Festival (1996)

Director Hinar Saleem's film Vodka Lemon (2003) has one of those unforgettable opening scenes. As quick as the crunching of the snow we hear upon the scene's arrival, an old man is dragged through the snowy streets of an Armenian village while still in his bed, a surreal scene that causes the viewer to stutter in their head wondering 'Huh?' We eventually discover this immobile man was being taken to a funeral to play his wind instrument. As he plays another man sings in Armenian. Brought back to the reality displayed in this fiction, I found myself reflecting on the fact that many foreign films released in the United States refuse to subtitle funeral songs. Funeral singing has been deemed something unnecessary to translate for United States viewers since, with the graves foregrounded, we get the picture. This makes Im Kwon-taek's Festival all the more unusual since not only are the funeral songs subtitled, but Korean viewers were offered titles that identified each step of the burial traditions, and English-viewers were provided with even more non-dialogue, ethnographic subtitles that documented the rationale behind each multi-theistic tradition.

Korean film scholar Han Ju Kwak states Festival is based on the writings of writer Yi Chong-jun. The film based on these stories follows a fictional author named Joon-sup (Ahn Sung-ki -- from The Housemaid to Arahan) who has returned to his home village due to the death of his mother. Upon leaving, his daughter Un-ji (Baek Jin-a) asks innocently "Grandma's dead again?", noting that there have been false alarms before. And it turns out Joon-sup's Mother fooled everyone again, because she is alive upon his arrival. (The actress playing Joon-sup's Mother is Han Eun-jin, who passed away in July 2003. She has been in close to 200 films, making me wonder, 'Should call her the Im Kwon-taek of Korean actresses or, since she outdoes Im twofold, if we should call Im the Han Eun-jin of Korean directors?' She debuted in 1939 in Mujeong and is most recognizable from Surrogate Mother.) However, Joon-sup's Mother does eventually pass away, bringing to the home family members, business associates, government officials, fellow villagers, and conflict. Much of the conflict involves impressions others have of Yong-sun (Oh Jeong-hae -- Sopyonje) and Hae-lim (Jeong Kyung-soon -- Taebaek Mountains, Segimal). Yong-sun is a niece whom Joon-sup's older brother had with a local prostitute. After Joon-sup's brother killed himself, Joon-sup's Mother insisted that the family take in Yong-sun. Yong-sun always felt like an outsider to the family, exacerbating this outsider status by stealing money from the family when she left for Seoul, and returning wearing garish makeup and clothes. Hae-lim is a magazine reporter who has followed Joon-sup's career and has come to the funeral to write an article. It is suggested that their relationship is more than just professional, and Hae-lim's presence discomforts Joon-sup's wife as much as the hole in the butt of her jeans delights the young children.

Along with this straight, realist narrative, Im includes flashbacks of Joon-sup's Mother's gradual, developing dementia, along with fantasy sequences narrating Joon-sup's first children's book where, told from Un-ji's perspective, grandmother's dementia is described as her passing on her wisdom to her granddaughter. These fantasy sequences are presented as stage-like, with a background of fake scenery, to differentiate them from both the flashbacks and the regular narrative, which Han Ju Kwak notes is a "rare formal experiment in Im's filmography." These scenes serve several purposes. Besides helping Un-ji understand her grandmother's transformations and deal with her passing, they also serve as wish-fulfillment for Joon-sup since, unlike what is presented in the children's story, he did not take his mother into his home during her illness. Also, since Im himself has said that he regrets not performing hyodo, or filial duty to one's parents, for his mother, we can see this story within the story, as well as the entire work of Festival itself, as Im's attempts to resolve the guilt he himself carried.

