Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000)

By Ian Floodgate

The nominations for the 73rd Academy Awards saw the third international feature to receive a nomination for Best Picture in five years. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon also set a record for the most nominations for a foreign-language film with ten. The film was also successful at the US box office grossing $128M on a $17M budget. Ang Lee‘s nomination for Best Director also catapulted him to the status of one of the most desirable directors in the business.

Adapted from Wang Dulu’s novel of the same name, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon tells the story of two swordsmen in pursuit of a stolen sword who are led by a physically-skilled nobleman’s daughter. Some audiences were perhaps likely drawn to the film for its impressive martial arts sequences but Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon offers so much more. There is artistry displayed in many aspects of its production too, including cinematography and the film’s beautiful scenery.

Letters From Iwo Jima (2006)

By Alex Sitaras

Letters From Iwo Jima was produced in tandem with Flags of Our Fathers, the two films portraying the Battle of Iwo Jima from the Japanese and American perspectives, respectively, and both directed by Clint Eastwood. One of the most celebrated Hollywood actors who recently won Best Picture for his 2004 film Million Dollar Baby, Eastwood’s starpower no doubt helped propel Letters From Iwo Jima to be the 8th/9th (along with Babel) foreign language film nominated for Best Picture. Ken Watanabe’s impact on the film’s success also cannot be understated as Watanabe performs in the lead role as General Tadamichi Kuribayashi, a general whose craftiness, bravery, and tactical mind could not have prevented American victory at Iwo Jima, but enabled the Japanese to fend off the Americans as long as possible. The effect is bittersweet since the difficult choices he makes and the empathy he has for his soldiers is admirable despite the fact that the Japanese were part of the Axis powers.

Letters From Iwo Jima received popular acclaim in Japan because of its casting of Japanese actors for Japanese characters (as opposed to casting Chinese or Korean actors) and the research into Japanese history and culture that occurred in order to make the film. Unlike many Hollywood movies that have portrayed the Japanese, Letters From Iwo Jima did not come off as a caricature of Japan and its people.

Babel (2006)

By Alex Sitaras

Like Amores Perros and 21 Grams before it, Babel displays a handful of stories that are interconnected through both circumstance and coincidence. A Moroccan goat herder buys a gun to use to shoot at jackals who are killing his herd of goats. Upon giving the gun to his children to tend the herd, they decide to test the range of the gun… and shoot an American tourist on a bus. The US government determines that the violence is a terrorist act and pressures the Moroccan authorities to find the perpetrators. Meanwhile, the children of the American tourists are being taken care of by a Mexican nanny. The tourists cannot return home in time as intended and the nanny does not want to miss her son’s wedding in Mexico so she takes their American children with her, across the border, to the wedding. Simultaneously, a Japanese girl is grieving because of her mother’s suicide. She encounters detectives investigating a hunting trip her father took in Morocco, bringing the story full circle.

Trouble occurs over the course of Babel because humans are humans. We are flawed. How “bad” people are in Babel is debatable depending on your views of what constitutes the worse offense. No one is deserving of misfortune of course, but it is nonetheless here and Alejandro González Iñárritu’s characters vary in their capacity to react to their tribulations. Bringing a multicultural story to Babel, Iñárritu weighs both fate and communication in equal measure.

Amour (2012)

By Ben McDonald

Amour is one of the harshest and most profound films I have ever seen, a work of uncompromising pain and beauty that genuinely took my breath away and forced me to lie down in pensive silence for ten minutes following its conclusion. Michael Haneke has never been known for making particularly emotional films – quite the opposite actually (if two versions of Funny Games, Caché, and the always chilling The White Ribbon didn’t give it away). Amour is undoubtedly the austere Austrian auteur’s most tender film, but it’s also his bleakest and most nihilistic work to date. A quiet portrait of death in close-up, Amour depicts the emotional devastation wreaked upon married couple Georges (Jean-Louis Trintignant) and Anne (Emmanuelle Riva) in the weeks leading up to the latter’s death after a crippling stroke. As one might expect, Amour is an immensely upsetting viewing experience, and Haneke pulls no punches in depicting the physical and psychological suffering of watching the person you love most fade away into cries and whispers. Death is a natural experience that all of us must go through at some point, but understanding that fact doesn’t make the film any easier to swallow, and Haneke maintains his characteristic coldness with the camera to elevate the nihilistic inevitability of what his film represents. And yet, even with so much pain and horror, he affords his audience – and his characters – small glimmers of sincere hope. Life isn’t all bad, after all. Even with so much inevitable anguish awaiting each and every one of us, the small moments of happiness have to count for something, don’t they? 

