Saturday, December 10, 2011

Jopok Week: Masculinity and Beauty in A Bittersweet Life and The Man From Nowhere – Part II

Questions of Masculinity and Beauty in the Jopok Films A Bittersweet Life (2005) and The Man From Nowhere (2010)


(contd.)

A Bittersweet Life

The question of who dies or survives is not a superficial question.  For Sun-woo, ultimately he is the author of the circle in which he becomes ensnared.  This truth is reflective of A Bittersweet Life’s very insular world.  The gangsters in this film hardly interact with the daytime, if they can help it; whatever dealings with the international world that the criminal organisation may have the film does not show or mention.  The irony is that Sun-woo could not help it:  Sun-woo is assigned to look after his boss’ much younger girlfriend Hee-soo for several days while he is away because he is suspicious of her having a boyfriend.  Like a rope that has reached its breaking point, Sun-woo's meeting with Hee-soo unravels the strands of loyalty and honour that had sustained his good standing with his boss.  After tasting a different rhythm and colour of life by accompanying Hee-soo in her day-to-day activities as a student, Sun-woo makes the decision to not kill Hee-soo and her boyfriend.  But what is a gesture of goodwill in the sweet light of day is a death wish in the underground shadows of noir.

The themes of loyalty, betrayal, and revenge; the narrative development of a woman triggering the protagonist's “downfall”; and the jungle of marginalised characters encountered to get to the boss are all there.  But Kim revels in playing with these conventions to bend the jopok under his spell.  One of the film’s distinct characteristics is the segment that bridges Sun-woo’s escape from his boss’ henchmen and his last killing spree.  In this unexpected, comical sequence, which could be a short film unto itself, Sun-woo meets a Laurel and Hardy-like pair of gunrunners and has a great seated showdown with their boss.  It is a bold move because this sequence basically brings to a standstill the dramatic action of revenge, but it showcases Kim’s distinct perspective of things and references the great peculiarity of his previous films like The Quiet Family (1998) and The Foul King (2000).  In this way, Kim demonstrates an incredible confidence in his interpretation of noir as a narrative template as well as visual pleasure.  From a bloody standoff on an ice rink, a muddy buried-alive punishment that turns into a veritable resurrection, the visual motif of lamps and turning on/off lights as a more literal illustration of noir lighting and mise en scène, to the final meeting with his boss at the Melville-esque lounge with the words la dolce vita between them in the background in all its irony, A Bittersweet Life is full of cool, masculine attitude and mood.



The Man From Nowhere

The Man From Nowhere is much more diversified in terms of the scope of criminal activities with which one must contend.  It brings together the Chinese mafia, a Thai assassin, child trafficking, drug trafficking, and organ harvesting to create the formidable criminal web in which pawnshop owner Tae-shik unwittingly finds himself through his acquaintance with a little girl, So-mi, who lives in the same apartment complex as him.  Unlike Sun-woo in A Bittersweet Life, Tae-shik has a backstory – and a tragic family one at that – which informs his conscious reaction to the things that happen to him and the things he witnesses with regards to So-mi.  Even if his actions yield unexpected results, his objective to rescue So-mi never falters.  That he ends up having to confront a big-time criminal organisation and put a stop to their illegal activities in the process is ultimately secondary but convenient and dramatic in a narrative sense.

How Tae-shik gets embroiled in the criminal organisation run by brothers Man-seok and Jong-seok is complicated.  While some regard this complexity as a flaw, it actually reveals the film’s smartness in terms of keeping up with these complex, globalised criminal times.  The parallel strands of Tae-shik finding more about Man-seok and Jong-seok’s extensive criminal operations and the police finding more about Tae-shik’s international special agent background reflect the reality of a more connected, complicated, diverse world.  Lee’s desire to reflect this multilayered reality may also help to explain his decision to have Tae-shik’s most electrifying fights be against Ramrowan, the Thai assassin who works for Man-seok and Jong-seok, instead of the brothers themselves.  Aside from the splendid choreography, the most striking detail about their confrontations is the surprising absence of extra-diegetic music.  The sequence that consists of the silence of their first fight in a bathroom and the pulsating sounds of the dance floor as they stand and face each other as if to initiate a duel, despite the crowd of people dancing obliviously around them, is an effective example of visual and aural contrast and also foreshadows Tae-shik and Ramrowan’s even more vigorous knife fight towards the end.  At the same time, Tae-shik and Ramrowan’s confrontations rise above the story to occupy a whole other dimension unto itself, which accounts for the film’s stylisation.  In this sense, unlike his colleagues, Ramrowan serves less to drive the plot than to affirm and spectacularise Tae-shik’s character.  Ultimately, nothing topples Tae-shik’s coolness and moral sense of self, which affirm each other throughout the film: so guarded of his past, but it tempers his actions in the present.



Angels with Dirty, Pretty Faces

David Thomson writes of Alain Delon in Le samouraï, “[T]he enigmatic angel of French film, only thirty-two in 1967, and nearly feminine.  Yet so earnest and immaculate as to be thought lethal or potent.”  This description of Delon’s taciturn, schizophrenic assassin in Le samouraï is perhaps not the first image of a killer that comes immediately to mind. It certainly does not apply to the majority of assassins or gangsters in cinema, past or present.  In fact, it applies only very rarely.  Not even Ryan Gosling in Drive (2011, Nicholas Winding Refn) fits this bill, regardless of the frequent comparisons made between this film and Melville’s work; marvelous attempt, but not quite.  
Only Louis Koo in Election 2 (2006, Johnnie To) – stunning, menacing, and intensely still all at the same time – is a worthy match.  In contemporary Korean cinema, Lee Byung-hun and Won Bin.