Many films allow wonderful comparison prospects for Festival. Although Juzo Itami's The Funeral (1984) would be the one that would come to most world cinema viewers, in Korean cinema, Park Chul-soo's Farewell, My Darling is perhaps the most interesting comparison since it was released in the very same year and is a funeral film with which the director is equally, intimately entwined by the very fact that Park plays the character of a director returning home to his father's funeral. Yet, Im's eminent status as the present patriarch of Korean cinema, representing the national cinema on the world stage, causes me to reflect back and forth upon Festival's relation to the The Wind Will Carry Us (1999), the masterpiece of Iran's premiere director Abbas Kiarostami. Both films are, in a sense, self-critiques; however, I find myself preferring Kiarostami's because we do not end up with a white-washing, positive view of Kiarostami's director surrogate, but a complicated one. Whereas, Im's novelist surrogate ends up being the hero that patriarchally leads everyone back to their rightful place in the family, a source of major contradictions that Han Ju Kwak finds in the film in his chapter for the book Im Kwon-Taek: The Making of a Korean National Cinema.

Festival is not one of Im's better films. All the films I've compared Festival with here in this review are much more accomplished works. The portrayal of Joon-sup's brother's widow Wedong-taek (Baek Seung-tae -- Chihwaseon, Silmido) comes off as choppy, as does much of the stage play entrances and line deliveries directed of some of the performers. Yong-sun's reconciliation with a family member who has nagged her throughout the film arises too implausibly. As a result, the film doesn't hold my heightened attention as does Park's. What Im has accomplished here is a studied detailing of the burial traditions. Interestingly, these pre-modern traditions, being a mix of Shamanism, Buddhism, Confucianism, and even Taoism, present a lie to the belief that Post-Modern collaging of cultural influences is anything new. Just as Han Ju Kwak notes that Joon-sup's mother's delayed deaths suggest "...the possibility that she is still alive, even after her actual death", Im's documentation presents how these traditions are still with us in hidden and visible forms, assimilating with and accommodating of the contemporary in order to survive along with us.

Jungle Story (1996)

According to Kim Hong-joon's harshest critic, Jungle Story is "The most boring rock movie ever made!" That unrelenting critic is director Kim himself. Kim is, of course, being somewhat facetious with that self-critique. What he really means is this is not the rock movie many might expect. As Akira Mizuta Lippit has noted, Jungle Story refuses to follow the basic rock film genre narrative trajectory: band forms, band rises to fame, band falls from grace, band learns moral lesson and/or rises again. Like later films such as Waikiki Brothers and Mr. Gam's Victory, we have a protagonist whose star doesn't shine as brightly as one expects in a usually star-studded genre. The boredom audiences might feel watching Jungle Story may be mainly from the dissonance certain genre expectations cause within viewers when not fulfilled by the director.

The story follows the character Yun Do-hyun, a young man fresh out of military service who decides to keep pursuing his rock star dreams in silent disagreement with his father's stern counter commands to pursue a direction that leads to a more reliably profitable profession. Yun instead takes a job selling guitars at a music store so he can practice while working and eventually slacks into the lead singer slot of a hard-rock-ish band. He is later discovered by a record executive through whom he also acquires a manager. The record he is contracted to make is pop-oriented, requiring aesthetic and ethical compromises fromYun. I'll stop with the plot trajectory here, since telling any more risks ruining some of the unique subtle shifting of this anti-rock, rock film.

Yun Do-hyun is played by none other than Yun Do-hyun, a real-life 90's Korean rock star. However, he is not intended to be himself. Kim has utilized many 90's rock stars in this film, such as the members of Easy Rider, Anti-Social, and Monkeyhead. He also procured an actual rock basement venue, Rock World, as an onsite location within the film. And Yun's manager is played by Shin Ha-chul, whom Kim notes as one of the rare successful Korean rock stars before the 90's. In this film, Shin's character later becomes a concert promoter, underscoring his real-life charge to help bands acquire the recognition he feels they deserve. Kim is often asked if this film is of actors playing musicians or musicians playing actors, to which Kim responds, neither. These are "Musicians playing musicians."

