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So-won (2013)
People Seeking Justice; Beware!
This movie is shocking on many levels. There is not too much to it that has not been revealed in the rather brief synopsis above. A little girl is brutally raped and almost dies, the movie is a character study of the impact that this heinous event has on her family, friends and community at large.
While some scenes are touching, the way the movie portrays the malevolence of the criminal, along with the ineptitude of the Korean criminal justice system left many in the audience either weeping or gasping as each line delivered in these scenes is like a punch to the stomach.
In a manner that truly befits an episode of 'Dexter', the monster escapes unpunished along with the promise to the girl's father that he will create the same situation for another family as soon as he can.
In the end we are left with a shattered community trying to pick up the pieces, and having limited success. One can only assume that the titular 'wish' is that things will get better after the credits roll...
Upside Down (2012)
An Upside Down Turkey is Still a Turkey.
Einstein once famously said, 'If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough.' Nothing truer could be said about the writers of this movie as the long, drawn out explanation of the way 'dual gravity' works not only loses the viewer in less than five minutes after the title credits roll, but also shows how the writers don't understand their own physics later. For example: ever tried drinking water upside down? Well, this is exactly what the main characters do as a fad in a club. Mass has no effect in some shots, but is critical to others.
A crude ticking clock device is employed whereby matter from one world will start to burn after some time in the other. Humans are exempt from this, yet every time Adam ventures into the upper world, the effect is used as a cheap gag rather than anything substantial to drive the plot along.
The Evil Corporation's building linking the two worlds together is laughable, and instantly reminded me of 'The Fall' tunnel in 'Total Recall'. The middle level is where both gravity fields meet, but rather than being canceled out resulting in a zero gravity situation, we have the ludicrous image of a split office where the superior 'uppers' work on the ceiling and pass briefs and office supplies 'down' to their 'lower world' people.
The Evil Corporation also has this highly valuable anti-matter that floats in bottom-world but sinks in top-world. It is supposedly so valuable that it is tightly controlled to avoid the 'lower' employees stealing any. In a move totally unexplained, our hero is able to stock-pile about 80 pounds of the stuff and use it to walk around the upper city unchecked.
The editing was terrible. Nothing caused any sense of urgency or suspense. During a chase scene, the hero is edited to safety, and later once his method for entering the upper world is revealed he is just edited there.
The acting and characterization were awful. The male lead takes his style from the Shia LeBouf School of stuttering stupidity. He doesn't tell his love interest who he is for absolutely no reason other than to drag out the movie; telling her who he was before making a mission to see her would have been the logical thing. Dunst's character has amnesia (seriously?!) which may be unintentionally emphasized by the way she says her name.. every.. time. 'I'm Eden... Moore.' There was also no clear antagonist, just a poorly explained 'system' that somehow messed up the two characters' lives. Again, absolutely no suspense is created by this aspect - we can't force ourselves to care about these two fools.
The only redeeming feature was the stunning visuals. The world looked really great, but not nearly enough to raise itself out of the clichéd and derivative muck that holds this movie back. Elements borrowed from Total Recall, In Time and The Fountain ensure that it struggles to find its own definitive identity; a crappy movie made in a laboratory from the rotting and discarded parts of other crappy movies.
To conclude, both physicists and lovers of great film will be united in their screams of outrage and apoplectic spasms brought on by their utter disbelief of how this film tramples roughshod over both disciplines. Avoid this movie.
Han nyeohaksaengeui ilgi (2006)
Grinding Pro-Kim Regime Propaganda
This film is pointless for anyone besides those interested in studying North Korean propaganda. It is devoid of all merit and worth apart from emphasizing loyalty to the North Korean state in general and Kim Jong-il in particular.
The plot is basically that a young girl hates her father because she thinks that he has abandoned his family and traditional fatherly duties in the service of the state. Finally, through events depicted in the film she comes to realize that dedication to the state is a virtue, and she cannot wait until she gets an opportunity to dedicate herself to the state in pursuit of glory for the Glorious North Korean People.
