Since the days of the New Korean Wave of the late 80s and early 90s men in Korean cinema have frequently found themselves on the road in
search of answers, a home and their identity. In contemporary Korean cinema male characters are for the
most part much more comfortably settled within the progressive society of
modern Korea and yet their philosophical dilemmas still simmer under the
surface, refusing to go away.
Four years ago, Na Hong-jin burst onto the scene with one of
the most remarkable debuts in modern times. The Chaser was an
under-the-radar genre effort from a rookie director with two mid-level stars,
and yet it became one of the highest grossing films of the year and along with The Good, the Bad and the Weird was also
one of Korea’s most popular exports.
Today, in the spring of 2012, Na and his two stars Kim Yun-seok and Ha
Jung-woo are among the heavyweights of the Korean film industry. Kim’s last five films have all
attracted well over 2 million admissions; in fact most of them have soared over
the 5 million mark (The Chaser; Woochi, 2009; Punch, 2011), a enormous benchmark in the Korean industry that few
films have reached. The
charismatic Ha is now one of the country’s top leading men, indeed two of his
films topped the box office last month alone (Nameless Gangster, Love
Fiction).
For Na’s sophomore feature, the gang got back together again
and delivered another worldwide hit in The
Yellow Sea, originally released in Korea in December 2010 and presented
internationally at the Cannes Film Festival in May 2011. Just like his first film, Na’s follow
up is firmly rooted in genre but disassembles and reconstructs it to further
his own ends. Beginning as an
ominous rumble in the distance, the film accelerates to the point that it
becomes a heart-pumping descent into despair.
Ha Jung-woo plays Goo-nam, a down on his luck cab driver in
the Yanbian Korean autonomous prefecture of Northeast China who loses at
mahjong every night as he hopelessly tries to earn enough money to pay off the
loan sharks who funded his wife’s passage to Korea. He’s offered a job to clear his debt by Jeong-hak (Kim
Yun-seok), which sees him smuggled into Seoul in order to kill a man. He has a week to carry out the contract
and while on the peninsula will try to track down his wife whom he hasn’t heard
from since she left.
Na’s mise-en-scene is downbeat, gritty and very
evocative. We follow Goo-nam
around Yanji, a dirty city full of forgotten souls. It operates like a lawless border town, steeped in vice and
hopelessness. The film is split
into a few chapters which each up the stakes over the last. Goo-nam’s debasement is the key
narrative point for much of the film and more than anything, what defines this
is his fractured identity.
Throughout most of The
Yellow Sea he find himself in transit or on the run. He is preyed upon and taken advantage
of from the outset; his lack of clear national identity is also the source of
his lack of confidence. There is
an early scene which features stray dogs and it quickly becomes clear that this
is what he is. He only fights back
through the basest instincts of survival.
Much of the action takes place in boats, buses, cars, ports and roads
and Goo-nam is always in danger.
Like the emasculated males that found themselves wandering the roads of
earlier Korean cinema, he seeks his identity through lines of transportation
but in modern Korea, a country that often seeks to forget about its past, he is
not welcome. He is a visible and
painful reminder of an oppressive and traumatic recent history. Whether jumping off a boat, apprehended
on a bus, chased on the street or crashed into while driving a car, he is
forced into the wild, away from civilization. Conversely it is only in these scenes, high up in the mountains,
that the threat dissipates.
Despite the looming danger, he is safe in the untouched and austere calm
of the outdoors.
The Yellow Sea
begins as a gritty drama and thriller, and then turns into a suspense film for
its second chapter but then becomes an unapologetic and propulsive action film
for the significant remainder of the running time which, though 140 minutes
long, is breathless. It’s an
exhausting and sometimes morbid experience to be sure, but the pure energy and
raw vitality of the set pieces are exceptionally effective. Much of the pulsating back half of the
film had me short of breath.
Just like in The Chaser,
Ha and Kim are exceptional. Though
their roles as protagonist and antagonist are reversed, they are remarkably
engaging. Ha truly embodies
Goo-nam’s despair while Kim, despite his dead eyes and listless mumble is one
of the most ferocious and animalistic cinema villains of recent times.
I will say that The
Yellow Sea is best enjoyed as a genre effort as held under close dramatic
scrutiny, it may turn up some unsatisfying conclusions. A small price to pay in my eyes for
what was one of the most invigorating cinematic experiences of the last few years. While Korean cinema may have a lot more
to offer than its thrillers, when a film like this comes along, it’s easy to
see what all the fuss is about.
The Yellow Sea is out on DVD/Blu-ray in the UK on March 26th, from Eureka Entertainment.
★★★★☆
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