In writing the original novel which inspired Heavenly Homecoming to Stars, Choi In-ho stated that he wanted to tell the story of “a woman whom a city killed”. The novel itself was first serialised in a newspaper where it quickly became a must read and popular discussion point among readers of all ages. It’s perhaps less surprising then that this completely radical film adaptation by first time director Lee Jang-ho proved to be the big cinema hit of 1974. A new “youth culture” movement was beginning inspired by social and political developments from overseas and there was a growing appetite for films and novels which were equally revolutionary. Heavenly Homecoming to Stars managed to provide this but also, crucially, was able to appeal to older age ranges too thanks to its re-imagining of classical melodrama.
In essence, Heavenly Homecoming to Stars is a traditional “fallen woman” narrative. Told in non-linear fashion, the film follows the sorry tale of Gyeong-a and her relationships with four different men each of whom contributes to her downfall. At the earliest point we see her she’s a cheerful young woman like any other working in an office in the city. She finds first love with her co-worker and the pair plan to marry but before they do Yeon-seok pressures her into sex. It’s at this point that everything goes wrong for her as in order to acquiesce to his desires, she begins drinking.
Later she winds up marrying a middle-aged widower with a young daughter but Man-jun is not the man she thought he was and is still nursing a wound from having driven his first wife to suicide through his jealous and increasingly erratic behaviour. After finding out about Gyeong-a’s past, he too leaves her.
Man three is Dong-heok, a rough and violent pimp who turns her into a bar hostess which only increases her reliance on alcohol. Before we meet the quasi-hero of our story, melancholy artist Mun-ho, Gyeong-a is already an alcoholic and well on the way to her own ruin.
Truthfully, Mun-ho may have been able to save Gyeong-a, but he doesn’t. We already know that things don’t end well for her – the film begins with its epilogue as Mun-ho carries a little white box full of ashes across a frozen forest. Hers is a sorry tale though one that’s been told hundreds of times over the course of history and, sadly, will likely continue to be told for centuries to come. Choi In-ho says the city killed her, but it’s only partly “the city” – what it really is is a cruel and patriarchal society which permits men to use and discard women relegating them to a kind of underclass from which it is impossible to escape. Gyeong-a is a woman among hundreds who came to the city in search of a better life and contributed to Korea’s modernisation but found herself sacrificed its name.
Having said that the tone is one of sadness much more than anger. The strict censorship practices of the time placed severe limitations on what could be expressed in a film such as this though, sadly, the ballad of Gyeong-a is one audiences of all ages could identify with. Though it condemns the behaviour of the men in Gyeong-a’s life it does not so much call for change as for lament. Gyeong-a was young, naive and in need of protection which she was denied at every turn – first from the anonymous and unfeeling city and then by its self centred men who took what they wanted from her and callously discarded her afterwards when she no longer fulfilled their standards of a “pure woman”.
Yet, Gyeong-a remains a “pure woman” at heart. Innocent and true, she dies alone in the snow, a woman still young yet ruined by drink, dreaming of her first lover who was also the cause of all of her later misfortune. We’ll be singing the ballads of a hundred Gyeong-as until the sun goes out, but that doesn’t make her story any less sad. Lee Jong-ho’s directorial technique is something of a revelation for the time period neatly allaying standard melodrama tropes with a new brand of Korean realism mixed with European arthouse style. Former child actress Ah In-suk (still only 22 at the time of making this picture) gives a beautifully nuanced performance as the tragic Gyeong-a though apparently retired from acting due to her marriage soon after completing Heavenly Homecoming. An extremely important film in terms of the history of modern Korean cinema kicking off a youth culture movement which would extend into the turbulent 1980s, A Heavenly Homecoming to Stars succeeds both as a conventional melodrama but also as a symbol of a culture in flux.
Heavenly Homecoming to Stars was recently re-released on blu-ray in a beautiful new restored edition which also includes English subtitles on not only the main feature but also the commentary track as well as coming packaged with a booklet in both Korean and English.
However, you can also watch the (considerably less pretty looking) unrestored version with English subtitles and for free (legally) via the Korean Film Archive YouTube channel.
Can’t seem to find a trailer but here’s a poignant (unsubtitled) scene from towards the end of the film:
What are you supposed to do when you’ve lost a war? Your former enemies all around you, refusing to help no matter what they say and there are only black-marketers and gangsters where there used to be merchants and craftsmen. Everyone is looking out for themselves, everyone is in the gutter. How are you supposed to build anything out of this chaos? Perhaps you aren’t, but you have to go one living, somehow. The picture of the immediate post-war world which Suzuki paints in Gate of Flesh (肉体の門, Nikutai no Mon) is fairly hellish – crowded, smelly marketplaces thronging with desperate people. Based on a novel by Taijiro Tamura (who also provided the source material for Suzuki’s Story of a Prostitute), Gate of Flesh has its lens firmly pointed at the bottom of the heap and resolutely refuses to avert its gaze.
Kabukicho Love Hotel (さよなら歌舞伎町, Sayonara Kabukicho), to go by its more prosaic English title, is a Runyonesque portrait of Tokyo’s red light district centered around the comings and goings of the Hotel Atlas – an establishment which rents by the hour and takes care not to ask too many questions of its clientele. The real aim of the collection of intersecting stories is more easily seen in the original Japanese title, Sayonara Kabukicho, as the vast majority of our protagonists decide to use today’s chaotic events to finally get out of this dead end town once and for all.
Windows on Worlds 