I shouldn't like war movies. I shouldn't like Henry V either. But I do. That doesn't mean I think guns are cool and colonialism is anything less than evil. It's more that while many real-world wars are pissing matches in which the poor and working class are fodder for the rich-and-powerful, big screen wars relate an altogether different reality. Is it propaganda? Probably. Yet defying logic and politics, here I am, watching Lee Man-hui's The Marines Who Never Returned on YouTube's Korean Film Archive and pretty much digging it, bayonets and all.
A Lee pic is always full of surprises. The action might get hyperrealistic in one scene (service men walk in on a pile of corpses) and then turn super silly in the next (a brothel madam is won over by unusual tactics). I doubt a military troop would have an orphan as their pigtailed mascot or that they'd be so at ease with a guy that they think acts like a girl. But hey, it's the movies. Anything is possible. Especially at Christmas time! And what a gift Lee is as a director. The world seems less limited, less constricted, less predictable when he's behind the camera. These marines are sentimentalists and Secret Santas, and I for one am here for it.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment