At the
Film Museum, Amsterdam Oct-8-2008, (Spoken: Korean, Subtitles: Dutch)
Adapted from the short story, "벌레 이야기" (1985) by 이청준
We hesitated a lot before seeing this film. Or at least
I did, because of the subject matter: widow with son moves to small town, where son is abducted and murdered, and she is then drawn into company of Christian evangelicals, while (not) dealing with her grief. Very Lars von Trier, and I look forward to LvT as much as a shotgun to the head.
So,
Secret Sunshine: yes, very fine acting, very subtle, wry and ironic observations (plus, if you get the broad dialect 경상도 사투리 that some characters use, as opposed to the false, faux-sweet sounding Seoul speak of Shinae, the female lead, that breaks down when she does) Dark humor, if you catch how old-fashioned and hokey the pop music used in the film is (80s, 거짓말이야, 그저 바라만 보고 있지), stuff that makes you burst out laughing at its horrible moments, with its deliberately "classic" kitcsh tunes.
But 3/4 through the film, I kept wondering: can a film be so relentlessly dark and futile, only briefly letting up (with gentle ridicule), and is there a smart way out of this horrible life mess, that doesn't insult our intelligence? And is this the question we're meant to ask: what
can you do, if your kid is kidnapped and murdered. Must the story present a solution? Maybe it can't.
Love/Romance? While presenting a gentle "deep down nice guy" in 송강호's character, the film doesn't take this solution. Too predictable, too easy, too insulting, so false. Nope.
Revenge? Well, this isn't a go after the killer, make them pay, then realize the futility of violence, sort of film.
Faith? Religion as a way out is questioned, though not the sincerity of blind (fumbling) faith itself. The Christians, the awful services, prayer meetings, songs, are ridiculed for the crass exterior, but not their belief.
Forgiveness? For me, the best part of this film was when Shinae went to see the murderer in prison, to "forgive him," only to hear that he had found God first, and felt he was granted God's forgiveness already, and how this hits her as a horrible betrayal. How dare God forgive him, when she didn't first.
No solutions, no resolution, no moment of (artificial) epiphany. Just moving on, and life as usual, because, it seems, the grief you carry does not go away by pushing it through a narrative of resolution.
So, the sequence of uncomfortable questions that the viewer might have after the film have already been anticipated and answered within the course of it, without giving you any satisfaction. But without that satisfaction, as with experience, from merely annoying to traumatic, without the narrative of closure (itself a conscious decision that keeps escaping the confines of resolution), it's going to keep rattling inside us, as this film does, while we try to move on. And descend further and further downwards.
Odd how a film that had me weeping in horror and sympathy during the 2/4 to 3/4, is at once so detached and clinical, so emotional in subject matter and so intellectually distanced in portraying it, somehow paradoxically restrained. It makes me feel a little stupid for craving that easily-granted moment of film epiphany.
Not one of my favorite films, but definitely worth watching, and muling over.
