When the Oscars nominations were released earlier this week, much of the discussion focused on the absence of “Barbie” director Greta Gerwig and “Barbie” actor Margot Robbie.
Understandably, much less coverage went to the failure of Taiwan’s Best International Feature Film nomination, “Marry My Dead Body” (關於我和鬼變成家人的那件事), to make the final list. And yet, it continued a trend that may interest those focused on Taiwan’s ability to project soft power around the world.
Put broadly, Western critical recognition for Taiwanese cinema has dropped off since the early 2000s. The 1980s Taiwan New Wave directors such as Edward Yang (楊德昌) and Hou Hsiao-hsien (侯孝賢) remain favorites of critics, with Yang’s “Yi Yi” (一一) for example appearing in the top ten of the BBC’s list of best films of the 21st Century. In the 1990s, Ang Lee’s (李安) films twice made the Best International Film Oscar nomination list, before winning in 2000 with “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” (臥虎藏龍). But since then, no Taiwanese film has made the final list of nominations, albeit two have made the longer shortlist in the form of “Seediq Bale” (賽德克·巴萊) in 2011 and “A Sun” (陽光普照) in 2020-21.
What’s interesting about that broad trend is that it’s something of a reversal of the Taiwan film industry’s fortunes locally. Having suffered setbacks after Taiwan entered the World Trade Organization in 2002, when competition with Hollywood films added to piracy issues to squeeze out local films, a popular revival has occurred since then, embodied and initially driven by 2008’s Cape No. 7 (海角七號). Cape No.7 became the highest grossing Taiwanese film in history and the majority of the top 20 on that list were made after that point. This includes some notable box office successes in the likes of Hong Kong and Singapore.
So where might this apparently inverse relationship come from, between local (or sometimes regional) popularity and critical recognition in the West?
One explanation might be that the types of films which get that critical recognition tend to be more opaque and there is a clear structural reason why filmmaking might have gone in the other direction in Taiwan.
“Coming out of martial law and the political upheavals of the 90s, a lot of the reason for the New Wave in itself is because of political repression. Filmmakers had to use different ways of expressing their ideas, otherwise they’d get censored. So with censorship done away with in a more open, democratic, multicultural state, I think we’ve seen films that are more willing to try to be more relatable,” Taiwanese film critic CJ Sheu (許景順) explained to Domino Theory via video call.
Edward Yang and Hou Hsiao-hsien made various public statements about their films’ lack of outright popularity in Taiwan — and Yang was open about deliberately targeting international audiences. The films that have followed them in Taiwan have talked more directly about local political issues, and this may have simultaneously allowed them to become more popular and less well liked by external critics. This issue might reasonably be exacerbated by the fact outside critics have less direct connection with these local issues.
However, while this is necessary as part of an explanation it isn’t sufficient.
The Oscars, for instance, does hand out awards to reasonably popular, more easily digestible films too. Those high-profile gongs don’t tend to go out to two-hour “slow cinema” films about the ills of capitalism. And yet still Taiwan’s middle-brow films aren’t hitting the top Western award shows, either, in the way that South Korea has notably managed with the films of Bong Joon-ho and Park Chan-wook.
So, what else is happening?
For Sheu, three factors come to mind when the comparison with South Korea is raised.
The first is that a “sufficient domestic market” in Taiwan means that chasing international money may not be prioritized. This is very much supported by the fact that only nine films were actually submitted to Taiwan’s Ministry of Culture for Academy Award for Best International Feature Film consideration.
Then there is influence of China and, relatedly, the government’s focus being elsewhere.
“They’re waging total warfare on us. That includes cultural warfare,” Sheu said. “But another part is simply lack of resources… the Korean government really put their back into it, whereas our government, I guess it’s more focused on political diplomacy instead of cultural diplomacy,” which “makes sense because even if people love Taiwanese cultural products that doesn’t always transfer to hard power.”
Of course, this shouldn’t be understood as saying Taiwan’s government isn’t trying. When we interviewed Tseng Ying-ting (曾英庭), director of “The Abandoned” (查無此心), which recently hit Taiwan’s top ten most watched films on Netflix, he emphasized that the government had indeed been supportive.
“I do think our government is quite helpful to us creators. We received sponsorship from the Ministry of Culture, and we have also received aid from the local government,” he said. “When I made ‘The Last Verse’ (最後的詩句), the format was set for TV broadcasting, and it was selected for Busan International Film Festival’s New Currents Award, so we received a grant from the government called ‘next film subsidy’ (下一部補助計畫) as an encouragement so we can go to bigger film festivals and competitions by making better films.”
The problem might be that, as journalist Brian Hioe has pointed out, success on these terms is not only about money. Taiwan’s international promotion efforts have often been “scattershot” compared to the more impressive efforts of the South Korean government.
For his part, Sheu suggests that promotion of Taiwan as a hub for international films coming in, through promotion of prestigious film festivals such as the Taipei Golden Horse Film Festival, may be more of a focus.
Does this mean that the level of filmmaking skill going into these films has nothing to do with their lack of Oscars and Oscar-adjacent successes?
Obviously this is more subjective territory. But there is a speculative, objective trend that might be pointed out here, too. This year’s Taiwanese Oscar nominee, “Marry My Dead Body,” at one point hit Netflix’s weekly global top ten list. But its storyline about a gay marriage to the ghost of an environmental campaigner did feel like it reached for relevance in a way that wasn’t entirely subtle. One user on Taiwan’s PTT social media platform noted, “There are too many themes in the film, and they can only be superficially brought up. It’s more like a news topic” (片子裡面放太多主題，都只能帶到，更像是一個新聞專題).
This “tick list” feel to marketing-friendly issues appearing in film plots — and being brought up very literally in dialogue — is not exclusive to “Marry My Dead Body.” And it’s reminiscent of a quote from our interview with Director Jun-Jieh Wang (王俊傑) of the Taipei Fine Arts Museum (TFAM) last year. Comparing how art is made in Taiwan now to how it was made during the heyday of Taiwan’s New Wave Cinema in the 1980s, he said it was “more digitalized, and everything is professionalized and systematized.”
There is a feeling that some of these films know a bit too much about what topics are widely discussed right now, where auter-led films that tend to win wider critical acclaim tend to wander off on their own a bit more. But, as discussed above, that might well not be the aim.
Photo: Mario Anzuoni/Reuters
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