I miss the DVD/CD shops in Sydney, for the most part English titles here are predictable American fare and its quite rare to spot a world section. So basically no European cinema. You do see a lot of Asian titles though, particularly TV Drama box-sets, and browsing through them is educational and a tad amusing. The other day a mega sale was on and the enterprising salesman, eager to break my K-Drama virginity (well he didn't use those exact words), recommended a few. Apparently they are quite the thing around these parts. Ultimately I went with Jejungwon because it seemed a sciencey historical as opposed to the spicy sexy court intrigue saga which many appeared to be. At $10 for 40 episodes, it wasn't exactly expensive either. Also HANBOKS! If there is one garment that I will concede right away is superior to the sari, it is the hanbok. And indeed behold their glory in Jejungwon.
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| HANBOK LUST |
In the end it turned out to be not quite the epic it wanted to be and at 40 eps it was a bit much for me but it did get me thinking of a few things. Like I had kind of forgotten that in my first few years in Sydney I lived in a suburb that was very much Little Korea. There wasn't any particular reason for choosing the suburb except it was close to work. Plus I lived in several suburbs in Sydney simply to get a flavour of different cultures. The Koreans were considered insular but this hardly bothered me, in my experience as an Army brat it's rare not to encounter insularity. And they were nice enough people, there were a lot of smiles but little talk due to the language barrier though now and then someone would use a few words of Hindi. I in turn got used to the pleasant cadences of the Korean language. The suburb was pretty much run by and for Koreans, at the cafe below staff would look a bit bemused if we wandered in for coffee. The best part for me was a wonderful clothes store which was affordable and stocked clothing in sizes I could wear, the stuff there lasted me for ever. Several years later I moved out to a very white part of Sydney which was a different experience in itself.
In my first few years in Sydney I used to watch a lot of Asian cinema, partly because my brother had been in Shanghai and I had spent a few weeks there. The rental stores always carried Asian titles and you could count on a few releases given this was a time when a few independent cinemas actually existed in Sydney. Korean cinema was hyped up in the papers as must see cinema so we duly went along to see a few. Plus SBS would screen a lot of foreign cinema (sadly this is also a casualty of restructuring and changes at the station and the fare is less varied these days). Offhand now I can recollect Spring Summer..., 3-Iron, Oldboy (probably the most well known), Il Mare etc. Each of the movies was engaging but it left you feeling that something was not right or incomplete (I often have this feeling with Indian movies too) and more often than not if I had to compile a top ten list in those years it would have included a Chinese or Japanese movie instead of a Korean one. I still watch Korean movies, particularly on flights. They are always watchable, beautiful to look at and stocked with beautiful people and yet its hard to find a piece that is exceptional. And more often than not they are marred by a sense of melodrama. The only exception to this is Untold Scandal, which to me is the best version EVER of Dangerous Liaisons. So it maybe that I prefer the restraint and amorality of the Japanese:) Having said that the Koreans employ melodrama very well. It never rings false as in a Hollywood movie neither is it loud and stretched beyond belief as in an Indian movie. It can be a superior work like Pieta. Or a shamelessly manipulative movie like The Way Home. But some underlying purity of intent will make you bawl at the end, promise yourself to call your grandmother often and be completely embarrassed at being taken in by its manipulation:)
So much ink has been spilled on K-Pop, Hallyu, K-Drama and the like that it's not my intention to add to it (though no doubt my take on it is different being Indian). Suffice it to say that they are inventive and dabble in far more genres than Indian cinema is capable of but also have the "hook" that reels in devotees of popular culture. It is a created world that is as enticing as anything set up by Hollywood or Bollywood. There is one small difference - perhaps because the vitality of the industry is fairly recent - and that is that despite all the artifice and created glamour and melodrama, some kind of true and pure feeling runs underneath. It is there in varying degrees, in the best it is there in spades, in the worst absent. What Korean visual culture lacks in subtlety it makes up with this. All the more because it is so much absent in most modern cinema where more often than not the only two modes available are irony and crassness. In that context, a number of Korean films are also chaste, the TV dramas even more so. While the movies are more experimental, there is still some degree of sexual reserve.
