Misfortunes of Imaginary Beings: 06/19/19

A blog formerly known as Bookishness / By Charles Matthews

"Dazzled by so many and such marvelous inventions, the people of Macondo ... became indignant over the living images that the prosperous merchant Bruno Crespi projected in the theater with the lion-head ticket windows, for a character who had died and was buried in one film and for whose misfortune tears had been shed would reappear alive and transformed into an Arab in the next one. The audience, who had paid two cents apiece to share the difficulties of the actors, would not tolerate that outlandish fraud and they broke up the seats. The mayor, at the urging of Bruno Crespi, explained in a proclamation that the cinema was a machine of illusions that did not merit the emotional outbursts of the audience. With that discouraging explanation many ... decided not to return to the movies, considering that they already had too many troubles of their own to weep over the acted-out misfortunes of imaginary beings."
--Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

Wednesday, June 19, 2019

Secret Sunshine (Lee Chang-dong, 2007)

Jeon Do-yeon, Seon Jung-yeop, and Song Kang-ho in Secret Sunshine

Cast: Jeon Do-yeon, Song Kang-ho, Seon Jung-yeop, Cho Yung-jin, Kim Young-jae, Song Mi-rim. Screenplay: Lee Chang-dong, based on a novel by Lee Chung-Joon. Cinematography: Cho Yong-kyu. Production design: Shin Jum-hee. Film editing: Kim Hyun. Music: Christian Basso.

Painful without being oppressive, Lee Chang-dong's Secret Sunshine manages to be a film critical of religion without being either against it or for it. It centers on the great loss suffered by Lee Shin-aie (Jeon Do-yeon in a performance that won best actress at Cannes), a young widow trying to start a new life with her small son. But when he is abducted and murdered, she finds herself seeking comfort in an evangelical Christian community. It's primarily a film about otherness, about the struggles of the solitary spirit, and Lee accomplishes wonders without taking sides in the struggles of his characters.