Tag: Korean

Sweet Dream (迷夢 / 미몽, Yang Ju-nam, 1936)

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Sweet Dream still 2The picture one gets of the 1930s is largely one of fear and oppression, especially in Korea under the increasingly brutal Japanese colonial regime, but then it was also a time of intense social flux in which the continuing influence of Western culture and the effects of the great depression placed the traditional way of life into question. 1936’s Sweet Dream (迷夢 / 미몽, Mimong, lit. “delusion”) is, at the time of writing, the oldest extant sound film, and perhaps attempts to kick back against the “corruptions” of the modern age in telling a tragic story of ruined motherhood in which a young woman’s desire for material wealth and a social freedom eventually draws her to her doom.

Our “heroine” is Ae-soon (Moon Ye-bong), a married wife and mother who resents the restrictive nature of her life and attempts to escape it through embracing the “modern” hobby of shopping – with her husband’s money of course, while neglecting her young daughter Jeong-hee (Yoo Seon-ok) whom she perhaps sees as a symbol of the forces which make her a prisoner of her own home. It’s on a shopping trip that she begins her descent into ruin when she’s spotted by the extremely suspicious-looking Chang-geon (Kim In-gye) who swipes her handbag while she’s busy wrapping up purchases only to give it back to her as a kind of meet cute. Nevertheless, Ae-soon is smitten, especially as she believes that Chang-geon is extremely wealthy. Kicked out by her husband for her increasingly unacceptable behaviour, Ae-soon moves in with Chang-geon at his hotel and embarks on the fun loving and fancy free life of her dreams.

As might be expected, the film does not end there and Ae-soon will pay for her “selfish” choice to pursue pleasure in her own life rather than channelling all of her hopes and desires into her family as a woman is expected to do. Truth be told, Ae-soon is not a particularly sympathetic woman, especially as her husband Seon-yong (Lee Keum-ryong) is portrayed as kind, sensitive, and devoted to his daughter who is clearly his primary point of concern in his dealings with his wife. It is therefore difficult to sympathise with her dissatisfaction in her married life which, externally at least, appears comfortable, stable, and close to the ideal that many young women would hope for in a society which continues to favour arranged marriage.

What Ae-soon wants is something which a woman is not allowed to have – freedom. Then again, the film asks us to set aside the natural desire to be free and see Ae-soon’s refusal to conform as a corruption born of excess modernity. Rather than abandon her home to pursue a career or a dream, Ae-soon leaves in pursuit of a man and even then she pursues him not for reasons of love or desire but greed. No sooner has Ae-soon begun to discover that Chang-geon is not all he claimed to be than she’s planning the next conquest in chasing a famous dancer she quite liked the look of at the theatre the previous evening when Chang-geon skipped out to meet a “business associate” leaving her feeling neglected. Unable to chase material success off her own bat, she chases it through men by using her sexuality which places her at the wrong end of just about every social code going even while she herself continues to abide by the tenets of those social codes by remaining in a monogamous relationship with Chang-geon which is in reality not so different from her marriage save for the absence of her daughter, the fact they live in a serviced hotel, and the illusion of having more money and with it more social power.

Ae-soon is no Nora. Her decision to abandon her daughter isn’t born of a sudden awakening to the destructive effects of patriarchy (which the film otherwise belittles in its casting of Ae-soon’s dissatisfaction as a dislike of housework), but of “mistaken” ambition which, paradoxically, she pursues through trading up her sexual partners in order to increase her material wealth and social standing. Ae-soon rejects her maternity and with it her daughter because she wishes to assert her own identity and finds it impossible to maintain both within the society in which she lives, but allowing a woman to reject the ideas of home and family, as Ibsen had done 50 years previously, is too dangerous an idea for the Korea of 1936 and so Ae-soon’s “sweet dream” is in effect a siren song which will lead her down a dark path towards the only redemption possible for a woman who has betrayed the very idea of what society believes a woman to be.

Strangely enough, Sweet Dream was commissioned as a public information piece sponsored by the Choman Traffic Office as the first “traffic film” intended to increase awareness of traffic safety which is why the subject features so prominently throughout culminating the heavily foreshadowed traffic accident that provokes Ae-soon’s reawakening to her latent maternity. Understandably unhappy, the sponsors requested that the next traffic film be “more cheerful and artistic” yet what could be more symbolic (except perhaps a train) of the dangers of modernity than a speeding motorcar? Ae-soon should perhaps have learned to look both ways and cross when the going’s clear, but then again the film seems to insist that the safest place for her to be is inside the cage, that the only path to “happiness” lies in learning to accommodate oneself within its confines as any attempt to deviate from the accepted course will lead to disaster not only for the individual but for society as a whole.

Sweet Dream was screened as part of the Early Korean Cinema: Lost Films from the Japanese Colonial Period season currently running at BFI Southbank. It is also available as part of the Korean Film Archive’s The Past Unearthed: the Second Encounter Collection of Chosun Films in the 1930s box set, as well as online via the Korean Film Archive’s YouTube channel.

Angels on the Street (집 없는 천사, Choi In-kyu, 1941)

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By 1941, Korea had been under Japanese colonial rule for over 30 years and was subject to the same kinds of increasingly oppressive militarism as Japan itself. This of course included tightly controlled censorship of the arts which eventually edged towards the suppression of all Korean language cinema. Nevertheless, even while superficially obeying censorship directives, conflicted directors were able to subtly undercut the desired effect by foregrounding other concerns. Choi In-kyu’s Angels on the Street (집 없는 천사, Jibeopneun cheonsa) is a case in point in its focus on impoverished children and the Christianising forces which eventually “save” them.

