Why am I so fascinated with Korean films?

When I stumbled upon the Korean Blogathon, my first reaction touched upon the existential “to be or not to be” question of this whole blog: What am I supposed to write about at all? While I was able to bring out a list with rankings such as in the preparatory posting a few days ago in just a few minutes, I am having a hard time both at writing reviews or blog postings in general. If I blog about a film I like, how can I do justice to it with the little time I spend on blogging about it, including research on the film, its director, actors and historical background? If I wouldn’t like films, why would I even bother with blogging them at all?

All these considerations make me afraid of tackling a topic such as this one, but sometimes I just really, really want to. The question why I particularly like Korean films is relatively important, because it does not go well with my general regard on film: I typically tend to watch films that are critically acclaimed. Those which are not critically acclaimed tend to be either very random choices, or generally popular in wherever country I am at currently, or I have a certain bond and knowledge of what is surrounding these films: I was born in China, have lived in France, I grew up in Germany with Hollywood films and I know extensively about these countries’ history as well as a few other European countries. With these countries, adding in the UK (Kubrick!), Italy (Antonioni!) and Spain (Almodovar!!), I know very well why I would have a particular interest for films from these countries. For Japan, the only country among all these I have never been to, a lot of my interest is derived from anime and manga culture which, carefully observed, can give you a connection to a particular culture and thus make you appreciate films like Departures even without having been there.

What to say about Korean cinema? Since I noticed how I really am not doing a good job at giving an overview on actual films and names, I think that gaguri has done an amazing introduction to Korean films, though I am a little less of a fan of Kim Ki-duk and mourn the omission of JSA and Take Care of My Cat. But he knocks down the most important categories: Fluffy love stories, black comedies, artsy yet recognized films, dramatic thrillers and ware epos.

Bin-Jip’s (3-Iron’s) masterpiece shot, beautifully honored at the Centre Pompidou Paris

Korean films are entirely different and there is no apparent reason why I would find them great. Unlike anime, I wholeheartedly dislike Korean dramas and find most of them utterly cheesy, stupid and pointless. While there certainly are similarities to Japan and China, my impression is that Korea differs from them just as much as the two rivaling countries are different from each other. I find this to be most apparent in film history. Just by browsing the Wikipedia articles on Chinese and Japanese cinema in comparison to relatively poorly written one on Korean cinema, we can see the biggest difference: Whereas China is beyond its so-called 6th generation of film-makers and Japan’s golden era was merely 20 years behind Hollywood’s, Korea’s cinema was virtually non-existing until the new millennium. (I am not counting in the 50’s during which Korea seems to have tried to become a second Japan. Those movies are unknown and not particularly influential.)

On a side note, I am personally quite attracted to this aspect. Just like it is comparably easy to understand the field of systems biology very, very well because it is a new, emerging field, it is relatively easy to get a good picture of what we would call Korean cinema. Unlike critics who can spend a large portion of their life actually watching films, I will not be able to see more than perhaps 100 films per year, attempting to cover over 100 years of film history over the whole world. Catching up with 10 years of films is much less hard, especially if it’s the 10 years paralleling my own youth.

Take Care of My Cat, so overlooked!

What makes the fact that pre-2000 Korean cinema did not produce many masterpieces besides exceptional titles such as The Housemaid even more intriguing is the extent to which the number of interesting Korean films have exploded ever since. Last year, when I looked into the library shelf (there was only one!) with Korean films, I did not only find a whole ton of crappy love comedies, but virtually every good Korean film I have seen along with secondary literature. Starting the 2000’s, the government of South Korea seems to have promoted the cultural export of their films, and it was during that time that South Korean films became the new fad, after Iranian films and leaving their place to Romanian films, now that the international audience has become more used to the likes of Park Chan-wook and Bong Joon-ho. As for myself, I find it impressive that this fad existed at all, considering that it sprouted out of nowhere.

That brings me to two most interesting aspects of Korean cinema: First of all, Korean films are really popular in Korea. Sure, they love their Hollywood blockbusters just as much as we do and try to mirror their concepts with lower quality (with Tidal Wave or D-War for example), but this only shows that this country likes their own films. There is a strong interplay between what the Korean film industry and the audience. Not everybody in Korean films is a crazy murderer as in Oldboy; typically these are films which please a mass audience and where humor is almost always an well-inserted element. In that respect, these films are not just stories well-told but reflect the country’s state, customs and problems in a similar way as German silent films during the Weimar Republic. They are a country’s dreams projected onto celluloid – or an iPhone, for that matter.

JSA, just seeing this picture makes me want to cry.

Because older Korean films have such little influence, this effect seem to become even stronger. In Korea, what a film mostly has to do is to speak to its audience, not to reflect upon itself, which happens all too often especially with Japanese films. It seems to me that Japanese films feel compelled to be a response to its old masters. Just by looking at Satoshi Kon’s 100 films list strengthens this impression. Japanese cinema can never turn their eyes away from Kurosawa, Mizoguchi and Ozu; they are strongly influenced by the omnipresence of mass media, which includes their animation culture which gave rise to Miyazaki’s universal acclaim and influenced not only Quentin Tarantino, but mostly their own film makers. Aside from the Big 3 of the 50’s, throughout of Japan’s film history, there have been impressive film makers of the likes of Imamura, Teshigahara, Oshima, Kitano. On a less artistic level, Japanese cinema has also been very rich in films that are “just good”, Itami’s Tampopo being its prime example in my opinion. All these aspects are not relevant for Korean cinema, whose directors have the refreshing freedom to practically do whatever they want – as long as the audience and/or the critics likes it, and perhaps ignoring even that. In Korea, the freshness of a democratic yet rather weak political system with relative wealth (making it possible for you to deal with more complex topics than the question why we have less food than others) coupled with young, energetic and sheer creative genius are perhaps the strongest reason why.

Apart from that, maybe I was just immensely impressed by JSA, the first one I have ever seen. Maybe. And I know this is very personal and almost irrational, because Shii does not particularly like it.