Night Before Independence Day: Have I Got a Story to Tell

Most times when people say "inspiring," what they really mean is "impressive" because they so rarely take any sort of action afterwards. To actually be "inspired" is a truly rare thing. So while I'd like to say that Night Before Independence Day is inspiring, whether it ends up being so remains to be seen. Although made in 1948, Choi In-kyu's captivating movie is actually a silent film in a way, one which had a single narrator's audio track added in post-production. Such a device is actually part of the Korean cinematic tradition as byeonsas — more or less, onstage voice actors — often took on the vocal parts before talkies in lieu of the tinkly pianos we tend to think of accompanying pre-sound movies on our side of the Pacific. Choi, however, doesn't do voices; if anything watching Night Before Independence Day is more akin to hearing a bedtime story told with accompanying visuals; a sordid tale involving thieves, rapists, murderers, addicts, gamblers, and double-crossers left and right.

It's all kind of loose and wild, with an antihero who wears blind man sunglasses all the time, and characters sneaking in and out of an abandoned warehouse space with the interrogator light overhead flickering on and off with cryptic meaning. Shirtless boxing matches, makeshift card games, narrowly escaped sexual assaults, greedy intravenous drug use... the action is continual and culminates in a death that launches a patriotic speech that somehow propels two surviving couples into a new idyllic world full of unexpected promise, a sunny land where men pair off with men, and women with women. Yes, Night Before Independence Day goes to some truly unexpected places. I was absolutely fascinated by it. I'd like to make a film like this. But will I? Unlikely.

Tuition: A Poor Education

Poverty may inspire some to get an education but it also gets in the way of learning. It's not just going to school hungry that does it in Choi In-kyu's and Bang Han-jun's drama Tuition either. It's also the shame that comes with not having the cash to pay your tuition. And it's not the teacher that's creating that sense of guilt. The kids without money feel bad all on their own. Yet the drive to learn is strong! So when given the opportunity to go to his aunt's house over 20 kilometers away, Yeong-dal (Jeong Chang-jo) makes the journey alone — first on foot and then a stretch on an oxcart before resuming his trek unassisted (often with indifferent vehicles passing him by). You have to admire his tenacity even as you wish he had an adult to accompany him, given his grandmother (Bok Hye-suk) — and primary care taking — is continually ailing. Where are his parents, you ask? Well, they're trying to make a living elsewhere and while they do show up at the end, they don't appear overly delighted to see him. The formality in that part may be cultural but it's still pretty weird to witness.

In truth, there's not a lot of emotion to be found in Tuition. Most of the action is presented matter-of-factly with incredibly sparse dialogue, although the scene in which the young boy cries that he's "bad luck" as a way to comprehend the lack of food and money in his struggling household is certainly an anguishing one. I also appreciated the subplot involving a young girl in similar straits: She's the school's other top pupil and their initial rivalry to get top honors shifts once they realize their struggles are the same.

Hurrah! for Freedom: A Fragment of Liberation

Gertrude Stein once said that she enjoyed the beginnings of movies but lost interest once she could figure out the plots. I understand her viewpoint. Somewhat related, I'm a big fan of movies with missing footage. I enjoy being left in mid-air by a truncated flick, films like The Widow and Yangsan Province, historic works which end not where the director planned but where the footage comes to an end. Sometimes, there's something less pat and more real about stories that are inconclusive, accidentally or not. It's as if we'd suddenly turned our heads away from the action then discovered that all of the players had left, thereby leaving us to come up with our own conclusions and narratives. Such is the case with Choi In-kyu's Hurrah! for Freedom which not only ends in the middle of the action but periodically jumps around as if some internal footage had also disappeared.

What we know in Hurrah! for Freedom is that the Korean resistance is committed to rioting as a way to combat Japanese occupation and people from all walks of life are getting involved: mothers, nurses, lovers... At times, Hurrah! for Freedom can recall the Italian Neo-realists with its intense-faced men and low-gloss interiors; other times, the style feels almost French New Wave like the highly stylized cuts that happen between a guard and a hospital patient. Vignettes of a woman breaking up a fight between two boys only to get a mud-ball thrown at her back and a man caressing another man's face in a homoerotic manner pull you in as well. This film may also be known as Viva Freedom, but I couldn't resist Hurrah!

Columbus: Korean-American Comes Home

Admittedly, the presence of the Korean language in Columbus is primarily a handful of international phone calls held by Jin (John Cho), a book translator who has returned to the States to care for his ailing father (Joseph Anthony Foronda), a noted scholar, but Columbus also touches upon the cultural differences between American and South Korean cultures on many fronts and is really such an exquisite film in its own unique way that it seems appropriate to bend the rules of this blog and include it. After all, Park Chan-wook's Hollywood entry Stoker and the dry tutorial The Great Courses: The World's Greatest Churches: Two Churches in Seoul, Korea are both part of Korean Grindhouse, too, and neither is nearly as good as Kogonada's exquisite indie flick.

What makes Columbus so special? Oh, many things like how it avoids turning its central relationship between Jin and Cassandra (Haley Lu Richardson), an architecture nerd, into a romance; how it similarly avoids sex scenes between these characters and a friend of the family (Parker Posey) and a librarian (Rory Culkin) respectively; how it spends so much time talking about ideas especially as they relate to architecture — most memorably to the work of Eero Saarinen, his father Eliel Saarinen, and the lesser-known Deborah Berke. The movie makes you realize how often traditional films ignore the myriad relationships available to men and women, parent and child, peer and peer, person and place. The cinematography by Elisha Christian is also worth noting as it so successfully uses the striking buildings and interiors of the film's hometown for truly remarkable framework again and again and again. I can't recommend this one enough.

The Widow: Females First, Female Firsts

Quick. What's the first Korean movie directed by a woman? Yeah, I didn't know the answer either and that's too bad because Park Nam-ok's The Widow is actually really, really good. This despite missing the final footage and having the ten minutes preceding that missing footage devoid of sound. How many movies can you say are unquestionably worth watching even though you never get to see the end? Well, The Widow is one of that select few. Part of the movie's appeal can be attributed to Lee Min-ja who brings a lot of complexities to the lead character, the single mother Shin: She seems crafty by necessity, devoted but only to a point. She's neither the hero nor the villain; she's more a self-respecting woman trying to get by in very less-than-ideal circumstances. You can't blame her for manipulating her husband's old friend, the rich Mr. Lee (Shin Dong-hun), and you've got to appreciate Park's unexpectedly bold presentation of her as a far-from-perfect mother to her petulant and needy child Ju (Lee Seong-ju).

Also hard not to relish is how the sex symbol of The Widow is neither Shin nor the philandering Mrs. Lee (and certainly not the prostitute who lives down the street). It's Taek (Lee Tak-kyun), the unofficial lifeguard we first meet wearing only a bathing suit even as our protagonist is hanging out on the same beach in traditional raiment with a parasol over her head. You could say, he's The Widow's homme fatale who will lead Shin to compromise herself in her family, to indebt herself to a married man, and to drink hard liquor. He's not trying to ruin this lady's life. He simply can't help cause all-around grief and destruction. Just ask his former love, Mrs. Lee.