Ah, well... I'm not an auditory learner at all, so I need subtitles for everything I watch. Otherwise, voices kind of turn into white noise to my brain. I need something visual to focus on to follow the spoken dialogue.

The Witch completely went over my head with the thick dialects and Old English language, and whereas visual context clues usually help fill in the gaps, I honestly had no idea what was going on until I re-watched it with subtitles. So I guess YMMV. I personally got more out of this film by understanding exactly what was being said with subtitles.

[–] Ilandar@lemmy.today 1 points 13 hours ago* (last edited 13 hours ago)

Yeah it's true that my experience is also not an objective one. I have had some exposure to older and regional versions of English previously so maybe I have more of an ear for it. You're right, some people may have a more difficult time following along (for many different reasons) so it's incorrect for me to suggest that subtitles aren't necessary. They aren't there by default, though, and I would encourage fluent English speakers to give it a try without them first. Eggers does put a lot of effort into trying to make his films as authentic as possible in relation to when and where they're set, so I think you get a lot more out of them if you try to play into that by avoiding modern translations as much as possible (obviously for some of his films like The Northman that's pretty unrealistic).