Since this is Oscar season, I thought of watching few of the short-listed movies. Most Hollywood movies are marketable products but they set standards for execution of ‘action’ that adolescent mind find exciting. They do however make some really good thought provoking movies. There was a time when Japanese, French, Italian and Iranian movies set the benchmark for international movies while hollywood movies set technical standards for mass entertainment without being too crass (except ofcourse too many guns). Now it is Korean who explore really complex ideas while in last two decades Japanese made some riveting horror movies. There are also Chinese and Taiwanese movies worth a look. Meanwhile there are some really good Sci-Fi hollywood movies. Though there are hundreds and thousands of movies released all over the world only few are worth the time. And based in a region that is known for quantity and very rarely quality (indeed most Indian movies scrap for worst possibilities as entertainment, crude crass noisy vulgar is common source for entertainment, and these degradation barge into public space regularly as mainstream. In here it is about squeezing the herd, creative excellence is rare) it is onerous effort to sift.
Two hollywood movies short listed for Oscar, Sinners and Bugonia, stand out for complexity of narration and subtlety of execution. Instead of straight staid narration of exploitation it shifts to allegory of vampire and aliens! It is such a masterful handling that subtly brings out absurdity in a humanistic way without demeaning. Even small details, for instance, in the original Korean movie (Save the Green Planet), it is the couple while in the hollywood version Bugonia it is replaced by cousins. It is quite a progressive shift that very clearly hollywood is aware. While in Korean the wife is shown as somewhat ‘slow’ and dependent, very much gender stereotype that works with primitive audience. In English version she is replaced by cousin who is clearly autistic and is empathically dealt. Not only that rather than reducing the excellent story into parody the English version works to bring deep divisions in an intellectually convincing manner wherein both sides are right as well as wrong in the context of argument and experience. Final revelation of exploitative elite as an alien exaggerates the division into absurdity which is as real as the contemporary world we live in.
