The King and the Clown
I am completely at a loss at what to say. This was the weirdest Korean movie I have seen ever since “The Good Lawyer’s Wife” (and hey, that one was just absolutely crazy) and I although this certainly is a better film, I still think it absolutely made no sense to me.
At first the film was indeed very funny, and I was rooting for the characters to make the king laugh etc. etc. I loved the sexual jokes, I liked the plays, I was very amused at the latent homosexuality in the whole film, I even liked the interaction between the king, his ministers and the main characters. At least at first, all the characters were funny and likable too. I am a big fan of the topic about clowns who tell the truth, there is some sort of lovely philosophical depth to it. I like criticism to the institutions (including the school), and the premise of this story is no exception. I’m very pleased that this film was first banned in China.
But from there, things just went… weird. So the king is a crazy paranoid idiot with a sad story, okay. But why would the main characters go all emo? During the last 30 minutes, I kept thinking “Why~~~?” I know what the end meant and I’m not exactly sure if I like that because the scene beforehand failed to touch me. Every touching South Korean film ends with a rewind to when the main characters were still together, and in most cases such as JSA and Welcome to Dongmakgol, I am moved to tears. This case just felt utterly lame.
Perhaps I was just incapable of understanding the film – I think something great could have come out of it. As it stands though, the film was not all too enjoyable. In my next life, I would like to be born as a grad student.