Centurion

Centurion is a new film, featuring a small group of Roman soldiers trying to escape from a band of Pictish manhunters after the massacre of the Ninth Legion. Here is the cast, with associated languages:

• Quintus Dias, the Roman hero - speaks modern English-as-Latin with a slight Irish accent, presumably because the actor is Irish; also speaks some modern Scottish Gaelic-as-Pictish
• other Romans - all speak modern English-as-Latin, with middle class, southern English accents
• The Picts - speak modern Scottish Gaelic-as-Pictish; the Pictish leader Gorlacon also speaks some English-as-Latin, with an unspecified "foreign" accent
• Etain, the anti-hero, from the Brigantes tribe - had her tongue cut out by Romans, and hence doesn't speak
• Arianne, the "good Pict" - speaks Gaelic-as-Pictish, as well as English-as-Latin, with an exaggerated Scottish accent

It's disappointing that a British film about Roman Britain should take the perspective of the Roman occupiers, rather than the native Britains. The Roman charaters get to have conversations, morality and inner lives. The Picts just get the odd line about wanting revenge. Obviously, there is politics going on here - the English elite identifying themselves with the technologically and organisationally advanced foreign imperialists, and pretending that the Picts were not really their ancestors, but rather the ancestors of the Celtic fringe people. This aside, it is clear that the languages have been chosen commercially - the language of the viewers the film gets marketed at is spoken by the main characters, with the 'other' language chosen for contrast. I'd still like to have seen the Romans speaking Italian, to give some kind of cultural neutrality.