The 'climax' of the film, if it is deserving of that term, is when Su-ryeon visits her dad's factory only to see him in a mechanic's uniform (remember Kim Jong-Il's fashion sense), apparently taking orders from a junior, female scientist. Her world is shattered, but it soon turns out that her father is such a genius that he not only develops bold new theories, but also constantly engages himself with the 'lower' workers through on-site inspections and guidance. And he's good at soccer! Everyone at the factory loves him.. they are like his second family! Su-ryeon loathes herself because she has been so selfish in wanting her father all to herself, when clearly many people rely on him! He's not bad for leaving his family alone to cope with their everyday 'annoyances' - she is bad for not understanding his world. This man is so selfless he doesn't even care for his cancer riddled wife lying in a state hospital; he is way too busy developing a computerized control system for his factory in order to give the workers more free time.
What an utterly revolting, filthy piece of Paternal-Fascist propaganda. It is clear that the girl represents the average North Korean (too naive and innocent to understand the 'real world') that may be upset with the Kim regime's bumbling maladministration of that county. Of course, the absentee father is Kim Jong-il! He is tirelessly working for the advancement of all people, not just the Koreans, but the world! How dare these people trouble him with trifling problems like, I don't know, human rights, daily struggles, the desires for love and recognition, or even if they are suffering from a terminal disease? These peasants should be grateful for such a wonderful leader that everybody loves! Why, they should even aspire to be just like him!
There is humor to be found, albeit unintentional, as one scene features shoddy electrical wiring resulting in a TV catching on fire. The grandmother living with the family puts it out with a bucket of water. Another scene shows a hastily constructed 'PC Lab' that is clearly a couple of computers placed on the table in a government boardroom. They are always shot from the back,and the sound effects played over them are clearly sounds from computers from the 1980's - they are not even turned on.
In the final analysis, one should treat this movie as if it were Samsung stock on the eve of a North Korean rocket launch, in other words; don't touch it with a 100ft bargepole.
PS. Clearly, the person who responded to my review is not familiar with the guiding principles of North Korean cinema as laid out by Kim Jong Il in the 1960's and 1970's, and crystalized in his 1978 book 'On the Art of the Cinema'. This ideology holds that to make a movie, it must aid and advance the tenets of the Juche (self reliance of North Koreans) policy, and devotion to the state. A movie cannot be released, approved or conceptualized in North Korea if it fails to meet this standard. In other words, movies are propaganda - the meta-story is what is important in North Korean films, and it is this thread that I take issue with; the French people who backed this movie for international release, and the other reviewers seem blissfully unaware of this cut and dry fact.
Pulgasari (1985)
Rita Repulsa Wants Her Monster Back.
Seldom have I watched a movie that fails so completely in all that it attempts to do. There could be a good reason for this, however; the director and two leads were abducted from South Korea by Kim and then forced to partake in this schlock whilst the Dear Executive Producer Kim Jong Il ran the show. This was ten years before he became the ruler of North Korea. I guess he runs his country on the same principles as he ran the production of this movie. (Un)fortunately the kidnapping victims escaped before the movie could be completed, which could explain much of the disjointed nature in the latter part of the film. Quite bizarrely, the director's 'punishment' was to have his name removed from the credits, until he SUED the film company to have it re-instated, although heaven only knows why.
The movie opens in a nameless village somewhere in Chosun Dynasty era Korea. A peasant girl is fetching water from a well. She is a kind and selfless young woman, as indicated by her desire to see the old people fed first at dinner time. Her father is the town blacksmith and makes many tools for the farmers. All is not well in the idyllic village, however. An evil king sits on the throne and a great rebellion/war is brewing. He has his army appropriate all the metal in the kingdom in order to forge weapons. It emerges that the leader of the bandits/rebels lives in this particular village and has hidden a weapons cache near the blacksmith's forge. The first of many 'epic' battle scenes unfurls as Korean People's Army soldiers forced to act as extras fight it out dressed as wicked royal guards slavishly obeying the king and virtuous peasants defending their right to bear pots and pans. Yawn.
