White Badge: Survival Is Not Always a Reward

Americans know all about the Vietnam War. They also know something about the Korean one. Yet they probably know nothing about South Korea's role in the former, a participation that was both alongside U.S. troops and at their behest. And if Vietnam remains a haunting conflict in American consciousness, it also appears to have wreaked havoc on the Korean psyche as well. In his allegorical fright flick R-Point, director Kong Su-chang equates that war's terrors to supernatural horrors; in White Badge, Jeong Ji-yeong takes a much more naturalistic approach by exorcising those same demons in a grimly nostalgic memory piece. Grounded by a terrific performance by Ahn Sung-kee as a heavy drinking journalist reluctantly writing a novel about his experiences in Vietnam, White Badge neither shies away from the absurdities of the battlefield (the troops mistake a herd of water buffalo for the enemy) nor minimizes the psychic damage to the soldiers who survive. (Pfc. Pyon (Lee Kyeong-yeong) is a basket case unable to salvage his relationship with a prostitute who was his wartime pen pal.) Children as scavengers, bulletproof panties, the paparazzi of the frontlines... White Badge's imagery is so rich, it really does insist on repeated viewings.