lost in translation, or is it subtitles?

I forgot one of the funniest things that happened to us over the weekend. They had a movie theater on the 10th floor of the Lotte Department Store which is connected to the Lotte Hotel. We decided we wanted to try to see a movie on Saturday night. Most of the American movies are in English with Korean subtitles. So after I returned from shopping and Ken from golf, we went to see what was on and what time it started. We had planned to eat on the 9th floor at TGI Fridays, so it was close (and easy).

We looked at all the movie posters and decided to go see the movie "Babel". It has Brad Pitt in it and I had heard it was about a man whose wife was shot while they were travelling overseas. That was basically all we knew about the movie. Our only other choice was Rocky Balboa and some children's movie. Everything else was Korean. You take a number from a machine and sit and wait until your number comes up. There were probably 12 counters, so you can imagine the amount of people at this theater. You go to the counter when your number comes up, tell them the movie and the time and you get your ticket. So we got our tickets and returned to our room to get ready for dinner and a movie.

After dinner, we headed upstairs to the theater and to our seats. You have assigned seats. The movie began. The first scenes were set in the desert (I think it might have been Morocco)and the characters were speaking another language. Normally you would have subtitles in English at the bottom of the screen but since this was Korea and the characters were not speaking Korean - the subtitles were in Korean. Do you follow me so far? We weren't too worried at this point and it was fairly easy to follow the plot of what was happening. Soon afterward, they switched to Brad Pitt and English with Korean subtitles which was good.

But it doesn't last for long. Brad Pitt and his wife have a Hispanic maid at home watching their children. Most of what she says is in Spanish and it only gets worse when she takes the children across the border into Mexico for her son's wedding. So now the Spanish the characters are speaking is subtitled in Korean again, not English. Are you still following?

It gets worse. Once in awhile, they switch back to Brad and his English speaking companions. Then all of a sudden, a Japanese man and his wild deaf teenage daughter are brought into the picture. Not only do you have subtitles in Korean for the Japanese words, but also for the deaf daughter's sign language. These would normally be in English. We could figure out the connection between Morocco and the Hispanic maid to Brad Pitt but not the Japanese man and his deaf child.

Finally after 45 minutes, we leave. I am sure it is a good movie and is probably tied into the story of the Tower of Babel in the Bible. If I remember correctly, God made everyone speak a different language so they couldn't come together to build a tower to Heaven. Which would make this story doubly ironic, since we weren't able to read the subtitles of a movie named "Babel".