Fans and critics alike frequently discuss these actors’ attractiveness, in terms similar to the ones that Thomson uses above to describe Delon:  “feminine,” “earnest,” “immaculate.”  Any filmmaker who casts these actors must somehow take into account their attractiveness and proceed accordingly, so that part of the interest in these actors in a jopok film – with all of its grimy, sordid violence – consists in seeing how the film uses their attractiveness:  is it downplayed, made more conspicuous?  For the actor, such as Delon, these gangster/noir films are a way to overcome or make rough one’s attractiveness and to be taken seriously as a dramatic actor.


For A Bittersweet Life, Lee Byung-hun’s looks were crucial for Kim Ji-woon.  In a 2009 master class, Kim elaborated on his choice of Lee to play Sun-woo:  “One of the reasons I cast him was that in French noir, the most [well-known] protagonist was Alain Delon.  I thought that Lee Byung-hun is the Korean actor who most resembles him.  Alain Delon doesn't have a lot of dialogue, either.  I worked it in because I thought he was the one who could bring the eyes and aura of Alain Delon.”  Accordingly, Kim shot Lee in close-ups and extreme close-ups throughout the film to express the gamut of overwhelming emotion that Sun-woo must go through without resorting to dialogue.  In turn, Lee brings the eyes, aura, and walk that recall the steely coolness of Delon.  Lee's walk alone conveys a myriad of things, such as in the opening scene where he descends from the sky lounge to the underground bar – the camera closely following from behind – for the first fight scene.  Or in the scene where Sun-woo walks towards Hee-soo to take her home – the camera also closely behind – and then does a quick about-face when he sees her male friend get there before him. The performance is wordless, but Lee gets the giddiness of a schoolboy in love as well as the shyness, vulnerability, and embarrassment that go with it.

For The Man From Nowhere, Lee Jeong-beom also made symbolic use of Won Bin’s pretty boy looks.  Lee speaks of casting Won Bin in a 2011 interview, “In the beginning I had an older character in mind.  But Won's face drew me to him even more.  He has a beautiful face, but when he is not speaking his face is cold.  For example, in the scenes with the child his youthful side would show, while in the action scenes his face grew colder.”  Lee, like Melville with Delon, drew amply from and enhanced the mysterious allure of Won Bin walking quietly but determinedly, looking, and listening intently, or simply standing still in order to create the emotion and mood of scenes.  The film introduces Tae-shik in such a way, which makes the fight scenes and aggressive dialogue all the more impactful.  Ultimately, why The Man From Nowhere works despite its borrowings of kidnapping, busting a drug/trafficking ring, and an ex-special agent rekindling his deadly training plots is due largely to the charismatic tension between the jopok genre and Won Bin’s pretty boy-ness.  The first part of the film relies heavily on this tension, with Won Bin’s face half covered by his hair, while the rest of the film and his subsequent haircut are the consequences of the full-on collision between Won Bin and the ultra-violent, ultra masculine world of jopok.


But what distinguishes Lee Byung-hun and Won Bin from Delon are the “manly tears,” so prevalent in South Korean films, jopok films included.  In both A Bittersweet Life and The Man From Nowhere, Lee and Won each have their moment of manly tears, something that would never happen to Delon’s characters.  What are the roots of this motif (see Pierce Conran’s previous post on MKC)?  Perhaps it goes back to the issue of reviving not just the screen image of Korean masculinity but a particular one that taps into Korean cinema’s history of melodrama and aestheticises masculinity and emotion simultaneously.

Part I of Masculinity and Beauty in A Bittersweet Life and The Man From Nowhere


Rowena Santos Aquino recently obtained her doctorate degree in Cinema and Media Studies.  She is a contributing writer to Asia Pacific Arts.  She has also contributed to other online outlets, such as Midnight Eye and Red Feather, and to print journals, including Transnational Cinemas and Asian Cinema.  She also loves football.  She can be found musing about film and football on her twitter page.


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 UpdateKorean Cinema News and the Weekly Review Round-up, which appear weekly on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday mornings (GMT+1).

To keep up with the best in Korean film you can sign up to our RSS Feed, like us on Facebook, or follow us on Twitter.

Friday, December 9, 2011

Jopok Week: Kim Sung-su's Beat (비트, Biteu) 1997



1997 was a pretty big year for Korean gangster films, no less than three of them wound up in the year-end top 10.  Song Kang-ho had his breakout performance with No. 3, Lee Chang-dong released his excellent debut Green Fish, and Jung Woo-sung, Ko So-young, Lim Chang-jung, and Yu Oh-seung made a name for themselves in Kim Sung-su’s Beat.  1997 was also an important year because of the disastrous IMF crisis in Korea.  After numerous big corporations failed the country had to be bailed out by the International Monetary Fund to the tune of over $50 billion.  After nearly a decade of enormous year-on-year gains, Korea’s economy drew flat and nearly dipped into a recession. 

Many critics and academics, assert that “the revival and popularity of the jop'ok cycle in the post-IMF period can be seen as a consequence of  and a response to, the national economic crisis” (Shin, 2005: 123).  Friend (2001) in particular is mentioned in this argument.  While I agree to some extent that the prevalence of social identity crises and anxieties in young men depicted in contemporary Korean cinema can be attributed to this cataclysmic financial event, I believe there is much evidence that would argue that this trend was already in evidence before the crisis.