The two youngsters at the centre of the tale, teenage older sister Myeong-ja (Kim Sin-jae) and her little brother Yong-gil (Lee Wuk-ha), seem to be orphans and have been taken in by a street family led by Mr. Kwon who forces them to sell flowers and other small items in return for food and shelter. The kids get into trouble when Yong-gil spends some of the money on sweets rather than bringing it all home for which he is severely punished, leading Mr. Kwon and his wife to further press Myeong-ja to become a bar girl so that her brother won’t be hungry anymore. Hearing Myeong-ja give in, Yong-gil runs away hoping to spare his sister such an unpleasant fate. While he falls in with a troop of street kids and is eventually “rescued” by a socially minded minister, Father Bang (Kim Il-hae), Myeong-ja eventually finds an ally in a drunken doctor who often comes into the bar where she sells flowers and offers to take her in as a trainee nurse.

What is clear is that poverty and its associated problems are rife leading to a large number of orphaned, abandoned, and runaway children living on the streets where they remain extremely vulnerable to manipulation by unscrupulous adults like Mr. Kwon. Then again, the kindly intentions of Father Bang are in themselves not unproblematic. As in many of these kinds of films, Father Bang is only interested in rescuing boys whom he later sets up in a kind of dorm/commune where he can “reform” them into upstanding, respectable young men filled with Christian virtues. His end goals allow him to overlook that his approach is also exploitative in that he requires the boys to fix up a barn he has borrowed from his embittered brother-in-law Dr. Ahn (Kang jeong-ae) to make it into a place fit for habitation and thereafter expects them to work, in this case making noodles, to provide economic support for the entire enterprise.

Father Bang seems to have spent at least some time in Germany, as has his brother-in-law, and has a deep seated protestant work ethic that perhaps leads him to feel that “hard work” is the best way of reforming these otherwise feral children whom he sees as lazy and selfish. Nevertheless, he is profiting directly from their labour in much the same way as Kwon even if his end goals are different. Like Dr. Ahn, who seems to have become cynical and embittered after losing his wife in believing that the children are beyond saving and all Bang’s efforts merely futile, Father Bang has committed wholly to protestantism in so far as giving both his children European Christian names while his wife has also taken the name of Maria (Moon Ye-bong). This seems like a fairly controversial step when many Koreans are being encouraged to abandon their birth names in favour of adopting new Japanese ones, let alone that militarists might not be keen on the introduction of religious themes which, sometimes but not exclusively, conflict with their prevailing ideology.

That aside, Bang appears to align himself with the colonial elite rather than native Korean nationalism. When introducing Yong-gil to his new “brothers”, he points out the smallest one as a promising bugler who will one day make a fine volunteer soldier. Later the same boy is pictured blowing his bugle with the Japanese flag flying somewhat heroically above him, while the boys who generally speak Korean with one another freely reel off the Imperial Rescript with relative ease. Choi subtly undercuts the essential propaganda effects of including the pledge in having Bang add a post-script of his own credo which is essentially repackaged Christian virtues but allows the implication to remain that Bang is preparing these young men to become muscle for an imperial power even if inculcating in them a notion of moral goodness (indeed, there is also perhaps the implication that these boys stand in for a “Korea” in need of moral education which can be earned through exerting themselves to become more “Japanese” as in Ahn’s final assurance that they will become “excellent people” “of great service to our country” if they continue to heed Bang’s teachings).

“Goodness” however seems to win out as even the villainous Kwon is made to renounce his life of exploitative criminality and Dr. Ahn’s sense of social justice is reawakened on seeing the effect Bang has had on the previously directionless boys. After completing Angels on the Street, Choi would refuse to make any more pro-Japanese films for the next three years before being convinced to return by committed rightist Han Hyung-mo, filming a trilogy of similarly compromised dramas before doing a complete about face in 1946 by directing the very first post-liberation film Hurrah! For Freedom which, ironically enough, celebrated the activities of the Resistance during the final days of occupation.

Angels on the Street was screened at the Korean Cultural Centre in conjunction with the Early Korean Cinema: Lost Films from the Japanese Colonial Period season currently running at the BFI Southbank. It is also available on DVD as part of the Korean Film Archive’s The Past Unearthed box set (currently OOP). Not available to stream online.

Short scene from the end of the film featuring the Imperialist Rescript (Japanese with Korean subtitles )

The Hand of Fate (運命의 손 / 운명의 손, Han Hyung-mo, 1954)

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Hand of fate poster 2

The kinds of directors who tend to garner retrospectives and reappraisals are perhaps those who lean closer to our own ideological biases. Even in the tightening censorship of the 1960s, Korean directors like Kim Soo-yong and Lee Man-hee were able to subtly undercut the prevailing conservatism of their times. Director Han Hyung-mo, by contrast, was a committed rightist whose films express a distinct intolerance towards liberalism, women’s rights, and the Communist North. Han, like many directors of his generation, studied filmmaking in Japan near the end of the Colonial era and began his career as a cinematographer. His first film, Breaking the Wall released in 1949, is sometimes described as the first Korean anti-communist film. Returning to narrative filmmaking after serving as a documentarian during the Korean War, Han’s Hand of Fate (運命의 손 / 운명의 손, Unmyeong-ui Son, AKA Hand of Destiny) released in 1954 is not perhaps as rabidly anti-communist as might be expected but makes clear that there can be no redemption for an ideologically compromised woman.

Jung-ae (Yu In-ja), a North Korean spy posing as a bar girl in the South, enjoys a life of comparative freedom and luxury but remains committed to her mission. When the police bring a wounded student, Yong-chul (Lee Hyang), to her door one day as a possible suspect in a robbery she’d previously reported to them, she takes pity on the man and tells the police to let him go. She brings him into her apartment, treats his wounds, and feeds him. For some reason she develops an attraction for the melancholy student and so when she spots Yong-chul working on a construction site, Jung-ae takes him out on the town, buys him a new suit and shoes, and eventually begins a relationship with him. Professional habits die hard, however, and so when she rifles through his wallet she is disturbed to find his military intelligence ID card and discover he is really a spy catcher.

