I was quite confused with the director's choice (well, assuming) to level the field of accents. I understand it takes place in France, as I have read the novel. However, I was confused about the American accents...just doesn't make any sense. I can only guess it was to even things out?
shareYeah, I kinda wondered about that but it would have made just as little sense to have them speaking english with french accents. It would have been best to simply use french actors but the cast was great so perhaps the movie would have lost something with different actors.
Damned if you do, damned if you dont I guess.
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I rather have a accent that sounds aceptble than a horrible try at a french accent.
"This is Fu Manchu. Once again the world is at my mercy."
I don't know why Alfred Molina, for one, had to assume a Merkin accent. It was jarring.
shareIt's the most stupid thing ever! I've had to stop the movie and find out exactly where this movie is set, I thought it was somewhere in America or Canada! Until they kept on mentioning Austria and how Japan is further away than Africa and I was like, hmmmm.
Most films in the English language that are set NOT in an English speaking country usually use the traditional british accent. For example, though Perfume was set in France they speak british english, same as for Troy (set in Greece though the accents were varying in levels of success!), Gladiator in Italy, Schindler's List in Germany, Quills in France etc, etc.
There are exceptions, of course, in many American-made movies with mostly an American cast (Marie Antoinette, for example, or Amadeus, Dangerous Liasons, etc). In these movies, whether set in France, or Austria or wherever, they speak American accented English.
However, the case with Silk is that it stars Keira Knightley, who everyone knows is English, putting on an American accent. And the fact that it is set in France is not as clear as in other movies where English is spoken instead of the native language (for example, it's pretty clear in 'Perfume' that it looks like France, or Troy that it's ancient greece).
As someone said before, Keira playing a Frenchwoman with an American accent...(?!)
The modern American accents had me confused for the first half hour of the film.
At first I thought maybe it was World War I because he was obviously American and the village was nothing like anything in America. Then he said 1862, so I'm thinking American Civil War, but that can't be because he's not in America.
They should've at least used the standard British accent that is so often used in period films based in Europe.
I am going to side with another poster who said it was probably because Michael Pitt couldn't affect an accent. I've seen several movies with him, and his performances always make me cringe.
Thank you for this quite thorough post on why we're used to British accents in period pieces set in Europe! Perhaps here it mattered more to distinguish France from England, because there was one line early on, spoken by Baldabiou I believe, about why France was out-competing England in the silk trade
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"Gentlemen, you can't fight in here! This is the War Room!"--Pres. Merkin Muffley
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Yep, the accents left me assuming for a while this was in the US. A poor choice to not explain this nonsense at the start on the directors part.
An actor that can't pull off a French accent is not suitable to play a French character. I see foreign actors putting on fake American accents all the time, it would be good to see the Americans reciprocate a little more.
Accents that don't evoke a recognizable or plausible geographic locale draw attention to themselves. They are distracting to the process of understanding a film as a viewer begins to process what clues are essential for comprehending narrative or characters.
It falls to the director to give a movie coherence. After all, a director makes an endless series of calculated choices for every aspect and detail in a film. If it's not clear why a particular accent was chosen, it becomes ultimately frustrating for the viewer to have such irrelevant information as we take the journey s/he intends for us.
Then there is the distraction for some of the technical aspects of an actor affecting a "proper" accent.
It's like a news anchor person with a hideous new hairstyle or color. Detracts from message.
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JackRabbitSlim, you write:
"So ... William Faulkner's 'Sound and the Fury' is less of a book if it has an ugly cover? Or printed in Gothic type?"
Unfortunately, your analogy is faulty. Accents are not comparable to font choices or the graphic design of a book cover. Accents are integral to understanding a character in context, her/his cultural background, etc. Accents inform content. Graphics are packaging.
If Faulkner had written dialog in some sort of corrupted English to effect the sound of various accents, patois or dialects, it would greatly affect the quality of his work.
Moreover, if he had chosen to write such dialog without adequate explanation as to why characters would speak in such ways, then, yes, indeed, "The Sound and the Fury" would be much less of a book. Distracting, confusing, incomprehensible really.
This director's decision to handle accents in the way he did may be based on some reasoned premise, but it's just not clear to much of his audience. It didn't work for a lot of viewers.
It's interesting that most of the responses bring up the fact that Keira Knightley is speaking in an American accent.
It was the first thing I noticed -- but moreover, it was that everyone was speaking in an American accent.
I assumed that instead of speaking with an English accent (albeit in vienna, france or wherever they were) like they did in Lover's Prayer with Nick Stahl and Kirsten Dunst, among many other films) -- was because Michael Pitt is American and couldn't affect an English accent.
Pitt, Knightley and Molina all spoke with a distinctively American accent (and Pitt's delivery was wholly flat throughout).
So I wonder why, too. Was it because Pitt, the star of the film, is American and couldn't affect a believable English one? Or something else?
Gah.. Kiera Knightley's American accent bugged me too. "Marie Antoinette" was brought up, how the accents didn't go along with the location, but the director made a conscious decision to just let all the actors speak with all their own natural accents. It worked for that movie. I just can't for the life of me figure out why they would choose to give the actors American accents. I think it was also brought up that traditionally, English accents are used for historical European movies. Why didn't the director just do that? I think that maybe you're right, theprovinces, that maybe Pitt just couldn't pull it off.. I'm not impressed with his performance at all.. He was just plain boring.
shareTo be honest, I think using English accents makes no sense either. Yes, it has usually been done in historical films, but for what purpose? The American accent didn't bother me at all, but I guess that was because of "Night at the Museum", that movie made a good point.
sharePerhaps just so the two leads would sound the same. It would have been more distracting had the two of them had different accents. Just a new twist to me. Usually these kind of films, even thought they are set in France, Italy, etc have people with English accents, which really makes no more sense the the American accents.
We gotta travel by day so..lets go
I seem to recall the director being a French guy?? Was this not a French production? Why do the bloody actors not speak French then? Then the Japanese actors........ well at least they finally bothered to use Japanese actors.... unlike that pathetic "Memoirs of a Geisha" hackjob. Still it was painful listening to their attempts at English. They should have just had them speak Japanese.
shareThe Japanese attempts at english? What? They were perfectly fine, and they spoke Japanese most of the time! It was one of the most realistic points of the movie.
shareThat the Japanese characters can speak some English is itself not realistic. No people could speak Enlgish in Japan at that time.
Can't sleep at night
It's common knowledge that in most films based in foreign countries, are spoken in American accents. I don't get why this bothers so many people when so many movies incorporate this strategy. Only in films based in England will the characters have appropriate British accents...would it make anymore sense to have a British accent in a French film? The American accent is meant to symbolize them speaking in a foreign language.
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[R][E][P][O]: My Anti-Twilight.
TESTIFY!
Pretty lame, huh?
Even the little girl in the Orphan could do an accent (though hers sounded more French a lot of the time.)
a lot of french people speak with american accents but that's not what it's about ... i think the director just wants continuity. keira would be out of place speaking in her normal accent ..
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