Nobody cares about the Golden Globe Awards. It's an old joke, but it's kind of true. No one cares about them because like any industry awards ceremony, it really only matters to the people in attendance and the people who hang their egos on the success of some third party that they have no association with. What people actually care about is all the awards-adjacent news that comes out it, like Rick Gervais cementing himself as Regressive, Aging White Male Comedian #593. But there was something else that came out of that awards show that was actually good, and carried a lot of meaning for me.
Bong Joon-ho is the director of PARASITE, a South Korean film that has won many awards in addition to Best Foreign Film at the Golden Globes. During his acceptance speech, he said something that couldn't have rung truer in today's world of film and film appreciation.
“Once you overcome the 1-inch-tall barrier of subtitles, you will be introduced to so many more amazing films,”
Credit must also be given to fellow filmmaker Sharon Choi, who was Bong's Korean-to-English interpreter for the evening and made Bong's word more punchy and quotable. Here is a good Twitter thread that goes into detail about the interpretation.
The moment I read that quote, I nearly shouted, "Yes! That!"
In today's world, facilitated by the interconnectivity of the Internet, accessing and watching films that were not made in your current country of residence could not be easier. But somehow, there are film fans out there that don't watch anything that's not in English or not made by Studio Ghibli. This is before we get to the film "fans" who espouse their love of the medium but basically limit their viewing to Marvel or DC, and the limited established canon of "Standard white guy" movies made by the likes of Tarantino, Nolan, Scorcese, etc. (they're all great directors, but there are other movies made by other people, y'know).
Putting aside how annoying it can be to listen to the criticisms and complaints of people who don't expand their horizons beyond the most mainstream Hollywood fare, I find it incredibly limiting and almost sad. There's a massive world of genres, filmmaking styles, and storytelling traditions that is sure to excite and delight. But no. They're not English and reading is for men who don't hit their wives, so they don't get watched.
And I'm not even talking about art films or high falutin dramas that are boring in any language. I'm talking about high octane action movies, hilarious comedies, or just straight-up weird genre fare that you won't find anywhere else. Hell, it's a great way to experience first-hand the influences and inspirations behind the movies that you're already familiar with and love.
Do you love the JOHN WICK movies? What if you had an entire sub-genre of movies that were all JOHN WICK movies? That's Korean new wave, which has entries like Byun Sung-hyun's THE MERCILESS or Byung-gil's THE VILLAINESS which features one of the best first-person action sequences this side of HARDCORE HENRY.
Speaking of action, if you're wondering where "good ole fashioned kung fu movies" went, they never left! They've always been here. People tend to remember them from renting VHSs and feel like they're no longer "made." Well, that's because the kung fu import boom ended, but that didn't mean the genre died. You just have to go out and find them yourself. There's stuff like Prachya Pinkaew's ONG-BAK, or really anything featuring Tony Jaa, where you can see some Muay Thai beatdowns straight from Thailand. There's Lê Văn Kiệt's FURIE, from Vietnam, which features Rose Tico's sister(Veronica Ngo) kicking all of Saigon to death to rescue her daughter. Of course, there's always the mainstays of Hong Kong-style kung fu, like the IP MAN series starring Donnie Yen, or really anything with Donnie Yen.
What about something broader? Something a little more "mainstream" and maybe with a bigger budget? Well, then consider the entirety of China's film output. China's filmmaking scene is big enough to rival Hollywood at this point and the Chinese love them some big dumb action movies. Frant Gwo's THE WANDERING EARTH is an amazing piece of high-concept science fiction where we're are literally moving the Earth to a new star, and the WOLF WARRIOR movies are basically if Michael Bay was Chinese. And if you're feeling in the mood to do a little bit of thinking, watching these big-budget Chinese movies can really give you insight into how a different culture makes movies on the scale of a Hollywood scale. We tend to think that military or government propaganda is dead and gone, but it's not. We just got used to it. When watching these Chinese movies and seeing all the themes of collective work and sacrificing for the group, consider how it looks obvious to us as Americans. Then consider the kind of stuff that maybe isn't so obvious to us as Americans in our own films.
And here's the kicker: You think I'm saying you gotta go down to some import store or dark website to see things. Nope. You can often find these on Netflix, but you gotta look for them. Of course, the Almighty Algorithm will never show these films to you because it doesn't want you to expand your horizons.
So get out there and watch something with subtitles.
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