La Jetée - a work of genius

With a bit of time to go before I get started on teacher training and edublogging proper, I’ve decided to post a bit of an aside which is nevertheless is still somewhat related to languages and learning.

So, why Beyond the Pier as a blog name? A somewhat convoluted story involving World War III, a personal love of French and photography, Terry Gilliam’s Twelve Monkeys ,  the joys of translation and not finding the domain name I really wanted.

While studying French at university I happened across La Jetée while looking for some films to watch as an easy and painless way to improve my French.  In a nutshell, it is the story of time travel in Paris  in the aftermath of apocalyptic World War III.  Survivors carry out time travel experiments as a way to try and save the human race.  Sound vaguely familiar?  That’s probably because Terry Gilliam’s Twelve Monkeys subsequent film was based upon Chris Marker’s 1962 short film.  I fell in love with the film and after seeing it had a few moments of genuinely stunned silence.  What captivated me, besides the intelligent and thought provoking storyline, was the format: a 28 minutes long, dialogue free, narrated photomontage of exquisite black and white stills.

In one scene a man travels back in time and walks with his girlfriend in a park and the narrator tells:

“They walk. They look at the trunk of a redwood tree covered with historical dates. She pronounces an English name he doesn’t understand. As in a dream, he shows her a point beyond the tree, hears himself say, “This is where I come from …”"

“Ils marchent.  Ils s’arrêtent devant une coupe de séquoia couverte de dates historiques. Elle prononce un nom étranger qu’il ne comprend pas. Comme en rêve, il lui montre un point en dehors de l’arbre. Il s’entend dire : « Je viens de là »”

This is essentially where the name Beyond the Pier comes from.  I loved the idea of the man pointing to somewhere beyond the tree, as yet ungrown, the future, and the man delivering his private in-joke “This is where I come from”.  So this blog should have been called Beyond the Tree but alas, somebody had already nabbed the domain name.  Settling for second best I chose Beyond the Pier given that the film revolves around an event on a pier at Paris Orly airport which is where the film’s title comes from.  In short, it is a reference to the future, the use of technology and communication, all of which I feel suit the aim of this blog, albeit in a rather obscure fashion.

Subtitling of films and translations are something I find extremely interesting and this film opened the door for me to this world.  Why a redwood tree when sequoia exists in English?  Why “They look at the trunk” rendered as “they stop in front of”.  Is a pier or jetty something you would have an an airport?  Where is the water?!  This kind of micro-translation, that takes contextual and cultural nuances into account, is an excellent linguistic exercise and something I hope to take advantage of during my teaching.  More generally, watching foreign language films with subtitles gives an extra support as a language learner and it can help you by

• immersing you in the target learning language.
• exposing you to new vocabulary and phrases.
• reinforcing those words you already know.
• helping you to take more fully on board words you slightly recognise but have not yet assimilated into the vocabulary you use by way of textual confirmation
• helping you get a sense of the linguistic rhythm and pronunciation of native speakers
• exposing you to the foreign culture and history.
• letting you do all this while watching an (hopefully) interesting film.

I intend a future post on some interesting/odd translations from films and TV, if you have any suggestions or material just leave a comment.  If you have come this far in this post you deserve a reward and here it is.  In my mind one of the greatest and most unique films of all time here on Youtube, in its entirety, completely free.  No excuses!

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