Movies

Last month, when Bong Joon Ho, the South Korean director of the film “Parasite,” accepted the Golden Globe for best foreign language film, he teased American moviegoers that a whole world of wonderful cinema awaited them beyond Hollywood.“Once you overcome the one-inch-tall barrier of subtitles, you will be introduced to so many more amazing films,” Bong said during his acceptance speech.In the United States, foreign language films with subtitles rarely gain the traction that “Parasite” has. It won over both audiences and critics and raked in more than $35 million on its way to winning four Academy Awards on Sunday, capping a glittering awards season with a best picture Oscar. It was the first film not in English to take home the top prize in the Academy’s 92-year history.It was a seismic night for fans of foreign films in the United States, where moviegoers have historically preferred their popular films in English. And it left some wondering: Are those one-inch-tall subtitles still a barrier?Even before “Parasite,” a thriller about the class divide in South Korea, took off, there were signs that things had begun to shift for subtitled entertainment in the United States. The film joined a small group of subtitled films that have broken through to mainstream success in Hollywood over the last two decades, like “Roma” (2018), “Pan’s Labyrinth” (2006), “Amelie” (2001) and “Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon” (2000), a Chinese drama that earned $128 million, making it the highest grossing foreign language film in the United States.Over the same period, as streaming services have replaced network and cable television, subtitles have also gained a stronger toehold on smaller screens, from cellphones to TV sets.Researchers credit the shift in part to two factors. The first is a 2016 rule from the Federal Communications Commission that made it mandatory for a TV show that has been captioned for broadcast to also be captioned when it is posted online or on a streaming service such at Netflix or Hulu. The second factor, they say, is Netflix itself. It is the most popular streaming platform in the United States, with more than 60 million paid subscribers, and much of its original content is in languages other than English.More than 50 percent of the audiences for the Netflix shows “Dark,” which is in German, and “3%”, which is in Portuguese, are international. A Netflix spokeswoman pointed to “Narcos,” a series about drug dealers in Mexico and Colombia. It has scenes in both Spanish and English, and uses subtitles for the Spanish dialogue, but that hasn’t kept the show from being popular, she said.What’s happening in your brainFor people who dislike subtitles, common complaints have been that they distract from the action onscreen, are hard to focus on, or that reading them can feel like work if a plot is complicated. Dubbing, in which speech in the target audience’s language replaces the original dialogue, is an easier alternative, some say.And it’s true that watching a movie with subtitles is cognitively different than watching one without, experts say.“Whenever you are watching a movie there is a whole orchestra’s worth of things happening in your brain,” said Jeffrey Zacks, a professor of psychology and brain science at Washington University.“That information includes what the words are and how they are ordered but also information about pitch and amplitude, which tells you a lot about emotional expression,” he added.The need to read to understand what is going on means you have to use other parts of your brain, according to Tim Smith, an associate professor of cognitive psychology at Birkbeck, University of London.But there is no scientific proof that the extra cognitive load is what keeps people from plopping down in front of a screen to read and watch a subtitled movie, Smith said.Rather, the extra work does not necessarily detract from the experience the movie has to offer, he said.“When you’re watching a subtitled movie, you have to be engaged with the screen and be more attached, but once you engage with that, you can have as rich an experience as if it were your language,” he said.How much have audience tastes changed?When it comes to subtitled films, there’s what happens in your brain, and there’s what happens in the entertainment business.In the 1930s, subtitles for foreign-language films were called English explanatory titles. One man who translated over 300 films in the early Hollywood era, Herman G. Weinberg, was profiled in 1947 by The New Yorker, which called him the “nuance preserver.” He started with literal translations from the original language, and then worked from there.“We’re adapters, rather than translators,” he told the magazine of the work he and his three assistants performed. “We try not to lose any wisecracks, even if it means stepping up the pace, because an American will hear a couple of Frenchmen in the audience howl at a joke in French and it burns him up not to be in on it.”Weinberg was credited with the superimposed titles for the smash hit German film “Zwei Herzen im Dreiviertel-Takt,” or Two Hearts in Waltz Time. The film is considered by many to be the first subtitled for the American market.Through the 1950s, subtitled foreign language films were marketable in the United States, according to Carol O’Sullivan, a historian of film translation at the University of Bristol in the U.K.