“Forever We Are Young” is set up to maximize the screams of BTS fans who have come to celebrate their favorite K-pop boy band by sprinkling an introduction of each of its seven members throughout its hour-and-a-half run time rather than all at once, shrewdly having a someone bring up their “bias,” their favorite in the group, and explaining in more passionate terms than the person themselves could be expected why they have inspired such adoration. However, the surprising element of Grace Lee and Patty Ahn’s vivacious doc about the groundswell that put the Korean band at the top of the charts is how it is equally likely to excite anyone interested in political activism and public policy, not when BTS was ever overtly involved in such matters, but the grassroots organization behind them appears applicable to any cause worth fighting for.
Reminiscent of Jon M. Chu’s unexpectedly far-reaching profile “Justin Bieber: Never Say Never,” which captured the pop star at a tipping point for the entire music industry when he harnessed the power of social media to build his career, “Forever We Are Young” is sure to please the BTS faithful as it dutifully chronicles their rise from a first show in Los Angeles at the Troubadour where they attracted 200 fans to playing SoFi Stadium across town, just before the band would be forced into hiatus by military service. But the fans themselves prove worthy of deeper introspection as Lee and Ahn look into unexpected pockets around the world that have fueled BTS’ rise. You wouldn’t expect, for example, an industrious fan in Tennessee go so far as to look for specifics into how a musical act could make it onto the Billboard charts, but after some correspondence with the publication, she got fans to call their local radio DJs to play the band’s single in 2017 to get the ball rolling and it isn’t difficult to think the same ideas could be applied to lobbying for an important piece of legislation, navigating a seemingly byzantine local government.
While the film is inevitably a little Western-centric due to its provenance with most of its fans from the States, ranging from reaction guys on YouTube to psychologists introduced with both their professional credentials and their status as BTS aficionados, Lee and Ahn are able to suggest how BTS’ path to becoming a global phenomenon could be instructive to transcending borders in other matters. A section on BTS-Bangtrans, a group of translators that volunteered their time to make sure every word spoken by Jin, Suga, J-Hope, RM, Jimin, V, and Jung Kook in any public appearance or interview could be understood by other fans in every language, is particularly effective at demonstrating how an information pipeline has been built impervious to traditional cultural obstacles such as language. The diversity of the fanbase is also on constant display in terms of the interviews without much additional emphasis, intriguingly expanding that consideration into gender when special attention is paid to how the band’s lack of adherence to traditional masculine standards, in terms of the androgynous nature of Jimin and the vulnerability they showed facing the double-edged sword of success that left them utterly exhausted years of worldwide touring, has only broadened their appeal.
“Forever We Are Young” is all the stronger for not being the first place you’d go to learn more about BTS itself when the brisk primer it offers to the completely uninitiated won’t bore the already obsessed. Instead, it has a broader understanding of fandom where the absence of input from the band’s members allows one to see their admirers to project their own emotions onto them, finding personal meaning in their songs and creating parasocial relationships that have a real impact even if they’re completely imagined. When the whole notion of a BTS Army may be silly to some, Lee and Ahn playfully show how that mentality has to be taken seriously when the band has sparked such strong belief that people look towards what connects them rather than what separates them and can give rise to an actual movement, recognizing their community as a force to be reckoned with if they can figure out a good ground game. Their devotion may come down to one thing, but the film becomes a welcoming celebration of how that can grow from so many different places.
“Forever We Are Young” does not yet have U.S. distribution. It will next screen at CPH:DOX in Copenhagen on March 22nd at 7 pm at Empire Bio, March 26th at 7:30 pm at Absalon, and at Kunsthal Charlottenborg on March 27th at 7 pm and March 29th at 8 pm.