Released in 1954, Hand of Fate is a product of the immediate post-war era and is in fact one of the very few surviving films from that year. Nevertheless, it takes its cues very much from international cinema and particularly from American and European noir and spy films in its fatalistic trajectories and uncharacteristically murky worldview. Though Han includes mild anti-communist sentiment in Jung-ae’s eventual disillusionment with the “Communist Party’s hackneyed methods”, the fact that she is a spy for the North is almost incidental for much of the film, the conflict being not that she is a Communist and therefore evil but on a much simpler level that she is required to straddle a difficult ideological divide. Of course, the force that shakes her loyalty is love and in this Han reaffirms her womanliness in simultaneously making emotion both her weakness and the best weapon against the rigidity of Communism. Then again, rightists aren’t so keen on emotion either and so romance must fail.

Both Jung-ae and Yong-chul come to the conclusion that their only mistake was falling in love – not so much with an “enemy” but across an impossible border presented by the 38th Parallel. The futility of the love is laid firmly at the feet of a destructive division imposed by outside powers which painfully separates two parts of one whole. “We love each other, why can’t we be together?” Yong-chul asks, still unaware that Jung-ae is the female spy he’s been looking for. “You’re so close to me now”, Jung-ae adds later, “Why have we been so far apart?”, lamenting that the wall which has kept them at a distance from one another has been largely illusionary and has now been destroyed if only in terms of personal ideology. Rather than the demonisation of the North which would define the anti-communist film, it is the pain of the division which is the real enemy though in contrast to other similarly themed films, Han suggests a clean break might be the best solution rather than holding out hope for reunification.

Meanwhile, the pair work at cross purposes in misattributing the suffering of the other to culturally defined, gender-specific stigmas. Yong-chul assumes Jung-ae’s misery is down to being a “fallen woman”, that as a sex worker she worries she has lost the right to love him (he is keen to assure her that she hasn’t and there’s nothing wrong her life choices – a liberality that stands in contrast to the film’s subtle condemnation of Jung-ae on just this fact as a woman who uses her body as a tool of war), when really she is caught in an impossible position in having fallen in love with a man she will probably have to kill. Before discovering his real occupation, Jung-ae assumed Yong-chul’s misery was down to his poverty. She feels the manual job he takes to support himself through college is beneath him, indulging in a stigma towards blue collar workers which seems odd for a committed communist, and wants to “save” him by restoring him to his rightful social class with her money which she earned in a way she fears he may think immoral.

Despite Han’s fierce conservatism, Hand of Fate features the first on screen kiss in Korean cinema history but where it is undoubtedly romantic, it is also dark and fatalist. In keeping with the title and the noirish atmosphere, the narrative trajectory leads only to tragedy in which the division will be maintained with the South in the ascendent. Jung-ae’s ideological fracturing leaves her with nowhere to turn, while Han’s overly conservative viewpoint will not allow her to find peace or resolution not only because of her Communist roots but because of being an “immoral” and “vulgar” woman as she describes herself early on. Described as “An epoch-marking, ambitious work in the history of Korean Cinema”, Hand of Fate is indeed a bold experiment, opening with a tense, dialogue free sequence of spy craft and danger even if it later overdoes the expressionism with climactic thunderstorms and overly literal bombs (not to mention the constant hand imagery), offering a dark and noirish vision of a divided future in which the pain and suffering caused by the division will continue with the only “hope” that the wall will eventually become a fading scar.

The Hand of Fate is available on English subtitled DVD courtesy of the Korean Film Archive which also includes a special documentary, a video essay by film scholar Kim Jong-won, and an interview with art director Non In-taek, as well as a bilingual booklet featuring a brief commentary on the film and an essay by the Korean Film Archive’s Jo Jun-hyung. Also available to view via the Korean Film Archive’s YouTube Channel.

Brief clip (dialogue free)

Running Turtle (거북이 달린다, Lee Yeon-woo, 2009)

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running turtle posterOne has to wonder why anyone becomes a policeman in Korea, or at least in the world of Korean movies. A policeman’s work is never done, yet they rarely prosper and often succeed in making themselves look ridiculous. The hero of Running Turtle (거북이 달린다, Geobuki Dalinda), played by The Chaser’s Kim Yoon-seok, is a case in point. Unlike Joong-ho, Pil-seung is still on the force (for the time being) but even for a small town beat cop he’s pushing his luck. It’s not surprising then that he gets himself all fired up when he comes into contact with a notorious fugitive from justice.

Pil-seung (Kim Yoon-seok) is among the least well-respected on a small team of police officers nominally upholding justice in a tiny fishing village. Mostly his day job involves harassing local sex workers which he mostly does by means of entrapment whilst hanging out with petty crooks like local loser gangster Yong-bae (Shin Jung-geun). Looked down on at work, things don’t improve much for Pil-seung at home where, despite the admiration he receives from the older of his two daughters, Pil-seung fails to pull his weight leaving his wife to supplement the family income by running a moribund manwha cafe whilst reduced to folding socks for the extra pennies. Then again, home is a place Pil-seung rarely goes, preferring to waste his life drinking and gambling.

On a rare occasion of busting his gut for justice, Pil-seung takes things too far with a pimp who’s a little on the heavier side and ends up almost dying after an “undue force” provoked heart attack. Suspended, Pil-seung has another set of problems in being without money for three months and being too afraid to tell his wife the truth. Stealing her savings and betting them on a local bull-fight Pil-seung’s luck comes up only to go down again when escaped fugitive and martial arts expert Gi-tae (Jung Kyung-ho) pinches the money off Yong-bae in payback for Yong-bae getting fresh with his girl (to be fair, Yong-bae had it coming).

What follows is a locking of horns as filled with macho posturing as the central bullfight between the “Bear” and “Typhoon”, though possibly not as elegant. Gi-tae, softly spoken and melancholy, has returned to an old love and means to leave the scenes of his crimes behind him for good. This whole thing with Pil-seung is a major irritation but he has no especial interest in the portly policeman other than needing to get rid of him long enough to escape with his patient lady-love.