Herein lies my main interest in Kim's film, the same aspect that, sadly, resulted in the weak turnout of paying customers, poor reviews from critics, and considerable humility upon the part of the director. Kim's main intent was to document the lives and methods of South Korea's 90's rock scene, not to follow mainstream film conventions. Perhaps Kim should have done a documentary instead, as he has suggested, but conveying such subculture specifics is fine for fictional features as well, it's just that doing such runs counter to mainstream cliches. And without those mainstream cliches, one can risk not obtaining mainstream success. So instead Kim has provided simple, smirk-inducing pleasures for those familiar with the underground scene, such as Yun's constant visits to the pharmacy to pick up a case of "Bacchus", a caffeine tonic that acts as a surrogate for the less accessible harder drugs for these harder rockers. Throwing back about 10 cans in one sitting apparently gives a considerable enough high that one would come back for more, as our pharmacist knows by eventually not even having to ask Yun what he wants when he enters her shop.

Kim attended Temple University in Philadelphia where he studied Anthropology. Such knowledge comes in handy when documenting a subculture. Particularly poignant is the explication of the Korean underground rock culture's own established ethical system. One of the ethical tenets Kim was exposed to was that which declares 'Thou Shalt Not Lip-Synch.' This tenet stands because it is believed each performance should be spontaneous and unique from the previous one. Kim has noted that this was the most frustrating part of making the film because of the subculture's resistance and, since this went against their ethics, they had little experience synching their performance to a soundtrack. (The drums were the most difficult to convey realistically in this process since even the most un-musically-skilled eye will notice mistakes in drum-synching.) Kim demonstrates this very frustration by including a scene in the Rock World venue where a video director runs up against this obstacle while filming. Such lip-synching of such raucous performances on such a grand scale places Jungle Story as an important film within Korean cinema's recent popular surge because the film broke sound ground from which later films could further advance. Although most commentators have focused on the advances in the visual production values of South Korean cinema, Jungle Story provides a turning point for sound production that scholars would benefit from investigating further.

Since this "boring" film failed at the box office and was panned by critics, one could say that the film was unsuccessful. Yet, to his credit, this reviewer, who has never found himself much enjoying the hard-rock genre, found himself appreciating a few of the songs appearing in the film, such as the last song played at Rock World's final day of business, a scene that eerily foreshadows the closing of the real-life Rock World after a long and antagonistic relationship with the local authorities. Yet even without an appreciation for hard rock, watching it within proper context rather than constrained within genre expectations and, to use film critic Jonathan Rosenbaum's term, "economic correctness," one finds that the film was indeed in sync with the people, the movement, and the time depicted within the film. And the narrative actually ended up being prophetic of the film's eventual reception. To have had Jungle Story perform otherwise would have been, according to this subculture, downright unethical.

The Day a Pig Fell Into the Well (1996)

Made while Hong Sang-soo still held a day job at SBS, The Day a Pig Fell Into the Well fell into acclaim at international festivals, winning him dual Tigers, that is, the VPRO Tiger Award at Rotterdam and the Dragons and Tigers Award at Vancouver. It was not without success at home either, for Hong also doubled up on the Dragons by winning the Best Director at Korea's Blue Dragon awards. Although Hong would still keep a second job teaching film at Korean National University of Arts, the critical success of A Day a Pig Fell Into the Well did not prove fleeting, for Hong is still considered one of the primary auteurs of the new Korean Cinema that began to form after 1996.

Separated into four narratives, we slowly learn how each character is connected. Hyo-sub (Kim Eui-sung) is a struggling writer who isn't really struggling because of his writing, but because of his impulsive, angry tendencies. He is sexually involved with both Min-jae (Cho Eun-suk) and Po-kyong (Lee Eung-kyung) who each are followed in the final two narratives. Min-jae is a 24 year old woman making due with random jobs, both of which enact surveillance of her movement and voice. She pursues the affections of Hyo-sub even though he treats her like crap. Po-kyung is treated a little better by Hyo-sub because he claims he loves her. Po-kyong appears to walk, as if pulled along, in and out of Hyo-sub's embrace. It even appears that she might be leaving her husband for him, however, if this is the case, this effort is thwarted like so many efforts in Hong's films. Her husband Dong-woo (Park Jin-song) is followed in the second narrative and he heads to Chunjoo for business that is never consummated. Instead, he spends the night in a love motel with a prostitute trying to obtain something from her he could never have.

