LOS ANGELES — At last night’s screening of the movie “Seven Hours,” the entirely deaf audience walked out confused — not by the plot of the film, but by the captions, which were clearly written by someone with a creative writing degree.
The job of the movie captioner is to transcribe the dialogue and sound effects of a film for a deaf audience. For “Seven Hours,” however, it soon became clear that the captioner wanted to put their MFA to good use. Audience member Darla Keene found many of the captions to be troubling.
“Before the title card even came up, I knew something was off. The production company logos were popping up. The captions said the score was [pensive string quartet, adagio, reminds me of winter.] We hadn’t even seen the first scene in the movie yet. Honestly, the captions made ‘Seven Hours’ feel more like eight or nine hours.”
Reports from other audience members were similar. One industry viewer who wished to remain anonymous said some of the captions were poetic, even historical:
“From context clues, I could tell the movie was a dramedy about a father-son road trip where they reconciled their differences. Yet in the scene when their car broke down, the sound effect caption was [floral car exhaust port trumpet, reminiscent of the Romantic Era.] It completely undercut the comedy of the exhaust port being stuffed with cheese. It was like the captioner had a thesaurus and student loan debt to justify. Then some birds flew by for half a second and the captions said [Hark! Meadowlarks! Hear thy bark!] Like, what?”
The climax of the movie generated similar confusion. A mysterious figure from the father and son’s past shows up at their hotel room. From the camera work, it’s clear that the audience is not supposed to know who this person is. The captions, however, gave it away immediately:
[The on-the-run mother and wife who we believed passed into the afterlife twenty years ago ethereally materializes at the hotel room vestibule, ready to make amends. We will learn about her tragic encounter with drugs in two scenes.] What was supposed to be a tease for a third act twist ended up being an opportunity for the captioner to spoil the turn and smugly include the words “ethereally” and “vestibule”.
Even the final moments of the movie were miscaptioned. Much of the audience could clearly see via lipreading that father and son’s last lines were “I love you”. Yet what showed up on screen was a link to an unemployed writer’s Substack.
One audience member seemed to enjoy it, however. Wearing head to toe tweed, Pernissus Chance pontificated: “As an English major myself (with a minor in Poetic Babulation,) I found this film quite delightful. I was worried at first, but the breadth of vocabulary and the philosophical captions that were presented provoked my soul. Does anyone have the link to his Substack handy?”