March 3, 2005
Those Oscars
So Best Foriegn Film went to the most popular movie in the category, THE SEA INSIDE. It was ripe for a win starring previous Oscar nominee Javier Bardem and directed by the well known and respected Alejandro Amenabar (THE OTHERS, OPEN YOUR EYES). It also made the topic of Euthanasia all that more discussed, with MSNBC having a segment the following day asking 'Are Hollywood liberals supporting Euthanasia?' I think they are simply supporting good movies, but what can you do.
Those Cesars
The Cesars are the French Oscars and I guess it was quite an upset over there. The small DV film L'ESQUIVE snatched most of the major awards away from 8 time nominee THE CHORUS and 12 time nominee A VERY LONG ENGAGEMENT. At least somebody's keeping it interesting. But oddly enough, the French gave their lifetime achievement award to Will Smith -- what? LOST IN TRANSLATION won their version of Best Foreign Film.
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The Highest Grossing Films in Various Countries
So TITANIC is still the highest grossing film in most countries. It's certainly, no contest, the highest grossing film in this one. It made almost 2 billion (billion!) dollars worldwide. In almost all countries, Hollywood movies outgross domestic films year after year. I've mentioned before that the rule used to be that there were only three countries where domestic films were 50% or more of the box office take -- U.S., India and Hong Kong. This is not really the case anymore in Hong Kong and is increasingly the case in Korea, it'll just take a couple more years for the textbooks to start saying it. Also, there are several countries where the highest grossing film of the year is often domestic, France is a good example, also this happens in Britain with some frequency. But the majority of the box office is still Hollywood. And their highest grossing film is still TITANIC, with nothing even approaching it. Although it is worthwhile to note that LORD OF THE RINGS:RETURN OF THE KING is the highest grossing film in New Zealand and some Scandanavian countries. It's up to you whether you want to consider it a domestic film in New Zealand or a Hollywood film, it very well may be both.
But there are a few countries who in the past couple of years have produced a domestic film so successful as to topple the TITANIC beast. And we pay tribute to these homegrown juggernauts today. And as you may notice, there are not a lot of them. But particularly in Korea and Russia, they are signs of truly growing and emerging film industries that you would be smart to keep an eye on.
Russia: NIGHTWATCH (NOCHNOY DOZOR)
NIGHTWATCH is based on a popular Russian novel and is supposedly the first in a trilogy. It's an epic effects extravaganza that recently became the highest grossing film of all time in Russia, doubling the profits of LOTR:ROTK which came out the same year. Like most films that are at the top of any country's box office, it was the highest budgeted film ever in Russia (a whopping $4 million dollars). But fortunately, it all worked out rather well.
I watched this movie raw (that means without subtitles my friends) because the English subtitled version did not exist yet (it was recently shown at Berlin though). So I cannot tell you every intracacy of the story. But this film is so visually rich, when it does come out everyone should see it twice -- once for the subtitles and once for the visuals. This film is hallucinatory and visceral and leaves a strong visual impact on the viewer.
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Our hero is Anton, who is what the world of the film considers one of "The Others", because he has powers and can see what's going on. What's going on exactly? The Forces of Light and Dark came to an agreement a long time ago (as dramatized in the prologue) for peace. The Night Watch watches the Forces of Dark and the Day Watch watched the Forces of Light. Needless to say, the truce is broken and all craziness breaks lose. Fortunately there is a "The One" to clear things up. There's also a cursed woman, a nosebleed kid, a tiger-man and an owl-woman who play into the many narrative threads of this film. And most of this stems from Anton's attempt at revenge on his supposedly cheating wife.
NIGHTWATCH starts and never stops. It's frenetic pacing is involving till the end. The director of this movie, Timur Bekmambetov, has easily seen most of Jeunet's films and probably REQUIEM FOR A DREAM. You know a country is coming into its own when style over substance prevails. But there is a definite and engaging style at work here.
But if you like supernatural beings, there's a host of them here. There's certain vampires and shape-shifters and a bunch of less easily categorized by equally cool folk. And only in Russia would your mythical beings chase blood with vodka. The biggest debate amongst people who have seen it with subtitles seems to be whether the story is convulted or simply complication. But either way, any fan of hard Sci-Fi or Fantasy will get his money's worth here. But you musn't be afraid of some serious gore and violence.
It's been bought for distribution and remake by Fox Searchlight who is also helping to fund the other two installments. Word from Berlin is that the way the subtitles were done by them is interesting and stunning in itself. At present, they are planning a limited platform release on Friday, July 29, 2005 which will expand up through a wide release on August 26, 2005.
Korea: TAE GUK GI
Korean has been toppling it's highest grossing film almost every year. And each year, the total for the highest grossing film is so much more than the previous year. It's an expanding industry. Last year's success was TAEGUKGI. Like the previous highest grossing film from the year before, SILMIDO, and most of the other highest grossing films of the past 5 years, it has to do with North Korea, South Korea and war.
