Yun Jeong-hi in Poetry
Cast: Yun Jeong-hi, Lee Da-wit, Kim Hee-ra, Ahn Nae-sang, Kim Yeong-taek, Park Myung-shin, Kim Jong-goo, Kim Hye-jun, Min Bok-gi. Screenplay: Lee Chang-dong. Cinematography: Hyun Seok Kim. Production design: Jum-hee Shin. Film editing: Hyu Kim.
Haunting and unsentimental in its portrait of a woman in pain, victimized by circumstance, Lee Chang-dong's Poetry is at once a celebration of its title subject and an exploration of its limits.
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| Sul Kyung-gu and Moon So-ri in Oasis |
Cast: Sul Kyung-gu, Moon So-ri, Ahn Nae-sang, Ryoo Seung-wan, Choo Kwi-jung, Jin-gu Kim, Son Byung-ho, Ga-hyun Yun, Park Myung-shin, Park Gyeong-gyun. Screenplay: Lee Chang-dong. Cinematography: Yeong-taek Choi. Art direction: Jum-hee Shin, Kil Won Yu. Film editing: Hyun Kim. Music: Jaejin Lee.
Lee Chang-dong's Oasis seems to me a kind of great film, a phrase I don't use lightly, especially about one with scenes so painful that they tempted me to stop watching. At the same time, however, it also has scenes to which my response was a kind of astonished, even reluctant laughter. Lee's control of tone and mood is what tempts me to invoke greatness. When we first meet the protagonist, Jong-du (Sul Kyng-hu), he has just been released from prison after serving time for a hit-and-run that killed a man. (The truth about that incident of vehicular manslaughter is one that Lee keeps from us until a moment of low-key ironic surprise late in the film.) Penniless, wearing only a short-sleeved shirt on a frigid day, the slow-witted Jong-du tries to find his family, only to discover that they've moved away without telling him. The only way he can reconnect with them is by getting arrested. After they reluctantly take in the feckless, undisciplined, unemployable Jong-du, he then decides that he should do something to make amends with the family of the man who died in the hit-and-run. But they're not much better than his own family: They're in the process of moving, leaving behind Han Gong-joo (the amazing Moon So-ri), who suffers from severe cerebral palsy, under the care of her neighbors in a subsidized apartment house for disabled people. They regard Gong-joo as a source of supplemental income. And so the two outcasts, Jong-du and Gong-joo, are thrown together by the indifference and venality of their families. What develops between them could have been a mere sentimental fable about survival of the least fit, but Lee makes it much more with the help of two marvelous actors and a deft use of unexpected details, including touches of fantasy. It's a movie that should come with a multitude of trigger warnings, but for those who can take it, it's a memorable achievement.
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| Sul Kyung-gu in Peppermint Candy |
Cast: Sul Kyung-gu, Moon So-ri, Kim Yeo-jin, Park Soo-young, Park Sung-yeon. Screenplay: Lee Chang-dong. Cinematography: Hyung Koo Kim. Art direction: Park Il-hyun. Film editing: Hyun Kim. Music: Jaejin Lee.
What could have been a gimmick in the hands of a lesser writer-director than Lee Chang-dong becomes revelatory in Peppermint Candy: Life can only be understood through hindsight. The film begins with the moments leading up to the suicide of Yongho (Sul Kyung-gu) after he shows up at the reunion picnic of a group of factory workers. Behaving erratically, he first disturbs the group and then climbs to a railway trestle where he stands in front of an oncoming train. The film then flashes back to scenes from Yongho's life, each one earlier than the one that has gone before: first three days earlier, then in succession, five years before, 12 years before, 15 years before, 19 years before, and finally 20 years before -- the only sequence that takes place at the site of his suicide. The accumulation of details, laced through with various leitmotifs such as the candy that gives the film its title, presents a portrait of a man brutalized by experience, and in particular by the experience of living through two decades of South Korea's troubled history. It's a study in remorse and guilt and compulsive misbehavior that succeeds because of Lee's storytelling skill and Sul's lacerating performance.
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A young man (Han Suk-kyu) finishes his military service and returns home, but on the way there he gets involved with a beautiful woman (Shim Hye-jin) with underworld ties. Fine performances and razor-keen editing animate this fascinating noir drama leavened with dark humor and superbly atmospheric cinematography and music.
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| Yoo Ah-in, Jun Jong-seo, and Steven Yeun in Burning |
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| Jeon Do-yeon, Seon Jung-yeop, and Song Kang-ho in Secret Sunshine |