Pil-seung’s motivations are different. Yes, he’s originally pissed off and wants his money back, but Gi-tae also represents an opportunity for him prove himself as everything he’s hitherto failed to be – a success, a strong man, someone worthy of respect. Sadly, Pil-seung will have to work quite hard to convince himself he can be any of these things, let alone convince anyone else. Trapped in his tiny rural town, Pil-seung has long felt impotent and oppressed. He can’t provide for his wife whose lack of respect for him is real enough, though noticing the holes in her underwear as he goes in for a not altogether romantic overture reminds Pil-seung that perhaps he needs to shape up and make something of himself before it’s too late. Generally he eases his feelings of inadequacy and existential despair through alcohol, gambling, and being the big guy around petty gangsters to whom he is useful but again, not a figure to be feared, loved, or respected.

Going up against a top criminal like Gi-tae all alone is a fairly stupid proposition in the first place, one only someone as deliberately pig-headed as Pil-seung would ever attempt. It’s his particular quality of bloodymindedness which becomes Pil-seung’s trademark as he absolutely refuses to give up on clawing his way back into the hearts of his wife and family through an act of officially recognised heroism though it’s true enough that if he’s going beat a man like Gi-tae (who often seems the unfair target of Pil-seung’s petty quest) he’ll need to reawaken some of those little grey cells to do it. The turtle of the title, Pil-seung chases his hare with furious, if plodding, determination only to see victory within his grasp through no fault of his own. It just goes to show, slow and steady wins the race but obsessive hard headedness doesn’t hurt either.

Currently available to stream in the UK (and possibly other territories) via Netflix.

Original trailer (English subtitles)

The Bell Tower (종각 / 鐘閣, Yang Ju-nam, 1958)

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bell tower newspaper 1Yang Ju-nam directed only five films and spent the bulk of his career, which began in the mid-1930s, working as an editor. Making his directorial debut with Sweet Dream in 1936, Yang would not return to the director’s chair for 21 years, releasing Exorcism of Bae-Baeng-Yi in 1957. In 1958, however, he completed two more, The Bell Tower (종각 / 鐘閣, Jonggak, AKA The Bell Tower: Missing Another Dawn) following on from A Mother’s Love. Adapted from the novel by Kang Ro-hyang, The Bell Tower is a small scale affair starring two actors who would become giants of golden age cinema in a melancholy chamber piece charting the tragic history of mid-century Korea through the life stories of a bell maker and a lonely orphan.

The scene opens with a voice over from Yeong-sil (Moon Jeon-suk) who tells us that she has been staying in this temple for sentimental reasons seeing as she loves the sound of its bell and was once told that her father was a bell maker. Her story quickly gives way to that of the bell maker himself, Seok-sung (Heo Jang-gang), now very elderly and in poor health, who recounts his own sad life story in answer to her question about the bell. As a young man, Seok-sung had been in love with a young woman, Ok-bun, and planned to marry. After she died suddenly, he became a bell maker in honour of a promise he made her but met tragedy again when his mentor died, only latterly finding happiness with a widow who bore him a child only to lose them too.

Of course, we are conditioned to assume that Seok-sung must be Yeong-sil’s long lost father – after all, that’s how these stories go, but Yang keeps wrong footing us, not least through the triple casting of Moon Jeong-suk who plays each of the women Seok-sung meets throughout his life including the tragic Ok-bun, dead of appendicitis at only 19 and around 40 years previously. Then again, our perception of events is that of an old man’s memories – perhaps none of these women truly resembled Yeong-sil and Seok-sung has simply read her into his story as he leads her through the course of his life which eventually led him to creating his masterwork in the beautiful bell which now hangs in the temple.

Tellingly, Heo also turns up in Yeong-sil’s eventual flashback as we come to learn how it was she came to be staying in the temple. Her story and Seok-sung’s occupy differing temporal spaces, seemingly cleaved in two by historical circumstance. Seok-sung is man of Joseon whose long life story takes him into the age of occupation but his troubles are all those of an old world and not the new, until, that is the present day. Yeong-sil is a child of the colonial era whose life has been lived in the shadow of imperial violence though it is men of her own nation who seem to have betrayed her. A lonely orphan she made her way to the city but was tricked by a people trafficker who sold her to a mine as a sex slave. Falling in love with an indentured miner (Chan Min-ho), she managed to escape when the trafficker decided to sell her on a Japanese comfort woman station in China, but lives her life as a fugitive in fear of discovery, hiding from those who would misuse her but longing for her lover to return and a new life to start.

For Seok-sung the bell seems to toll mournfully as if in memory of things past, while for Yeong-sil it rings of determination, as if urging her not to give up rebelling against her fate. Yet the bell itself is doomed by the times of its creation. Now finding itself in the middle of a failing war, the bell is just hollow metal and soon to be melted down for military use. Having poured his heart, soul, suffering, and familial legacy into its creation, Seok-sung can hardly bear to see it put to such a sordid purpose. He would rather destroy his bell or take it with him than allow it to be sullied in such a way, but he is old and his gesture of rebellion futile.

Contrary to expectation, Yang ends on an ambivalent note as if anticipating a kind of limbo in which the present struggles to break free of the past but is, in essence, still waiting for something to begin rather than resolving to begin it. Beautifully framed and told almost entirely in flashback, The Bell Tower is a strangely melancholic meditation on post-war malaise and temporal dissonance as a dislocated father and daughter ponder on past and future while pulling at the threads of their miscommunication.

Available on DVD from the Korean Film Archive accompanied by a bilingual booklet featuring essays by film critics Kim Jong-won and Chung Sung-il, plus a documentary on the career of direct Yang Ju-nam. Also available to stream via the Korean Film Archive’s YouTube Channel.

The Midnight Sun (0시(영시) / 0時, Lee Man-hee, 1972)

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midnight sun posterIn Korean cinema, the police are a problematic presence. Often corrupt, violent, self-interested, and incompetent, even when the cops are the good guys it’s generally because they’re badder than the bad. 1972’s The Midnight Sun (0시(영시) / 0時, 0 Shi), however contains a rare example of a virtuous policeman whose fierce commitment to ethical values perhaps runs too far in endangering his role as a husband and father.