None of the aforementioned films could have been designed with the crisis in mind since it happened in July, months after all of the productions had wrapped.  The gangster film made its comeback earlier in the decade with Im Kwon-taek’s The General’s Son trilogy, of which the first two installments topped the Korean box office charts for 1990 and 1991 (as far as locals films are concerned).  Earlier this week, as I examined gangster films at the Korean boxoffice, I also noted that three gangster films from 1996 wound up in the top 10 as well.  However, the works from 1997 are more notable as they bear much more similarities with the supposed post-IMF crisis gangster cycle of films.  Each has its own stake to that claim but I want to talk about Beat which was not only produced before the crisis but I believe to be the precursor to Friend.  Aside from a similar narrative, they share the same themes and explore similar social mores and anxieties of the young male in modern Korea.

Min (Jung Sung-woo) is a high school student who likes get into fights with his friend Tae-su (Yu Oh-seung).  He is sent to a new school and makes a new friend, Hwan-gyu (Lim Chang-jung), and meets Ro-mi (Ko So-young) while Tae-su gradually falls in with the local mob.  As the narrative progresses Min is torn between joining Tae-su down his criminal path and a more virtuous life with the upwardly mobile Ro-mi.


As many films would do subsequently, such as Die Bad (2000), Friend, Conduct Zero (2002), and Gangster High (2006), Beat examines apathetic youth violence and how it can lead to gang integration.  Though in addition to quantifying the role of male peer pressure, machismo, and home situations in this violence, it also throws in something remarkably modern:  brand fetishization.  Min’s love interest, Ro-mi, asserts early on that anyone interested in “sex, screen, or sports is a loser” and she is relentlessly studious though she presents a vain and feckless exterior to her equally studious classmates.  Min wears a Nike shirt modeled after the Chicago Bulls player Dennis Rodman and covets Tae-su’s motorbike.  Inaddition, early on in the film Min is auctioned off at a bar by Hwang-gyu and Ro-mi buys him for $100.  This in effect commodifies him, which can provide an interesting reading of Jung Woo-sung’s star status.  He’s never been viewed as a consummate actor and relies more on his looks and physique.  Aside from fetishizing him, Ro-mi’s purchase of Min switches the genders roles as he becomes her servant.  She is very frank with him and puts him down at every opportunity though eventually she can’t help herself, she loses her composure and falls for him.


It’s interesting to consider the purpose of the brand worshipping in Beat as it coincides with frequent references to America.  Examples include Min’s shirt, Hwang-gyu’s rapping and ostentatious clothing, and especially Ro-mi’s use of English aphorisms and her made up enrollment in a New York university.  While the ideal of America may no longer be quite so vaunted in these times, back in 1997 it very much embodied a dream of escape, personal gratification, and the pursuit of happiness.  Min dreams of achieving something, though it is not clear what, and moving past his childhood marred by his promiscuous and absentee mother.  For Ro-mi, her lie, machinated by her parents who wish to live vicariously through her, hides the truth of a psychiatry stint.

Much of the first half of Beat focusses on the extraordinary pressure put on children to succeed academically.  Ro-mi’s stay at a mental institute seems to result from this, though it is never explained.  Of course it was probably triggered by her friend’s suicide on a subway platform before her very eyes, after failing a test.  She probably blamed herself as immediately before she had boasted of a top score, keep in mind her friends believe that she does little work at all and socializes most nights.


Min’s stay in high school may be brief but he suffers similar problems as his mother berates him for not doing better but clearly she is not a good motivator and her behavior, which incongruously coexists with her aspirations for him, may be what leads him to his violent behavior, though at heart he seems rather sweet-natured.  Eventually he disrupts the school order by smashing up the teacher’s office which, after a brief rush of power and adrenaline, gets him thrown out of the system and will eventually lead to gang integration, despite an honest and initially rewarding attempt at a business venture with Hwang-gyu which gets violently shut down by the government as their establishment is demolished.  The sequence brings to mind the brutal repression of the student demonstrations of the 1980s.

I’m rambling a bit but the more I think about Beat, the more impressed I am by it, it seems to combine some of the social relevance of the Korean New Wave, which unofficially ended a year earlier with Jang Sun-woo’s A Petal, and the aesthetics and themes of modern Korean film.  In light of this analysis the leap between Beat and Friend seems far less pronounced, indeed production values sem to be the greatest disparity.  Though the film is no stylistic slouch as it employs Wong Kar-wai’s cool step motion film style that he employed throughout the 1990s, though later Korean films would be far more important to developing Korean film style.  There also something to be said about the homoerotic vibe between Min and Tae-soo, I suppose it might be a facet of their shared machismo and hyper-masculinities.  Beat stands as one of the first great jopok films of new Korean cinema, see it if you get a chance.

★★★★☆


See Also:

Born to Kill (1996)

Further Reading:

Shin, Chi-yun, "Two of a Kind: Gender and Friendship in Friend and Take Care of My Cat," in New Korean Cinema, ed. Shin Chi-yun and Julian Stringer (New York, NYU Press, 2005), 123.


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 UpdateKorean Cinema News and the Weekly Review Round-up, which appear weekly on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday mornings (GMT+1).

