Som

Look at it this way. We have the chance to see virtually every American film that’s released, and many of the English language films in general. But with the crisis in U.S. distribution, the only foreign-language films are those someone paid hard cash for, and risked opening here. “You always like those foreign films,” I’m told, often by someone making it sound like a failing. Not always, but often. They tend to involve characters of intelligence and complexity. If they’re about people of subnormal intelligence, they’re about that, or acknowledge it. In most of the world, people want to hurry into adulthood, not clinging to adolescence.

Have you noticed how many American mainstream films are about stupid people who are presented as normal? One opened recently: “Did You Hear About the Morgans?” No one in that film has an interesting thought as they stumble from one plot point to the next. I prefer characters who are articulate. Foreign films tend to be about people like that. Many American films are, too; in release now, for example, “Up in the Air,” “A Single Man,” “Crazy Heart,” “Me and Orson Welles,” “Mammoth,” “Invictus.”

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