The rebels are routed and arrested, and the blacksmith is then drafted to make weapons out of the confiscated metal, but allows the village people to take back their items when the army leaves. The army comes back and discovers the iron gone and this leads to his imprisonment and torture. As a form of protest, he decides not to eat and begins to starve. His daughter, Ami, tries to get him to eat rice balls by throwing them to him through the bars of the jail. He is a man of principle, however, and refuses to eat even this food prepared by his loving daughter. Instead, he makes a little figurine of the rice balls and clay and makes a dying wish to some unseen force to give it life and help the peasants. He then dies and the obligatory wailing so prolific in North Korean films starts. Once Ami, her brother, her mother, the village, the bandits, and their dogs have recovered from the loss, wiped their tears away and shouted 'aigoo' for the last time, the little sculpture finds its way to Ami. She pricks herself whilst sewing and some blood splashes onto it, bringing it to life. Pulgasari is born, and from this point on the movie never lets you forget that his name is PULGASARI! Every time PULGASARI gets screen time there is an annoying peasant/bandit/king/vizier/random extra shouting 'It's PULGASARI!', 'Hey, PULGASARI!', 'LOOK OUT IT'S
' or 'HERE COMES
' Only the heinous abomination that is 'The Outlaw of Gor' can rival the number of times the lead character's name is repeated as part of the movie dialog.
So moving on, Pulgasari starts out small, he eats the needle Ami was using, then he eats the door hinges, then he eats the scrap metal in the forge. He grows bigger and bigger under Ami's control, since it's her blood that infused him with life. I immediately saw a problem with this monster; the peasants' woe is due mainly to the fact that the king wants all their metal for weapons, but their newfound hero eats the same metal. The rest of the film uses made for TV effects reminiscent of 'Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers' as Pulgasari stomps his way through Feudal Korea MiniTown, killing the king and liberating the peasants. Stuff happens along the way but the rubber suit is more convincing than the plot and character development. Predictably, the monster continues to eat metal, and becomes a burden to the peasants. Ami sacrifices herself by hiding in the village's bell before Pulgasari eats it. Pulgasari and Ami die. Roll credits on the ninety minutes of my life that cannot be taken back; a horrid mess of a movie that cannot be unseen.
Reflecting on the didactic nature of the several North Korean films I have watched IE: Peasants Good/Powers that be Bad, I'd have to say that there you could interpret this as a young Kim Jong Il giving the middle finger to an establishment that had molded him from a young age to take over from his father, despite his wishes of film making glory. In 'The Flower Girl' we see how the peasants are oppressed and need the Korean Liberation Army to free them, it takes food, lives and money (metal) to support in order to drive out the Japanese Imperialists (the evil king taking the peasant's resources) but once in power, the KLA and the Communist Party continue to take all of these things from the peasants, eventually requiring the peasants to die in order to rid themselves of the scourge that they themselves have helped feed. The irony would be delicious, but I think that it's actually just a ham fisted attempt to knock capitalism; yet another aspect of this movie that fails with unintentional, yet hilarious results.
Kotpanum chonio (1972)
Initially somewhat touching but degenerates into communist propaganda later on.
The movie starts in a small, nameless village somewhere in Korea during the Japanese colonial era. Wicked capitalist farmers backed by the "Jap" Imperial Army oppress the Korean people, but none more so than the titular character. Her father is dead from overwork, her mother is indebted to his former employers and has to do their laundry, and grind rice into flour for their constant banquets, despite her own life threatening illness. These vile capitalists beat and abuse their workers, and give out "charity" to the peasants in the form of rice rations that have to be paid back at a 2:1 ratio. As if there were not enough suffering in Koppun's life, her little sister was blinded by the farmer's wife for daring to touch a roasting nut when she was hungry. The evil woman threw a pot of boiling wild ginseng into Sun Hi's face, blinding her for life. Koppun's older brother is arrested by the Japanese at the behest of the farmers after he sets fire to their store rooms to avenge his sister's injury, and is promptly shipped off to prison without trial.
