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ONE YEAR after the South Korean satire Parasite took Hollywood by storm, another movie in Korean, Threatening, is causing a sensation during awards season. However, the two movies couldn’t be more different.
Parasite, which made history in 2020 by becoming the first film in a foreign language to win an Oscar for best picture, is a dark satire on social class and contemporary society in South Korea.
Threatening, now in US theaters and due to hit South Korea in March, is a sweet, quintessentially American story about an immigrant family in the 1980s trying to get better by starting a farm in Arkansas. Unlike Parasite, was conceived, produced and filmed in the United States.
“They speak Korean and it is about a family and there is some Korean culture involved, but I think this movie speaks a lot about what America is. It contains many people who do many different things, many different lifestyles, and in that way it is quite different from ParasiteDirector Lee Isaac Chung said.
An intensely personal story, the film is based in part on Mr. Chung’s own life as a child growing up in Arkansas, but there is no satire and little mention of racism. Instead, the film, which has already won multiple award nominations, including Golden Globes, has been widely accepted for its universal humanity. Oscar nominations have yet to be announced.
Korean-American actor Steven Yeun, who plays the father, said he was terrified about taking on the role.
“It was scary to approach my father’s generation on a level that is not just cartoon, but actually just tries to delve into their humanity. It opened my eyes to the ways I could misunderstand my own father and that generation as well, ”Yeun said.
Mr. Yeun, best known for his television role in The Walking DeadHe is joined by Korean actors Yeri Han as his stressed-out wife, and Yuh-Jung Youn as his idiosyncratic mother-in-law, who live together in a suffocating trailer in a remote and unforgiving field.
Chung said the warm response to the film so far has been more than he bargained for. “I am hopeful and happy that it seems that the public is willing to read subtitles and watch movies that do not reflect their own experiences,” he said. “It seems that they identify with what they see and seek more this shared humanity.” – Reuters
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