“There were two big audiences for subtitled films,” she said. “You were either really well-read or were from an immigrant community that knew the language,” she said.Back then, movies from around the world were mainly being shown in New York, she said, and if they found success there, they would be shown elsewhere.But few foreign films could ever surpass a Hollywood movie at the box office, O’Sullivan said.In the 1970s, as American films became more experimental, diverse and exciting, the marketability of foreign language films diminished, Dr. O’Sullivan said, adding that not much has changed.“The situation has always been that there are more standout successes,” she said.Theater owners, from national chains to local independents, have yet to find the surefire formula to marketing a subtitled foreign language film.About a decade ago, the national theater chain AMC decided it wanted to show more subtitled films — and make money doing it. To help with the effort, it hired Nikkole Denson-Randolph to be the vice president of content strategy and inclusive programming.Despite a growing acceptance of subtitles, a movie still has to be captivating to make it in the American market, Denson-Randolph said.“There are a couple of distributors who have kind of figured out how to attract a younger psyche,” Denson-Randolph said. “Films that can attract attention are very character-driven.”“Parasite,” she said, had what it took to succeed in the American market, including a hefty marketing budget.“Inherently the film was slick, and the direction was gorgeous, she said. “It is much harder when you don’t have a budget and you’re targeting a different audience.”For the past 10 years, Denson-Randolph has brought more subtitled foreign language movies to American screens, somefrom China and some from India’s Bollywood.“We are opening dozens of subtitled foreign language films a month, some on one screen, some on 10, as we learn what our guests are looking to watch,” Denson-Randolph said, adding that AMC has not yet been able to crack the code.“We have seen a lot of distributors attempt to produce the same magic as ‘Parasite,’” she said. “But if you don’t know who the audience is, it’s hard to make them work.”In the art world, subtitled films can always find an audience, said O’Sullivan, the film translation historian.“Subtitled films cannot compete with Hollywood in market terms but they could compete in cultural prestige terms,” she said. “They have always been more important in cultural circles.”In the past, theaters were selective about what movies they showed, because of limited distribution. For many subtitled films, audiences had to go to special cinemas. But with digital distribution and streaming, there is a larger opportunity for a wider audience to watch foreign films.Today Netflix adds subtitles to their content in 28 languages, allowing their content to be marketable in different countries.“We’re seeing a growing number of our members choosing shows and films that transcend borders, and cultures,” a Netflix spokeswoman said.Watching a movie with subtitles may require more brain activity but cinema is a great way to look at the world, said Dennis Lim, the director of programming at Film at Lincoln Center, one of New York’s premiere independent theaters.“What it requires is orienting your eyes and your body and your cognitive system to stay on that task,” Zacks, the Washington University professor, said. “You don’t need so much.” More

UNIVERSAL CITY, Calif. — “The Hunt” is back on. Only this time Universal Pictures has designed a radically different marketing campaign for the violent film, which is ostensibly about liberal elites who kill conservative “rednecks” for sport.Before “The Hunt” was shelved last year in the face of criticism, Universal had started to market the film as something it was not: a relatively straightforward horror flick. Now the studio is hoping that an unusual marketing tactic — forthrightness — will protect “The Hunt” from blowback before its release on March 13.A new trailer, released on Tuesday, does not try to boil down “The Hunt” to a single, salable genre, which is the way Hollywood usually approaches films. Instead it presents “The Hunt” as it is — an absurdist satire that leaves no side of the political divide unscathed and is equal parts comedy, horror and thriller.“Not one frame was changed,” Jason Blum, who produced the film with Damon Lindelof (“Lost,” “Watchmen”), said in an interview. “This is exactly the same movie.”