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July 26, 2007

The Host

Genre Bender

By Andrew

Epic Movie. Date Movie. Scary Movie. Scary Movie 2. Scary Movie 3. Scary Movie 4. I suppose it’s only a matter of time before the catch-all spoof to end all spoofs is produced. Call it Genre Movie. Wasn't it the French New Wave critics who thought genre movies epitomized the grand opportunity that was cinema? As a form recognizable by all, genre films could communicate meaningful truths to popular audiences. Too bad an endless string of films like these has killed that theory dead like so many bullets burst from the barrel of an automatic weapon, just like in the American crime films those Frenchies loved so much.

All of these spoofs utilize a comedic formula of packaging together the most ridiculous genre tropes and playing them for laughs. But in even really funny ones like Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, the formula says less about the intelligence of the films themselves than it does about the sad state of genre films in general. Because genre films are audience friendly and predictable, their elements can be endlessly recycled for quick easy cash, like aluminum cans cashed in for dimes and nickels.

This is also probably why they litter independent fests with self-referential joke films, shot on the fly and fervently un-thought-through; my town’s local film fest had to create an entire category – “Pure Schlock” – to accommodate them all. At worst, genre conventions create silly, insular sets of normative criteria that are starving for real world relevance – Fangoria is more interested in probing wounds than probing society – and cultivating gore hounds like Eli Roth so cut-off (get it?) from reality they equate retributive castration with feminism. Even genuinely socially conscience genre pictures aren’t held to very high standards; for some people it seems any hint of social commentary in a B-Grade movie gilds it for the ages.

Myself, I prefer films to tackle politics dead-on rather than by inference. Hand it to South Korea, a country on the global periphery, to give birth to a monster movie that does just that, shaking up the world of genre in the process. Fun, funny and fiercely political, Bong Joon-ho’s The Host is his third film, and the second that I’ve seen following 2003’s Memories of Murder. Both are firmly genre films, with a serial killer in Memories of Murder, and a giant tadpole in The Host. A unique mix of pathos and bathos – illustrated in both films by a few comedic drop-kicks – is quickly becoming Bong's trademark, as is strong anti-government satire. Where The Host is different, however, is in its setting in the present; a shift of its critique of the State from the fear of emasculation to the fear of public crisis; and a slightly Spielbergian devotion to the family unit.

Unlike the standard established by Spielberg in Jaws, the monster in The Host – a giant skull-chewing CGI tadpole – is revealed very quickly: a river gets polluted and this big green thing comes jumping out of it. Joon-ho’s intention seems to be to establish the premise and get it out of the way as soon as possible. The ensuing film, aside from a few choice chase scenes and a firy climax, is not even about a giant tadpole so much as it is a farce aimed at the State’s ability to declare a crisis without having a clue about what’s really going on. When the Korean government – and its overpowering overseer, the United States – declare the tadpole to be a SARS-like virus, it’s up to the intrepid, devoted family to navigate the real situation and resolve it on their terms.

In the United States, Little Miss Sunshine was last year’s other film about family dysfunction. Like Lil Miss, The Host provides a host of idiosyncratic characters: there’s the central cute little girl, her aging grandpa who runs a snack stand, her lazy father whose shifts at the stand double as nap-time, an unemployed college graduate uncle, and a professional archer aunt. While The Host is certainly cute at times, unlike Lil' Miss there’s nothing overly precious about it, largely thanks to the greater social and political weight on its shoulders. Unlike the traffic stop cop in Lil' Miss, for instance, the State isn’t there simply as a set-up for a joke; in The Host, it’s there to perform its true function: to repress.

Apparently, The Host is currently slated for a U.S. remake. Unfortunately, U.S. audiences are usually at a loss when it comes to appreciating knowledge of their own society and its history. I can only imagine it will compare to the original much like the recent Zodiac compared to Memories of Murder: the two are very similar in plot, but Zodiac emerges as little more than an entertaining exercise in genre, at a painful loss for political and historical context.

While one doesn’t have to know anything about Korea or its political history to enjoy The Host, it might take some knowledge of the country to appreciate it. When the uncle demonstrates his college degree was in molotov tossing, for example, it's good to know he’s part of a generation of students who helped throw out the country’s dictatorship in the 1980s. It was the repressive context of '80s-era south Korea that gave Memories of Murder a rare quality of voice and intelligence, and its the legacy of that era that gives The Host a respectable amount of political and social depth. Here, the conventions of genre bend to commentary, and not the other way around.

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