I didn’t watch the Oscars and I never do. I do, however, always welcome my friends to let me know about any of their personal highlights (mainly from the International category) and tell me which picks won awards. The elation one of my lawyer friends had on his face and in his voice when I asked him if Son of Saul had won Best Foreign Language back in 2016 was yet another reminder to me that film is so important for humanity’s collective spiritual health that it is irreplaceable. Not to sound too New Age-y, but that’s how I feel.
That said, I care very little for the ostentatious pageantry of the Academy Awards. I’m here for the films, and even then, most of the ones nominated for Oscars don’t interest me. But I do like how celebratory a lot of my friends are about the wins Parasite nabbed last night. Obviously, a lot of my compatriots tend to share my enthusiasm for cinema, although it’s not always quite on my level and usually their tastes definitely differ drastically from mine. Still, a Korean film won Best Picture, and that’s a huge win not just for Bong Joon Ho and cinephiles, but for world cinema as well.
I have spent a large portion of my life supporting, promoting, and championing world cinema to varying degrees and in a multitude of ways. A lot of people I know don’t care for the stuff; “I don’t watch movies to think,” “Movies are for escapism,” “I don’t like having to read movies.” I was lucky in that I grew up not having a lot of money, and with that kind of upbringing, anything can be escapism. I was in high school and TCM and IFC were showing movies like Citizen Kane, Seven Samurai, Ballad of a Soldier, La Dolce Vita, Wings of Desire, The Virgin Spring, Fists in the Pocket, Fires on the Plain, Ikiru, were all escapes for me. Granted, at 32 I watch those movies differently now than when I did when I was 19, because I don’t necessarily need the escape anymore, but that escapist element is there lingering. Even though I can afford a ticket to Italy now, I didn’t think I would ever be able to afford a plane ticket to Italy 15 years ago, so a 3 hour black and white Italian film on TV was a way to get there. Subtitles were not going to stop me. Hell, IFC used to do this thing called Samurai Saturdays and thanks to that I hadn’t even graduated high school when I saw Rashomon, Yojimbo, Throne of Blood, and Inagaki Horishi’s Samurai I – III. I received a mostly complete film education without paying for film school and at home and didn’t even realize it. I was lucky.
My point? Movies are powerful, they’re fucking great. So what about the Oscars? When world cinema pictures win these awards in the US, it makes it far easier for people to access them. I have some money now, so it’s not a problem for me to go on Amazon France and order a region free blu-ray of a French film that has English subs (Thank you for your consistent level of quality, Gaumont!), but a lot of films don’t get those kinds of releases, and I wait mostly at the mercy of the corporate studios who only care about what has “buzz.” Luckily, things are better than they used to be thanks to amazing companies like Magnolia, Cinema Guild, Grasshopper, Criterion (obviously), Kino Lorber, and many others, but it’s still hard to see a lot of films that interest me.
For better or worse, American audiences care about the Oscars, seemingly to the exclusion of other film awards around the world. When an international title wins an Oscar, it makes life easier for everyone who cares about movies. Roger Ebert said that movies were like a machine that generates empathy, and that the purpose of civilization is to reach out and empathize with other people. I believe that to the extreme. I think not watching films and not engaging with stories about people whose life circumstances differ from mine is a disservice to myself, it’s a waste of time. I don’t need to see yet another American save the English-speaking world from aliens. I need to see what people in Iran are talking about in their record stores, I need to see Venezuelan people walk around their cities grieving for their dead grandparents. This is how we grow as people, by caring about what goes on in other people’s lives. It’s work, sure, but it’s not back-breaking by any means.
That said, I’m still going to complain about the downsides. I’m very happy that Taika Waititi won Best Director. He’s one of my top 5 favorite filmmakers out of New Zealand, but I also notice that the people I know who loved Jojo Rabbit haven’t seen anything else he’s done besides Thor. A lot of the Americans I know raving about Parasite have only seen Snowpiercer and nothing else from Bong Joon Ho’s oeuvre. It reminds me of so much of the hype around Shinkai Makoto’s Your Name, which was a great film, but it also wasn’t that radically different from his other films, aside from having a happier ending than say, 5 Centimeters Per Second and The Garden of Words. It reminds me of so many Americans, typically men, who talk about how much they love Korean cinema, when underneath the surface, what they mean is that they’re able to enjoy Korean cinema because it’s closely influenced by Hollywood moviemaking. All this celebration, and part of me wants to ask “What took you so long?” and the other part of me wants to ask “Are you planning to keep running with this?” because this is a march that does not stop.
Think of how great you feel about Parasite. Whether it’s because you believe you have witnessed cinematic perfection or you’re happy to be in some sort of “club” that appreciates it, if you feel like you’ve happened upon something new and inspiring, whatever your reasons, think about it for a few seconds. Do you know how many other international films you could have that reaction to if you let yourself be willing to experience them? There is so much great cinema out there, and to paraphrase Bong Joon Ho, the only barrier is the 1 inch block of text for the subtitles. You could have this experience many times over and all you have to do is put in a little effort. What Parasite has done for you, for the Oscars, for movies, is something all cinema is capable of if you care about it. You can start with the winners and nominees of Best Foreign Language Film Oscars if you need a place to start. I can promise you won’t regret it, and I’ll see you at the movies.
The Seeming and the Meaning 