To keep up with the best in Korean film you can sign up to our RSS Feed, like us on Facebook, or follow us on Twitter.

Jopok Week: Born to Kill (본투킬, Bon tu kkil) 1996


By Kieran Tully

I must admit, I probably approached Born to Kill (1996) in the wrong manner, one in which I thought it would be a good companion piece to Beat (1997) given their similarities.  After all, both films star Jung Woo-sung as an unstoppable fighting machine; are about gangsters; feature a leading love interest; are from the late 80’s and possess the style, music, and colour associated with the 80’s; and have titles beginning with the letter B.  At the end of the day, that is all they share in common.  Maybe it wasn’t fair to come in expecting something similar in quality to Beat.  Ultimately, Born to Kill is not as good a film and on a week celebrating Jopok, I recommend you stick to something else.

The film is about a professional killer (named Kil, which did get a laugh out of me when referring to its Korean meaning) who seems to be totally detached from society.  The only connection he makes with others is with the end of his silver dagger or the sole of his boot.  We soon learn the back-story of Kil (played by Jung Woo-sung) and come to understand he was an orphan, once raised by a crime lord.  Somehow he got out of this environment and is now taking hits for money.  Guess who is next?  The kingpin who raised him.  It is a dilemma that tries to give the film some kind of backstory but ultimately it falls flat.  There is a lot of gang rivalry, with double cross after double cross, and Kil always ends up being caught in the middle of them.  The most interesting Jopok aspect of the film is Kil’s sole use of a large Bowie knife rather than guns, bats, or 2x4’s.  This leads to 3 things: lots and lots of stabbings, some intense eye-gouging scenes, and an important role in understanding who he is and how he became Kil.


Naturally, Kil soon crosses paths with the gorgeous bargirl Soo-Ah (Shim Eun-ha) and eventually falls in love with her.  It’s a story we’ve seen before, even in 1996.  So, what’s new?  Kil has never been with a girl, doesn’t drink, or even socialise except for with his pet monkey Chi-Chi. Luckily.  Soo-Ah is brazen enough to intrude into his life and literally forces herself into his apartment, his bed, and soon, his heart.  Without much effort, she inspires him to break free from his self-imposed shell, that is until she finds out what he does to put all that cash in the fridge.  This leads to some complications, sacrificial beatings, and even a water-launched attack scene at a fishing village that Kim Ki-duk surely made an homage to in The Isle (2000).

Summing up the plot has already become tiresome as it’s fairly generic.   I was surprised at how little happens in the film, as Kil constantly stares off in silence.  However, the film genuinely picks up pace every-time Shim Eun-ha is on screen, and while it’s not her most accomplished performance, her talent is clearly evident.  For an actress with such a small filmography, any fan of hers must seek out this film, even if the subtitles are well below par.  Speaking of which, the picture quality of what seems like the only available copy is quite poor, as the colours look slightly off and there are frequent imperfections in the picture.   The biggest mistake in the film was the decision not to allow Shim Eun-ha more singing time on-screen.  A smile came across my face whenever she did appear, so I must give her credit for that.


The film lacks drama, which is something Beat never had a problem with.  Maybe it was the addition of a 3rd main character that stopped this from moving forward at a faster pace, or in any direction.   The action has some nice set pieces, with a reasonable last stand in a night club (mind you, there was no flying kick or glass shattering throw we haven’t seen before).  Jeong Doo-hong is involved as he is with nearly every Korean gangster film, but fights disappoint.  Jung Woo-sung himself improved greatly in just a year for his star role in Beat, both in terms of acting and martial arts performance.  The two leads are relatively well rounded, but the middle segment of the film where this is developed doesn’t really fit with the rest of the movie.  Its major downfall is that it doesn’t go far enough to establish the ‘multimoods’ Korean film has become famous for.   It’s just a short romantic tale in the midst of a gang war, and while it was my favourite part, it simply belongs in another film.

The film is written by a combination of Song Hae-seong (Director of Failan, 2001; A Better Tomorrow, 2010), Lee Moo-yeong (Writer of Joint Security Area, 2000; Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance, 2002), and Director Jang Hyeon-soo, who began his career as a screenwriter on genre pics, often involving gangster storylines, including the acclaimed film noir Rules of the Game (1994), with Kang Je-kyu and Park Joong-hoon.  Since then most of his entries have been romantic tales, including his latest offering, the romantic sex-comedy Everybody Has Secrets (2004).  Unfortunately their individual talents don’t quite feature here.  The middle segment did work quite well, but the problem is the weak gangster bookends that encapsulate it, with fairly average action scenes and a convoluted story.   Given this is Jopok week, I feel bad focussing on the negatives of those parts, but simply put there are many more entertaining and creatively made Korean gangster films out there.  Some elements of religion are added for depth, and Soo-Ah’s slimey agent could have been explored further. 


The film was edited by the notorious Park Gok-ji, who along with being the wife of Park Heung-sik, has edited classic gangster films such as The General's Son 2 (1991), The General's Son 3 (1992), No. 3 (1997), My Wife Is a Gangster (2001), A Better Tomorrow, and to an award winning extent on A Dirty Carnival (2006).  What I found even more interesting was when I discovered she had edited just as many successful romantic classics, such as Seopyeonje (1993), The Gingko Bed (1996), The Contact (1997), Lies (2000), and Failan.   Utilising both genre approaches here, she does an OK job, but slow motion is heavily over-used and strange sound effects are littered over a synthetic soundtrack.   I know at the time it was common to slow down and stylise entire fight scenes, such as the opening scene in Nowhere to Hide (1999) or the closing to Beat, which both worked great, it’s just unenthusiastic in Born to Kill.  But hey, for a year where Gok-ji edited The Day a Pig Fell Into the Well and Crocodile, I will give her the benefit of the doubt. 

