The Linguists (2008)
The Linguists is a hilarious and poignant chronicle of two scientists—David Harrison and Gregory Anderson—racing to document languages on the verge of extinction. In Siberia, India, and Bolivia, the linguists confront head-on the very forces silencing languages: racism, humiliation, and violent economic unrest. David and Greg's journey takes them deep into the heart of the cultures, knowledge, and communities at risk when a language dies.
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Reviews
Admirable film.
Simple and well acted, it has tension enough to knot the stomach.
It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.
This is a dark and sometimes deeply uncomfortable drama
Was shown to us by our teach in the context of a linguistic class. I thought the documentary was interesting and the skills of both these guys are very very very impressing. But I was extremely disappointed by the adding of a scene where someone proceeds to kill a live mouse. I thought that was very unnecessary and it really didn't add anything to the documentary. If they wanted to expose the culture of this particular tribe, I'm sure they could've chosen something more flattering to show about them. I am really against any showing of animal cruelty of any kind on any given media. It really was clumsy from them. Overall what I liked about the documentary were the parts where dead tongues and linguistic were discussed, but some very unflattering scenes about other cultures (not just the mouse one) could easily be dismissed and the whole movie would be well better off.