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| First day at school – a Disney moment |
Delve into any well-balanced childhood and you’re sure to
find a candy store: our ephemeral youth’s source of confectionary delights and
perpetual euphoria. During my
childhood I had a particularly aggressive sweet tooth and the easiest way to
motivate my obedience or to inspire my eternal adoration was to drag me into a
store full of sweets. I grew older and these gave way to popcorn as I found
myself gazing up at the silver screen, the candy store of my adulthood. Between these two worlds lies a transition
and at the forefront of it, an enduring symbol that came both before and will
likely remain long after. I speak
of Disney, the dream factory that is also the world’s most powerful media
conglomerate. It is a kaleidoscopic
candy store that titillates our senses beyond our sweet-craving taste
buds. It is also calculating,
cloying, and devious but I seek not to denigrate its brilliant success, merely
to point out what makes it so infectious: formula.
Just like the chemicals that bind together to delight our
youthful, undeveloped palates in the candy store, the Walt Disney Company
applies a rigid, time-tested formula to all of its products. The formula has many permutations and
its application is effectuated, for film and animation, through themes, morals,
and standards, but also by way of a carefully constructed mise-en-scene. When done right, as it often is by
Disney and even more frequently by its subsidiary Pixar, the result is clear: a
good film that is guaranteed a solid ROI.
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| 'Sunny' reconnects in the present |
Recently, Koreans were bowled over by the extraordinary success
of
Sunny, a seemingly small production, as it laid local blockbusters to waste
throughout the long summer doldrums, at least until War of the Arrows came
along to save some face for the industry.
First off I would like to contest the fact that
Sunny was an unexpected
sleeper hit. The media certainly
portrayed it as such, and the people behind the film were happy to go along
with that story, as an underdog’s success is always more palatable to the
viewer. I believe that
Sunny, in
the revered tradition of the great Mouse house, relied on an intricate formula
designed to hit all the right buttons.
I’m certain that the filmmakers knew that they had a hit on their hands,
if not quite aware of the heights that it would soar to.
When handled poorly, formula can sound the death bells for a
film but when done right, both the filmmakers and the spectators reap the
rewards. A recent
New Yorker profile of Andrew Stanton, the director of
Finding Nemo (2003),
Wall-E (2008),
and the upcoming
John Carter (2012), revealed the inner workings of the world’s
most successful and consistent animation production house. Pixar films, as it turns out, are always
a work in progress, early drafts and cuts are put forward to the Braintrust, an
in-house think tank that collaboratively repairs any perceived problems. As Stanton said, “We're in this weird, hermetically sealed freakazoid place where everyone's tying their best to do their best – and the films still suck for three of the four years it takes to make them.”
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| Unsuspecting |
Sunny begins in the present and focusses on the comfortable
life of mother and wife Na-mi. She
visits her mother in hospital and recognizes a cancer-stricken occupant of an
adjacent private room, an old high school friend whom she hasn’t seen in 25
years. They were close and part of
a band of seven friends called ‘Sunny’.
Saddened by her friend’s illness but reinvigorated with nostalgia she
goes home and listens to one of her favorite songs from the 1980s. Soon after, she drives by her old
school and witnesses a hoard of uniformed children making their way up the
cobbled path leading towards the gate.
She injects herself into the crowd and with the help of some dizzying
camerawork, clever editing, a Disney-esque theme song, and an across the board
costume change, she is transported back to the 1980s, the scene of her youth. Today is the young Na-mi’s first day in
a new school.
I don’t know what the developmental process was for Sunny
but it is something I would be very keen to find out a little more about. The exquisite craft in its making seems
effortless, which almost always means that a huge amount of effort was expended
to get it to that point. During
the first transition to the past, on the path to the school, I was immediately
reminded of Disney, and that impression sunk as I delved deeper into the narrative. Sunny was awarded, among other notable
prizes, Best Editing at last month’s 31st Daejong Film Awards (the
Korean equivalent to the Oscars).