Police captain Jang Jung-han (Heo Jang-gang) has been charged with tracking down a couple of delinquents who’ve been going round committing robberies on a motorcycle they stole from the son of a high ranking police officer. Meanwhile, his son, Kyuseok, has made friends with a boy from the country, Dol Lim, who’s looking for his sister. Feeling sorry for the boy who’s all on his own, Jang takes him in until Kyuseok manages to get him a job as a greeter outside a local restaurant. Complications arise when Lee Min-soo (Mun Oh-jang), a felon previously arrested by Jang, is released and signals his intention to get revenge on Jang whom he blames for the death of his son while he was inside.

Jang is in all ways a model police officer who is good at his job and pursues all of his investigations with the utmost professionalism. His work is, however, not always compatible with being a regular family man. An early scene sees him greeted by his young son, up early on a part-time job delivering newspapers on his flashy pushbike, who reminds him he’s not been home in a couple of days. Kyuseok has been given a message from both his aunt and his mum to make sure his dad remembers to come home early – Jang has completely forgotten that it’s his wife’s birthday (and not for the first time).

Though she has long made her peace with being a policeman’s wife, Mrs. Jang (Yoon Jeong-hee) has her share of troubles with a husband whose safety is not assured while he is often absent from home for extended periods of time. Jang’s salary is also comparatively low and the family have a very modest quality of life with little chance of any kind of advancement. For all of these reasons, she counsels her sister, Hye-rung (Kim Chang-sook), not to get into a relationship with Jang’s junior officer, Park (Shin Seong-il). Hye-ryung, unmarried, lives with the Jangs and works as a tour guide on a tourist bus. Rather than advocating marriage, Mrs. Jang thinks her sister should look into becoming an air hostess, hinting at new possibilities outside of the home for the next generation of Korean women. Despite her sister’s advice, however, Hye-ryung purses a tentative, spiky romance with Park even if somewhat irritated that he only takes her out for noodles rather than something fancier. A policeman’s salary only stretches so far, after all.

Jang’s loyalties are strained when his cases begin to overlap. Lee Min-soo has returned from his prison sentence to find his wife has left him for another man and his son has died. Lee only turned to crime because his son was ill and he needed money for medical treatment, but Jang wouldn’t listen to his mitigating circumstances and arrested him anyway. While he was inside his boy died and Lee holds Jang responsible. In revenge, he kidnaps Kyuseok but rather than drop everything to look for his son, Jang continues to work on the delinquent case and reminds his colleagues to split their workloads. He regards his son’s predicament as “personal” and refuses to dedicate extra resources or take men and time away from other matters for his own benefit. Jang’s coolness further strains his relationship with his wife who can’t understand why he isn’t trying harder to find their son. Yet in Jang’s officious mind, to do so would be wrong and a betrayal of his duty as a police officer.

Lee eventually decides to give up on his revenge and let Kyuseok go after bonding with the boy and being swayed by his cheerful innocence. Kyuseok forgives his kidnapper and wants his dad to do the same. Jang too is a compassionate soul – he is eventually able to help Dol Lim find his sister though, unfortunately, also has to arrest her. Like Lee, Dol’s sister is also forced into a reconsideration of her life of crime after seeing her brother. Arrested by Jang, she resolves to atone, swaps her bright red mini skirt for modest attire, and ties her hair up in a more innocent style. She even manages to convert her boyfriend to the same cause and the pair decide to get married once they’ve paid their debts to society. Wanting to help Dol, Jang does his best to get the pair as a light a sentence as possible while ensuring justice is served both on a legal and on a human level.

Mixing the crime genre with family drama, Lee Man-hee continues his tendency towards experimentation but with a more hopeful outlook, allowing for a happier ending in which family bonds are restored and crimes forgiven rather than punished. Rather than the frustration and inertia which often traps Lee’s conflicted heroes, Jang and his family are able to free themselves from their various prisons through nothing more than compassion and goodness. Sponsored by the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency, Midnight Sun is an oddly cheerful piece of pro-police propaganda in which the stigmatised face of authoritarian rule is given a humanising makeover even while remaining steadfast and selfless in the pursuit of justice.

Available to stream online via the Korean Film Archive’s YouTube Channel.

Psychokinesis (염력, Yeon Sang-ho, 2018)

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Psychokenesis posterThe animated world of Yeon Sang-ho is dark and cynical, finding only fear and anger in the hopeless vision of contemporary Korea that his films continue to paint. His first live action feature, Train to Busan, began to see a little light as its jaded protagonist finally rediscovered his humanity while the innocent were eventually allowed to find a degree at least of rescue. Psychokinesis (염력, Yeomlyeok), in once sense, continues the theme in centring itself on another of Korean cinema’s bad dads, one so morally corrupted that he rejects all responsibility to others and lives only for the self-indulgent pleasure of the petty scam. Given superpowers, his thoughts turn to finance but eventually lead to an opportunity to right himself in societal eyes by reconnecting with his estranged daughter and accepting his responsibility as a family man.

Seok-heon (Ryoo Seung-Ryong) left his family when his daughter was only ten years old. These days he makes a living as a (lazy) security guard while supplementing his income by pilfering coffee and toilet paper from the company. After drinking spring water from a mountain shrine which, unbeknownst to him, has recently been struck by a mysterious meteoroid, Seok-heon realises he has developed the power of psychokinesis but is only really interested in how it might benefit him financially. That said, Seok-heon’s thoughts do not turn to crime, but to fame – he thinks it might make a good magic act and has heard there can be a lot of money to be made on the circuit.

Shortly after his magical revelation, Seok-heon gets a call from Ru-mi (Shim Eun-kyung) – his now grown up daughter who had been running her own very successful fried chicken restaurant until the shop was compulsory purchased to make way for a shopping mall intended to cater for Chinese tourists. Ru-mi and some of the other shopkeepers have been engaged in a resistance movement, refusing to let their property be taken until they have received fair compensation. During an altercation with the thugs sent in to evict them by force, Ru-mi’s mother was killed – which why is she called, to invite her long lost father to the funeral. Though Seok-heon is not exactly keen to get involved, he eventually realises that his new found abilities might prove useful and help him restore himself in his daughter’s judgemental eyes.

