I’ve moaned about this nonsense before:
Since hitting UK cinemas last month, the atomic bomb thriller Oppenheimer — which stars Cillian Murphy in the titular role — has been given a slew of five star ratings while critics branded it Nolan’s ‘best and most revealing work’.
However:
BBC News star Jane Hill revealed she walked out of Christopher Nolan’s film halfway through after spotting a major flaw that left her ‘disappointed’.
I was thinking “historical inaccuracy” or “gratuitous sex/violence”, but no:
It appears Jane was certainly not in agreement as she shared that she was frustrated at not being able to hear the film’s dialogue properly due to the loud soundtrack — and was even more astounded to learn that the issue occurs in almost ‘all’ of Nolan’s films.
She told her followers: ‘Saw Oppenheimer. Well, managed half of it. Disappointed that music & effects often drowned out the actors, I missed whole chunks of dialogue.
Well, that takes the movie off my “to watch” list.
Till fairly recently, I thought that this degraded sound in movies was simply the result of my age- and tinnitus-ridden hearing, but now I know the truth. It seems that the new trend in cinema verité is now to muddy up the dialogue either by having the actors mutter their lines — and sometimes in thick, incomprehensible accents withal — or else to submerge the speech with over-loud sound effects and / or “background” music. Or in the case of this weasel Nolan, both.
Sorry, but there’s not much verité when you can’t hear it being spoken.
I know, the answer is to wait for the movies to appear on a streaming service, and then tap the “subtitles” button.
Nah I’m not going to do that. If I’m going to have to use subtitles, then I’ll just watch furrin stuff like gloomy Scandi detective shows or Belgian whodunnits, which quite frankly are often better than their “English” competition anyway.
The Son&Heir suggested that I get a sound bar for my TV so that I can turn up the “mids” (mid-range audio) and compensate, but I’m not going to do that either.
This little trend is like an artist covering his painting with sheets of thick gauze so you have to strain your eyes to see what’s on the canvas. I wouldn’t bother looking at those, and I’m not going to watch these shitty movies either.
A pox on all of them.
Related: Oppenheimer director Nolan tells us all to fuck off.
For the last 10 years I’ve had to have my audio compression turned on at home to elevate the dialog and suppress the sounds effects and music.
I have also turned off or refused to go see those movies that use shaky cam as a way of creating drama and action.
I think that both are related products of lazy film-making.
Preach it, Brother Raven.
Wife & I saw it last weekend. I concur. Missed a ton of dialogue. Ridiculous. Spend all that money on 70mm format (not necessary for this type of movie) and then make half of it unintelligible.
It’s definitely a trend in the last 10-15 years or so and not aging. Anything made recently is impossible for me to follow without captions But earlier stuff isn’t. Last night I was watching the original Star Trek series and didn’t turn on captions for some reason. I’m quite serious, but about 10 minutes into an episode I turned to my wife and said: “Is it just me or is the dialogue really clear?” And she says: “It is, and I don’t know why you insist on watching that shit.”
HA! We did the same thing. Bought the whole STOS awhile back and watch 1 episode per week. My wife was originally skeptical but after about 8 episodes she is liking them.
At least 90% of everything hollywood has made in the past 20 years or so is completely unuseable to me and the piss poor dialog thing is at the top of the list. Again, it’s like putting up with antics of “other people’s” children – irritating and unnecessary. I have no more fux to give.
It’s not just the movies……
The renewed series “Justified” suffers the audio illness also.
Too much background washing out the dialogue.
There is definitely something going wrong in Hollyweird.
The VA has provided me with rather nice hearing aids for the last eight years, I had no idea how damn deaf I had become and now I can hear stuff, mostly. Yes, Yes, Yes about crappy sound tracks on movies, we watched Casablanca a week ago without subtitles and it was delightful. I have one of those gadget things hooked up on my TV that brings the BlueTooth sound right into my hearing aids and that helps me with some of the newer movies but we keep the caption thing turned on most all of the time and that helps too.
I has been nine years since I saw a movie in the theater and that time it was such a sound mish-mash of crap I left before it was over. One other thing about the movie experience was people talking and playing with their phones annoyed me a lot. I have a low tolerance for disruptive behavior that interferes with my being able to enjoy an experience I have paid a decent amount of money to attend.
I thoroughly enjoy the Nick and Nora series.
The Maltese Falcon.
Those actors enunciate, their dialogue clear and clean.
Those directors and Foley were respectful of the audience… the people paying the bills.
.
We won passes to color purple with winfrey and glover.
The theater was packed with only other pass winners, standing-in-the-aisles packed… Free! Movie!.
Viewers around us were constantly asking ‘what did he say?’ or ‘what was that line?’.
We walked out after absurd random characters were inserted for no reason.
.
We wandered into another theater to waste time with eddie murphy and his stage movie ‘raw’.
But, apparently, nobody ‘won’ passes to that, because the entire theater had three other people.
And we walked out after about six minutes of his discussion of his toilet habits.
.
Probably four decades since we considered going to a theater for a movie.
And yet, 1991 — on the recommendation of Siskel and Ebert — we saw the Rolling Stones at the Seattle IMAX, and that was interesting.
I might go watch this in the theater. The last movie I saw the latest installment of Indiana Jones. There were parts of the dialogue that I missed.
If we go someplace loud, I take out my phone to be entertained. yeah, it’s rude but what’s the alternative? sit there and nod my head like I can hear someone?
JQ
Part of the problem, which could be easily solved is that actors and
actresses are no longer taught DICTION – speaking clearly, enunciating
clearly, call it what you will. That practice ( no pun intended ) started with
the ‘talkies’ for obvious reasons, and started tapering off in the 80’s until
now we have people who sound like they have a mouth full
of hot marbles when they speak. Compound that ‘practice’ with having
a comedian on the mixing board and you end up with our present day
sound tracks !
And no, it is NOT your hearing !
I have long since solved the problems of hidden dialogue, shaky cameras and all the other ‘new art’ tricks.
I simply don’t go to the movies. The last movie I saw was The Killing Fields. Great stuff.
Ryan George’s “Pitch Meeting” for the Nolan film “Tenet” made fun of that. The pitchmans whip out his mobile, starts playing music really loudly, then continues his “pitch” underneath it. The producer guy complains, so the pitchman eventually turns it off… until a minute later when he whips it out again….
It’s quite funny — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t23ZEKqGHzs
I literally cannot recall the last movie I saw in a theater. It stopped being worth the hassle – traffic, parking, crowds, lines, the couple in the next row who won’t shut the fuck up, the parents who couldn’t find a sitter for their fussy kid, 10 bucks for popcorn… I may or may not give Oppenheimer a shot once it’s available online.
Redundancy alert – I’m pretty sure I’ve posted this here before: The Making of the Atomic Bomb, by Richard Rhodes. Go ye, and read of it. Rhodes is a truly gifted writer, and the research he did to pull this off is staggering. Plus he’s able to dumb down the science so that even a dipshit like me can wrap his pea brain around some of the ins & outs of nuclear physics.
We get to know the principals involved, including Oppenheimer. And others like Enrico Fermi, who insisted on fishing with real flies because he believed the condemned were entitled to an authentic last meal.
His account of the raid on a Nazi heavy water facility by Norwegian commandos reads like something out of a Clancy novel. His compilation of first-hand survivor accounts from Hiroshima & Nagasaki comprising the final portion of the book is probably the most horrifying reading I’ve ever done. The good, the bad & the ugly, expertly portrayed.