Tradition and modernism. Yesterday and today. Folklore and metafilm. New Korean film isn't just a pile of ultimate festival excess, but also an alteration of meditative antipodes
Possibly the most relevant representative of the traditional in modern Korean cinema is the great author and workaholic Im Kwon-taek, who is devoted to making detailed and extremely refined chronicles of the lives of Korean artists. In his hundredth film Chun nyun hack (Beyond the Years), he returned to pansori, the traditional musical that can last for over four hours. He has made a number of his earlier films (Chunhyang, Seopyeonje) in this same genre. In this film he tells an epic tale of a travelling musician and his blind half-sister, whose serene frames resemble the aesthetic of an old canvas (code: Chihwaseon). On the other hand, Lee Joon-ik (The King and the Clown) is also fascinated by history. In this film two court jesters are facing a death sentence for mocking the king. Their relationship has characteristics of a fine queer aesthetic, as one of them has an emphasized feminine side (played by the Korean teen music star Lee Jun-gi whose 'kkonminom' image is a Korean response to Japanese 'bishonene' – androgynous boys beyond gender).
This retrospective also brings us the 'invisible' Lee Jang-ho, whose complex allegoric parable The Man with Three Coffins is possibly the closest that Korean film came to works by Alain Resnais. The genius Lee Chang-dong demonstrated his love of female characters even before Poetry. In Secret Sunshine, Jeon Do-yeon as Korean Gene Rowlands, is a woman under (Christian) influence, who finds herself on the verge of at least five nervous breakdowns. This was the first Chang-dong's films after retiring from politics and resigning as the Korean minister of culture, but also his most linear work. However, his line is more like an electrocardiogram, simple and elegant like the film title itself. But Secret Sunshine speaks of something specific which should be a substitute for family. It is about Christian fundamentalism. Although Christianity is often an obsession of Korean filmmakers, from Park Chan-wook (Thirst) to Kim Ki-duk (Amen, Samaritan Girl), which is not unusual as Seoul alone is home to 11 out of 12 world's biggest Christian congregations, Chang-dong's approach is much more rational.
Two films in this retrospective revolve around driving in a taxi. In No Blood, No Tears, the character of a tough female taxi driver owes a lot to Tarantino's Grindhouse, but with a much weaker soundtrack. And the black humorous sex comedy Driving with my Wife's Lover directed by the insane Kim Tae-sik. His protagonist is coming back from Seoul by taxi driven by his wife's lover. At the very beginning of their journey, Tai-sik shows a billboard saying 'Listen to God's voice'. Christian obsession is still present, in an ironic discourse. Their road odyssey includes rolling water melons, a game of badminton, swimming in a mountain stream and literally pissing up wind. In the second part of the film, which invokes the ghost of Im Sang-soo, the author abandons the road rhetoric.
The touching Christmas in August by Hur Jin-ho, who as a Korean Mike Leigh focuses on the little things, gently takes an unobtrusive camera into the story of his protagonist who accepts his illness with a smiling face. Alos on program is the elegant and beautifully filmed meditation on old age and snow directed by Choo Chang-min (Late Blossom), based on the online comic by Kang Full 'Love Story'. And the only film in this retrospective not made by a Korean film maker is a serene elegy Grain in Ear by the Chinese director Zhang Lu, influenced by the Chinese underground film. His protagonist is a girl, a member of the marginalized Korean ethnic minority in China, who shares a rundown flat with four Chinese. She sells kimchi in the street, and sticks to her tradition symbolized by the old Korean dances. (Dragan Rubeša)