Maybe we're supposed to sympathize with the Old Guard landowners in Yoo Hyun-mok's Descendants of Cain. But I sure didn't. Well-intentioned Park Hun (Kim Jin-kyu) may have parlayed his roles as sympathetic squire into beneficent school teacher but he's also been stringing along O Jang-nyeo (Moon Hee), his masochistic housekeeper who's been lusting for him all these yearsduring which her absent, wifebeating drunk of a husband (Choi Bong) has been making a dubious name for himself in the party. Park is that latest in a line of kind lords of the manor but are the impoverished villagers really supposed to come to the defense of the "good" slave-owner? Who in their right mind wouldn't rejoice at a land re-distribution plan?
The refusal to cast the protagonists as good guys and the antagonists as villains is what makes Descendants of Cain so effective. The lowest of the low can have his moments of truth-telling; the best educated can also be the most delusional. The new social order may mercilessly judge all members of the upperclass regardless of their moral center but it also finally challenges a system that accords wealth, health, and -- to some degree -- happiness as a birth right guaranteed only to the moneyed minority. Fights break out but I, for one, was surprised by who stabbed who.
Awards: Blue Dragon Award for Best Film (1969); Buil Film Award for Best Film (1969).
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