Born to Kill was the 8th highest grossing Korean film of 1996, not too bad considering a week after it opened, the mammoth beast of Two Cops 2 launched, a film that would go on to take the number 1 position for the year, reeling in 6 times the box office earnings of Born to Kill (Figures refer to Seoul admissions, courtesy of Koreanfilm.org).  There were definitely better things to come for Korean film and specifically Korean gangster films.  Noticeably, production values picked up from the late 90’s, and stories became larger and more interesting as they encompassed all aspects of gangsterhood.   The ‘New Korean Wave’ was often mislabeled as ‘New Hong Kong’ cinema when it emerged, but if that label does indeed apply to some Korean films, Born to Kill is probably one of them – given its style and content (though quite poor).  Go watch Beat instead as it’s great fun, but if you are looking for a darker, less emotional ride or are a fan of Shim Eun-ha, check out Born to Kill.


Kieran is Marketing and Festivals Manager of the Korean Cultural Office in Sydney, where he coordinates a weekly film night (Cinema on the Park) and the Korean Film Festival (KOFFIA).  He is currently completing a Masters of Arts on Asian Film in Australia, has worked at more than 15 film festivals across Sydney, and writes about film on the blog Tully’s Recall.



See Also:

Beat (1997)
Green Fish (1997)


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 UpdateKorean Cinema News and the Weekly Review Round-up, which appear weekly on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday mornings (GMT+1).

To keep up with the best in Korean film you can sign up to our RSS Feed, like us on Facebook, or follow us on Twitter.

Weekly Review Round-up (12/03-12/09, 2011)

A nice selection of reviews this week including a number for The Yellow Sea and three from The Hollywood Reporter.  Since it is Jopok Week here on MKC, I'm happy to note some reviews for A Bittersweet Life and Righteous Ties.

Enjoy!

CURRENT KOREAN RELEASES


(hancinema.net, December 3, 2011)


RECENT RELEASES


(Walter Peck Was Just Doing His Job , December 4, 2011)

(Film Business Asia, December 4, 2011)

(Hanguk Yeonghwa, November 27, 2011)

(The Hollywood Reporter, December 7, 2011)

(Hanguk Yeonghwa, December 6, 2011)

(The Hollywood Reporter, December 7, 2011)

(Modern Korean Cinema, December 2, 2011)

(The One One Four, December 6, 2011)

(Otherwhere, December 7, 2011)

(Hanguk Yeonghwa, December 9, 2011)

(Hanguk Yeonghwa, November 28, 2011)

Sunny

(Rainy Day, November 27, 2011

(Beyond Hollywood, December 6, 2011)

The Yellow Sea

(Japan Cinema, December 9, 2011)


PAST FILMS


(Hanguk Yeonghwa, December 7, 2011)

(Rainy Day, December 6, 2011)

My Sassy Girl, 2001

(searchindia.com, December 8, 2011)

Shiri, 1999
(Hanguk Yeonghwa, December 3, 2011)

(Modern Korean Cinema, December 7, 2011

(Modern Korean Cinema, December 8, 2011

(Modern Korean Cinema, December 9, 2011


The Weekly Review Round-up is a weekly feature which brings together all available reviews of Korean films in the English language (and sometimes French) that have recently appeared on the internet. It is by no means a comprehensive feature and additions are welcome (email pierceconran [at] gmail [dot] com). It appears every Friday morning (GMT+1) on Modern Korean Cinema. For other weekly features, take a look at Korean Cinema News, and the Korean Box Office UpdateReviews and features on Korean film also appear regularly on the site. 

To keep up with the best in Korean film you can sign up to our RSS Feed, like us on Facebook, or follow us on Twitter.

Thursday, December 8, 2011

Jopok Week: Masculinity and Beauty in A Bittersweet Life and The Man From Nowhere – Part I

Questions of Masculinity and Beauty in the Jopok Films A Bittersweet Life (2005) and The Man From Nowhere (2010)

By Rowena Santos Aquino


The Jopok Film

In June 1990, Im Kwon-taek released the first film of what would become The General’s Son series (1990-1992).  The General’s Son singlehandedly revived the jopok, or organised crime, film in South Korean cinema, following a drought that stretched back to the 1970s and early 1980s.  Significantly, in October 1990 the South Korean government declared war on organised crime and proceeded to conduct raids on various criminal organisations and arrest leaders of the principally family-led businesses throughout the country.  Though government raids and arrests occurred following the release of The General’s Son, it is interesting to imagine that headlines about real-life jopok members fed into the ongoing interest in the film and the rest of the series, and contributed to making it a box-office hit.  One need only recall the classic Hollywood gangster triptych of Little Caesar (1930, Mervyn LeRoy), The Public Enemy (1931, William A. Wellman), and Scarface (1932, Howard Hawks) to think of a scenario of crime headlines, film production, and the box-office informing each other in such a way.