“The Hunt,” starring the Emmy-nominated Betty Gilpin (Netflix’s “Glow”) and the two-time Oscar winner Hilary Swank, was supposed to arrive in theaters in September. Trailers in July veiled the political aspect of the $15 million film and made it resemble an entry in the Universal’s dystopian “Purge” horror series. Universal had not yet screened “The Hunt” for film reporters or critics.Then 31 people were killed in back-to-back shootings in Texas and Ohio. The Hollywood Reporter published an article saying Universal had pulled ads for “The Hunt” as a result. The article, based on a copy of the script, also disclosed that the movie revolved “around third-rail political themes” — notably elites stalking “deplorables.”An outcry followed, with conservative pundits criticizing the film’s premise as “sick” and “awful.” Before long, President Trump alluded to “The Hunt” on Twitter, saying it was made by liberal Hollywood “to inflame and cause chaos.”Caught in a maelstrom, Universal canceled the release, leading to accusations of censorship.Universal, a division of NBCUniversal, which is owned by Comcast, said on Tuesday that it would give the film a wide release in theaters. It also invited a handful of reporters to its campus in the San Fernando Valley to watch “The Hunt” in the Alfred Hitchcock Building and discuss it afterward with Mr. Blum and Mr. Lindelof.“We didn’t want to just pretend that nothing had ever happened,” Mr. Blum said.Mr. Lindelof, who wrote the screenplay with Nick Cuse, said “The Hunt” had been inspired by “Get Out,” the blockbuster comedic mystery, social satire and horror film directed and written by Jordan Peele. (Mr. Blum was a producer.) It may be hard to believe, but Mr. Lindelof insisted that he had never expected “The Hunt” to prompt political blowback, certainly not on a presidential level.“It didn’t strike me as third rail,” Mr. Lindelof said of the film. He added of Mr. Trump: “I wish that he had seen it. The movie he was talking about was not the movie I feel that we made.”“The Hunt” begins (spoiler warning) with a close-up shot of text messages on a phone. One reads, “Promise you won’t judge me?” The conversation is about killing “deplorables” for sport. The discussion seems serious. Or is it in jest, albeit in very poor taste?The film, directed by Craig Zobel, whose credits include the well-reviewed 2015 thriller “Z for Zachariah,” then introduces the unlikable elites. One snootily rejects the caviar offered to him by an attendant on a private jet. He would prefer figs. There aren’t any? Sigh. Champagne will have to suffice.A dozen strangers then wake up in a clearing in the woods. All are overt stereotypes. A woman from Wyoming rocks a spectacular mullet. One older man wears a beige fishing shirt and a military cap.The liberal elites then begin the slaughter. “For the record, climate change is real!” one shrieks before blowing up a victim.Then one of the people being hunted turns the tables, picking off the killers one by one until only the ringleader remains. Slaying the liberals is not terribly difficult: They are easily distracted — bickering with one another over politically correct language, squealing in delight when the progressive filmmaker Ava DuVernay likes a social media post about their volunteer work in Haiti.By the end of the R-rated film, the story has included a paramilitary unit in Croatia, a dark internet conspiracy theory, a killing by stiletto pump and a pig wearing a T-shirt.“As anyone who has seen the movie can attest, it’s all so over the top and absurd,” Mr. Lindelof said. “It’s possible that people will see this movie and say it’s irresponsible or is a call to violence. But the morality of the movie” — who is left standing at the end — “has always felt very clean to us.”As any Hollywood marketer will tell you, it is exceeding difficult to burnish a film once an unfavorable narrative has formed around it. So part of Universal’s new marketing strategy involves embracing the ugliness. “The most talked about movie of the year is one that no one’s actually seen,” Universal’s new poster says. “Decide for yourself.”But the new trailer also marks “a big tonal shift,” as Mr. Lindelof said. Rather than a horror movie with some social commentary, à la “The Purge,” “The Hunt” is shown as a comedic social satire with some horror elements. In particular, the new trailer plays up the absurdity of the premise.“You wanted it to be real, so you decided it was,” Ms. Swank’s character says sternly.Which leads to a question: Why didn’t Universal take this approach to begin with?Michael Moses, Universal’s marketing chief, declined to discuss the studio’s initial strategy or the shift revealed on Tuesday except to say in an email: “To simply restart the previous campaign felt like it ignores what transpired. We thought it appropriate to acknowledge the film’s history and also the potential curiosity around it.”The initial strategy probably boiled down to Movie Marketing 101. Satires are hard to explain to a mass audience. Horror films are easier. More

