For this
blog post I was supposed to watch a show or movie in another language and wound
up watching the movie the Piano Tuner or in its original name L’accordeur.
This movie is about a French Piano player who was a prodigy. But after a failed public performance he
gives up on pursuing his dreams and turns to tuning pianos for money. To my surprise I enjoyed watching this film
and even though it was short I feel liked a learned a decent amount about
French Culture.
One scene
of the film shows a café where two people meet to discuss what the career choices
of the protagonist. But that is not important
to learning about French culture. What
is important is how the people communicate with one another. In a sense it is not that different than how
Americans speak. They curse like we do however
they are slightly more formal in the way that they speak. On top of that they eat differently then us. The food they were eating was light and in much
smaller portions then in American restaurants.
On top of that the main character was eating desert during this scene which
was pointed out as unusual and unhealthy by the other character. The story took place in the city, so it was
hard to see if it really was all that different from the cities in
America. What I can say is from the few
shots that we saw it seemed that cleaner and not nearly as crowded. Another thing that stood out to me was that
all the people were in nicer clothing. I
think that the people in the show all were well off. The main character implied that he was struggling
with money at the moment. So for that
reason I feel that people in France tend to dress nicer than people in America.
I enjoyed putting myself in an unfamiliar environment, trying to understand what was happening without knowing the language. I found myself having to rely on picking up facial expressions and vocal tones to try and comprehend what was happening. This turned out to be very useful as I could hear the difference in speech between those who were angry and those who were happy, or the difference between those who were worried and those who were calm. I very much enjoyed this experience I think that I will do it again.
