In Bruges

In Bruges, the movie

Today I went to the movie In Bruges in Newcastle together with Tinne. It’s a funny movie about two assassins in Bruges, a tourism city in Belgium. Now that we are back at our place in Durham UK, I immediately wondered whether they are playing the movie in Belgian movie theaters too. Surprisingly they don’t. Sure they make fun of Belgians, Belgium and the “shit-hole Bruges” quite a lot. But hey, that doesn’t mean you can’t air the movie in our country! We can take a couple of yokes. Don’t worry!

It was a bit sad that they didn’t speak a single word of Flemish/Dutch in the movie. It’s not really normal for Flemish people to spontaneously and automatically reply in fluent English each time any guy asks something. Even the people screaming when a dude falls out of the sky at the end of the movie don’t use a single word of Dutch for the shouting. I’m quite sure you’d hear a “Wat is da joh??” or a “Godverdoemme! Wah valt er naa ut de lucht?! Nen Englander!” and then they’d probably go look at say something like: “ei mo, dien hee een geweer”. And they’d continue with a “goh ligge, die zen aant schieten na mekander!”.

Nothing like that in the movie. Just boring English speaking people doing English, like in every typical movie. They did get the bus company, De Lijn, right in the beginning of the movie. Also some romantic images from the city Bruges. That was about it, regretfully.

Anyway, me and Tinne had a few good laughs. Funny Belgians, etc etc.

DBusGlibBindings and AsyncWorker combined

I added a sample to the DBus page that I wrote this weekend. It uses AsyncWorker. I also made the now two samples actually compile. Although I have not really tested them, you can download them too now.

8 thoughts on “In Bruges”

  3. I’m sure it’ll be in Belgian theatres at some point or another. Belgium tends to be a bit .. how shall I put it .. slow like that. Not to mention that Kinepolis is quite likely the worst cinema in the world.

  4. I think it is quite unrealistic, though, that we don’t hear a single word of Dutch.

    Even in the scene where the Belgian film girl and Ray are kind of having sex and the boyfriend drops in, they immediately start talking English.

    Daniel, if you caught your girlfriend having sex with a Frenchmen, would you start talking in French immediately?

  5. @Bram: I checked at cinebel.be for future planned movies, and In Bruges was mentioned as a movie that will only be aired in UK.

    I can imagine that the movie is specifically targeted at a UK audience. Still, it would be nice if they show the movie in Belgium too. Especially since Bruges is part of the actual subject of the movie.

  6. Tinne: No, I wouldn’t (not least because my French doesn’t extend much past random roots of words, some prepositions, and ‘avec fromage’), but if you’re shocked that movies aren’t an absolutely accurate depiction of real life …

  7. daniels: g_assert_cmpstr (“it’s a bit sad”, ==, “shocked”);

    You give me the results. Also, I mentioned that it would have been nicer if there would be at least “one” occurrence of Flemish being used when the movie has as one of its actual subjects the Belgian/Flemish culture, Bruges, etc. Just one, one single word. Maybe do it in English with a Dutchy way of saying it? They do that for Russian movies too, right? Put a subtitle underneath that one sentence? Anything at all?

    Especially for the areas around Bruges is the use of the dialects a very important part of the Flemish culture. Making a movie about Flemish culture, about Bruges, but not even once mentioning this …

    I’m not shocked, though. That’s just you skewing what I wrote.

  8. Jeebus, you call that dutch? ;)

    Also, is it not slightly grating that the English call the place by it’s Walloonse name? Should be “In Brugge” surely, given the history of the place especially..

    Also, what’s with the capitalised van? :)

Comments are closed.