Don't fear the subtitles

In a recent trip to Washington D.C. to visit some family, I did what all good tourists do: I went to the movies. Well, that's not entirely true. I walked down the great mall, visited some museums, including the brand new National Museum of the American Indian, saw the many memorials that surround the Washington Monument and watched the second presidential debates with my two highly-conservative aunts. However, even though these were all memorable moments, it was the film I saw on my last night in the District that I've been thinking about the most.\n"The Motorcycle Diaries," Brazilian director Walter Salles' coming-of-age, road trip story featuring a young Ernesto "Che" Guevara (Gael García Bernal), was screened at this year's Toronto Film Festival but only opened to the public in select cities three weeks ago. The film, which is based on the real-life diaries of Guevara and his traveling companion Alberto Granado (Rodrigo De la Serna,) tells the story of the young Che as he travels through South America before he became the communist revolutionary that most of us are familiar with.\nAs I left the theater, I was reminded of how much I enjoy the less conventional, anti-Hollywood foreign films that we so rarely get to see down here in Monroe County. \nThis is not to say that all movies that come out of the United States are bad, but let's be honest, the majority are trash. Who could forget last year's hip-hop airplane comedy "Soul Plane?" We like our action movies loud and pointless and our romantic comedies sappy and dull.\nNow don't get me wrong, there is a fine line between entertainment and art. I love a good Jerry Bruckheimer extravaganza like everyone else, but I am more intrigued by an interesting storyline and engaging characters. I was fascinated with the different characters that the two travelers encounter in "The Motorcycle Diaries" and found myself wanting to see more.\nForeign films work for me because they show a side of life that we generally don't see in mainstream Hollywood movies. The stories are anything but ordinary, and the characters are not recycled like many we see in the U.S. A recent example of this is the wonderful French-Canadian film "The Barbarian Invasions," which dealt with death, a theme featured in many movies, but was unique in how it portrayed it. The actors' performances, combined with the wonderfully written script, helped draw me into the lives of the characters in the film.\nThese "world films" also influence what we see in the U.S. Many of the big players in filmmaking today got their roots from watching the work of people like Italian director Federico Fellini or Ingmar Bergman. Case in point: Martin Scorsese, who, besides being an important filmmaker in Hollywood, is also an avid film buff of works from all over the world.\nDo you think someone like Quentin Tarantino would have made "Pulp Fiction" or formed his film company A Band Apart (a name taken from the Jean-Luc Godard film, "Band of Outsiders") without growing up watching these types of movies? Can you imagine Bryan Singer being able to direct his crime mystery "The Usual Suspects," without first sitting down to watch Akira Kurosawa's "Rashomon?" The answer is probably not.\nIt is also interesting to see a large number of foreign films being remade (generally unsuccessfully) in Hollywood to reach a larger audience. The 2002 movie "The Ring," along with the upcoming thriller "The Grudge," are both remakes of Japanese horror films. The Argentinean conman film "Nine Queens" was recently remade into the movie "Criminal," while Cameron Crowe's 2001 film "Vanilla Sky" was taken from the Spanish reality versus dream thriller "Abre los Ojos" (Open Your Eyes.) And the list could go on.\nAnother trend these days is bringing foreign directors to the U.S. to give them a shot at Hollywood. Mexican filmmaker Alfonso Cuarón, who made 2001's wonderful coming-of-age film, "Y Tu Mamá También," directed the last Harry Potter movie.\nSo why is all this happening? Why is there suddenly a stream of hot new actors and filmmakers coming from overseas to work in the states? The answer in my mind is that Hollywood desperately needs something fresh and new, and in many cases, we are getting our fix from abroad. \nSome of the most anticipated movies of this upcoming season happen to be foreign. The long-awaited film from Spanish filmmaker Pedro Almodóvar, "Bad Education," (which stars Gael García Bernal of "The Motorcycle Diaries") hits theaters this winter. Other releases to look out for include the Chinese martial arts period piece "House of Flying Daggers," from the director of "Hero," and finally "Amélie" director Jean-Pierre Jeunet's wartime love story "A Very Long Engagement."\nWhile many of these may not make it to the Bloomington megaplexes (at least not right away,) they are worth checking out nonetheless, whether on video or at one of the many film screenings around campus.