Cineaste Adapts To Watching Foreign Films With Subtitles

As the opening credits of The Boy and the Heron began, we realized we had made a huge mistake. Rather than purchasing tickets to the Christian-Bale-dubbed English language version of Hiyao Miyazaki’s most recent (and ostensibly final) film, we had inadvertently gotten ourselves seats at the Japanese language, subtitled version of the film.

In any context that did not involve a young child, I might have actually preferred this, but Kina is a new (if devoted) reader, and I got ready to pack up my things as I explained to Kina that she would need to read subtitles to understand the film.

Surprisingly, she was all in.

As the film unfolded, two things became apparent:

First, that Miyazaki’s movies are not substantially driven by dialogue; much of the film was told through visuals alone, with music and sound effects that hit the emotional points home. In hindsight, as I think back on some of Kina’s favorite Studio Ghibli films, many of them are sparing with words.

The second thing that came up was Kina’s continued unfamiliarity with movie theaters. In a room full of angsty young adults, with exactly one other small child in attendance, Kina repeatedly called major plot points out loud and, at one point, complimented the protagonist robustly for fletching his arrow with his antagonist’s magic tail feather—which elicited some laughter in the theater.

Short version: I would not rule out taking a seven-year-old kid to The Boy and the Heron if they have not become super accustomed to subtitles. It’s not for early readers, but you kind of don’t need them that much, as it turns out, and the movie’s fantastic, no matter what language is being spoken. If you’re Kina, you’ll have plenty to say either way.

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