Nothing can replace the experience of watching this monumental work of art for yourself, but below are two quotes from the film that I think best embody its dichotomous themes of pitch-black despair and existential peace. Which one is more reflective of the human experience? Who’s to say?

Georges: “Things will go on, and then one day it will all be over.”

Anne: “It’s beautiful.”
Georges: “What?”
Anne: “Life. So long.”

Roma (2018)

By Alex Sitaras

Netflix threw the kitchen sink trying to get Roma a Best Picture win, spending $25, $30, or up to $60 million on its Oscar campaign depending on which source you read. For all their efforts, the film ultimately won three awards, falling just short of Best Picture but winning Best Director for Alfonso Cuarón. Even so, Roma achieved great success and its story was empowering to its cast, consisting mostly of nonprofessional actors, and audience, many of whom haven’t seen the story of a Mexican family told to such a wide audience before. Partly autobiographical, Roma is a love letter to Cuarón’s childhood housekeeper and Mexico. Shot in beautiful black-and-white, Cuarón donned many hats during the making of the film as director, producer, screenwriter, and cinematographer. For me, Roma is the first Cuarón film that I’ve really enjoyed, and its heartfelt story is one that is impossible not to have appreciation for. Unlike a number of recent Mexican films from directors such as Alejandro González Iñárritu and Amat Escalante, Cuarón portrays the beauty of the country and its people, not just its social unrest.

Similar campaigns for Marriage Story and The Irishman suggest that Netflix is not giving up their dream of a Best Picture win, and their avenue of attempt- investing in otherwise difficult-to-finance auteur projects and releasing the films to a broader audience- is one that is definitely commendable.

Parasite (2019)

By Alex Sitaras

After directing his second partial-English language film Okja, Bong Joon-ho returned to his roots in South Korean cinema with Parasite. And despite Snowpiercer and Okja reaching a broad international audience through great success at the festival circuit and a Netflix release, respectively, Parasite is the film that has brought Director Bong his most widespread acclaim yet. And why is this? The most likely explanation of why Parasite resonates so deeply with audiences around the world is its commentary on wealth and privilege. Bong’s unique directorial style of blending action, comedy, and drama, able to alternate between the three effortlessly, is perfectly suited for bringing to the surface the bizarreness of our times and the vast differences in lifestyle between the wealthy and the unwealthy. The fact that the film centers on two South Korean families is far from irrelevant to Bong’s film, yet one does not need to possess any knowledge of life within South Korea to glean value from Parasite. With the exception of the most insulated of neighborhoods, one doesn’t have to look far to see wealth and poverty coexist civilly… or not so as in Parasite.

Unlike many films with an eye to social commentary, Parasite is far from preaching and far from moralizing. While one might wonder if the film is limited in what it expresses given its praise by a variety of audiences, Bong does not restrict his characters from sharing their worldviews and their hardships. One character notes that a family is “nice because they are rich” and we know firsthand, even if not wealthy, that it is easier to be nice to others when all is well. Another character notes that the poor have a certain smell to them, Bong somewhat cruelly observing a subtle chasm that separates people and leads to prejudice. It is difficult for both the unwealthy and wealthy to convey an appearance other than that they are a part of, and Parasite demonstrates this alarmingly well, enabling the film to make a profound statement and ultimately be awarded Best Picture at the 92nd Academy Awards.