Many of the themes consistent throughout Hong's later films find their origins here in The Day A Pig Fell In The Well. We follow separate narratives, although a greater number of them than we've followed before. Each main character is presented with serious flaws that inhibit their chances of finding fulfillment in their personal and professional lives. And moments that may initially seem irrelevant or represent bad editing choices amount to significant scenes with multiple viewings.

Yet what is most interesting about this film is what Hong chose to portray that he has since stayed away from in his later work. Dong-woo and Hyo-sub are probably the most pathetic men Hong has ever portrayed. The image of Dong-woo with his head down, arms and legs clamped, body shaking vigorously as he sits on the bed of the Love Motel is one of the most harrowing we've seen in Hong's films because this man appears to be losing it right before our eyes. Also, Hyo-sub and one of the side characters in this film are portrayed much more violently than any other character in any of Hong's films to follow. And it is the presence of these two differences, (plus, perhaps, the lesser production quality present here that we find throughout the Korean film industry until 1998), that give this film a feeling of hopelessness that I have not felt in any of the three films to follow this one. In the later films, although each main character traveled in a trajectory of poor choices, I always felt that there were positive trajectories available to them that could help them stray from their unhealthy patterns if they would only simply choose these alternate routes. Here, everyone seems to be trapped in their own personal wells with a rope not long enough to scale their way out, but definitely long enough to hang themselves.

Farewell, My Darling (1996)

Farewell, My Darling begins and ends with images that strangely allude to future films by Park Chul-soo. We begin with a woman Push-Push-ing a baby into a dream of the patriarch, Mr. Park (Choi Seong). And it ends, (don't worry, this doesn't spoil it), with a snapshot reminiscent of Kazoku Cinema. As much as any director in South Korea, this continuity across films further underscores Park's intent to chronicle the changes that a Modernizing Korea has wrought and gifted.

And what more perfect a venue to explore those changes than the rituals surrounding that which never changes? Death. The family of Mr. Park returns to the village where the family was reared following Mr. Park's death. The cast of characters brings a circus to town of dreams met and deferred. Pal-bong (Kim Il-woo) returns from Seoul with the bling-bling of his new high-rolling status, fancy car, trophy wife, and child as accessory. Chan-sae (Park Jae-hwang) travels across the Pacific from America with his bible in hand and gospel music on tape. Chan-suk (Choo Kwi-jeong) finally makes the funeral only to open up old wounds that desperately need dressing. All the while Mr. Park's brother acts as the village elder who tries to wield an iron voice to force all to perform within his understanding of the proper rituals. His efforts are mostly in vain, however, for each party at this party mourns in their own way, from the calculated hysterics of the Aunties to the sincere gesture of Pa-yoo (Kim Bong-kyu) offering a bottle of pop (Yes, I'm from the Midwest) to deceased Mr. Park.

Although I often mistakenly call this film Farewell My Concubine, the more appropriate films to compare with Farewell, My DARLING are Juzo Itami's The Funeral and Im Kwon-taek's Festival. Itami's film is a comedy that successfully transcended cultures in its display of Modern Japan's forgotten traditions. Several comedic moments also erupt throughout Park's film, such as Pal-bong, placing cashier's checks rather than won in the pot for Mr. Park's trip to the afterlife. Park's film, while showing what's been lost by South Korea's quick Modernization, also shows what traditions remain and what new ones have emerged. Interestingly enough, Im's Festival, about a matriach's passing, was made in the same year as Park's film. Im has said Festival served two purposes for him: to document Korean traditions at risk of extinction and to resolve his guilt around never performing hyodo (children's filial duty to their parents) for his mother. Park documents these same traditions, although not as meticulously as Im, such as feeding rice to the corpse and placing a marble between the corpse's lips. And including a director, Chan-woo, as one of the characters -- acted by Park Chul-soo himself -- we can not help but presume the character is a self-critique, similar to the role Ahn Sung-ki's character seems to play for Im in Festival. Interestingly, Chan-woo is asked to stand aside by his Uncle, allowing his younger brother to assume the role of the eldest son, since Chan-woo has been away from the village for so long, he is less familiar with the necessary rituals required.

