The coronavirus crisis has helped me rediscover the joy of subtitled films. A passport to new worlds

Plus I have to concentrate, as – let’s be honest – we are all likely guilty of turning to our phones at slow points when streaming movies at home

World cinema. The term tend to evoke images inscrutable French surrealist offerings that critics use to fill their books of the top 100 movies of all time – just to prove how clever they are. And of course subtitles. Especially subtitles.

What the Oscar-winning director of Parasite, Bong Joon-ho, described as the “one-inch-tall barrier” is still something some English speakers still find inexplicably hard to climb over.

But here’s something the coronavirus pandemic has taught me: subtitles rock. That’s true even on a Friday night, when those of us who are past the going out phase – because children, and getting old – are usually after something that doesn’t require too many brain cells to enjoy.

Hollywood doesn’t have a monopoly on action-laden films that put the emphasis on entertainment. Anyone who’s watched Hong Kong’s martial arts flicks, or its police procedurals, will know that. Then there are Japan’s samurai movies, its anime, its J-horror (and much more besides).

Some of Hollywood’s biggest pop hits have been none too subtle copies of Asian classics. You want to watch Star Wars in feudal Japan? Check out The Hidden Fortress, which even has human versions of C3PO and R2D2. It’s on the BFI player, along with the films which inspired A Fistful of Dollars and The Magnificent Seven (among others).

The barrier is a positive advantage when it comes to enjoying these movies in the age of Covid-19, with cinemas still hobbled by a paucity of new releases.

Subtitled offerings force the viewer to actually concentrate on and properly watch films while streaming at home. Come on, be honest. How many times have you found yourself tapping away at a phone or a laptop while in the middle of streaming something on Netflix.

The lure of texting, social media, or the silly games we’re all constantly dipping into, is ever present. It’s particularly hard to resist when films hit a slow patch, as they often do thanks to Hollywood’s struggles with getting them in below the two-hour mark.

Subtitles deal with that problem. You can’t mess around with your phone when you have to read the actor’s words at the bottom of the screen to keep up with the plot. They also make it harder to fall asleep on a Friday night, something I prefer to avoid given the need to take medication at set times.

Once you’ve cleared the barrier, the door is open to new worlds. That’s proving handy in 2020, when the UK is in danger of turning into a rogue state courtesy of the self-destructive nationalists we’ve somehow managed to elect, while the US remains gripped by the carbuncle that is Donald Trump.

Sampling films from places whose own nightmares are at one remove from our own offers an escape from that unpleasant reality. Cultural travel also broadens the mind at a time when real travel isn’t an option.

People seem to be coming around to that. Paul Lewis, head of the BFI Live Services, tells me that even before this year’s JAPAN 2020 collection launched on BFI Player’s subscription service, “around 65 per cent of our best-performing titles were non-English language films”.

Anime Ltd, which runs the Screen Anime online festival, and has distributed films like Weathering With You to UK cinemas, also says that around 60 per cent of viewers prefer the subtitled option when given the choice. This despite anime being a medium that lends itself to dubbing, with A-list actors often involved, particularly in Disney’s dubs of Studio Ghibli’s work.

If 2020 sees the inch-high barrier kicked over to the extent that more subtitled films from around the world make find their way into cinemas, for me that’d be once consolation from a thoroughly rotten year.

It’s also true that some English language films would benefit from a wider adoption of subtitles. I found Tenet’s sound so bad it was a challenge to hear what the actors are saying, which is particularly problematic given how hard it is to work out what hell’s actually going on. 

If I give it a second run with the aim of solving that puzzle I'm minded to find a cinema offering closed captioning.