On Adapting Foreign Film

Recently I shared a few email back-and-forths with a local filmmaker and former Columbia student. The topic of discussion was America's obsession with adapting foreign films, especially those from the currently hot spots of Hong Kong, Korea, China, Thailand, and other Asian countries. Their stand was that American improved upon those films when adapting them.


I disagree completely. We are a different culture and have difficulty understanding other cultures in general, especially when so many of us never venture out of our safe worlds to try to understand them. It's a small planet, but we like to make it smaller by remaining within our own, albeit large, world. I watch a lot of foreign film, and Korean film is one of the hottest right now, although on the wane, and the reasons given satisfied me... probably because of my watching three or four Korean films a month.

And The Departed was a good adaptation, but nowhere near as good as the original. The drama in Infernal Affairs I was so intense that the film had less than half of the gunplay as The Departed, yet it kept the suspense levels just as high.

We covet our weapons and explosions over good character drama and we fall back on them because the Hollywood system demands we keep the bulk of mainstream America happy, in their seats, buying their buckets of corn, We, as a public, will not allow for artistic expression as much as the emerging cultures do in their cinematic growth. Probably because those cultures, in particular Asian film, have embraced the Hollywood model but in so doing have added their own unique spin, thanks to the customs of their cultures.

And the few of us in this country who will take the time to watch a film with subtitles feel superior; but the problem is that just doing that is not enough. We have to keep our minds open to the fact that we are experiencing another culture. If all we do is try to assimilate it into our own then we are suppressing our own experience and minimalizing the original filmmaker's intent.