The 1960s are the decade in which movies swung from predominantly black-and-white to color, with Korean auteur Yoo Hyun-mok making the jump somewhat late himself around '67 with The Guest Who Came on the Last Train. I'm glad he dragged his feet. For Yoo was a director who truly understood how to maximize light, shadow, and depth in a monochromatic world. His films really feel like moving pictures. He uses doorways to frame action, positions actors for portraiture, embraces the odd angle as a way to reorient us. Repeatedly in The Daughters of Kim's Pharmacy, he makes the most out of the setting whether it's a dockside or a hilltop, a bamboo forest or a barren hill.
Yoo's artistry — and that of cinematographer Byeon In-jib who collaborated with him on Forever With You, Freely Given,and The Sun Rises Again — elevates this melodrama to art. This tale of four siblings cursed by an ancestor's suicide teeters on the allegorical and it's no coincidence that the family matriarch (Hwang Jeong-sun) searches for help from a shaman when her seaside life sinks into misery. "I am breathing so I have no choice but to live," she remarks matter-of-factly. I can relate. I can even forgive the second eldest daughter for feeling optimistic about marrying a strange man fresh out of prison. The unexpected can be so much more appealing than the predictable when life totally sucks.
January 2, 2021
The Daughters of Kim's Pharmacy: Sisters of Disaster
The 1960s are the decade in which movies swung from predominantly black-and-white to color, with Korean auteur Yoo Hyun-mok making the jump somewhat late himself around '67 with The Guest Who Came on the Last Train. I'm glad he dragged his feet. For Yoo was a director who truly understood how to maximize light, shadow, and depth in a monochromatic world. His films really feel like moving pictures. He uses doorways to frame action, positions actors for portraiture, embraces the odd angle as a way to reorient us. Repeatedly in The Daughters of Kim's Pharmacy, he makes the most out of the setting whether it's a dockside or a hilltop, a bamboo forest or a barren hill.
Yoo's artistry — and that of cinematographer Byeon In-jib who collaborated with him on Forever With You, Freely Given,and The Sun Rises Again — elevates this melodrama to art. This tale of four siblings cursed by an ancestor's suicide teeters on the allegorical and it's no coincidence that the family matriarch (Hwang Jeong-sun) searches for help from a shaman when her seaside life sinks into misery. "I am breathing so I have no choice but to live," she remarks matter-of-factly. I can relate. I can even forgive the second eldest daughter for feeling optimistic about marrying a strange man fresh out of prison. The unexpected can be so much more appealing than the predictable when life totally sucks.
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