To say that South Korea was happy
their locally-produced black humor film “Parasite” from director Bong Joon-ho
won both Best International Feature Film and Best Picture, among others, at the
92nd Academy Awards this past Sunday is a gross understatement. Nationwide
celebrations erupted this week, with government officials joining in the
revelry to congratulate Bong, his cast and crew on their historical triumph at
the Oscars. But the scooping of four Academy Awards by “Parasite” is also being
observed by other quarters around the world who realize it for what it is: a
game-changing moment for the world’s film distributors.
The Hollywood Reporter tells us that movie directors and
distribution firms from primarily non-English-speaking countries and
territories are now looking at Bong Joon-ho’s award-winning film “Parasite” as
the model by which their own productions might be recognized in the
international stage. Analysts from the European Film Market which opens in
Berlin later this month opine that particularly for Asian filmmakers, they will
not only be inspired by “Parasite” to dream big with their own efforts, but
will also examine and dissect all facets of the production to find the “magic
recipe” that wins Academy Awards.
But one factor for the surprise
success of “Parasite” is rather well-known to global audiences by now: the
mainstreaming of subtitles in visual media. While decades ago English-speaking
viewers, especially Americans, would find reading through English subtitles of
a foreign film to be tedious, years of watching streaming media like on
Netflix, with its multiple-language subs, has sold the convention to many, such
that they have gotten used to seeing onscreen action while simultaneously reading
lines of text down below. Miky Lee of CJ Entertainment, one of Bong’s distributors
for “Parasite,” notes the disappearance of the foreign-language barrier in
media viewing saying, “Netflix has trained everybody to watch subtitles in
their living room, and now Parasite in the movie theater."
“Parasite,” which tells the story
of a middle-income South Korean family whose members craft unrelated false
identities to get all of them hired by a wealthy household, was not only an awards
darling – aside from the Oscars it won in the Golden Globes, SAG and BAFTA – it
also rocked the box office in Korea and overseas. Its latest total gross is
$170 million against a modest $11 million budget, pretty much confirming it as
blockbuster.
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