Chow Yun-fat in The Killer (1989)

According to Jinsoo An, more immediately in the mind of director Im Kwon-taek in making The General’s Son series was the idea of reviving the screen image of Korean masculinity.  This idea was partly triggered by the highly popular and influential 1980s and 1990s Hong Kong action and Triad films – courtesy of filmmakers John Woo, Johnnie To, and Ringo Lam, among others – which began to be distributed in South Korea at the time.  Looming large above all other idealised images of cool, handsome, and individualistic masculinity was Chow Yun-fat.  With Chow’s height and tragic-manic persona in Woo’s films, he literally and metaphorically loomed over his male costars such as Leslie Cheung and Tony Leung.

Of course, the interesting detail is that John Woo modeled Chow Yun-fat’s walk, dress, and overall performance after the French actor Alain Delon and the crime noir films he did with Jean-Pierre Melville, especially Le samouraï (1967).  In turn, Melville was inspired by Alan Ladd’s portrayal of an assassin in the Hollywood film This Gun For Hire (1942, Frank Tuttle) for Le samouraï.  In these two films, Ladd and Delon personify assassins whose otherworldly physical beauty creates a compelling tension with their criminal profession and stoicism in the face of killing and death.

Alain Delon in Le samouraï (1967)

But what began partly as a way to distinguish Korean crime action films and images of masculinity from those found in Hong Kong films (flavoured with Melville-Delon) has become a full-fledged successful, dynamic, and self-sustaining genre in its own right in contemporary South Korean cinema.  Between 1990 and 2005, South Korean cinema saw a plethora of jopok films (e.g. Beat [1997, Kim Sung-su], Nowhere To Hide [1999, Lee Myung-se]), gangster comedies (e.g. No. 3 [1997, Song Neung-han], My Wife is a Gangster series [2001-06], Marrying the Mafia series [2002-06]), and other films that appropriated gangster tropes for their own purposes (e.g. Hoodlum Lessons [1996, Kim Sang-jin]).


Jopok Evolution

If by 2005 South Korean cinema had reached a jopok saturation point, it is also the point of departure for another phase in jopok evolution.  Films such as A Dirty Carnival (2006, Yoo Ha), The Show Must Go On (2007, Han Jae-rim), Rough Cut (2008, Jang Hun), and Breathless (2009, Yang Ik-jun) run through the usual gamut of jopok themes of duty vs. personal desire and the endless cycle of violence, but they also toy with the jopok genre in a marvelous way and present a different level of grittiness, self-reflection, and auteur expression over and above commercial impulses.  A Dirty Carnival and Rough Cut are particularly interesting for having the component of a film-within-the-film.  Rough Cut is especially superb for its commentary on the desire for the realism of violence and the gangster as a film fetish to be admired and feared at the same time by having an actual gangster play opposite an actor in a gangster film.  The very good looks of lead actors Jo In-seong and So Ji-seob in A Dirty Carnival and Rough Cut may not be absolutely crucial to the trope of admiration and fear of the gangster, but they certainly factor into it and reference that tension between beauty and violence with Ladd, Delon, and Chow.

So Ji-sub in Rough Cut  (2008)

In the context of this Ladd-Delon-Chow loner lineage and idea of cool, handsome, and individualistic masculinity, arguably the most existential interpretation thus far is Kim Ji-woon’s 2005 film A Bittersweet Life, while the most literal interpretation has to be Lee Jeong-beom’s 2010 film The Man From Nowhere.

A Bittersweet Life explicitly takes the jopok film to the level of noir, that is, a level of stylisation of lighting, place, film references, (masculine) interiority, and narrative trajectory.  The distinction between the gangster film and noir comes from director Kim himself.  Kim said in a master class on A Bittersweet Life back in 2009, “How I thought of noir was that it's a genre that expresses a gangster movie in a more aesthetic way.  I think that gangster movies and film noir have to be distinguished [and] separate.”  A Bittersweet Life is a stylistic exploration of one’s place in the world at a given time, one’s actions, one’s emotions that fuel or thwart such actions, and the consequences of in/action through the proverbial loner and revenge scheme within the criminal underworld.

Lee Byung-hun in A Bittersweet Life (2005)

Such a description also applies, though to a lesser degree, to The Man From Nowhere (2010).  It is stylistic in its own way and actually opens up the revenge scheme to reflect the globalised, diversified world in which criminals and their organisations must now work.  The differences in the ways in which these two films stylistically explore one’s place in the jopok world are much more marked than the similarities.  For one thing, the level of noir elements in A Bittersweet Life is much more pronounced than in The Man From Nowhere, which factor into the nature of each film’s narrative and conclusion.  In A Bittersweet Life, the existential malaise of the lone anti-hero is explicit and falls outside of any moral context.  Sun-woo (Lee Byung-hun) makes the conscious decision of not killing his boss’ girlfriend and clandestine boyfriend and pays for it.  To a tee he follows the protocol of revenge to its inevitable end after his boss and cohorts beat him to a pulp.  In The Man From Nowhere, the existential malaise is also palpable but fitted out more along moral/ethical lines as Tae-shik (Won Bin) is forced to come out of his shell and into contact with a crime organisation to find a kidnapped young girl.  While A Bittersweet Life follows a man bent on revenge against his own boss and cohorts and carried away by internal (il)logic that he himself does not question, The Man From Nowhere is about a man who gets haphazardly involved in a rescue and must contend with a host of external malicious forces.  While the narrative trigger for Sun-woo’s revenge in A Bittersweet Life is romantic, the impetus for Tae-shik in The Man From Nowhere is more familial through the young girl.  Perhaps the most significant existentialist difference between these two films is the death and survival of the protagonist.  Take a wild guess as to who dies or survives.

