I have a lot of trouble following movies with subtitles- either I understand what they’re saying and miss the action, or I see the action and miss what’s being said. Thus far I’ve seen three or four movies from start to finish that have subtitles in them without giving up in frustration- and all three have been in Spanish, which I speak some. I know a lot of people say " after a while I forget entirely that I’m reading the subtitles" but I’m not able to do that, so I’m always accutely aware that I have to read the dialogue to understand what is being said.
For the most part I’ve just avoided attempting to even try watching them at all, but I rented The Devil’s Backbone a few months back, not realizing the title was the only thing in English, and ended up watching it anyway once I realized it was subtitled because I’d heard rave reviews. It was a great movie, and I’m glad I decided to give it a shot. It ended up being easy enough to follow even with the subtitles, and I only needed to rewind to catch things a couple of times. However, after 4.5 years of Spanish (though it’s been years since those classes) I understood some of the spoken dialogue anyway.
So now I’m feeling a little braver when it comes to subtitles, and I’m toying with the idea of buying The Kingdom on tape. (I wish I could rent it first!) However, I’m wondering how it compares to something like The Devil’s Backbone which had parts with little dialogue. Is it really as fast-paced as e.r. as the box says? They talk a mile a minute on that show! Not to mention I have no familiarity with Dutch or Swedish to help me understand the dialogue…
Should I try it? Or is there little hope of getting through it given my “inexperience” with subtitled films?