The world of theology in the movies is about to erupt, with Mel Gibson's $35 million dollar movie about Christ in the last hours of His life. No subtitles are to be used, and all dialogue is spoken in the original language that Christ used.
(click on, or type into finder http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/08/04/1059849338248.html

Question:
Should Mel Gibson finally follow later with 'Fahrenheit 451', how will THAT be colored by THIS? ( A little off the beaten track topic, but worth kicking around? )

This film seems to be making a lot of people uncomfortable. I saw the trailer a few weeks ago and it gave me incredible chills. Something is up with the film if newspapers were digging up dirt about Gibson and his father while he was in another country shooting. How about that?

Will it have an impact on F451? I sincerely doubt it. Gibson is too highly liked for that.

I must admit to some curiosity about "The Passion"--though if it will be on the art-house circuit, I probably won't have the opportunity to see it.

But, why on earth is this film to be released without any subtitles???? That simply doesn't make any sense!

octobecountry:
I was brought up in a Lithuanian family, on my mother's side. I never really learned the language, but it evokes a magical presence when I am around people speaking it. Just think. Gibson is doing the film with the language Christ spoke. It's fascinating to just hear it, amidst the images...don't you think?
We know the story.
And we don't know the story. And not knowing what is being said and the film carrying us into the "passion", might be like being 'caught' in a crowd and taken along somewheres that everyone is going, if we like it or not...

Welllll...... I guess I can understand, that by not knowing the language, you can get caught up in the atmosphere of the story; kind of get the feeling that you are eavesdropping in on a bit of history.

But still, it seems to me that it may be incredibly frustrating not knowing what anyone is saying! Unless everyone is acting in a sort of broad pantomime style (like in silent pictures), how is the audience to know what is going on? If there are any dialogue scenes of any length whatsoever, I think the film is going to totally lose the audience, so I'm guessing this is a very visual film, with very little speaking in the first place.

[This message has been edited by octobercountry (edited 08-05-2003).]

Without subtitles you'd certainly have to guess who is supposed to be who--if the names are also pronounced as near as possible to the original--you wouldn't even recognize those! I don't know who started the movement that the Bible and religious services should be in the language of the people, but it way predates Martin Luther. It goes back to the Middle Ages sometime, the 1100s in France and the 1300s in England, and you can certainly see the peoples' point in this. The 1611 King James Bible was so influenced by earlier English translations that the language was a bit "old" even for its time, giving a traditional feel which was handed down for many generations. Speaking of funny-talking people, I'd still very much like to see the Russian version of "Dandelion Wine." Given that my Russian extends about as far as "Da" and "Niet," and it took me days even to learn to say "Vino iz oduvanchikov"--"vino" was easy but "oduvanchikov" for "dandelion" was killer--I would like to see how much I could follow.

Any questions that remained pertaining to Mel Gibson doing Fahrenheit 451, should have been... pretty much "squashed" last year (that's 2002)... when Gibson said then he was NOT interested in Fahrenheit 451. Looks like all these previous discussions seem to have been for naught...

(click on the following, or type into finder. Go to bottom of article, and scroll up about 3 paragraphs to the Fahrenheit question posed to Gibson)
http://www.azreporter.com/celebrity/interviews/melgibson.html

Just looked on the Internet Movie DataBase website the other day and they say Fahrenheit will be both adapted and directed by Frank Darabont, who did The Green Mile, The Majestic, and Shawshank Redemption. Two of these three were adapttions of novels and hold up very well next to the books. So it appears we are in good hands. The site also said the movie is projected for a 2004 release. But you never can tell...

Shawshank and Green Mile not only hold up to the books but transcended the actual material. The Majestic was pretty bad except for the nice movie theater.