As in Train to Busan, Seok-heon is a cynical and jaded father but this time he’s one very much down on his luck, one of life’s losers whose decision to accept defeat has been lifelong and total. Faced with Ru-mi’s cohort of resistance members, he publicly refuses to help, pointing out that their battle is doomed to failure and it would be better to just give up now. Ru-mi, apparently still capable of additional disappointment, reminds her father that this is what he does – when things look grim he runs away. Ru-mi refuses to be like her dad, and therefore refuses to give up without a fight.

Yeon once again injects some background social criticism into an otherwise friendly tale of dead beat dads and the power of community. Echoing the Yongsan tragedy, Yeon makes the destruction of a neighbourhood to build a shopping mall for tourists his battleground as Ru-mi and her fellow resistance members hole up behind a barricade throwing Molotov cocktails at the police and trying to avoid a fight with the thugs who work for the corrupt construction company behind the whole affair. To make matters worse, Yeon takes us past the site of so much drama at the film’s conclusion, showing us an empty lot, a scar on the landscape memorialising the senselessness of corporate greed which eventually eats itself and stifles any kind of progress economic or social. Ru-mi and the others are powerless to resist their eviction but insist on the compensation they ought to be entitled to which would allow them to begin their businesses again elsewhere so they can continue to earn a living.

Seok-heon is the archetypal apathetic man who thinks it’s pointless to resist and is content to live in as corrupt a way as his society permits. He refuses his responsibility to others, walking past the cleaner being threatened for taking the “free” coffees from the lobby he convinced her were OK to take whilst lamenting her “stupidity” for inexpert pilfering. Battered and defeated, Seok-heon rejoices in pettiness, getting his kicks by shirking at work and getting one over on the bosses by stealing. His first thought on getting powers isn’t their capacity for good, but nor is it a lust for power or revenge, he merely wants to show off a little and earn big bucks – his crime is petulant self-indulgence, not active villainy. Reuniting with his daughter and witnessing her fighting for something she believes in, Seok-heon begins to rediscover his long buried heroism finally becoming a father worthy of his daughter’s respect.

It’s not all plain sailing however as the corporate stooges are not just thuggish but clever and devious. Figuring out that the twin issues to evicting the protestors are the unsolved murder of Ru-mi’s mother and Seok-heon’s superpowers, they set about undermining both – setting up a patsy for the crime and attempting to blackmail Seok-heon by leaking footage of his powers to the news in the hope that the country turns against him. Unable to explain his unusual abilities, TV news pundits do what they always do – blame North Korea, and insist he must be some kind of spy and/or infiltrator.

Working with a much lower budget, Psychokinesis is a lighter affair than might be expected, essentially mixing a hapless dad narrative with a superhero origin story but with a more cheerful tone than one usually associates with Yeon. As expected, you can’t fight city hall and Seok-heon’s assertion that the battle was always a losing one may prove to be correct but what he discovers is that is not necessarily a reason to just give up and walk away. Even if one plan fails, there may be other ways to “succeed” so long as there are enough people willing to stand up for what’s right whilst holding fast to each other, committed to building something better rather than just to tearing something down.

Psychokinesis is currently streaming worldwide via Netflix.

Original trailer (Korean subtitles only)

The Bros (부라더, Chang You-jeong, 2017)

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The Bros posterTime passes differently in the country. Two brothers from rural Andong thought they’d escaped the relative restrictions of an oddly feudal upbringing, but something keeps pulling them back. Ghosts literal and figural force them to return home, confront each other and their remaining family, and then attempt to come to some kind of acceptance of their places in the grand scheme of things in light of their newly acquired knowledge. The Bros (부라더, Buladeo) stars unlikely siblings Ma Dong-seok and Lee Dong-hwi and is adapted from the stage musical “The Brothers Were Brave” which was also directed by Chang You-jeong. Set in rural Andong, the film is an affectionate, if not entirely sympathetic, portrayal of the fiercely traditional way of life in tiny country towns in which it really still matters who accedes to be the head of a family and women are expected to know their place.

“Estranged” brothers Seok-bong (Ma Dong-seok) and Joo-bong (Lee Dong-hwi) have each skipped out on their familial responsibilities for lives of modern “freedom” in Seoul. Seok-bong is a “treasure hunter” who gives eccentric lessons on archeological ethics to bored students while overspending on the latest tools to aid him in his (permanently unsuccessful) quests, while Joo-bong is an ambitious salaryman whose career runs into a problem after he is accused of “embezzlement” for ruling out the cheapest route for a new road because (unbeknownst to his bosses) it would cut right past his childhood home. Just as Seok-bong realises he’ll have to pay back the outrageous sum of money he “speculated” on new equipment when a civil war breaks out in his prospective dig site, and Jong-boo frets over his workplace blunder, both sons get an unexpected text informing them that their “estranged” father has died and they’re “welcome” to attend the funeral, if they should wish. As both brothers are in need of a getaway plan (and also an opportunity to ask for some financial assistance), they find themselves finally going “home” only to unexpectedly find each other on the road, start bickering in the car, and then accidentally run over a random young woman (Lee Honey) apparently out walking in this otherwise barren and deserted stretch of land.

On their arrival, the brothers are not exactly embraced by their loving family. Nobody really expected to see them and, as it turns out, their grandfather didn’t even realise they’d been invited. The boys’ rural country home is one of fierce traditionality, seemingly cut out of time and existing in the feudal past where people refer to each other via archaic titles and it really seems to matter who is declared “first son” of the family. Both Seok-bong and Joo-bong left the village because they had no interest in all this feudal nonsense and resented the old fashioned authoritarianism which defined their relationships with the apparently tyrannical patriarch they have both come home to bury, if not perhaps to mourn. Seok-bong, in particular, remains extremely resentful towards his late father for the way he treated their mother who, he assumes, must have been very unhappy all her married life.

