Glass explores the best recent foreign language films

 

The most interesting new films are being made in languages other than English. Don’t let a prejudice against subtitles stop you from seeing them

What, if anything, do you remember from the Golden Globes ceremony back in January? Was it Ricky Gervais’s demand that winners refrain from getting political in their acceptance speeches? (They got really political.) Or Sacha Baron Cohen accusing Mark Zuckerberg of spreading Nazi propaganda? Or was it Ellen DeGeneres’ shout out to her (entirely fictitious) husband “Mark”?

Parasite, 2020, Bong Joon-Ho

Perhaps, amid the glitz and glamour, you missed the most important moment of the night. Accepting his award for best foreign language film, South Korean director Bong Joon-ho issued a plea – or a challenge? – to his English-speaking audience: it’s time to get over subtitles. To be exact, he promised viewers that “once you overcome the one-inch tall barrier of subtitles, you will be introduced to so many more amazing films.” Trust the director of 2017’s Okja – a film about a kidnapped superpig – to phrase it with memorable whimsy.

Bong Joon-HoBong Joon-Ho – director of Parasite

Joon-ho’s point was not entirely devoid of self-interest; he’s relying, after all, on British moviegoers tolerating subtitles if they are to see his much-discussed black comedy thriller Parasite (currently in UK cinemas). But this was no plug. In the context of an Anglophone cinema culture that continues to relegate foreign films to the margins, it was a much-needed entreaty.

Foreign cinema is in trouble in the UK. Distributors are inundated with foreign titles to choose from, and the ones that do get shown in cinemas are often granted a tiny release window. By the time you’ve read that great review, the film in question may have come and gone from the big screen. Curzon Artificial Eye, a leading distributor of quality world cinema, didn’t manage a break-out success in 2019; its highest-grossing film, Paolo Sorrenito’s Berlusconi romp Loro, took in just £183,000. With the help of Parasite, its fortunes will hopefully change in 2020.

The challenges facing the foreign film market are various and specific. One thing that doesn’t seem to change, though, is the general suspicion which with subtitles are treated in a country overwhelmingly used to seeing film and TV produced in its native language. The main objections to subtitles are that they require more work from the viewer and that they are visually distracting. “Film is a visual medium – if I want to read, I’ll get a book!” There are, of course, viewers living with particular conditions such as dyslexia for whom subtitles can be a real obstacle to enjoyment. But most opposition to subtitles seems to be culturally learned rather than neurological.

Image from So Long, My Son (2019) Wang Xiaoshuai

After all, in the 21st century, the idea that reading short bursts of text for two hours or so is beyond the average viewer is a curious one – isn’t that exactly what people are doing when they browse Facebook and Twitter? Our social media feeds are crammed with fast-moving text and visuals that most of us have learned to navigate with ease. Content creators have realised that people often end up watching videos at work, or in other environments where they can’t have the sound blaring out, so they now often add subtitles to videos by default. You could say we’re already a nation of subtitle-readers.

So why the continued resistance to subtitled films? Maybe it’s rooted in the old notion, continually debunked yet stubbornly pervasive, that while books and paintings are art, film is ‘mere’ entertainment, and watching a film in a foreign language is too demanding for viewers who are really looking for passive consumption rather than active engagement. Netflix’s policy of defaulting to dubbing for its foreign-language content is a product of this long-standing Anglophone hostility to subtitles and, naturally, will exacerbate it.

Image from Parasite, 2020, Bong Joon-Ho

What’s wrong with dubbing, you ask? If it lures otherwise sceptical viewers into watching films they wouldn’t usually consider, that’s surely to be applauded. But dubbing comes at a great cost. One of the reasons we watch films in the first place is to see (and hear) actors give great performances. If another, English-speaking, actor has replaced the original actor’s dialogue, you’re simply not watching the same performance.

Even when we don’t understand the original language, we benefit from the intonation and vocal style, and what they bring to the character. Dubbing can also change the whole mood of a film, just as swapping the original colour palette for another would. If you don’t believe me, just wait for the next release or re-release from Studio Ghibli (the Japanese animation studio that gave us Spirited Away). Take the kids to see the dubbed version, then seek out the subtitled version for yourself. The sound world created by Japanese dialogue will render the film more enchanting, more unique – not to mention more authentic.

Sometimes we crave the sort of deep immersion in otherness that only a foreign film experience can provide. The day after last December’s general election, I wanted to transport myself from this rainy island and remind myself that outside the relentless news-cycle of British politics there are other people, leading their own lives, mostly oblivious to our local crises. I didn’t buy a plane ticket. Instead, I got myself to the nearest cinema and bought a ticket to the three-hour Chinese drama So Long, My Son. It’s not everyone’s idea of escapism.

But Wang Xiaoshuai’s intergenerational epic took me on a journey in a way that feature films don’t often manage these days ­­– the sort of meaningful arc, rich in emotional and historical substance, that we expect to find in novels and long-form TV drama.

Most foreign films released in the UK, especially those of an arthouse flavour, will not be available in a dubbed version. So if we write off subtitles, we rob ourselves of these experiences. We don’t know what magic we’re missing. What’s more, in an age of resurgent blood-and-soil nationalism, border walls and the dehumanisation of migrants, watching a subtitled film becomes an act of resistance. It reaffirms our potential for connection across linguistic and cultural lines and nurses the flame of intellectual curiosity that makes a tolerant, peaceful world possible.

My advice: be like Bong. Make 2020 the year the one-inch barrier comes crashing down.

By Jackson Caines