Although the intrusion within the frame of disruptive sunlight in some scenes can be explained away as a desired documentary effect, the bad makeup, (or poor lighting of the actors and actresses that reveals the obvious makeup), is not something we can excuse. Such poor production reminds us how the high quality we've come to expect from Korean films had yet to take shape by 1996. Despite these flaws and the plethora of characters that are unnecessarily confusing at times, what Park's film shows most vividly is the community that emerges from moments that signify life's stages. As weddings are often more for the parents than the bride and groom, so are funerals often more for the living than the dead. This funeral is a time to eat, gossip, campaign, and transact business. And it is a time for traditions to be passed on through mimicry, such as the delightful scene where Pa-yoo repeats everything the men say, through repetition, such as the constant preparing and re-preparing of food, flipping of pa jun, pouring of soju, and through assimilation, such as the communal viewing of a Korean soap opera amongst the women, the snapping of gender-segregated photographs, and the very portrayal of all these events within this film.

The Gingko Bed (1996)

After telling French film critic Adrien Gombeaud that I was working on an essay about the significance of Kang Je-gyu's film Shiri -- a piece that thankfully was never published since I was far from fully happy with what I wrote -- I received an email from him wanting to make sure I didn't forget to underscore the success of Kang's debut film The Gingko Bed. Gombeaud made this extra effort with me because he wanted Shiri placed in its proper context. He didn't need to worry because I too wanted to challenge portrayals of Shiri as something that 'came out of nowhere.' Shiri wasn't out of its element, but instead a fish in water, a moment waiting to happen.

And Kang's work on The Gingko Bed was as much a part of Korean Cinema's productive milieu than any other. The year 1996, in some ways, represents a moment of greater things simmering underneath celluloid packaging, all the ingredients were beginning to mix for a vibrant Korean cinema to soon emerge. Kang demonstrated his potential with a very respectable gross of roughly 450,000 Seoul admissions, the second highest grossing Korean film that year (behind Two Cops 2), and one of only two Korean films to finish the year in the top ten.

The Gingko Bed tells the tale of time-crossed lovers court musician Jung-mun (Han Suk-kyu -- Christmas In August, Shiri) and princess Mi-dan (Jin Hee-kyung -- Sweet Sixties) whose love for each other was severed by the possessive General Hwang (Shin Hyun-jun, as equally fully mascara-ed here as he is in Guns & Talks) over 1,000 years ago. Present day print-maker and art teacher Su-hyun (also played by Han Suk-kyu) is about to find out through strange dreams that he is the reincarnated soul of Jung-mun. These visionary dreams lead him to acquire a finely crafted and extremely heavy bed made from the wood of two gingko trees. The trees are alleged to be reincarnations of our two immortal lovers. General Hwang has resurfaced in the present day through stealing the heart of a rapist in order to track down and kill Su-hyun before Mi-dan can reach him. Mi-dan realizes human form temporarily through borrowing the body of a patient of Su-hyun's girlfriend, Dr. Ryu Sun-young (veteran actress Shim Hye-jin who would later star in yet another film about the past lives of a tree, Acacia). Unfortunately, Dr. Ryu pronounces this patient dead, so when Mi-dan returns his body, the patient's resurrection causes controversy for Dr. Ryu and her hospital.