“Wild: Life, Death and Love in a Wildlife Hospital” and “Waiting for Giraffes,” documentaries paired for a double bill opening Wednesday at Film Forum, are both relatively short and feature animals and Middle Eastern settings, but they take different approaches. “Wild” is a gentle, observational movie for animal-lovers; “Waiting for Giraffes” has its eye on geopolitical issues.“Wild” is a largely fly-on-the-wall-style portrait of an Israeli veterinary hospital where animals hit by cars or shot, for example, are tenderly rehabilitated.[embedded content]The directors, Uriel Sinai and Danel Elpeleg, are interested not only in the animals but also in the humans who look after them. Shmulik Landau, a tireless caretaker, patiently helps an unsteady young gazelle stay on her feet and eases her pain with medication and massages. (He died in 2017, and the movie is dedicated to him.) The devoted veterinarian Ariela Rosenzweig Bueler persists in finding an obstruction in a hyena’s digestive tract, even when her colleagues are about to give up. And confronted with a wild ass who has suffered a shattered bone, she explores options for healing an animal who might otherwise need to be euthanized.The charms of “Wild” are minor, lying mainly in the pleasure of watching the animals and the big-hearted professionals devoted to them.“Waiting for Giraffes,” at least initially, seems to have a broader scope. It follows Dr. Sami Khader, a Palestinian veterinarian at the Qalqilya Zoo in the West Bank, who is seeking to boost his institution’s visibility and access to animals by gaining admission to the European Association of Zoos and Aquaria.The film, by the Italian-born director Marco De Stefanis, opens by quoting the organization’s standards on enclosures, which should be built “to avoid the risk of persistent and unresolved conflict.” The excerpt offers an obvious metaphor for the Israeli-occupied West Bank.The title refers to potential replacements for a giraffe the zoo had that died. Various people onscreen share the reasons they have heard for its death, which may have been connected to violence in the region.But “Waiting for Giraffes” doesn’t lean hard into its occupation-as-a-zoo theme. It is largely devoted to earnestly celebrating Khader’s mission. He takes seriously a recommendation that his job is to bring the animal kingdom to West Bank Palestinians whose travel is controlled by the miles of barriers Israel has erected.“We can’t visit the sea,” a prospective zoo visitor says. “An aquarium with fish would be a compensation.”Waiting for GiraffesNot rated. In Arabic, with English subtitles. Running time: 55 minutes.Wild: Life, Death and Love in a Wildlife HospitalNot rated. In Hebrew, with English subtitles. Running time: 59 minutes. More

The great Chilean documentary filmmaker Patricio Guzmán does not grapple with the idea of eternity in his new picture, “The Cordillera of Dreams.” He sits with it, patiently. He considers it through metaphor, as his camera slowly considers the chain of Andes Mountains that makes up the cordillera of his movie’s title.Drone shots are overused in movies, often predictably so; this sublime film, though, abounds in great, distinctive ones. Guzmán’s lens flies the way you would wish your own eye could, unveiling incredible natural beauty and revealing secrets: a labyrinth of gorges for instance. The filmmaker’s narration nuzzles up to the metaphysical, and frequently anthropomorphizes the mountains that practically seal off Guzmán’s homeland. But given his own story and the story this picture needs to tell, the movie toggles between heights and depths.[embedded content]Guzmán left Chile in the 1970s. As depicted in this account, he exiled himself to Cuba practically carrying reels of film under his arms. Those reels became his signature work, the acclaimed documentary The Battle of Chile, a searing chronicle of the coup that felled Salvador Allende Gossens and culminated in Augusto Pinochet’s fascist rule. Guzmán did not return to his homeland for decades, and one of the sites he visits in this film is his childhood home in Santiago, the facade of which seems immaculately preserved. But the house has no roof, a cue for one of the movie’s drone shots.“Santiago receives me with indifference,” muses the filmmaker, whose voice is heard throughout but who is never seen except in archival footage.Memory and loss are interwoven with an activist sense of lineage. (The movie, which won best documentary at Cannes last year, is the last part of a trilogy; the prior pictures in it, “Nostalgia for the Light” and “The Pearl Button,” are in a similar mode.) Guzmán interviews writers and artists who remained in Chile after he departed. One of them, recounting the propaganda of the day, chillingly recalls how “The Left became a demon that had to be eliminated,” a state of affairs that evokes both a distant past and our immediate present. Guzmán eventually settles in with Pablo Salas, a documentarian whose archive of footage in different film and video formats is fascinating.Once Guzmán starts discussing how Pinochet and his cronies used “the Chicago model” to bring their country to economic ruin, you may think, given the depredations these figures committed, that he’s talking about Al Capone. Except he’s talking about the American economist Milton Friedman, of the University of Chicago, whose prescriptions Pinochet followed. “The Cordillera of Dreams” is a beautiful film about nightmares that have yet to end.The Cordillera of DreamsNot rated. In Spanish, with English subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 24 minutes. More