Coming back to Jejungwon, all of this is true of the serial (which as it happens was not entirely successful). Taking in the rise of its hero from a member of the untouchable caste to a senior doctor in Korea's first Western hospital (the eponymous Jejungwon), it opts for a broad brush treatment. The good are very good, the bad are very bad, it is timid in its treatment of the politics of the era and the hero rarely catches a break before ultimately triumphing. Really not terribly different from an Indian drama of the 1950s, this in fact comes equipped with a Nagesh like light relief character too. All its tropes will be familiar from Indian cinema (this is not to say it is inspired by Indian cinema, rather there are some common sensibilities at work in Asia). Despite all this it has its pleasures. And it is subtle and moving in parts.
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#EXCUSE THEIR BEAUTY |
One of the pleasures for a history buff of course is that you can go back and look at actual events that took place (most wtf moment, what the Japanese killed and burned a Korean Queen?!). Unsurprisingly most of the Japanese in the series exist only as villains (except for the filmic cliche of a Japanese girl falling in love with a Korean aristocrat-doctor). Neither was I aware of a rigid caste system in Korea, in fact the country appears to have been in the grip of strangulating mores for a long time. It also turned out that a number of run of the mill dramas I had seen inflight (Masquerade, A Frozen Flower) were not set in some vaguely mythical past but set in specific periods of the Goryeo and Joseon dynasties (the Koreans seem to be on par with the British in their love of period dramas). As far as I can see even the costuming is specific, the hanboks of Jejungwon change with time.
The other is that its three main characters, roughly the poor, ostracised and bright boy, the aristocrat-scientist and the emancipated beauty, are nicely etched. Their actions for the most part make sense and despite the archetypes they are cast as, they seem real and the actors do their parts more than justice. The three main leads and some of the smaller parts are solidly cast (though at times some visible plastic surgery is a distraction:)). Again despite the flaws - the melodrama and lack of subtlety principally - something runs underneath that tugs at you in much the same way as if it were real. But the most remarkable feature of the drama for me was the female protagonist, Seok-Ran (played by Han Hye-jin). Neither an aristocrat nor middle class, her character has freedom and an understanding father who allows her to make her own choices which include becoming a doctor. Her choice of the outcast hero makes perfect sense within the context of the drama. But at no point does the drama confine her or define her by this romance. Which is remarkable given how much I have read about sexism in Korea and its arts (obviously not all that true or rather more complex than usually portrayed). Everything about the character is so perfectly judged that neither does it set up the progressive/reactionary doomed sexual relationship like many Western dramas (Howard's End, South Riding) nor does it go in for the complete devotion and self-abasement demanded of women in Indian dramas. Rather Seok-Ran is intellectually curious and devoted to her career, tops the exams over the two men who love her and if required chooses her calling over her husband. None of this is shown as out of the ordinary nor does she lose her husband over it, rather throughout she is strong and compassionate and respected for it. She is an inspirational heroine in a middling drama and Hye-jin's performance never falters even for a moment. You know you cannot be her but you would like to be Seok-Ran. It also reminded me of a movie I saw in Australia which was much lighter in tone (Private Eye) and where the actress had a small role but the character was similarly a turn of the century inventor in firm charge of her own life.
The other major factor in Korean dramas from what I can see is the parental relationship. Almost everything I have seen explores the bond from its most dysfunctional and yet unbreakable (many fathers with an undercurrent of violence!) to filial devotion, especially for a mother. Korean cinema treats this particularly well and it also embeds the romance in the context of these relationships, often in a far better way than Indian movies. Jejungwon is no different. For e.g. Jejungwon's central scene is the acknowledgement by a son of his father and though played for effect and very weepy, it is also strangely affecting.
And on that note let it be said that no Korean man in cinema or TV land is afraid of crying-the violence, the romance, the tears must have surely resulted in many pop cultural studies deconstructing Korean masculinity:) This being Korea the tears are bountiful and perfect, almost beautiful on the male face so to say:) Move over Rajendra Kumar and Shahrukh, your cry face is simply no match!
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| #CRY FOR KOREA |
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| #UNSPILLED TEARS FOR KOREA |
I may or may not be on my way to a K-Drama addiction...we will see:) In the meantime though I do need a break from 40 hrs of viewing so you might have to wait awhile. Next up...possibly The Painter of the Wind.
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