Jason Isaacs as Georgy Zhukov | THE DEATH OF STALIN (2017)
This was a very funny, very black satire, which was (surprise!) banned in Russia. I wonder how the voices would have been dubbed, since almost all the actors used their own British or American accents rather than the usual Pavel Chekhov / Bela Lugosi default.
YMMV, but this made the movie far funnier. IMO foreign accents are OK if the foreign characters are speaking English to English listeners, but if they’re speaking their own language to each other, then speaking in regional English - British OR American - conveys class and regional differences as effectively as was done in ”Rome”.
Viewers and reviewers who are unhappy when actors don’t use “proper foreign accents” fail to make the connection that taking accuracy all the way wouldn’t mean a Britisch or Amerikan aktor shpeaking zer linez like zis, but would mean dialogue between Germans or Russians or Romans in German or Russian or Latin.
Good luck with audience acceptance of that; the actors might say a thing or two as well.
Oddly enough Jason Isaacs doesn’t use his own accent - a vaguely Home Counties sound in a good baritone voice - or even his birth accent, “Scouse” from Liverpool, the non-music Sound of the Beatles. It makes the city name sound like “Livvapewl”, and
after the Isaacs family moved to London
11-year-old Jason deliberately lost it when he was mercilessly teased at school.
Instead he steals every scene he’s in by playing Zhukov as a swaggering no-nonsense foul-mouthed Yorkshire hard man, and it’s great.
Hear it for yourselves…
