Breaking Down the Language Barrier

There are only three people in the theater: me, my grandmother, and a hooded stranger in the back row. It’s strange and also comforting to be so isolated from everyone else, the theater lacking the usual packed crowds that I have become so accustomed to for blockbuster films. But this is a relatively new film and no one, including myself, quite knew what it was about. Soon the movie title, Everything Everywhere All at Once, appears on the screen and the credits roll. I am reeled back to reality as the overhead lights slowly turned back on. Wiping away some stray tears, I turned to my right and asked my grandmother what she thought of the movie. She gave a slight laugh and said in mandarin, “I also had to deal with taxes,” referring to Michelle Yeoh’s character, Eleanor, who had conflict with the IRS as she and her family struggled to pay their dues. Taxes. That was her one takeaway from the story, and also a scene that had mainly occurred at the beginning of the film, which, to anyone who has seen the movie, was quite a mundane part of the story when keeping in mind that the premise of the film revolved around Eleanor traveling through multiverses to experience all the lives she could have lived. Personally, my own mind was reeling from the onslaught of, to put it simply, weirdness I had just watched. My grandmother didn’t mention the fact that the Michelle Yeoh, a martial arts legend, had sausages for fingers, or that there was a raccoon controlling Harry Shum Jr’s character. While I was trying to process what exactly had just happened, my grandmother was generally silent as we exited the theater, her final words regarding the film still being, “ha, taxes….”

There was a point where I didn’t think that films could combine two worlds, two cultures, together. But now cultural films and shows are breaking down barriers. On Netflix, some of the most watched shows on the platform are international shows, such as Squid Games (1.65 billion hours, Korean-spoken), Money Heist (619 million hours, Spanish-spoken), and All of Are Dead (560.8 million hours, Korean-spoken), which is an achievement that would not have seemed possible only a few years ago. Stories that are spoken in a language other than English are often overlooked and until quite recently as evident in the lack of such films in theaters. While Everything Everywhere All at Once certainly is not the first film to tackle cultural issues or experiment with dialogue in multiple languages, its immense popularity, despite being a niche and independent film, does spark a conversation about the ever blurring line between languages and cultures. 

Take Steven Spielberg’s remake of West Side Story (2021) for example. The story follows the conflicts of Puerto Rican Sharks and New Yorker Jets, two gangs whose rivalry brings light to socially systematic issues like racism and classism. Some of the film is spoken in Spanish, but whereas the original West Side Story (1961) provided English subtitles for the Spanish dialogue, Spielberg made the executive decision not to. Audiences watching the movie on a streaming service might have been confused as to why there were English subtitles for every part except the dialogue that was not spoken in English, blaming it on the streaming service for not doing its job. However, Spielberg has stated that, “it was out of respect that we didn't subtitle any of the Spanish. That language had to exist in equal proportions alongside the English with no help.” The decision to exclude English subtitles forces audiences to become more attentive to contextual and subtle clues, such as emphasizing the racist character, Lieutenant Schrank, who tells anyone conversing in Spanish to speak English. This is a pushback from every bilingual person who has grown up or experienced hearing the words “speak English.” West Side Story’s lack of English subtitles is a wake up call to how many of us expect English to be the “default” language when, in fact, the United States has no official language and is a land of many tongues.

Films are becoming more open to including bilingualism, but it’s not just about breaking through language barriers that storytellers have to consider. Now films are pushing to tell culturally relevant stories that reflect an authenticity that has been lacking from the stories of people of color, immigrant families, and minorities as a whole. As an Asian American, a few films that have been released these past couple of years that stand out to me are Crazy Rich Asians (2018), The Farewell (2019), Minari (2020), and Shangi-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (2021). These films range from drama to action to sci-fi, but they all have the ability to make you laugh and cry from one scene to the next. While each film would require its own paper to break down its themes and messages, the overall uniting theme that connects these films together is the struggles of being an American born East Asian, or an immigrant from East Asia. These stories have long been missing from the mainstream media, and now that they are being told, it opens the door to appreciating more diverse works.

It is important to note, however, that non-English films do not have to tell solely cultural stories about Asian Americans to be considered relevant. One of the most critically acclaimed international films, the classic In the Mood for Love, is considered one of the greatest films of all time. Spoken in Cantonese and co-produced by Hong Kong and France, its success is not attributed to its ability to convey the universal language of love. A more recent example can be found in anime, or animation from Japan, which has taken over screens across the world. These films and shows are subbed, or spoken in Japanese, and usually dubbed in English can range in all genres from drama, fantasy, comedy, to even horror. Naturally, anime features aspects of Japanese culture from traditions, cuisine, and lifestyle. So even though anime’s main-focus isn’t to be “culturally-driven” and tell ground-breaking stories about immigration and familial issues is Asian families, the beauty in the art and storytelling is one that still deserves to be appreciated.

Sure, there were only three people in the theater that day: a first generation Asian American, an immigrant, and a stranger whose story I do not know. I wonder what their thoughts were as they walked down the theater stairs and out the door. Were they as perplexed as me and reflecting on every moment of their life that had led them up to that moment? While the day I had seen the film, it was still unknown, a week later, everyone was raving about it. My point is, everyone has a different takeaway. My grandmother didn’t relate to the movie the same way I did. To her, it was simply an absurd, confusing, slightly…. okay, maybe really strange movie. To me, it was being able to relate to Eleanor’s daughter, to my grandma it was an abstract work, to the stranger watching behind us, it could have meant something totally different, but that’s the whole point. Maybe a film is just an extremely weird comedic relief, but that doesn’t matter. A story doesn’t have to resonate with everyone, as long as it resonates with the audience it is meant to reach. Honestly, I didn’t care that my grandmother couldn’t relate to being a daughter of an immigrant family, I was just glad that I could watch a movie with her that was partially spoken in her mother tongue and was a personal experience for me. And who knew the impact the film ended up having on so many other people? After all, it didn’t follow the typical Hollywood blockbuster “formula.” Niche, unknown, debuting at only 10 theaters, and, well, a whole lot of weird, this is proof that sometimes the most unexpected story is the one that needs to be shared.