Koppun's life goes from bad to worse after this point, and she is forced to sell flowers to get medicine for her mom, who can't earn any money for herself, as she is basically a slave to the Korean version of Kulaks. Her efforts are hampered even though she has "enough hope to cover the whole village". Japanese collaborators spit on her, call her dirty and generally treat her very poorly. With help from a kindly old woman from the market, she manages to eventually scrape together enough money to buy the medicine, but on the very day that she reaches her goal, her mother reaches a turning point in her terminal illness and spills some rice flour because she is too weak to lift the bowl. She is then beaten to within an inch of her life by the farmer, and the sickness takes care of the rest. Koppun and Sun Hi are blissfully unaware of this, and are skipping towards home with the cure laughing and playing. This fleeting happiness is cut short when they meet the funeral procession coming down the road. A heart wrenching, exploitative scene follows with much wailing and beating of chests. It goes on too long. An authoritative voice comes out of nowhere, asking who is to blame for this tragedy. The question is left unanswered, as the audience obviously know the answer. (Psst. It's the Capitalist farmers and their Japanese organ grinders.)
Because her mom is now dead, the farmer wants to sell Koppun into slavery to get his money back. She knows that the only way to survive is to find her older brother. She flees in the dead of night and has to travel many weeks to the prison. Upon arrival she is told that her brother has perished. Filled with despair, she contemplates throwing herself into the sea. The movie goes all "Carnival of Souls" at this point, with a kaleidoscopic montage of the various oppressions meted out to the Korean people at the hands of the Japanese and their lackeys swirling around her head. Then she thinks of Sun Hi, and is determined to return home. Meanwhile back on the farm Sun Hi is sobbing uncontrollably because she misses her sister. The farmer's wife takes ill, and it's time for the movie to strike out at religion as another source of needless suffering. The priest believes that the spirit of the little girl's mother has come back and possessed her because the farmer's wife fell ill at around the same time as the sobbing started. The woman also has feverish hallucinations about all the evil she has done in her life, compounded by hearing the sobs of the girl that she has blinded. The farmer sends out one of his henchmen to "take care of the demon". He tricks the blind girl into going with him on the promise that he will take her to Koppun. He leads her off to the mountain, just as Koppun nears the village.
The final fifteen minutes of the movie all collapse in on themselves as the themes explored up to this point take a back seat to North Korean propaganda. Koppun learns of her sister's fate and is the first person to "revolt". She has just had too much, she bursts into the farmer's house and demands the return of her family. She throws a pot of boiling water at the farmer's wife, but is eventually overpowered by a goon and thrown into a granary to be killed later or sold off as a slave.
All seems lost until her older brother is shown walking in the mountains with his Korean Revolutionary Army buddy. He did not die in prison, but escaped and joined Kim Il Sung's brave revolution. The two men find an old hermit who is friendly to the revolution and by some miracle Sun Hi has been saved by this old guy. The farmer's lackey was apparently too much of a coward to kill her outright, opting instead to leave her on the mountain to die. After this reunion, they go back to the farm and discover Koppun's fate. Under the leadership of the KRA, the peasants overrun the farmer and his entourage of comically stereotypical capitalist characters. Hammers flash, sickles sparkle in the moonlight as the farmer is paid back for is oppression in what I estimate is a 2:1 ratio.
The movie ends with Koppun saved and reunited with her remaining family members, the peasants liberated, the Japanese vanquished and the farmer, his wife and his gang of hoodlums dead. "Long live the KRA. Long live (United) Korea. Long Live Kim Il Sung".