Reel Asian 2011: Saturday

Reviews of screenings from the The 2011 Reel Asian International Film Festival, Toronto, Canada.

The Journals of Musan (South Korea, 2010, 127 min. Dir: Park Jungbum)

My undisputed favourite among the films I saw at this year's festival, The Journals of Musan was also pretty bleak, and a bit of a tough slog. The film follows Jeong Seung-chul (portrayed by director Park), a defector from North Korea trying to establish a life in Seoul. Seung-chul is withdrawn and extremely reserved, but it's easy to understand how the daily grind could turn him that way.

It doesn't make it any easier to reach out, however, as we see in his fumbling attempts to connect with Sook-young, a fellow parishioner in his Church. Living at — or below — the economic margins, Seung-chul is employed in the illegal postering industry, which turns out to be more competitive and cut-throat then you could have guessed. Even when he adopts a dog (shades, perhaps, of De Sica's Umberto D.), there's a pervasive sense that things just aren't going to end well, especially when his friend Kyung-chul's hustling starts to catch up to him.

Stone-faced and impassive, Park still manages to convey a surprising amount of emotional expression, while his camera portrays a city that ranges from generic grey to shabby and crumbling (Seung-chul lives near a bulldozed village that seems fated to soon be replaced by more highrises, which already stretch as far as the eye can see). Park also exhibits a sharp eye for composition, with a lot of shots taking advantage of two or three layers of background action. The net effect is to give us a sense of how big this city is, and how small Seung-chul must feel within it.

There are some small flaws. Given its measured pace, there are a few scenes that drag, and although the movie had a convincingly open-ended conclusion, the narrative could as well have wrapped up several scenes earlier. Still, a remarkably-accomplished debut, and a deserving winner of the festival's Best First Feature Film Award.

Bleak Night (South Korea, 2010, 116 min. Dir: Yoon Sung-Hyun)

Musan would actually be more bleak than Bleak Night, which also came from South Korea but felt like it was set in a different world. But even in a more affluent strata where material needs are taken care of, there's much sadness. Ki-tae, a high-school student, has died and his father — too often absent from his son's life — is trying to find out about the events that lead up to it. This sets up a complicated flashback structure where the father seeks out his son's best friends, and through their stories and memories, we learn about the layers of their relationships. Why did Dong-yoon drop out? Why did Hee-june transfer to a different school shortly before Ki-tae's death? As the father tries to make these connections, the younger characters also seek each other out and share their memories.

Although the flashback structure was well executed — there were some points, especially later in the film, where scenes slid fluidly between past and present, adding an eerie sense of dislocation — it pushed up against being too elusive. By the time I had sorted out the basics of who-was-who and how they were connected, a third of the film had gone by. And if the intent at the outset was to use the flashbacks as a sort of unfolding to a deeper truth, it doesn't quite get there, especially in terms of the father's quest — as the film progresses, he recedes to the periphery. And as we start to learn toward the end that Ki-tae was not as popular and virtuous as we might have thought, there's no indication that the father is actually learning about any of this, leaving his catharsis incomplete.

And though the film was a little too slow-going at points, it's worth seeing overall. It certainly doesn't spoonfeed the narrative to the viewer, so careful observation is rewarded. And the young actors, who invest their characters with realistic personalities, are convincing in conveying in intense pressure-cooker of the Korean school system, which has mostly been portrayed in the more stylized confines of horror films like Whispering Corridors and its ilk.