Rice: Communism for Non-Communists

Rarely do you see a movie so unapologetically histrionic as Shin Sang-ok's stridently socialist drama Rice. How exaggerated does this one get? How about a man sobbing while banging his head against a bamboo stalk then saying "I'm not crying"? Or a woman who confesses her deep feelings while flames from a fire lick the space between her and the camera? Or a politician who says to a war veteran, "Do you think I'll even consider a cripple for my son-in-law" to a daughter (Choi Eun-hie) who wears pigtails until she finds her true independence as a woman?

The camera shots can be equally grotesque: a point of view from within a casket; a face framed by a hole in a rock underground. And yet despite how Rice traffics in exaggeration with agit-prop dialogue that may have set the groundwork for the eventual kidnapping of Shin and Choi to North Korea, there's still some powerful moments that occur in this oddball flick. Your heart goes out to the movie's hero (Shin Yeong-gyun), a disabled war vet who goes from one government department to the next in search of backing for an agricultural project that all agree has worth but none will fund. You also get a certain rush when one townsmen calls his fiancee out for asking him to compromise his integrity during a manufactured red scare.

Indeed this movie abounds with relevancies to our current cultural crises by showing examples of women who side with a patriarchy that oppresses them; illustrating how the wealthy will undermine the working class's attempts to become autonomous; revealing the complicity of a religious institution with corrupt power as well as how that eventually backfires; and detailing the sacrifices real changes entails — which sometimes necessitates forsaking your own father! You may snort derisively of the sub-plot involving the rolly-polly figure but in Rice, as in life, you simply have to take the good with the bad and make the best of it.