Foreign films are a lot like foreign foods. If you don’t have the taste for them, they can be off-putting with their unfamiliar ingredients. It might seem quaint now, but there was a time when sushi restaurants were aberrations, eating curry was unheard of, and Mexican food was only Taco Bell. Likewise, foreign films carry the stigma of pretension. They are forced upon you with the sour taste of medicine. Unless it’s a chopsocky kung fu movie, it’s probably a tedious meditation on death that involves weeping peasants lamenting their fate.
Gradually, though, some of those foreign flavors become accepted overseas. Palates open up, and Mexican food becomes more than Taco Bell, Chinese food becomes more than sweet and sour chicken, and Japanese food becomes more than chicken teriyaki. Sushi becomes understood and accepted as a culinary option, breaking through from the rarefied air of elitism and becoming a mainstream taste. At a certain point, the foreign flavors become virtually adopted by the new homeland (witness the mushroom-like proliferation of Chipotle burrito joints, or the infinite numbers of curry fry-up shacks in London), and the foreign flavors become seamlessly integrated into the national palate.
With The Host, directed by Joon-Ho Bong, the flavors of America have hit the mainstream in Korea. This rollicking tale is a Hollywood worthy action flick that has become the highest grossing film in Korean history. The single-minded high-gloss intensity of American action films has been broken down into its component flavors and reconstituted into something new. Much like the Korean specialty bimbimbap – a savory mix of meat and vegetables seared into rice, The Host is a seamless mélange of flavors imported from overseas. Think Little Miss Sunshine sautéed into the middle of a monster movie.
Gang-Du Park is an amiable doofus who runs a concession stand on the Han River. When a monster resembling a giant, mutant catfish lurches out of the water and starts munching on picnickers, that can only be bad for business. When the dust settles, the bad news is that Gang-Du’s been covered in the monster’s blood, and has to be quarantined. The worse news is that his precocious young daughter, Hyun-Seo has been carried away, presumably to become a late-night snack.
That’s all fairly standard action movie setup, but when the family gathers at a makeshift memorial for the victims, The Host really starts breaking the mold. Gang-Du’s father and brother gather with him at the memorial. It’s haunting imagery, a gymnasium filled with flowers, candles, and pictures of the dead. Dazed family members stand about in shock, processing their grief. The Park family, though, almost immediately collapses onto each other with angry accusations of who’s to blame for losing Hyun-Seo. In the midst of this, the brothers’ absent sister quietly appears and is drawn into the fray without missing a step. The scene ends with the whole family wrestling each other to the floor, grief pouring out of them as they grapple with each other, knocking over memorials and traumatizing the other victims.
Watching this for the first time is a strange experience. It’s familiar, but foreign. A bit shocking and a bit appalling, until suddenly it becomes hilariously funny. The first moments of laughing at this come as a surprise, like a hot pepper in a soft Chinese dumpling. It’s unexpected, and for a precarious moment it’s totally foreign, until you realize that the whole scene is comic and tragic in equal measure. It’s riotous, almost, but never does it lose a grip on the desperation or sadness the family is going through.
The rest of The Host will seamlessly shift gears in a similar way. Heartbreaking and tender family moments get sandwiched between exciting chase scenes and comic moments of official ineptitude that play like Groucho Marx doing Kafka. What’s wonderful is that they never feel forced.
The director, Joon-Ho Bong, has readily absorbed the lessons that Hollywood has been teaching, especially Spielberg. When the plucky young Hyun-Seo attempts to escape from the monster’s den, she has to make a flying leap over the monster to a rope that dangles just out of reach. She screws up her courage and leaps for freedom, hanging onto the rope with eyes wide open in surprise. After the elation of success passes, she gently lets go of the rope, only to remain suspended in mid-air. After another heartbeat the camera reveals that the monster has her firmly gripped in its tail.
There are moments so familiar that they transcend all language, and hit an American audience with the shock of the familiar. Even the clichés feel re-invigorated. The sister who just happens to be an Olympic archer, the brother who happens to be good with a Molotov cocktail, and the daughter with the broken cell phone.
In the standard Hollywood action movie, all of those pre-fabricated details get introduced with a groan. Spielberg 101 teaches that before it’s over, the sister will find herself miraculously armed with bow and arrow, aiming to make the heroic shot in just the nick of time. What’s so refreshing about The Host is that when the time comes, she misses. Nor does everyone in the family survive to walk off into the sunset. The ingredients might not be very foreign, but the startling new ways they get re-combined make for a nifty new genre.
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