Now that I have seen it, I can see that there was really no competition
in that category. Rarely is any
film, let alone a Korean one, so well edited. The look, feel, and especially the nostalgia of the film
reminds me of one of my personal favorites, the criminally overlooked French
Canadian coming of age film C.R.A.Z.Y. (2003). Particularly the magnificent moment in the scene where the
young Na-mi follows the boy she likes to a café bar, when he comes up from
behind and puts his headphones on her, instantly flooding the soundtrack with
an engrossing song. The nostalgia
effect is crucial to Sunny’s success, but far-be-it from only appealing to
adults who came of age in the 1980s, the radiating, bombastic, and positively
addictive soundtrack is, just like C.R.A.Z.Y., one of the chief elements
which makes it nigh on impossible to resist.
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| Surprised/engrossed |
The flashback sequences, which take up a little more than
half of the film’s running time, are, like our merry band of youthful
protagonists, sunny. In fact, they
are positively sundrenched.
Considering how much it rains Korea, this seems like an element that has
been exaggerated to more effectively transport the audience, collectively, back
to their youth, or at least the parts we like to remember. Of course memory is very deceptive and
we do frequently remember things differently from the way they actually
happened. Colours are also
exaggerated in the film, for instance the predominant ones in the present are
monochromatic: from the black and white of the school uniforms; the clean sunlit
living room of Na-mi’s home; the caustic white of the hospital’s rooms and
corridors; and the general lack of colour in the wintry surroundings. In the past, the colour palate is
explosive: the bold primaries of the un-uniformed children; the many different
Nike bags; the make-up; the accessories; and the verdant colours of spring.
The 1980s, just like much of the 20
th century,
were a difficult time for Korea. A
few years earlier, one autocratic president (Park Chung-hee) was assassinated
and replaced with another (Chun Doo-hwan) and then the decade got off to an
awful start with the infamous Gwangju massacre. It was only near the end of the decade that signs of a more
liberated Korea began to emerge.
Sunny’s protagonists seem to live in a bubble: they are more concerned
with their Nike handbags than with the political turmoil of the period. They are young and perhaps they do not
understand what is going on but the film prominently features indications of
troubled times: Na-mi’s brother
is a political activist and is at odds with his parents; platoons of soldiers entertain themselves in alleys as others go about their business. In one of the film’s most memorable
scenes, ‘Sunny’ goes head to head with a rival gang alongside student activists
battling it out with riot police.
Their behavior references the jop’ok (gang) culture which pervades the flashbacks of the film. Their leader Choon-hwa (Kang So-ra) is reminiscent of both Jang Dong-gun in
Friend (2001) and Kwon Sang-woo in
Once Upon a Time in High School (2004). While the popularity of gang culture in the 1980s may well have had something to do with the social ills of the time, I wondered how
'Sunny' could be so disconnected with what was happening around them. Is it apathy, ignorance, or
escapism? In any case, for some of
the characters, things don’t end up so sunny, so perhaps this signifies that,
ultimately, no one in Korea was immune to the troubles of the time.
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Rival girl gangs against the backdrop
of political turmoil |
The film features a lot of protagonists and twice as many
actors to portray them in both the past and the present, naturally a lot of the
success of the film relies on how well they inhabit their roles and how they
interact with one another. Thankfully,
the cast is fit for the task and uniformly wonderful, they make
Sunny a joy to
watch. Particularly impressive is
Shim Eun-kyeong as the young Na-mi, while very eccentric, her performance shows
off her great comic timing and her endearing naivety. While only 16, she has already built up an impressive resume,
including:
Possessed (2009),
The Quiz Show Scandal (2010), and
Romantic Heaven
(2011).
As previously mentioned, the editing in
Sunny is
masterful. It is also well complemented
by spirited cinematography, great costumes, and strong production design. All of these elements come together under the direction of Kang Hyeong-cheol, who expertly bring to life his own
sensational script. Kang
previously made the enormously successful
Scandal Makers (2008) but he has
outdone himself this time around by deftly applying a formula of friendship, music, memory, social commentary, and a little Disney Magic, to what will easily be one of the finest films of 2011.
★★★★☆
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| The young protagonists of Sunny |
Reviews and features on Korean film appear regularly on Modern Korean Cinema. For film news, external reviews, and box office analysis, take a look at the Korean Box Office Update, Korean Cinema News and the Weekly Review Round-up, which appear weekly on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday mornings (GMT+1).
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