Rural Andong, it turns out is not a great place for women. The brothers do have a “friend” in the family complex in the form of Mi-bong (Jo Woo-jin) – a policeman recently married to a very nice but often frustrated young lady who has taken to smoking (still considered scandalous in these parts) in secret in order to relieve the stress of being a married woman suddenly expected to undertake all these arcane social responsibilities, which include being “nice” to her overbearing mother-in-law who seems to delight in scolding her for doing everything wrong. In fact Mi-bong’s wife wants to move to Vietnam to get as far away from the family as possible, but  finds it difficult to abandon the feudal way of thinking in wondering what it would be like to be the wife of a “first son”. Women here are supposed to know their place – stay silent, serve the men. When Joo-bong’s “lady friend” from the city shows up unexpectedly, everyone reacts to her as a “potential daughter-in-law” and sets about giving her the third degree which includes a pop quiz on the three duties of an Andong woman which include obeying a father, then a husband, and then presumably a son. In a running joke, no one can even remember the given name of the boys’ mother because she was always just referred to as “first daughter-in-law”.

All in all, it’s no surprise that Seok-bong and Joo-bong wanted to leave but then again, it turns out there was a lot more going on with the family than they were ever privy to know and they have perhaps judged their father unfairly without knowing all the facts. This being a comedy, the central point is the repair of a broken family – firstly in the brothers repairing their bond as they face the crumbling of their individual quests and are forced to work together, unwittingly uncovering the truth about their family history. Meanwhile, they also have to cope with the strange woman they apparently ran over who seems to have lost her memory but has valuable information to impart to each of them. Haunted by the ghosts of home, neither of the boys finds what they originally came for but gets something (arguably) better in rediscovering their roots and experiencing the upsides of familial connection.

Filled with the strangeness of the village tradition with its mourning suits, wandering monks, shamanic rituals, and uncles who speak only in incomprehensible four character idioms The Bros is an absurd affair but one with its heart in the right place. Chang enlivens the otherwise unremarkable comedic narrative with interesting visual compositions as the mysterious woman seems to drag the brothers away into a pretty fairytale land filled with oversaturated picture book images in which the moon is just a little bit bigger than you’d expect and oddly ‘70s fashions of purple and yellow lend a cheerful and nostalgic air. A comedic tale of family, brotherhood, and the unexpected endurance of feudal tradition, The Bros is a warm and fuzzy tribute to rediscovering one’s roots but also one with unexpected bite in its subtle undercutting of the pervasive misogyny which underpins it.

The Bros is currently available to stream in the UK (and possibly elsewhere) via Netflix.

Original trailer (Korean subtitles only)

26 Years (26년, Cho Geun-hyun, 2012)

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26 Years posterA society says a lot about itself in the way it treats its villains. Chun Doo-hwan was a brutal dictator who came to power as a result of a violent counter coup which encompassed the now notorious murder of ordinary citizens by agents of the state in Gwangju in May 1980. Chun’s reign eventually came to an end with the successful conclusion of the democratisation movement which gave birth to the modern democratic state of South Korea that is, at present, in the aftermath of dealing with another unpopular leader deposed through peaceful, democratic means. Though originally sentenced to death Chun’s punishment was later commuted. He has never paid the massive fine that was imposed upon him as symbolic recompense for his acts of terror and vast web of corruption. .

The five men and women at the centre of 26 Years (26년, Nyeon) have not forgotten the face of Chun Doo-hwan (Jang Gwang), identified only as “that man”, and are among the many frustrated by his refusal to take responsibility for his actions. A former soldier remorseful for his role in the events (Lee Geung-young) recruits an olympic sharpshooter (Han Hye-jin) whose mother was killed by a stray bullet, a gangland thug (Jin Goo) whose father was tortured and murdered by security forces driving his mother into madness, and a policeman (Im Seulong) who lost his sister running away from a demonstration, as well as his son (Bae Soo-bin), to assist in a plan to force the former general to apologise for his crimes and, if he refuses, enact their own justice.

Spoilers aside, Chun Doo-hwan is still very much alive and the events of 26 Years are inspired by an entirely fictionalised webmanga though it is true that Chun lives in an L-shaped compound protected by perimeter walls and a small army of police and security forces presumably at great cost to the Korean tax payer. He has never apologised for his actions regarding the Gwangju massacre and continues to blame the “rioters” in insisting that the soldiers had no choice but to fire back in self defence. That such a politically sensitive film could be made about a figure who is still alive, let alone that it would become a major box office success and crowd funding phenomenon is a small miracle in itself but speaks to the deep rift this troubled period of recent history provokes in the minds of the contemporary society.

First time director Cho opens with the events of 1980 but in highly stylised animation rather than live action. There is something in the sketchy quality of the artwork that perfectly evokes the ambivalence of the entire enterprise, of not quite wanting to look at events which are so hard to see. See we do as bystanders are cruelly struck by stray bullets, soldiers panic and shoot, and the left behind search desperately for their missing loved ones but find only tragedy and pain. Reverting to live action for 1983 onwards, Cho then takes us through the next 20 years noting landmarks as he goes – the ever present terror of Chun on TV screens everywhere, his eventual fall and the restoration of democracy, Chun’s pardoning and eventual yet accidental house imprisonment for his own security.

The wounds remain unhealed, festering without resolution. While protestors make their voices heard, a room full of supporters fall to their knees before a resurgent Chun standing proud before them. Chun remains unrepentant, cruelly so in Cho’s dramatisation, shaking off the body of a fallen bodyguard like a slobbering dog, caring nothing for his people and thinking only of his own survival.

