For the love of foreign film
I don’t normally engage in social media disputes or get swept into the dissentive territory of YouTube’s or Facebook’s comment section. It would take something big for me to become an active participant to conflict in this particular form. Or just something that matters enough to me on a personal level to extend it to an entire branch of media study and turn it into an issue of representation with socio-political and economical implications.
Something like, say, a review about a Romanian movie that had just been screened at film festivals and that is so entertaining that it’s absolutely “begging for an English language remake”. Oh yes, fasten your seatbelts, it’s going to be one argumentative ride!
The acclaimed feature which triggered such a response is Corneliu Porumboiu's The Whistlers, which is only set to be released in February 2020 in the US – and the publication in question is IndieWire, an article from May 2019, to be more specific. “What a compliment, right?” – you might think. Except what it actually is – is problematic and repetitive and it deserves at least a comprehensive discussion that frames it in a much larger context about film as art and as an industry.
IndieWire is a publication which I absolutely love and respect, it’s where I get a large part of my film and TV-related news and a lot of great content written by great specialist writers, anything from blockbusters to more obscure international productions. And if there’s one thing my film buff buddies (which is all of them) know about me – is that I love foreign films. Each so specific to the geo-political region it represents, whether we are talking about European film, South American or South East Asian – to name a few, simply because those are my favourites. Every single aspect, from writing to tonality, the pace and rhythm of the film itself as well as the internal rhythms of the respective actors – it is all uniquely representative of the culture, space and mentality it encapsulates. A Bergman movie will speak to its audiences differently than a Fellini or a Tornatore movie, just like a Wong Kar-wai film will touch different sensibilities than an Almodovar film. You would not take Mujeres al borde de un ataque de nervios (Women On The Verge Of A Nervous Breakdown) and re-make it with an American cast, for an American audience – or you could, but then it would cease to be the movie it was intended to be, so particular for its geography, gender politics specificity and frankly all the elements that make it Almodovar (also, good luck finding an equivalent to gazpacho that’s as efficient in masking one’s vindictive intentions while at the same time being the perfect representation of their mental state!).
I am quite vocal about my love for Romanian cinema. The comedies from the ‘70s and ‘80s so subversive of the communist regime, as well those as after its fall, in the late ‘90s and early 2000s - even the naturalistic, at times depressingly-realistic films from the Romanian New Wave in the past two decades. I love them because they are us, and they are their own thing. The humour, the dialogue, the pace and the atmosphere – we exist at the confluence of modern and myth, and our art is, likewise, infused with folklore and transpires a commentary of a mentality that is trying to re-conciliate living in the present day while still being conditioned by ancestral patterns inherited from generations before us.
As you can tell, the innocuous suggestion in the article on Corneliu Porumboiu’s film was enough to send a little electric-like charge directly to my defensive hard-wired Romanian brain. Those were deep, unresolved issues from way back in the past. Freedom nor independence are yet gained, the battle continues. I am not talking about our tumultuous history fighting Ottomans, Russian and mostly every empire surrounding us trying to take our land – although come to think of it, it may have something to do with it.
This was a modern battle. A battle of ideologies. Or egos. Or simply a Don Quixotesque attempt on my part to make others see what I saw, or at least direct their attention to things they were overlooking.
Flashback to February 2017. Just days after it was announced that Romanian film producer Ada Solomon might be in the run for the Academy Awards with the German-Romanian co-production Toni Erdmann, the story of a father and his estranged daughter trying to navigate their complicated relationship as adults. It wasn’t long before the buzz for the film’s success at various film festivals and the raving reviews were dimmed out by the buzz of a Hollywood remake, rumored to have Jack Nicholson and Kristen Wiig play the two lead characters.
And again, anyone who knows anything about me knows how much I adore both Nicholson and Wiig, they are two of my heroes. But that aspect couldn’t even measure up to the rage I was feeling in that very moment - you’d think the big shot Hollywood execs would let this harmless player do its run for at least a year, before bashing its kneecaps – or at least for a few more weeks until the award season during which we were offered some recognition was over!
Of course, a question worth asking is: would that actually help us gain more exposure on the international scene, and therefore be beneficial to us? Possibly. But not probably. Most probably it will be remembered as the brilliant, heartwarming story that brought together two American comedy geniuses and which also received a bunch of accolades for its more budget-centric, hollywoodesque production value.
So you can see why the whole storm in a teacup. As well-intentioned as the suggestion of making yet another English-language remake may be, it might not be as serviceable to our industry and our creatives as expected, when you see the details. I can only attribute the statement to the enthusiasm provoked by viewing the feature - that is indeed flattering. It is the industry that is defective in that sense, we just play as best we can under the greedy business mindset of “There’s never enough”.
I could blabber all day about the absurdity of re-makes and live action re-makes and I am still positive that my grandchildren and I will have an entire timeline of Spiderman movies to compare and review together – but please, I beg of you, as little as my voice may be, at least it is not alone – let foreign films be their own thing.
So, to round it up with the Facebook comment I posted and which opened the can of worms, here’s a thought: instead of another English-language remake, how about - and this may sound quite insane, but hear me out, please - we value foreign films for what they are and maybe don't feel the need to filter everything good that international cinema has to offer through the Hollywood system.
Now, if anybody would like to hire and pay me for chatting/writing all day long on behalf of foreign films and the importance of their preservation – I’m available. Or if there’s a special branch of law that deals with it, I’d appreciate the shout-out, I’m open for a career shift as long as it allows me to make passionate (albeit acid reflux-inducing) arguments about things that are worth standing up for.