This is a story about two brother, Jin-seok and Jin-tae. Jin-seok is the younger brother and is currently in college and Jin-tae works as a shoe shine man is engaged to a beautiful girl. Both lives are going very well and they are very happy...until the Korean war begins. Jin-seok is foreceably drafted and Jin-tae goes along to take care of him. But in war Jin-seok loses his brother in more ways than one. He is lost, mentally, becoming too entrenched in the wartime mentality.
There is an obvious comparison to SAVING PRIVATE RYAN and while TAEGUKGI is not filmed quite as suberbly, it is surely filmed very very competently and with greater themes and messages that SAVING PRIVATE RYAN even aspired too. This tale of two brothers represents the country at war -- the North and South are brothers, torn apart. The war destroys them in a way that's not entirely literal, but much deeper.
This film is very violent and except for our main character Jin-seok, no one is portrayed well. And Jin-seok has his less proud moments as well. I've always said Korean movies are American movies. If this movie was in English (and didn't star Asian people, whom the whole nation seems to have a quiet prejudice against when it comes to movies), it'd be a blockbuster film. But where this film differs from Hollywood films, is that everyone is portrayed badly. I wonder if it's some Korean masochism, or guilt, that makes this film their highest grossing. Or perhaps an acceptance of their faults and humanness that is just not prevalent in America. All the soldiers in SAVING PRIVATE RYAN are noble, are heroes. The soldiers in this film sometimes have good intents, sometimes do not. And the South is shown in this film to be at fault for many atrocities. They do not attempt to make themselves look better than the North in this film. In fact, the point here, is that they are the same -- or they were the same once. A similar theme is in the director's SHIRI, one of the finest action pictures of the 90s from any country. The North and South are not so different and could get along if they weren't raised not to. This film doesn't go so far as to explain this war, who is keeping these brothers apart. Is it 'the system'? But no system is present in the war shown here, mostly just chaos. But I suppose if they knew the answer of who was at fault, they would have solved the problem by now.
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If you do a search on IMDB for the highest rated film of 2004, it will be TAEGUKGI. This film really touched a large audience. It's a story any one from any nation can understand. I think it's biggest fault is that it delves into melodrama at points and some of the plot coincidences, which at least are there to strength the point of the film, hurts the believability of the story. Nonetheless, it's a timely and touching morality tale.
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On a more serious Note: The female star of this movie, Eun-ju Lee, committed suicide last week on February 22, at the age of 25. I'm tearing up just thinking about it. She was beautiful, talented, young, with a great career and was an incredible loss to the Korean film industry, her fans and the world that didn't get to know her yet. News reports claim it was a combination of depression and a family argument about her racy sex scenes in her new, and now final, film THE SCARLETT LETTER. She also starred in the very well reguarded films A BUNGEE JUMPING OF THEIR OWN and VIRGIN STRIPPED BARE BY HER BACHELORS, both of which I very much recommend. I don't mean to sound too much like an after school special, but if you find yourself having suicidal thoughts, please try and get the help you need.
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Japan: SPIRITED AWAY
In Japan, the first film to topple TITANIC was Miyazaki's SPIRITED AWAY. Hayao Miyazaki is one of the world's most acclaimed filmmakers, and what's odd about that is that he is a master of good old 2-D animation. It's been noted before that he's a lot like a new Walt Disney, making creative, accessible films for all ages. This is probably what got him an exclusive distribution deal at Disney for US release of his films.
There is a long history of little girls tripping into weird and mysterious worlds. Chihiro joins the ranks of Alice and Dorothy. Trying to describe the story from there is much like trying to describe Alice in Wonderland -- she meets this person and then this happens and then she meets, and then... -- but it's a joyous adventure, easy to emerse yourself in. This film is noted not only for it's artistic style and detail but the depth of its characters, story and themes which is unusually not only for an animated movie these days but simply for any movie these days. It won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature, was nominated for best foreign film in Britain and France. It won Best Asian film in Hong Kong. It won the Golden Bear at Berlin and so many more awards around the world. It is the highest grossing non-Hollywood film of all time (just beating out THE FULL MONTY for the honor). If you haven't seen it, you are just about the only one.
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I honestly have not heard a lot about Miyazaki's current film HOWL'S MOVING CASTLE. After HOWL'S MOVING CASTLE opening day receipts in Japan it was expected to surpass SPIRITED AWAY's total but I cannot seem to find any information about whether or not it has. But chances are, by now, it is the highest grossing film in Japan. It will be released in the U.S. in June and then we can all discuss whether we think it's better or not.
India
As mentioned in last week's column, the highest grossing film in Bollywood is GADAR. Watch upcoming columns where I intend to cover the top three grossing Bollywood films (as the other two have been highly recommended to me). But Bollywood, of course, is a place where homegrown films do a whole lot better than Hollywood ones in general.
IN TWO WEEKS: Brazil! Sorry I don't mean Gilliam, I mean the country. The world's newest slick, hip and edgy cinema. Come see what they have to offer.
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