Perhaps the most interesting thing about this movie, at least on the behind-the-scenes side, is that while Kon-Tiki was indeed nominated for an Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film at the recent ceremonies, this isn’t quite the same film. Because the film was shot twice at the same time: once in Norwegian (which is the version that was nominated), and once in English (which is the version that will get a U.S. release).
The Norwegian version has been doing gangbusters box office business in Scandanavia. If the English-language one does well globally, I wonder if this will become a new way of shooting films with aspirations of international success…
Ah, everything old is new again. They used to do this in the early days of talkies, too. See, for example, the Spanish version of Dracula.
Yeah, I was going to say, a lot of the early fiction films Werner Herzog made (like Fitzcarraldo) were shot this way too. Bit retrograde, if you ask me, but if it gets people into the theatre…
That seems a little labor-intensive to me. Is this a concession to the belief that Americans won’t read subtitles? If they want the film to succeed in Asia, will they also re-shoot all the dialogue scenes in Chinese? ;-)
The story of the Kon-Tiki is certainly a great adventure (and the 1964 illustrated edition of the book is gorgeous). But I hope the film doesn’t leave audiences with the impression that Thor Heyerdahl’s accomplishment proved his theory right, because it doesn’t.
Kon Tiki, great adventure story, but the theory was wrong. The difference between they could have done it and they actually did it.
If we’ve already read the book and seen the documentary… but I guess most of the audience probably hasn’t.
I remember my dad taking me to see the documentary when I was a kid in the early 70s. This movie looks a lot more exciting than what I remember!