Review: THE TRANSLATORS

After an announcement at a book fair of the imminent release of  the final part of a mega-successful novel series (think Dragon Tattoo) a group of people are picked up in Paris in a stretch limo and conveyed to a country mansion with a multi level underground bunker with all mod cons. They have been assembled from all over Europe (plus one from China) to work on a simultaneous translation of the book for a same day global release in as many markets as possible. But this is massive business so it has to be done in secrecy that forbids anything like digital communications or contact with the outside world of any kind until the four hundred plus pages are singing in English, German, Mandarin, Russian, Spanish, Portuguese, Danish, Italian and Greek. They are sealed in. Watching this I beamed behind my facemask and enjoyed the setup so familiar from those thrilling glamour heists of the '60s like The Brain. This is going to be a fun thriller.

So, what's a thriller in any case? Can be many things but it should declare high stakes from the off, show clear threats to the order and throw in as many twists and turns short of being silly or twisting itself into incomprehensibility. I was actually happy for it to just hit marks and say lines after that opening but it gives so much more. Like what? Well, rather than just establish the stakes as a McGuffin that only has to be declared as valuable, we are given a developing dialogue literature and how it relates to the business that sells it to the world. Where is the author left after that exchange and where do these ghostly servants translating end up in the process? The intimidatingly urbane publisher Eric Angstrom who has been made rich by the books and looks to only get richer, assumes a kind of overlaid value in the scheme of things: picking up the finished pages from the author as though they were bags of cocaine and bearing down on his translator crew like a cartel boss, complete with uniformed Russian guards. Not one day in and there's a leak; the first ten pages are free online and a ransom demanded. From that point it's war, or at least oppression in what increasingly seems like a brutal prison.

This example of the art of thriller does one thing right which lets a lot of other right things follow: it foreshadows every twist credibly so that each happens with a clean precision. And with a cast you will know if you see more than one subtitled film per year who bring great balance and heat to what might have become an over-machined plot. Here's a thing to consider: the translator characters are played by actors from the nationalities they represent; all speak mostly French until their own languages become a plot point and the setup as intended by Angstrom uses the multi-lingual filter as a capitalist mechanism whose human parts, while dosed with media and pastimes, are effectively temporary slaves. Russian translator, Katarina is doubly a slave, so devoted to the book's heroine that it borders on cosplay. Alex, the English guy is obsessed with meeting the author Oscar Brach, thinking that participating in this far flung function of the publishing industry will bring him close to greatness. And so on, everyone of the workers is drawn by more than simple professionalism.

Against this, how can literature compete? While the Dedalus books are presented as airport novels that got lucky we get many clues as to their being fashioned from a knowledge of great literature and there is the sense from the depiction of the author that, as cynical as he might be about the business, they have been written with conviction. Is this related to the motivation of the extortionist who is prepared to topple this monolith of the industry?

Because of this torsion, the literature vs commerce theme and the requirements of the thriller genre we could suffer the deflating effect of a lack of follow through but in this case each detail as it is given us in reward for our attention feels like a treat. Perhaps some of the confession sequences can go longer than needed but the conviction of the performances prevents them from dragging. Add a little symmetry in some of the imagery a the top and tail of the film and you have a movie that will make you smile like you do when you unwrap the best presents.