Cho keeps the tension high as the small band of traumatised youngsters attempts to confront their nation’s difficult history head on, finding both resistance and camaraderie yet fighting internal conflict all the way. Avoiding easy answers, 26 Years is among the most direct attempts Korean cinema has made to reckon with the traumatic recent past, mixing high octane action with a melancholy consideration of the effects of a national trauma but it also finds itself in a moment of indecision, refusing the ending narrative demands in favour of an intake of breath followed by a weary exhale of weighty resignation.

Currently available to stream via Netflix.

Original trailer (English subtitles)

Seven People in the Cellar (지하실의 7인 / 地下室의 七人, Lee Seong-gu, 1969)

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Seven People in the Cellar poster

The “literary film” was beginning to fall out of favour by 1969. The collapse of the quota system introduced under the 1962 Motion Picture Law, the exclusion of literary film from the “Domestic Films of Excellence” programme (which encouraged producers to produce high quality Korean films to qualify for distributing more lucrative foreign ones), and the rise of television all conspired to produce a shift towards the populist. Lee Seong-gu had made his name with a series of literary adaptations which enabled him to experiment with form in the comparatively more elevated “arthouse” arena but with horizons shrinking even he found himself with nowhere left turn. Seven People in the Cellar (지하실의 7인 / 地下室의 七人 *, Jihasil-ui Chil-in) is Lee’s last “literary film” and is adapted from a stage play by Yun Jo-byeong who was apparently unhappy with Lee’s adaptation in its abandonment of his carefully constructed ideological balance in favour of adhering to the typical rhetoric of the “anti-communist” film.

Set towards the end of the Korean War, Seven in People in the Cellar presents itself as a conflict between the godless and hypocritical forces of communism and the good and righteous Catholic Church. Accordingly, our hero is a priest, Father Ahn (Heo Jang-gang), who has just returned to his church after being forced to flee by the encroaching “puppet army”. Accompanied by a nun, Lucia (Yun So-ra), and a new curate, Brother Jeong (Lee Soon-jae), Father Ahn is glad to be reunited with his flock but there are dark spectres even here – Maria (Yoon Jeong-hee), a young woman Ahn was forced to leave behind when he fled, runs away from the priest on catching sight of him, apparently out of shame. Meanwhile, while Ahn was away, three rogue Communists began squatting in his cellar waiting for the “reinforcements” which are supposedly going to retake the town. Taking Sister Lucia hostage, the Communists force Ahn to feed them while keeping their existence a secret. To Jeong’s consternation, Ahn agrees but out of Christian virtues rather than fear – he feels the Communists too are lost children of God and have been sent to him so that he may guide them back towards the light.

Not a natural fit for the world of the anti-communist film, Lee does his best to undermine the prevalent ideology even if he must in the end come down hard with Ahn’s essential moral goodness. Thus, Communists aside, the conflict becomes one of age and youth, male and female, as much as between “right” and “wrong” or “North” and “South”. Jeong, youthful and hotheaded, lacks Ahn’s Christian compassion – he bristles when Ahn immediately sets about feeding the starving villagers with their own rations, and disagrees with his decision to harbour the Communists even while knowing that Lucia’s life is at stake if they refuse. Twice he tries to kill the communist “enemy”, threatened by their ideological opposition to his own cause – once when he enters the cellar and misinterprets an altercation between Lucia and sympathetic soldier Park (Park Geun-hyeong), and secondly when the troop’s female commander, Ok (Kim Hye-jeong), attempts to seduce him.

Sexuality becomes spiritual battleground with Christian chastity winning out over Communist free love. Ok, as unsympathetic a communist as it’s possible to be, is sexually liberated and provocative. She suggestively loosens her shirt and fondles her breast in front of a confused junior officer, later taking him into the forest and more or less ordering him to make love to her (which he, eventually, does). However, it is to her simply a matter of a need satisfied. Ok describes the moment she has just shared with her comrade as no different than sharing a meal. She was “hungry”, she ate. When she’s hungry again she will eat again but there’s no more to it than that and there is no emotional or spiritual component in her act of “lovemaking”, only the elimination of a nagging hunger. 

Ok’s transgressive and “amoral” sexuality is contrasted with that of the abused Maria who was tortured and later raped by the Communists’ commanding officer. Forced to betray a nun, she was robbed not only of her innocence but also of her faith. Maria is the “pure woman” corrupted by Communist cruelty. Her chastity was removed from her by force, and she sees no other option than to continue to ruin herself in atonement for her “sin”. Unable to live with the consequences of her actions, she sees no way out other than madness or martyrdom.

The fact that Maria’s torturer is another woman, and such an atypical woman at that, is another facet of the Communist’s animalistic inhumanity. As in The General’s Mustache, the Communists are seen to use innocent children as bargaining chips when ordinary torture fails, even this time killing one to prevent him telling the village about their hiding place. Yet the height of their cruelty is perhaps in their indifference to each other – Park, touched by Sister Lucia’s refusal to leave when he tried to let her go fearing that he would face reprisals, announces his intention to defect to the South and is shot dead by his commander in cold and brutal fashion. Park’s defection is a minor “win” for Ahn who sought restore the Communists’ sense of humanity and bring their souls to God, but it’s also born of misogynistic pique in his intense resentment of the “bossy” Ok who turns out to be an undercover officer from HQ on a special mission to spy against him.

With the one redeemed Communist dead, all that remains is for the others is to slowly destroy themselves. Ahn, cool and composed in absolute faith, waits patiently certain that the friendly South Korean soldiers will shortly liberate them. A hero priest, Ahn is the saintly opposite of the Communists’ cruelty in his compassionate determination to save them even at the risk of his own life. Lee keeps the tension high, creating siege drama that feels real and human in contrast with the often didactic and heavily stylised narrative of the “anti-communist” film, subtly muddying the essential messages but allowing Ahn’s compassion (rather than his “faith”) to shine through as the best weapon against oppressive inhumanity.

Seven People in the Cellar is the fourth and final film included in the Korean Film Archive’s Lee Seong-gu box set. Not currently available to stream online.

* In rendering the Hanja title, the landscape poster uses the arabic numeral 7 while the portrait version uses the Chinese character 七.