The following is part five of a multi-part series chronicling the trials of an aspiring (and not yet there) film snob. For the full story see part one, two, three, and four.

The simple truth of the matter is, you have no business calling yourself a film snob if you shun subtitles. If you can’t bear the text and won’t tolerate a foreign film unless it’s dubbed, you can’t set upon your shoulders the mantle of film snob. You must – you simply must - have at least some experience with foreign, and more specifically non-English, films. It’s one of the unwritten rules.

I knew this. I knew this well, which left me with something I had to tackle in order to complete my training. A task I had to complete in order to take a step closer to the world of film snobdom.

I had to tackle the foreign market.

But god damn where to start? The list of great and essential non-English films is as long and winding as that for great and essential American and/or English films. These days I don’t go looking specifically for foreign films, nor do I particularly bat an eye when one comes my way. A quality film is a quality film. Whether it’s in English, German, French, Dutch, Japanese or Portuguese (all languages I’ve watched in), all that matters is that it’s good. But I had to get my feet wet before I could reach that point, so I did what seemed best and started at the top. I watched Akira Kurosawa’s samurai epic, Seven Samurai. Then I watched it again. And for good measure, I watched it a third time.

In truth, I’m not entirely sure that Seven Samurai was the first subtitled film I ever saw. I may have watched others prior, but I just don’t remember the specifics. What I do remember is that Kurosawa’s masterpiece is the first one that made an impact on me. Not more than four minutes into the film, I forgot that I couldn’t understand a word being said and got lost in the rich tapestry of characters on the screen. The subtitles were secondary; subconscious; just another means of getting the dialogue to me. What instead became important was how Kurosawa masterfully framed nearly every shot as if it were meant to be a still. How he carefully painted each character’s role in the seven without beating you over the head. How he managed to create visceral, powerful action scenes without relying on overblown special effects. And how he managed to make 200 minutes of film slide by in what felt like half the time. The film was nearly flawless in execution and quickly rocketed to among my favorites of all time.

If subtitles were an issue before, something strange and foreign and unusual, it was a matter that ceased to be an issue pretty quickly. Like, before the film was even over. (How well did Kurosawa tell his story? Well enough that a seven-year-old came into the room 30 minutes or so into the movie; something on screen caught his eye; he sat down for a second; and didn’t leave until it was over, despite not being able to follow the subtitles. And he loved it.)

Like seeing the first black and white film that inspires and moves you, watching the first subtitled film that is instantly one of the best films you’ve ever seen opens an entire world to you. Suddenly, the possibilities are endless. You’re no longer bound by some baseless and unspoken idea that you “can’t watch a movie with subtitles.” The notion, just like the notion that black and white is distracting and unwatchable, becomes laughable. Pathetic, even. If it’s out there and it’s good, you need to see it. Like, now. Subtitles or not.

Kurosawa proved to be a well from which I would draw many times, returning again and again to bask in his rich visual style and ability to draw passion from his actors. In Ran, the master’s final (and most sprawling) samurai epic, he uses color like a painter, all broad strokes and bold design, bringing Shakespeare’s King Lear to life in a way never before seen. In Rashomon, the breakthrough film that turned the Western world’s eye to his work, he retells the same story several times, each time from a different perspective, a conceit Yimou Zhang would snatch years later for Hero. And in Ikiru, Kurosawa proved he could impress without swords and armor, telling the story of a Japanese working man destined to die and how he lives out his final days. All of these films (and others) have something in common: All made me forget I was reading the dialogue, enveloping me in their world and broadening my cinematic boundaries.

But “foreign” does not necessarily mean “Japanese,” and I knew there were still some key works out there to be explored.

Ingmar Bergman is one of the most renowned filmmakers in the history of cinema, his work influencing scores to come and adding to the palette from which filmmakers draw. The natural first selection from his catalog for me was The Seventh Seal, with its fantasy elements and its historical setting seemingly tailor made for my tastes. Yet it wasn’t just “knight wanders across the land.” Here was something a little less straightforward. Something more cerebral. Something less grounded in a graspable reality. The Seventh Seal plays out in a very realistic fashion 80 percent of the time, save for the ever present Death … who plays chess. It was a great way to test to see if I could really sink into a film without noticing the subtitles. (That’s not exactly how I looked at it at the time – I just wanted to see how Bergman handled the time of the Black Plague – but in retrospect that was certainly the case.) Wrapping one’s head around a sometimes grim, sometimes humorous story that seems to float in and out of realism isn’t something someone weaned on Star Wars is prone to do naturally … but (and I credit the film for this) it came very easily.

No, the real test, the final exam, came in a more recent film, this one French. Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s The City of Lost Children is a twisted, dreamlike, nightmarish fairy tale with gangs of young thieves, wretched half-machine men, an unsettling mad scientist, and a distinctive, well-realized visual style. And in order to watch it, you must be ready to deal with strange, very much out there dialogue, all delivered through subtitles.

My wife left the room 30 minutes into the film and did not return. I stayed and enjoyed the world Jeunet painted, even if I found some aspects of the story rather scattered. It was maddening and brilliant.

Another French film impressed me far more. Filmed in 1928, The Passion of Joan of Arc captivated me from the word go, so bold in presentation I simply could not look away. That the dialogue – again, read, not heard – was so poetic and often so moving made this all the more captivating. Once again, I got another great film experience under my belt without ever once thinking, “Jeez, I really hate having to read my movies.”

The Passion of Joan of Arc had one other thing going for it, too. It was a type of film every aspiring film snob must at least give a token exploration. It was a silent film, and as I learned in my self-imposed film education, a film need not have sound to be brilliant.

Watch next week for Volume 6 of Diary of an Aspiring Film Snob.