The Gingko Bed is not my kinda film, too overly melodramatic too often, but I can see why it was so successful. The story maintains its internal logic for the most part while tapping into successful melodramatic tropes. This idea of reincarnated lovers will be used again and again in Korean Cinema in films such as Bungee Jumping of Their Own and The Classic. Further, stories of unattainable love, where some type of barrier limits the opportunities for a couple to consummate their love, e.g., Ditto, Il Mare, Failan, and, well, Shiri, turn up almost every year. I'm not claiming that The Gingko Bed "started" this trend. I haven't seen enough older Korean Films to make such a claim, and I assume the theme has been around for years. Still, The Gingko Bed's success may have made such stories more likely in the future. Still, The Gingko Bed may inhabit an interesting place within this genre since Dr. Ryu, along with being very self-actualized, eventually displays a interesting sympathy void of jealousy for her husband's time-crossing "affair." As for other aspects of the film, the suspense is held up well, buffered by the score when the action is lagging, although I personally didn't need the coda and wish it would have closed with the scene where all parties meet and Dr. Ryu attempts to clear her name. Considering the other films produced in 1996 that I've seen, the special effects utilized by Kang are decent, particularly when General Hwang steals the rapist's heart. Still, a scene of ancient decapitation had this child of Monty Python and The Holy Grail unintentionally laughing -- 'Tis a Flesh Wound!'.

Although Kang is not why I come to Korean Cinema, The Gingko Bed is my favorite of his three films. Taeguki may have proved to many that Shiri was no fluke, but The Gingko Bed shows the firmly rooted ground that Kang began upon prior to reaching the mountainous heights of the modern Korean blockbuster.

From 1996 onwards

Although 1996 was a year that saw impressive debuts by some future giants of Korean cinema, perhaps the biggest debut of all was that of Korea's first international film festival. The launching of PIFF, the Pusan International Film Festival, was an ambitious and daring gamble that has proved to be one of Korean cinema's biggest success stories. Apart from its burgeoning importance to Asian cinema as a whole, the festival also served as the major catalyst in making Korea an active participant in the international film community, rather than just an observer.

The strong international reception of the festival also gave Korean cinema a platform on which to highlight some of its best films from the past and present. PIFF's first edition in 1996 featured debut works by Hong Sang-soo (The Day a Pig Fell Into the Well), Kim Ki-duk (Crocodile), and Yim Soon-rye (Three Friends). Hong Sang-soo has been described by many as Korea's most talented arthouse director; Kim Ki-duk's unique, tortured vision has fascinated international festival audiences, while Yim Soon-rye marks the first major female auteur to debut in contemporary Korea. PIFF was instrumental in launching these three directors onto the world film scene.

One last directorial debut of note was that of Kang Je-gyu with the fantasy romance The Gingko Bed. Although it proved a strong hit at the box-office and contributed to the emergence of actor Han Suk-kyu, it would be Kang's second film Shiri in 1999 that would really make waves in the industry.

A Single Spark (1995)

Films about historical figures are mostly spoiler-free since the story being told is public knowledge. It was expected that any review of Titanic would talk about the ship sinking. So the majority of people going to see Park Kwang-su's biopic A Single Spark know what they'll witness at the end. The film chronicles the life of labor activist, Chun Tae-il. Anyone who is even only slightly aware of his legacy knows that he set himself on fire in protest of labor law violations. And for those who don't, the DVD cover design and the images before the DVD menu comes up show Chun in fire-y flight. Plus, Park himself alludes to the climactic scene immediately in the opening sequence. I'm glad this is the case, because the scenes of Chun's self-immolation in Park's film are perhaps the most indelible images in all of South Korean Cinema and it would be hard to restrain myself from not talking about these images here.

A Single Spark is Park's most commercially successful film so far, and the topic played a huge part in this success. Chun Tae-il was a labor activist in the late 1960's who exposed the horrendous conditions at the sweatshops run at Seoul Peace Market. In organizing against such conditions, one was by association organizing against the oppressive government of Park Chung-hee. Michael Breen has noted when describing the shamanistic traditions underlying Korean culture that "The worst thing the living can do to someone they hate is commit suicide because of him." And in 1970, the 23 year-old Chun Tae-il followed this philosophy and set himself on fire from the flames of a burning book of Korean labor law, chanting slogans such as "Comply with labor law!" and "We are not machines!". This act solidified Chun as a rallying cry of protest against the South Korean regimes and policies of the 70's and 80's to the point where fire extinguishers became regular gear for Korean police at such protests.

