Existing in a Gray area
will have divided loyalties at Oscar gala
ROBERT GRAY “I really, really loved both films. Fortunately, it’s not up to me to decide which film wins.”
Robert Gray will be attending Sunday’s Academy Awards gala at Hollywood’s Dolby Theatre. This is not the first time the Montrealer will be experiencing the glitz in the flesh, but this is the first time he will be in a quandary as to whom to cheer for in the foreign-language film category.
Gray will be sitting with Austrian director Michael Haneke and his Amour entourage. Gray has served as Haneke’s personal interpreter — German to English, German to French — for nearly 25 years at film festivals and awards shows.
But Gray’s heart will also be with the Quebec team behind Rebelle, which, like Amour, will be vying for the foreign-language film award. Gray was involved in the German subtitling of Rebelle.
“I really, really loved both films,” Gray says. “Fortunately, it’s not up to me to decide which film wins. Of course, they often don’t choose the right film, either.”
In perhaps the perfect world for Gray, Rebelle would take the foreign-film prize while Amour would win for best film, director and original screenplay (Haneke) and best actress (Emmanuelle Riva) — categories in which the film has also been nominated.
If Haneke or Riva do win on Sunday, Gray will be backstage, fielding questions for them from the hordes of reporters.
“What’s incredible is that the Oscars are usually such a closed society in terms of nominating foreign films — other than for the best foreign film. It’s mostly just the Americans celebrating themselves. It’s so rare that they open up other prizes to people from other countries as they have done with Amour, Michael and Emmanuelle,” Gray notes. “I can understand Emmanuelle in the best actress and even Amour in best overall film and screenplay categories, but for Michael to be included in the best-director hunt — when you look at the people who have been left out, like Ben Affleck, Kathryn Bigelow and Quentin Tarantino — that is just amazing.”
Haneke will be heading to Hollywood from Brussels, where he has been directing an opera. “You’d think he’d be in a panic, because his lead tenor just twisted his leg and has been confined to a wheelchair, and the opera opens Saturday night. But Michael is amazingly upbeat about everything and on top of the world,” Gray reports.
Gray, 59, who has degrees in French literature from Laval and English literature from McGill, actually wears two film hats: translator and subtitler. He began both careers more than 30 years ago. “They are very different pleasures,” he says. “With interpreting, you’re basically flying by the seat of your pants — which is a thrill. With subtitles, even though there are deadlines, you can reflect a little more.”
Among his many hundreds of subtitling credits — usually French to English — have been all the Canadian foreign-language Oscar nominees: Le Déclin de l’empire américain (1986); Jésus de Montréal (1989); Les Invasions barbares (2003), which took the statuette; Water (2006); Incendies (2010); Monsieur Lazhar (2011); and now Rebelle (2012). Gray has subtitled most of Denys Arcand’s films (including Le Déclin, Jésus and Les Invasions), beginning with the late-1970s CBC miniseries Duplessis.
“The Quebec film scene has really evolved over the years, but one of the things that has stayed constant over time has been the government support for films that have artistic merit,” he points out. “The view here is that film is seen as a cultural industry, and not just an industry. As a result, we’ve been able to nurture several generations of filmmakers with something to say.”
Gray got his first interpreting gig at the 1981 Montreal World Film Festival with one of the giants of German cinema, the late director Rainer Werner Fassbinder. It was a baptism of fire. Fassbinder had shown up with his latest film, Lola, but only in its original German version.
Gray had to do double duty at that fest, providing simultaneous translations of Lola at the film’s screenings in both English and French. “I was sweating bullets, because I was translating the film live as I was watching it for the first time,” Gray recalls. “Thinking about that still sends shivers up my spine all these years later.”
He went on to do subtitles for Fassbinder’s World on a Wire and Fear of Fear.
Gray doesn’t wish to namedrop, but when pressed, he does mention that he was also involved in the subtitling of works by such French directing luminaries as Alain Resnais, Jean-Luc Godard and Luc Besson.
In the case of Haneke, Gray was moderating press conferences at the 1989 Cannes Film Festival, where he was also offering German, French and English translations for the director’s first theatrical feature, The Seventh Continent.
Haneke was clearly impressed. He invited Gray back to Cannes to be his interpreter on his next 10 features presented at the fest, as well as to moderate his press conferences. Gray was also Haneke’s interpreter at the 2010 Oscars and Golden Globes; the director’s The White Ribbon was a nominee for best foreign film at the former and a winner in the same category at the latter.
“Michael has been very faithful to me. But he often works with the same teams, explaining that ‘if it’s not broke, don’t fix it,’ ” Gray says. “Hopefully, though, this time we’ll be able to celebrate at the Oscars — not like the last time with The White Ribbon.”
It does look good. Amour has already taken foreignfilm prizes at the Golden Globes and other awards shows this year. Gray has also served as interpreter for the film’s stars, Riva and JeanLouis Trintignant, as well as Haneke.
Showbiz runs in Gray’s family. His aunt was the late Bea Arthur, star of Maude and The Golden Girls. His mother, Kay Gray, is a former film publicist. (His dad, the late Alan Gray, was a Gazette business reporter.) And while Gray’s German-born wife, Christa, is a psychologist, he has sought her German-language prowess on subtitling projects.
“I owe both careers to my parents,” he says. “They insisted that my brother and I speak French, outside of what we learned in school. They sent me on a trip where I was only one of two anglos in a group of 60. Suddenly I discovered this world, a parallel universe to the one I had grown up in. That made me so eager to explore it further.”
The adventure began with Gray translating books from French to English. “I backed into the film stuff later. I had never really had my sights set on becoming a translator or an interpreter. I didn’t know what I really wanted to do, so I decided to do it in the interim.” That interim has lasted more than 30 years.
“But the real reason, I think, that I became a translator is because I could never write. This is a way of writing without having to worry about what I’m going to say.”
Perhaps, but that’s not what some of his clients have said. French filmmaker and novelist Catherine Breillat, for whom Gray has been an interpreter at an array of festivals since 1999, paid him the ultimate compliment. When he introduced himself as her interpreter to one of her friends, Breillat interrupted: “He’s not my interpreter. He’s my poet!”
And after winning top honours at the 2000 Cannes film fest for Rosetta, Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne — Belgium’s answer to the Coen brothers — were asked by a reporter from the Guardian if their lives had changed. They responded: “Yes. Now we have Robert Gray translating for us.”
“Then again,” Gray says, “I once made the awful mistake of trying to translate some really old English Shakespeare dialogue into something more contemporary for a French film version of Hamlet, and I was rightfully chastised for doing so. You don’t mess with Shakespeare — ever. I learned my lesson.”