I dedicated last week to catching up on Korean film. The early film history of Korea from 1910 to 1945 was heavily dominated by Korea being under Japanese rule. Although there are some fragments left from the silent era and the early ‘talkies’, film making was very restricted during this time period. The years 1945-1955, Korea was under US occupation until the Korean War made an end to this. A film I liked from this era is Young-kyu Yoon’s A Hometown in Heart (1949), a film about a child monk who longs for his mother who has left him at the monastery in the countryside at 3 years of age.

The first golden era for Korean film was in the late 50s and early 60s. Films that stand out from this period are Ki-young Kim’s The Housemaid (1960), Sang-ok Shin’s My Mother and Her Guest (1961) and Hyun-mok Yoo’s The Aimless Bullet (1961) – a typical ‘after the war’ movie about family life and poverty in war-stricken Seoul. Sharing one house with two brothers and their families and their sick mother, the home becomes the battle ground between the conscience-driven older brother and the ‘can’t care less’ attitude of the younger brother.

This creative period came to an end through increasing government censorship from the early 1970s onward. Licenses of creative filmmakers were revoked and political correctness was demanded. After a period of recovery, the next golden era, the New Korean Cinema, started to blossom from the late 1990s onward. Some early films from that period that I enjoyed were Sang-soo Hong’s The Day a Pig Fell into the Well (1996) and particularly Kwon-taek Im’s Chunhyang (2000). Chunhyang is a very original film built on a traditional Korean form of storytelling, ‘pansori’, told through song. It is a love story that transcends classes, with the governor’s son falling in love and secretly marrying the beautiful daughter of a courtesan. It is beautiful, it is different, it is sophisticated, it is spellbinding. It entered the Cannes Film Festival in 2000 as the first Korean movie ever.

For me, the two outstanding Korean film directors, who have dominated quality film making in the past two decades are Ki-duk Kim and Chang-dong Lee. Both made their debut films in the late nineties, Ki-duk Kim with Crocodile (1996) and Chang-dong Lee with Green Fish (1997). Ki-duk Kim’s work is much more prolific, but not everything is of the same high quality. The films of Ki-duk Kim that I have responded most to so far are Birdcage Inn (1998), his most famous film Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter…and Spring (2003) and 3-Iron (2004).

Chang-dong Lee has only made 6 films in 20 years’ time, but each one of them is a gem. If you can get hold of one of these six films: Green Fish (1997), Peppermint Candy (1999), Oasis (2002), Secret Sunshine (2007), Poetry (2012) and Burning (2018), don’t hesitate! Chang-dong Lee delivers films with unique, complex stories, leaving us to contemplate existential, spiritual and moral questions. His films are known as ‘trauma cinema’.

If I have only raised your awareness for potential enrichment by Korean films, it was worth the effort!

Rinus, March 2019

Photo by Steven Roe on Unsplash

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