Won Bin in The Man From Nowhere (2010)

Despite, or because of, these differences, these two films make for an interesting study of comparison, especially with regards to their respective lead actors and how the films narrativise and deconstruct their masculine beauty.  Before focusing on Lee Byung-hun and Won Bin, some more general comments on the two films are in order.

Part II of Masculinity and Beauty in A Bittersweet Life and The Man From Nowhere


Rowena Santos Aquino recently obtained her doctorate degree in Cinema and Media Studies.  She is a contributing writer to Asia Pacific Arts.  She has also contributed to other online outlets, such as Midnight Eye and Red Feather, and to print journals, including Transnational Cinemas and Asian Cinema.  She also loves football.  She can be found musing about film and football on her twitter page.


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 UpdateKorean Cinema News and the Weekly Review Round-up, which appear weekly on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday mornings (GMT+1).

To keep up with the best in Korean film you can sign up to our RSS Feed, like us on Facebook, or follow us on Twitter.

Jopok Week: Im Kwon-taek's The General's Son 3 (Janggunui adeul 3) 1992


The final installment of Im Kwon-taek’s The General’s Son trilogy was not particularly well-received upon its release in 1992 in Korea.  Unlike the previous two installments, The General’s Son 3 was not the year’s highest grossing film, that honor went instead to Marriage Story, the ‘planned’ feature which is credited in part with the entry of the chaebol into the film industry, who modernized it, paving the way for the technically-superior Korean cinema of today.  Im stopped making actioners after this but he wasn’t absent from the top of the charts for long as his masterful Sopyonje was released the next year and became the first Korean film to cross the one million admissions mark in Seoul, even though the Korean market share of the box office fell to a record low of 15.9% in 1993.

At the start of The General’s Son 3, Kim Do-han is not released from jail, but he is in exile and his gang has been dispersed in Mapo-gu. The Japanese now control the district and Kim leads a peripatetic life, wandering from town to town, making connections and enemies along the way.  The first half of the film sees him on the road in a series of questionably strung-together sequences as he meets characters from previous entries in the franchise and makes some new ladyfriends while the back half of the narrative focuses on his return to Mapo-gu and leads up to the final and long-awaited (sort of) showdown with the local Yakuza gang. 


After an opening film that had quite a lot to say and did so in a balanced, if imperfect, manner, the conclusion to The General’s Son trilogy does little more than rehash themes and story tropes from the previous two films.  It adds nothing new, just presenting us with more fights, nightclub scenes, and women.  The first film affixed a fairly convincing historical and sociological pretext upon the generic template of the gangster film but The General’s Son 3 abandons what made the series a hit in the first place and revels in the threadbare mechanics of genre filmmaking.  Just as in The General’s Son 2, it’s all about the fights this go-round and women, but in a much more sexualized manner than in previous installments.  Gone is the simplicity of its predecssor, which was happy to give us a straightforward story which led from one fight to the next , instead we have to suffer Kim’s perambulations through foreign towns which bog down the narrative and add up to a big waste of time when he finally returns to his hometown.

The depiction of women in The General’s Son 3 was quite problematic and surprising given Im’s involvement.  The main love interest, who is gorgeous, is handled like a commodity when Kim meets her.  He stands up for her and they begin to fall for each other but then he treats her like a piece of meat too, only know she is more than willing to submit. One of the running gags in the film is her screams of pleasure which resound throughout the night. Perhaps Kim Doo-han’s virility is legendary, not that I have heard as such, but this repeated joke smacked of sexism for me. I can say that compared to the other female protagonists in the trilogy, who exit the narratives without having changed from when they first appear on screen, this new character is a little more three dimensional and features an arc which is passably integrated into the main narrative.


There is some attempt at character development, while Kim was a hero figure in the first and fell prey to vanity in the second, his current exile essentially leads him on a path to redemption and he returns to Mapo-gu the conquering hero.  However the characterizations here are not well fleshed out and in any case it is difficult to make anything out in the muddled narrative.  The good news is that it doesn't really matter as they fight scenes, while exceptionally contrived, are still very enjoyable, even if they get repetitive after a while.  We meet new gangs in the new towns and there's even some opium dealing and sex scenes thrown in for good measure.  

My biggest disappointment is that ultimately the film series didn't go explore what I was hoping it would, namely Kim Doo-han's transition from a gangster to a political figure.  It certainly hints at it but the wheels are never set in motion which I thought was a shame.  I suppose Park Sang-min would have been too young to portray an older Kim but now that 19 years have elapsed I imp Mr. Im to consider The General's Son 4 as his 102nd film!  The General's Son 3 is the weakest entry in the franchise but all in all I had a great time with this series despite its flaws and I look forward to revisit it again in its entirety soon.


See also:

The General's Son (1990)
The General's Son 2 (1991)


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 UpdateKorean Cinema News and the Weekly Review Round-up, which appear weekly on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday mornings (GMT+1).

To keep up with the best in Korean film you can sign up to our RSS Feed, like us on Facebook, or follow us on Twitter.

Jopok Week: Korean Gangster Films at the Box Office (1996-2003)

As part of Jopok Week, Modern Korean Cinema will be featuring reviews of three 1997 Korean gangster flicks (Beat, No. 3, and Green Fish), all of which ended up in top 10 of that year.  This prompted me to go back over the receipts of Korean gangster films over the last 16 years and see what I could find out.

