Fighting on Many Fronts in Asian Foreign-Language Entries

1:18 p.m. | Updated One of the intriguing mysteries of the competition for the Academy Award for best foreign-language film is trying to figure out why certain groups of countries submit films that are so similar in subject matter. For example, this year, as in 2011, several European countries have chosen films about interactions between Europeans and immigrants from poor, ravaged nations seeking sanctuary in the West.

Have those films been submitted because they are really the best work to come out of the countries they represent? Because the subject is so topical? Or is it simply because someone in a national film institute somewhere thinks that Academy voters will respond favorably to that particular kind of film?

Those may be questions that do not have answers, but there is no doubt that such a tendency exists. Another such cluster this year is in East Asia, where all four of the major nations are competing for the Oscar with blood-soaked war dramas: China with “The Flowers of War,” Taiwan with “Warriors of the Rainbow: Seediq Bale,” South Korea with “The Front Line” and Japan with “Postcard.”

Much has already been written about “The Flowers of War,” so there is no point in rehashing that. (If you want to catch up, look here, here and here.) But it is interesting to note that in both the Chinese and Taiwanese submissions, the villains are the Japanese, while in the South Korean entry it is the Chinese, along with the North Koreans, who are the bad guys. Clearly, nationalism is alive and well in East Asia; little wonder the region is sometimes called “the most dangerous place on earth.”

But for all their airing of regional rivalries that refuse to die, these submissions also adhere to many of the rules of genre films, Hollywood-style, which may help explain why they, rather than other films, have been chosen to compete for the Oscar. “The Front Line,” for instance, will seem familiar to any filmgoer, American or foreign, who has seen “Saving Private Ryan” or “A Few Good Men” or “The General’s Daughter,” since it replicates tropes from all three of those movies by mixing the horror of combat with a military investigation that leads to unexpected conclusions.

Well Go USAA scene from “The Front Line,” South Korea’s entry for the Oscar for best foreign-language film

“The Front Line” is set in 1953, in the waning days of the Korean War. Central command suspects that a North Korean infiltrator has penetrated a combat unit fighting to hold a hilltop on what might become an armistice line, and sends an intelligence officer to investigate. In a country as homogenous as Korea, it’s obviously not possible to employ the same clichés common in American combat movies, like platoons with soldiers named Rizzo, Goldberg, O’Connor and Martinez. But the film focuses on their local equivalents: the fat guy, the hardened veteran, the country yokel, etc.

For a full dosage of Hollywood influence, however, it might be best to look at “Warriors of the Rainbow,” which plays like an Asian remake of “Avatar.” Consider this plotline: an indigenous clan-based people living in harmony with nature find their way of life threatened when violent interlopers from another culture arrive, intent on seizing their natural resources and enslaving them. In this case it’s the Seediq Bale, a tribal people who lived in the mountains of Taiwan, in the role of the Pandorans, and the Japanese, who seized Taiwan in the mid-1890s and held it as a colony for 50 years, substituting for villainous earthlings.

It turns out, however, that “Warriors of the Rainbow,” directed by Wei Te-Sheng and produced by the Hong Kong action film master John Woo, was conceived nearly a decade ago. Mr. Wei even shot a five-minute showcase in 2003 but could not get the financing until he had a hit in 2008 with “Cape No. 7,” a romantic comedy. Production of “Warriors of the Rainbow” then began in 2009, just as “Avatar” was about to be released.

Pichi Chuang/ReutersWei Te-sheng, the director of “Warriors of the Rainbow,” at the 48th Golden Horse Film Awards in Taiwan in November.

In its original iteration, shown in East Asia, “Warriors of the Rainbow” consisted of two chapters, running at a total of 4 1/2 hours. For the West, it has been trimmed to about half that, but still manages, as The Economist noted, to show probably ”the highest number of graphic beheadings of any film anywhere.” Nevertheless, it was a hit in Chinese-speaking areas, where resentment endures over Japan’s behavior during World War II and over what are widely seen as its half-hearted apologies for abuses then and during the colonial period.

And what about the Japanese entry, “Postcard”? If there is a villain, it is war itself, along with the damage it wreaks on survivors. When a soldier about to be sent to the front lines during World War II receives a postcard from his wife back home, he writes a reply and, assuming he is going to be killed, asks a friend to deliver it at war’s end. The friend later visits the widow at her rural home and finds that her suffering has been even greater than he could have imagined.

This is not a surprising perspective, given that “Postcard” was written and directed by the 99-year-old filmmaker Kaneto Shindo. Born in Hiroshima, he served in World War II himself, emerging as one of only six survivors from a unit of just over 100 men, and in 1953 directed “Children of Hiroshima,” about a teacher returning to that city to find out if any of his students have survived the atom bomb.

So what are the odds that one of these four East Asian war films will take home the Oscar for best foreign-language film? Japan has won four times, most recently in 2008 for “Departures,” and Taiwan once, for Ang Lee’s “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” in 2000. But China has never won, though Chinese films have twice been nominated, and no Korean film has even reached the final five. That’s not exactly an encouraging track record.

http://carpetbagger.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/04/fighting-on-many-fronts-in-asian-foreign-language-entries/

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