Left Flank

The purpose of retrospective film festivals is to relive old debates from a new perspective. However, when the 50 years old conflict, the Korean War is still simmering and distorting ideologies, it's hard to take a new look at a film like Mt. Sahwa. But then, there's just the long shots of what appeared to be central Busan, the harbor and beaches, and the Young-do bridge.

In an American context, where irony and parody are all but necessary even on TV sitcoms, 1969's Mt. Sahwa could actually hold its own. It's one of those movies that plays with a viewer's mind trying to figure out who the bad guy is. Unfortunately, it's soaked in ideological symbolism, but really, unless one is pacifist or communist, it's harmless now (although the Park dictatorship at the time was certainly not). I was pleasantly surprised by this film. A recent Korean movie, Brotherhood of War (Taegukgi Huinallmeo) will play a recurring role in this and the next movie review. The American films, The Guns of Navarone and The Dirty Dozen, also came to mind, because of how seven men come together with an unconventional mission.

There's some confusion in the website blurb: Kim Seung-ho's character was a father, but no father figure. When first we encounter him, his character is a drunk and a brawler, and he is recruited in spite of his almost constant intoxication. Later, we find out he killed his wife's brother during the war for bringing Kim Il-sung's brother to his house for hiding. In a manner, he is the cause of the events in the entire film, and it's unclear if he or his wife can redeem what they did after that day.  The wife, also the mother of their boy, has spent her years as a KPA officer struggling to fulfill her brother's dying wish to protect Kim Il-sung's brother and keep contact with her son whom the Communists have abducted and placed in a Busan orphanage for extortion. Even with her guilt and the extortion, she had more real power over a unit of guerrillas on Mt. Sahwa than any South Korean woman of the time. Other characters cloak themselves as criminals and lowlife, and everyone is carrying around a secret.

Mt. Sahwa is obviously pro-ROK (at one point, a son buries his father in the Taegukgi), but the South Koreans are on the side of motherhood and putting divided families separated by Communist perfidy back together. Those modern Commies just don't know what good in this world: a village in the hills with your family, and all that's traditional, like pure love between young people. Unlike Brotherhood of War, choosing the right side is important, if one wants to be Korean. And, even if you've spent years stewing on the docks in Busan or in exile in Japan, one can still earn a reunion with one's family with the help of those nice ROK soldiers (commanded by the guy in the crew disguised as a knife-fighting con man).

One could also spin an anti-war perspective, where excessive ideology and human evil trample over family life. But, Mt. Sahwa, unlike Brotherhood of War, at least does not argue that the sordid details of an unfortunate life aren't compensable, but require the dross to make the gold appear in its real form. Mt. Sahwa is a more provocative and edifying film for all its propaganda quirks.

So, what do you do after you kill a security guard (but not maliciously)? How about some of the most listless, disconnected sex ever filmed (with what must have been the shallowest, stupidest girl ever seen on film), and then break up with her a few days later? Or, perhaps, do you write a confessional letter to another girl who guessed what you did after a single conversation, and then burn it? What ever happened to getting drunk, or a nice meal?

Gus Van Sant's Paranoid Park is a quick stroll around an old theme, about as worn as Hudson and Day: the lone killer. This time it's Alex, a high school skateboarder who's about as distant a sprite as I can remember on film. But, he's got a cute face, even if it's as blank as a cartoon, and girls like him, too. He can obviously lie with the best of them, too, from cops to his girlfriend. And, while we're trying to understand him. his parents are getting divorced. Alex is looking for a ride on the train, and the security guard just tried to pull him off the boxcar. Who would know the guy would take a flip backwards and get split in half by another passing train?

Gratefully, this was only a 90-minute film (and without some of the skateboard sequences, long walks, and a lot of slow motion, it could be shorter). Even scarier than Alex's relief as he burns his confession in a beachside fire, is that he started the confession because of a girl. I guess there's something mawkish about that, perhaps redeeming. For me, it's neither fish nor fowl: not a monster, but certainly no fellow.

What is it about this generation?

Secret Sunshine (which is the English translation of the South Korean town, Miryang) is more than a very thick read. It's a credit to its inspirations. The blend of Kafka, in Before the Law, and Korean culture takes time to develop. This might be one of the few exceptions in long form where narrative time is worthily traded for the essay that worms into one's brain in spite of its brevity. Kafka had a knack for provocative metaphors, but Lee Chang-dong might just have managed to create a film that haunts in its own way.