There is no question that the Korean gangster film is one of the most prevalent and popular film genres in Korea and I would have been inclined to think that it was second only to melodrama but after a little research I find myself wondering whether gangster films are in fact the dominant genre in contemporary Korean cinema.


Korean Gangster Films at the Box Office (1996-2003)


1996


Shortly before the explosion of Korean cinema, gangster films already seemed to have a firm grasp on the box office charts.  In 1996 there were three ranked in the top 10:  Gangster Lessons (aka Hoodlum Lessons; No. 6, 176,757), Born to Kill (No. 8, 132,261), and Boss (No. 10, 101,078).  Born to Kill will be reviewed by Kieran Tully from KOFFIA a little later this week but I am not familiar with the other films, though I noticed that Gangster Lessons starred both Park Joon-hoon and Park Sang-min (Kim Doo-han in The General's Son, 1990).

1997


As already mentioned 1997 was a big year for gangster films in Korea.  Just as in 1996 there were three of them that wound up in the top 10, however they fared a little better and more importantly, played a significant role in the reshaping of Korean cinema.  I will explore what Beat (No. 4, 349,781), No. 3 (No. 6, 297,617), and Green Fish (No. 8, 163,655) brought to the industry in each of their reviews which will appear later this week.

1999


After a brief hiatus from the top 10 in 1998, three gangster films found their way back in in 1999, scaling new heights for the genre.  Kim Sang-jin's second feature (after Two Cops 3, 1998), the anarchic Attack the Gas Station (No. 2, 960,000), depicting a group of violently apathetic youths with a total disregard to authority was a huge success, was a fiercely original and enormously successful film that helped forge a new identity for Korean film abroad.  Similarly, Lee Myung-se's Nowhere to Hide (No. 4, 687,000), starring big names Park Joon-hoon, Anh Sung-ki, and future star Jang Dong-gun heralded a new, stylistically fresh epoch for the industry.  The third was City of the Rising Sun (No. 10, 329,778) starring Jung Woo-sung and Lee Jung-jae, a film I'm eager to discover.

2001


After another absence from the chart in the year 2000, though heist film Jakarta nearly qualifies, Korean gangster films came back with a vengeance the following year.  2001 was the biggest year for gang films at the Korean box office and this will likely never change.  They accounted for six out of the 10, not only that but My Sassy Girl was the only non-gang film in the top seven.  Four of those were released in the last four months in the year, a very mob-heavy season!

Leading the pack was Kwak Kyung-taek's Friend (No. 1, 8,134,500), a nostalgic look at the friendship through  the years of four boys from Busan.  It's tale of conflicting loyalties, and it's settings, from 80s schools to the modern criminal underbelly of Korea's major port city were huge drawing factors for the film, which became, at that point, the highest grossing Korean film of all time.  My Wife Is a Gangster (No. 2, 5,180,900) kicked off the gangster comedy melodrama trend and would spawn two sequels.  Kim Sang-jin's third film was even more successful than his last.  Kick the Moon (No. 4, 4,353,800) was the first of the year's many gangster comedies and was similar to Friend in that in mined school and gang conventions in a regional setting.  Hi Dharma (No. 5, 3,746,000), which features gangsters in hiding at a buddhist monastery, and My Boss, My Hero (No. 6, 3,302,000), in which a gang captain goes back to complete high school, were both high concept gang comedies which would be followed by successful sequels.  Last was Jang Jin's Guns and Talk (No. 7, 2,227,000) which featured a great script and strong performances from Shin Hyeon-Jun, Shin Ha-Kyun, Won Bin, and Jeong Jae-Young.

2001 was also the year that Korean films finally broke past the 50% market share and these six films accounted for 60% of that or 30% of all theater admissions throughout the year.  Making this hoodlum coup all the more impressive, perhaps gangsters are good for the economy?

2002


Gangster films took the top and bottom spot of the chart in 2002.  Marrying the Mafia (No.1, 5,021,001) paired My Boss, My Hero star Jeong Joon-ho with a gangster comedy melodrama concept similar to My Wife Is a Gangster to kick off its own franchise.  Ryoo Seung-beom made a name for himself away from his brother's films by starring in the uproarious, high school-set Conduct Zero (No. 10, 1,683,533), playing off the popular and socially prescient youth violence theme.  Though it only came in at No. 25 on the chart, Ryoo Seung-wan's (the aforementioned brother) No Blood No Tears would be considered by many to be the best gang film of this year.  Another big hit, Public Enemy doesn't quite fit the gangster mold but subsequent in the franchise would.

2003


2003 featured relatively few gangster themed pictures.  Oh! Brothers (No. 6, 3,125,256) had gangster elements but was more of a buddy comedy, the same could be said for Oldboy (No. 5, 3,326,000) which does feature gangsters in what is probably the most iconic scene of Korean cinema.  Kwak Kyung-taek's Mutt Boy was relatively successful but was not in the top 10.  The second entry in the My Wife Is a Gangster franchise also did well but paled in comparison to its predecessor.

Korean Gangster Films at the Box Office (2004-2011)


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 UpdateKorean Cinema News and the Weekly Review Round-up, which appear weekly on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday mornings (GMT+1).

To keep up with the best in Korean film you can sign up to our RSS Feed, like us on Facebook, or follow us on Twitter.