My film is going to be half English and half Mandarin (these percentages may in the end, be a bit, or very much off). I think immediately when people watch a foreign film, one of the first things they think is, "unique".
Now, a lot of foreign films aren't actually that far away from home. For instance, Past Lives (2023) is from Canadian filmmaker Celine Song and its stars weren't born in Korea, both Greta Lee and Teo Yoo being born in America and Germany respectively. This doesn't make any less Korean, but the sense of their foreign-ness is a constructed one, and that makes me think that foreign films evoke a sense of freshness not only because of a different auditory language (their literal language) but the visual language and contextual content. Two incredible original screenplays from this year, Anatomy of a Fall and Past Lives are both considered foreign films...actually I'm not sure because when I google it, Past Lives is apparently an American film? Either way, Past Lives features a ton of foreign language in it so I'll talk about it and Anatomy of a Fall is a full-fledged foreign film.
If you've watched it, you would know that even the title of Past Lives is a reference to the Korean folklore belief of "inyeon" or, the accumulated fate an individual collects from their past lives. It's a Buddhist belief following their belief in reincarnation. Every time you interact with another individual, it's an "inyeon" and after a million of them throughout countless lifetimes, you ultimately end up with them.
Foreign films are unique because they carry the filmmakers' cultural identity with them. While all American films have a distinct American-ness to them, even regional differences can account for the peculiar interests of some directors. For example, Scorsese and De Niro's experiences shooting Taxi Driver, both driven by their sense of isolation in the worst parts of New York during that time period. But for an Asian-Canadian filmmaker like Celine Song, the balancing of identity resulted in a story that showed a conflict between both sides of her and it's glorious. I have a very similar experience being an American-born Chinese child and so seeing Song use "inyeon", a Korean concept and exposing it to the American audience, I feel too, very inspired to bring up things from my culture and my childhood outside of just the language.
Of course, the best foreign films have a sense of universality to them. While we might have different experiences geographically, the human experience is one of many different sensibilities that all people share. Touching on these sensibilities, no matter in which cultural context it's done in, can appeal to all around the world.
Since Miyazaki is potentially going to win an Oscar again, I wanted to mention that the Ghibli films are perhaps the greatest example of universality within an obviously narrowly-inspired aesthetic. Isao Takahata's Grave of the Fireflies is even more so, exploring the Japanese perspective of the atomic bomb (and this year's Boy and the Heron expanding on that). Despite the obvious Japanese perspective of these films, we don't think that only Japanese people can watch them and appreciate them, in fact, it's quite the opposite. There's a charm in knowing that a certain audience can watch this film and take one thing from it because of their experiences and being able to, to an extent, share in that moment with them even if all other things are different. Because these movies are both stylized and general, they allow for audiences to break beyond the boundaries of language and culture.
In a growingly globalized world, Bong Joon Ho's parasite speaks as starkly about American capitalism as it does about Korean capitalism. It'd be a mistake to think that foreign films, despite their freshness in production techniques, say anything less about us, their audience overseas, than it does about themselves, right at home. I was conflicted for a while, whether or not I should make a story that was still very personal in nature but just make the characters American or not, but then I realized, a foreign-language film explores the question of identity and culture so much more. So much subtext is created just by using a foreign language and for me, who thinks of Mandarin as one of the main ways I remain rooted to my parents, my grandparents, and my country of origin, it's an especially powerful tool for storytelling and emotion.
No comments:
Post a Comment