Park has structured the film within two slightly different times periods, representing Chun's life (here portrayed by Hong Kyeong-in of Our Twisted Hero and Hi, Dharma!) in black and white while, five years later, the life of an underground intellectual writing a biography of Chun's life, named Kim Sang-jin (Moon Sung-keun of The Black Republic, To You From Me, Green Fish), is portrayed in color. (The author character in this film is a fictional character. According to Korean film scholar Kyung Hyun Kim, the real-life writer of the influential biography of Chun is believed to have been ghost written by a human rights lawyer and underground intellectual named Cho Yang-nae.) Kim and his wife (Kim Sun-jae) are being followed by the police for their own involvement in the labor movement. Juxtaposing Chun's and Kim's life, Park underscores how "nothing has changed in five years" since Chun's death. And by releasing the film in 1996, Park appears to request that we reflect on what has and hasn't changed in our present moment.

I am not completely clear how the film's dialogue falls on Korean ears - and being that the screenplay is written by none other than Lee Chang Dong (director of Green Fish, Peppermint Candy, and Oasis) and the fact that Kyung Hyun Kim translates one of the slogans Chun screams while burning as "Do not waste my life!" when the English subtitles never provide such a translation, I am hesitant to lay any blame on Lee for the dialogue problems - but the English translation errs where many political biopics fail. That is, dialogue that comes off as didactic in efforts to emphasize certain political points and important moments in the life of the political figure. Park and Lee want to chronicle a great deal here, such as the tuberculosis that ran rampant in the poor ventilation of the sweatshops, the enforced injections of amphetamines to keep sleep-deprived workers awake, and all the poignant discussions at secret labor meetings. But their efforts to cover so much ground result in the dialogue telling us what to think rather than letting the audience come to their own interpretations while watching each scene. For the scenes with the most power are the ones where we are left to figure things out for ourselves, such as the scene where Chun lies in a self-made grave or when Kim, still hiding from authorities, sneaks a view of his pregnant wife in order to send each other dialogue-less 'I love you's and 'don't give up's merely by the expressions on their faces. The black and white scenes are the most beautiful in this film, but the scenes of all hues are greatly enhanced by Song Hong-seob's score, presenting pre-Boards of Canada warbles for the contemplative scenes and percussive pieces - reminiscent of Peter Gabriel's ode to South African activist Stephen Biko - sounding like heartbeats resonating from the character on screen.

The most beautiful shot, and the one exploited in the film's marketing, is that of Chun's self-immolation. Yet portraying such a horrible culmination of a young life, however politically motivated, with such beauty is ironic since setting one's self on fire isn't pretty. And for all Chun's deification here, it is truly saddening that he had to take this step to speak out against the injustices to have the impact he did. However, character Kim Sang-jin's worries that Chun's work would be forgotten have been made much less likely with the memorable images of his life that director Park Kwang-su has provided in A Single Spark. (Adam Hartzell)


A Single Spark ("Areumdaun cheongnyeon Jeon Tae-il") Directed by Park Kwang-su. Screenplay by Lee Chang-dong, Kim Jeong-hwan, Yi Hyo-in, Hur Jin-ho, Park Kwang-su. Starring Hong Kyung-in, Moon Sung-keun, Kim Seon-jae, Lee Ju-sil, Myung Kay-nam, Dokko Young-jae, An So-young, Kim Seung-soo. Cinematography by Yoo Young-gil. Produced by Keyweck Shidae. 96 min, 35mm, color/b&w. Rating received on November 13, 1995. Released on November 18, 1995. Total admissions: 235,935. Presented at the 46th Berlin International Film Festival.