; and, while the Portuguese priest Rodrigues speaks at times in "rough Japanese," his words are still uttered in English, not in Japanese with English subtitles. While some Japanese characters are understood to be talking with Rodrigues in Portuguese (which they’ve learnt from previous Portuguese Jesuits), they speak in English.

So why am I the dumbass?

OK, so, now that you understand that the characters are really speaking Portuguese and the English we hear is actually just the translation of that. How is that an anachronism? It's a TRANSLATION intended for 21st-century audiences.

There are two points here:

a) I said earlier that as the film was produced for an English-speaking audience, all its characters, whether Portuguese, Japanese, Chinese or Dutch, speak in English, but it’s accepted that they all speak their native languages — which implies that what they say are translations from their respective languages.

b) Whether the character Rodrigues says the expression in Portuguese, or it’s translated into English by the actor playing him, it’s in English, which is enough. That it was used by Shakespeare doesn’t alter the fact that it’s not something a Portuguese priest would say in 1640, and that the film was designed for a 21st-century audience is no excuse for the only example of an out-of-period expression.

Now if you heard some of the Japanese dialog that didn't exist in 17th century Japanese, then maybe you'd have an anachronism. But that's not what you're complaining about. You're complaining about the English being used by the characters -- but the characters are not speaking English you twat. It's only the translation that is English.

I was talking only about the expression used by a single actor, playing one character, not about the English “being used by the characters,” let alone about the use of Japanese in the 17th century. Sorry, but this is a red herring argument.

My point was that it would be unlikely for the English expression “go find” to be used in Portugal even if the expression was used in an English play performed in 1603. It’s precisely because the “translation” is in English, which identifies it immediately as an everyday modern American idiom, that it’s so notably wrong for a Portuguese character in a film set in the mid-17th century.

reply share

add reply

formatting help

The other thing that outs you as a total moron is your arguing the dates from Shakespeare's play. How stupid are you, really? You complain that the English used didn't exist in the time period the movie is set in.

Excuse me, but I did not say that the English expression “didn’t exist in the time period the movie is set in.” Your accusations are therefore groundless.

Even if we pretend that the characters WERE speaking English, you still fall flat. Someone else proves to you that the expression did exist by quoting Shakespeare.


I’ve not disputed that Shakespeare used the expression. In fact, I agreed that he did. But just because a phrase is used by Shakespeare doesn’t mean Rodrigues would have known it — especially as he wasn’t English.

Then you go off on some amazingly stupid "analysis" about how Rodriguez couldn't have picked up the expression because he didn't see the play. Seriously, are you on medication? You dumb fvck. Shakespeare didn't INVENT it.

If Shakespeare didn’t "INVENT" it — as you very loudly claim — I wonder which English writers used it before Shakespeare wrote As You Like It. Could you please provide some evidence to support your assertion?

Shakespeare was simply used as proof that the expression did in fact exist well before the movie's setting.

It’s not disputed that Shakespeare used it in 1599, forty-one years before it was used by Rodrigues in 1640.

What on earth would make you think that they only place someone could have learned a common English expression would be from William himself?

a) You ask whether “someone” could have learnt “a common English expression” other than through a Shakespeare play. I’m afraid I have no idea. Do you have any answers to what seems to be a rather rhetorical question?

b) You say that it’s “a common English expression,” which might suggest that it’s one with which you’re currently familiar. (I hesitate to ask whether this familiarity is due to your viewing of American films and television.) But I actually question whether it was a common expression in England at the time Shakespeare wrote As You Like It.

After all, he used the phrase only twice, and both times were in that specific play. If it was as common an expression as you claim it to be, it seems unusual that he didn’t use it more often. Do you have any evidence that it was part of everyday 17th-century speech in England — as well as in Portugal?

On a related issue, Shakespeare’s characters did use highly untraditional English. For instance, in the original text of King Lear, Edmund says, about the Duke of Albany, “Know of the duke if his last purpose hold...”

Modern American versions of the text instead “update” Edmund’s line, by using the kind of informal, everyday speech used in America, to “Go find out from the Duke of Albany if his decision still holds...”.

The phrase is common enough in American films (and television), and I question the likelihood that so many American screenwriters were aware it was used twice by Shakespeare in 1599, and so thought that it would be appropriate for characters in films as varied as:

M*A*S*H (1970), Labyrinth (1986), The Relic (1997), American Pie (1999), The Beach (2000), Lost in Translation (2003), Elf (2003), Idiocracy (2006), Milk (2008), American Horror Story (2011), The Place Beyond the Pines (2013) and The Fault in Our Stars (2014) as well as in American TV shows, such as in Supernatural (2005) and Lie to Me (2010), to name two.

In the end though, the Silence screenwriters knew what they were doing.

The shooting script simply states:

RODRIGUES: Father, it seems our mission here is more urgent than ever. We must find Father Ferreira.

Unlike the actor, however, they realised that the expression “go find” was inappropriate for a Portuguese priest in 1640.

Perhaps Andrew Garfield thought it better to “update” the story—especially as, after all, it was an American film designed for 21st-century American audiences.



reply share

add reply

formatting help