Language

I was watching the City of God the other day. It is an intensely realistic portrayal of the grimy drug and crime-ridden slums of Rio de Jinero (sp) . It's so real, in fact, that even the majority of the actors are of the slums themselves, and had no prior acting experience. My beef is not with the actors, or with the movie in itself. I've no doubt that it's a masterpiece from start to finish, ridden of all the overdone acting and American cheesiness of films like Scarface. The problem is that it is in Portuguese. No matter how good the acting is, I just can't shake the periodic isolation factor off. The lips not lining up with themselves, the jumbled nature of prepositions and verb phrases, arrgh. The same goes for music that is spoken in another language. When I try to get into an opera, for example, it is already difficult enough to simultaneously integrate both the orchestral layers of sound and the melody line of the soloist. The extra conversion factor of having to strain my eyes for the English subtitles makes the listening experience all the more insurmountable a problem for me. And think of all the books written in other languages, especially the religious texts, in which its English equivalent does the prose and overall message little justice. I tried to read through the English translation of Les Miserables, and alas, being the purist that I am, could not come to grips with finishing the mammoth text. I reasoned to myself that it was probably a poor representation of the real thing, even though the numerous reviews that I've seen of the English version on amazon seem to indicate that it is I who is in the wrong. I really do want to learn German, at the very least.