From the beginning, there was a refreshing earnestness about Lee's characters. Unlike most big budget films on either side of the Pacific, Lee's Koreans acted like the ones I know, not the illusions those Koreans wished to believe about themselves. That is, except for the lead character, Lee Shin-ae. Watching her was like being subjected to a fictive character walking around with a huge sign marked «everyman». Worse, all the other characters want to believe her lies. Her ruse is shattered very early, when she talks about moving to her husband's hometown, only what woman would feel such devotion to a man so stupid he died in a car accident with his mistress? Quickly again, Song Kang-ho (one of my favorite South Korean actors)'s character puts a plague, listing her fictive achievements, on the wall with the intent of luring customers to a piano school, she cannot disagree.

At one point it seems the film is becoming an advertisement for the church, and a deaconess' s insight that there are real things unseen in the world does help Shin-ae. Her son's murderer gives her another chance to submit, but she feels only anger that God would forgive the sinner and grant him peace before she could play her role as saintly mother dispensing forgiveness. Shin-ae sacrifices her son, who is kidnapped and murdered, her reputation in the church and town, and finally her sanity. But, still she refuses to submit. As her mother shrieks at her grandson's funeral, Shin-ae brings only death.

However, Shin-ae reveals the hypocrisy of the Christians in her own community as she painfully gives up her own lies. There's one scene where she furtively replaces the musical backdrop for an outdoor revival with a Korean song, «Lies». In another, a troubled girl, the daughter of the murderer, seeks help from the deaconess, but she is not at her business. The church community is no different from the other townspeople who believe Shin-ae's lies about her musical skills and investments. The deaconess and her husband, whom Shin-ae repays by seducing him, work with Shin-ae very compassionately, but never realize how much the other girl needs help. As bad as she appears, her family and fairweather friends behave even worse.

When one sees a Korean film like this, one can only hope Koreans stop watching the other kinds of lies they watch.

The Pusan International Film Festival (PIFF) lost its cineaste's novelty in April, when BUDi fought and nearly won my affections. BUDi, or the Busan Universiade for Digital Content, is for the short film format what PIFF is for the long form, the conventional (dare I say, classic 120-minute format). Like the LP, I fear PIFF is at a disadvantage in the age of attention deficit disorder and IPODs. So, I started slow this 12th iteration of the venerable autumn convocation for camera-empowered artists in all phases of self-expression, from pic snappers to the silent news crews, the flash-resistant stars and their directors, and finally to the producers and scriptwriters dreaming of the limelight. I picked a selection composed of four short segments, In Our Time,  by four different Taiwanese (or is that the Chinese Taipei contingent?) directors.

I have to say, though, that another charm of BUDi was its amateur-ish facade. Perhaps, it was the venue, Kyungsung University, and all those college volunteers running around. Maybe the short film format was reminiscent of a college final. Or, perhaps, it was the fact that admission was free of charge. Free gifts don't hurt, either, like last years winning films on one CD (I dare PIFF to do that!). Honestly, it took a lot of conviction to convince my wife to spend money for more than one film at PIFF (let alone eight!), when she watched over 20 for free at BUDi. I'm trusting a good deal of my credits for the rest of my married life on this 12th PIFF.

So, too, it was disappointing to have to run through a hollowed-out building in the midst of renovation to get to the movie theater perched atop Daeyoung CGV. With all the money I'm spending for a two-hour film, I might at least have a chance for some free browsing, instead of floors full of hammers, drills, and frantic investors scrambling to fill their stalls before morning. Get it! I'm nostalgic for the days of parking my lazy butt in one theater to watch ten films.

Part of a retrospective featuring Edward Yang, In Our Time (1982) recalls the stages of life, from childhood to adulthood. Each segment reveals flashes of a tell, a directorial gamble. There's the brief flirtation with dream sequences in the opening ode to a frustrating childhood with the parents from hell; unabashed earnestness in Yang's second segment featuring a girl becoming a woman; slapstick featuring a comic hero in the third; and, finally, in the fourth, a naked man running through Taipei at rush hour displaying his commitment to his wife and ignoring all else. My wife said it was all too «funny», which goes to show the film is not realistic in the deadpan sense. It's transcendent.

Once in a while, I realized I was not watching Kansas, or Korea. There were brief moments when universalistic themes took a back seat to cultural incomprehension. Because of the first two segments, I almost believed mornings in Taiwan start with schoolchildren walking out of their homes like convicts head for execution. Chopstick etiquette intruded upon saliva-inducing displays of food, and I am glad Koreans use spoons so much. At some points I thought I was watching Koreans speaking in Chinese, but then there was a schoolboy's military uniform, to disorient me.

So much compacted material in four brief vignettes. Again, I ask, why should I sit through two hours of a single story? Stay tuned, and see if I can!