NOTE: This has spoilers for the movie Martyrs, so if you have interest in seeing that, you might want to skip this post.
I need to know whether “doute” means “doubt” as a verb or as a noun in this context.
I’m trying to figure out the ending of Martyrs - a task which Google tells me has befuddled many a person. However, I keep noticing in other people’s interpretations that they use what looks to me like an incorrect translation of what was actually said.
I’ll set up the scene for you:
Two people are having a conversation. One has learned what comes after death (or at the very least THINKS she has, but I digress). She is speaking to a male who is very interested to learn what she has learned about the afterlife.
Their conversation goes like this:
her: Can you imagine what comes after death?
him: Are you okay?
her: Can you?
him: No, I…
her: Doubt, Etienne.
Then she kills herself.
That is the translation on my copy of the movie. “Doubt, Etienne.” I’ve noticed that when people talk about the ending online, many people claim she says “Keep doubting, Etienne.” But she doesn’t. She says “Doubt, Etienne.” (She actually says what sounds like Doute, Etienne.)
So in this context is she saying that the afterlife is just “doubt” or is she telling Etienne to doubt the afterlife or is she telling him to keep doubting what he thinks about the afterlife?
Input from some strong French-speakers would help ease part of the pain in my brain from figuring this one out
Martyrs sounds like as a truly bad movie. We had a splatter/torture fad during the 2000s, and it was part of it. Thankfully, as most of those movies have failed, it is pretty much a dead fad.
As I dont know what the lines were originally in French, and as knowing if it is a verb or a noun would be dependent on the line delivery, I can not answer this. But doubt (even in the original version) could be used as either a verb or a noun in that case. In fact, I suspect that was probably the intent, for the audience not to know with hundred per cent accuracy what was being said.
Would fit with the pretentiousness of all the directors of those movies to conclude with a “mysteriously ambiguously philosophical” ending .
Basically the imperative form of the verb “doubt” and the use of the “doubt” noun would sound the same (and be written the same).
Well, it’s been a very long time since I took French in high school, but…
I would read that as being a noun. If it were a verb, it would be conjugated depending on the number of people the speaker were addressing and the formality of the voice used. The issue for the listener here is that although some of the verb conjugations are spelled differently than the noun form, some of them are pronounced exactly the same.
So the imperative verb doute (addressing a signular subject, in an informal voice) could easily be mistaken for the noun doute. If the speaker were being careful to avoid ambiguity, she might have said “Doute-toi, Etienne”, which would mean the Etienne should be skeptical.
I haven’t seen the movie, but as written above, I again believe the statement is that after death comes doubt. Then again, this kind of ambiguity is exactly the kind of thing that keeps people thinking about the movie and wondering what was really meant.
I just went on YouTube and watched the scene, and she says “Doutez, Etienne”, which is the verb form.
Also, Capitaine Zombie, you are of course entitled to your opinion, but Martyrs was truly horrifying beyond the gore and violence. I wouldn’t say it’s fair to put it in the same category as, say, the Saw movies, as to me it felt like more than just torture porn. However, I think you get the best effect by not knowing much or any of the story first.
- YouTube (Possibly NSFW, although I didn’t watch the whole thing)
Here it is in case anyone wants to hear for themselves. The exchange starts at about 5:05.
Here’s your answer. So, there isnt even a try at being ambiguous.
I dont know. I used to be a dedicated Mad Movies reader. Which is a mag focused on genre movies, especially SF and horror, and staffed with dozens of Pascal Laugier’s clones, and a lot of them being friends to Laugier or Gans (Gans being the director of Crying Freeman and Pacte des Loups, and Grangier being his “protégé”). And I read dozens and dozens of rants in it against French establishment cinema, until those guys started making their very own movies and showed how they incredibly sucked at it. Laugier is of the same stock, and as he has already wasted 2 hours of my lifetime with the quite shitty “Saint Ange”, I am in no particular hurry to see if he has improved in any way.
He, and his cohort, have always struck me as being stuck in a mode where they take a story that would barely qualify for a short movie and try to further dilute it to last the length requirements of feature films. With some shock scenes added to make up for the lack of talent. Martyrs seems to fit exactly that bill.
That said this isnt a Café Society thread so I’m kind of ranting off here. But, as Sacrilegium has got his answer (I’m surpised that the ending of the movie is on utube though)…
That’s not grammatical, and in fact I don’t know what you’re trying to say. Do you mean “doute de toi, Étienne” (doubt yourself Étienne) or “continue à douter Étienne” (continue doubting), or something else?
Heh, I won’t try to change your mind. Hell, I don’t even particularly *like *horror movies, Martyrs was just different from anything else I’d ever seen. It sounds like you might have just a bit more exposure to the genre and the filmmakers than I do.
