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I must say, getting no comments at all on the preceding seven DVD reviews is not what I was hoping for. Especially since I've posted links to them in three different places, trying to attract people who I thought might have an interest in the subject.

If you have any comments or feedback, positive or negative, please don't be shy.

My Rosy Life

The final installment of the Korean Movie Classic Collection is 1994's My Rosy Life (or La Vie en Rose, 장미빛 인생), directed by Kim Hong-joon. It is set in Garabong, a suburb of Seoul, amid the student riots and general chaos of 1987 as the government prepared to host the 1988 Olympic Games. The story centers on a comic book shop which the proprietress (Choi Myeong-gil) uses as an illicit no-questions-asked shelter at night. Her shop is populated by a wide variety of down-and-outs, petty thieves, and others with no place to go who, for a small fee, can stretch out on the chairs, enjoy a bowl of noodles, and watch a late-night porno on the closed-circuit. In particular, three men are attracted to the shop and its "Madam:" Dong-pal (Choi Jae-sung), a small-time hood on the run from two or three different gangs; Yu-jin (Lee Ji-hyeong), a baby-faced writer whose latest work has made him an unwitting enemy of the state; and Ki-young (Cha Kwang-su), who harbors a secret that will upend all of their lives.

I really wanted to like this film. These are fairly well-thought-out characters thrown together at a very interesting place and time in modern Korean history. Unfortunately, there are just too many problems for the film to overcome.

The main problem is that the film revolves around the least interesting, most generic character, Dong-pal. Dong-pal is just a hood, like any other hood from any other Korean gangster film set in any time or place. Time spent with this character and his romance of the Madam (I'm not spoiling anything; that's Dong-pal and the Madam on the cover, shown above) is basically time wasted, when one considers the potentially much more interesting stories shunted aside to make room for him. In particular, the moment that Yu-jin reveals his secret, for all practical purposes his story ends, in favor of a "Yu-jin Becomes a Man" story which is utterly without interest.

A second problem, even more damning in my eyes, is that the first act of this central romance is Dong-pal's brutal rape of the Madam. I confess that I have very little tolerance for these "love-my-abuser" stories. At first, the Madam takes no action, the point being to demonstrate to us that she's a tough cookie; and anyway, she really can't turn him in to the police as she herself is running an illegal business. Besides, this is 1987 Seoul; you don't turn to the police for help, especially from their side of the tracks. Okay; fine. But Dong-pal immediately falls in love and (for lack of a better word) begins to stalk her, and this of course wears down her resistance over time. Spare me.

There are other issues, such as several laughably out-of-place martial arts fights (with sound effects straight out of the old Batman TV series; I kept expecting to see "OOF!" or "KA-WHAM!" spiral up from someone's kicked stomach), and the combined effect of them is to sink what had been a very promising premise.

Once again, we have an anamorphic 1.85:1 presentation that is crisp and clean, and a good 2.0 soundtrack in the original Korean. Subtitles are fine; much improved over the middle five titles from this boxset. Extras here include both a director's commentary track (unsubbed) and a 15-minute curiosity entitled "My Korean Cinema, Episode 8: Garabong, again." This 2006 item is nothing more than brief scenes from the film, in chronological order, presented wordlessly with a simple music track. Each brief scene is prefaced by a title card, on which the only things I could decipher were dates--evidently shooting dates, as each are from 1994. They're not outtakes or alternate scenes; each is from the film itself. I don't know how much sense it would make if one were to watch it without having seen the film; but maybe those title cards explain it all. There's also the usual trailer/poster/photo gallery.

The Avatamska Sutra

Not being a Buddhist, I am going to find it quite difficult to describe the next film in the series, variously titled The Avatamska Sutra, Passage to Buddha, or its Anglicized Korean title, Hwaomkyung (화엄경). I imagine that a better grounding in Buddhist philosophy than I possess would enrich the viewer's experience, but even lacking that it's still an intriguing and beautiful film.

As it happens, I am currently reading a book in which the Dalai Lama explains some basic Buddhist concepts, and one of them seems quite pertinent to this film. "There can be two visions of the same thing," says His Holiness to the author Thomas Laird, "one of people who have a pure insight developed through spiritual practice and one that is purely conventional." He goes on to explain that both viewpoints can be true at the same time, even if the "uncommon viewpoint" is not verifiable by western standards.(*) All throughout this film are examples of things (mostly people) which are both as they seem and not as they seem.

On the surface, the story is about Sun Jae (Oh Tae-kyung), an 11-year old boy who, upon the death of his father, sets out to find his mother. Along the way he encounters a number of colorful characters, each of whom give him guidance in his quest. However, while Sun Jae is a young boy, at another level he is not. He seeks his mother, but who--or what--is his mother? The people, and even the cows, that he encounters are also, in the uncommon view, sattvas, placed in his path to assist him in his quest.

At the "common viewpoint" level, Sun Jae's travels illustrate director Jang Sun-woo's concern about the deteriorating state of postmodern Korean society. Sun Jae moves from construction sites to shanty towns to quarries to fishing piers, and nearly everyone he meets is poor or even entirely without possessions and living in at least some degree of squalor. Even the weather is uncomforting: wind and rain pelt him throughout the movie. Bustling modern Korea can often be seen on the horizon, but he knows, and we know, that Sun Jae will not find his "mother" there.

If this sounds like a gray, depressing, and difficult movie, it is not. (I told you it would be hard to describe!) It is beautifully photographed by You Yeong-gil, one of Korea's foremost cinematographers with a 70+ film career spanning from the late 1960s to Hur Jin-ho's Christmas in August, You's last feature before his untimely death. Even if the story (or stories) leave you befuddled, the film is worth viewing just for the images. The performances are strong throughout, most especially by young Oh Tae-kyung, who is onscreen virtually throughout the film and must cross some physically (and emotionally) difficult territory. There are a few of scenes that some viewers might find disturbing, one involving the slaughter of animals, the others involving the sexual awakening of the young boy-who-is-not-a-young-boy, so be forewarned. (This subject is covered with a little more depth in Adam Hartzell's review at koreanfilm.org, if you wish to know more.)

As with most of the other DVDs in this box, the picture is enhanced for widescreen TV from its 1.85:1 OAR, and looks lovely. The sound is a bit hissy, but that's not always out of place in a film where so many storms rage. The optional English subtitles, however, leave a lot to be desired. They're really no worse than the others in this series (Yeong-ja excepted), but in this film, the dialogue is much more crucial, and you're already expected to understand each line at two distinct levels, the "common" and "uncommon." Thus, when one encounters a subtitle like the one shown at right (click the screengrab to enlarge it), it can really throw you off your stride.

Even with the distracting subtitles, and the dense and multi-layered storyline, 90% of which I'm probably not getting, I still can recommend this DVD as one that will provide an interesting viewing experience.

(*)Thomas Laird, The Story of Tibet: Conversations with the Dalai Lama (Grove Press, New York, 2006, p. 5). Please excuse any formatting errors in this footnote; I lost my Strunk & White about 30 years ago!