It's hard to know what's more surprising, that Korean cinema appeared full-blown or that it existed at all. For most of us, Korean film is an industry so obscure that it doesn't even register on our cinema radar. If you thought about it at all, you might imagine it to consist of scratchy black and white films with cheap cardboard sets, actors in pancake makeup and hopelessly long, boring stories on par with a Russian movie about a tank circa 1935.

Prepare to be blown away by films that equal anything Hollywood or Hong Kong can produce in terms of directors, actors, cinematographers and technology, and can outdistance them both in creative and entertaining stories. The late 1990's and early 2000 have seen a renaissance in Korean cinema, only now accessible outside the country and outside of film festivals. Right now is the beginning of the great Korean movie tsunami, so get on board. It promises to be a great ride.

RECOMMENDED FILMS

I'm not an expert, just a fan. I don't know everything about Korean cinema and I haven't watched every film available. However, here's my list of recommended films that are available now on DVD with English subtitles and region one coding. There's not a heck of a lot out there, perhaps 30-40 films. However, this is a quantum leap from a year or so ago when it was just a handful, and increasing every day.

Beat 1997
Directed by Kim Sung-soo

From the first frame you know you're in for a fast, exciting ride through teen angst, true love and heroic bloodshed. Min and Taesoo are best friends and high school students in Korea, a country where making the grade is so notoriously brutal, suicide seems like a viable option, and life without the grades, a dead end. Min and Taesoo's junior thug activities lead them to an uncertain future; Taesoo pursues a life of crime, while Min tries to escape from it.

This is a tight film with an emotional wallop and it's easy to see why it was such a huge hit with the young crowd. Romanticism and heightened emotionalism that only teenage hormones can produce, however, are grounded in the cold, hard facts of life and its consequences, making it a credible and affecting movie. Yoo Oh-sung (Attack the Gas Station, Friend) does a stand out performance as Taesoo. Chung Woo-sung as Min and Ko So-young as Romy play the star-crossed lovers. Well-made and well worth seeing.


Attack the Gas Station 1999
Directed by Kim Sang-jun

The basic story is four thugs with nothing better to do decide to rob a gas station only to find it has no money. They hatch a plot to pump gas and pocket the change and if the customers get uppity, they just take them hostage. You wouldn't think a movie about someone pumping gas all night would be interesting, but the delight of this film comes from the unexpected twists and turns the story takes and its inspired moments of lunacy. One incident piles on top of another as each character jockeys for position in an ever-shifting power game. Each little event is plausible and they all keep adding up to ridiculous proportions to finish in a sublime, preposterous and satisfying conclusion. It's a delicate balancing act that can't possibly work, like a teetering tower of Jinga blocks, but it does. This film is a rarity: a fun movie that doesn't insult your intelligence. It stars Lee Sung-jae (Art Museum by the Zoo, Kick the Moon), Yoo Oh-sung (Beat, Friend), and Yoo Ji-tae (Libera Me).


Nowhere to Hide 1999
Directed by Lee Myung-sae

Dissed by some, but in my opinion, a flawed masterpiece. Here is a director who has gone all-out to create something wholly original and purely visual, and the result is electrifying. It's not so much the story -- a simple tale of cops chasing a criminal -- as the way it's told, with ingenious experiments in color, rhythm and adrenaline-pumping movement, that send this story to the top of my list. And move this story does. Characters chase each other on foot, in cars, on bicycles, into alleys, trains and rooftops. They chase each other through snow, rain and mud. The detectives chase morning, noon and night, attempting to find a drug lord believed to have brutally murdered his archrival. The hunting pack of detectives are brutal, dumb and relentless in running down their man, stomping every suspect to within an inch of his life. Master criminal Sungmin, played by Ahn Sung-ki, is distinguished, solitary and brilliant, repeatedly outwitting their buffonish attempts.

And herein lies the rub: the detectives are the heroes who chase the bad guy, but they are also brutish thugs who beat and kill people. They attract and at the same time repel. Because of this, some people claim this movie advocates police brutality. It doesn't sit well with our moral sensibilities of what a good guy and a bad guy are. Director Lee spoils our need to simplistically root for the good guy by making him a bit ugly as well. Park Joon-hoon is a standout as the gleefully knuckle-dragging Detective Woo, a Korean John Belushi. Park is equally matched by powerhouse actor Ahn Sung-ki who holds his own without one word of dialogue. Chang Dong-gun plays Detective Kim, Park's moral barometer partner, the sole exception to the pack of crotch-scratching, suspect-pounding detectives.

Nowhere to Hide is an immensely enjoyable ride. It is a gorgeous film that is beautifully shot and makes the best use of music since 2001: A Space Odyssey. It does has a bump or two along the way (one too many chase scenes, lack of character development) that ultimately do not derail the film as it rockets to its satisfying and brilliant conclusion.


Art Museum by the Zoo 1998
Directed by Lee Jeong-hyang

On leave from military service, Chul-soo makes a beeline for his fiancée's apartment for a little rest and recreation. When he finds she's gone out, he lets himself in and settles down to wait, cleaning up her untidy apartment and even paying her back rent. However, the girl who returns to the apartment is not his fiancée but Choon-hee, the new tenant. To Choon-hee's dismay, Chul-soo refuses to leave the apartment until he's found his fiancée and she finds she must help him in order to get rid of him.

The close quarters results in friction and sparks between the two opposites. They squabble, get their hearts broken, write a screenplay together and eventually fall in love. Shim Eun-ha (Christmas in August) who plays Choon-hee shines as the dreamy videographer unconcerned with the accoutrements of femininity such as cooking, cleaning, and clothes. It's a delight that she finds love and gets the man without the requisite Hollywood makeover. Lee Sung-jae (Kick the Moon, Attack the Gas Station) plays the bossy control freak Chul-soo who barges into her life and takes over her screenplay. The story they create about an isolated zoo veterinarian (Ahn Sung-ki from Nowhere to Hide) and the art museum docent (Song Seon-mi) who falls for him begins to take on a life of its own as the two stories begin to mirror each other and eventually mesh.

I could lodge some complaints against this movie for its underdeveloped second story or the too-overbearing Chul-soo character, but in the end these are minor complaints. You'd have to be a curmudgeon not to fall in love with this simple, sweet, and utterly charming movie.


Peppermint Candy 2000
Directed by Lee Chang-dong

Generally speaking, I go to movies to escape reality, not to confront it. Every once in a while, however, the Serious Art Film comes along that has critics trumpeting it and me guiltily avoiding it for as long as possible, like a dose of dreadful tasting medicine. You know it's good for you, but it's not going to be fun. This is one of those movies.

The story begins with a middle-aged man, Yongho, joining a 20-year reunion picnic. He seems drunk or crazy, or perhaps both. He stumbles around shouting, singing and making a general embarrassment of himself before wandering over to the nearby railroad tracks. A train inevitably appears and, in a scream of frenzied agony, he ends his life in suicide. At which point you'd be seriously tempted to turn off the remote and watch an old episode of Hawaii Five-O. However, if you left it on, you'd be rewarded with an intelligent, profound film instead of wasting a half-hour looking at Jack Lord's conk, however cool it may be.

The story then begins a series of flashbacks that piece together Yongho's shattered jigsaw life. A train connects each flashback as it shows what lead him to this end. The reasons that slowly unfold are fascinating. We see him as a ruined businessman, a brutal cop, first-class heel, hopeless romantic, callous youth, frightened soldier and starry-eyed student. With each bit of information revealed, degrees of distance and dispassion are stripped away from the viewer. We begin to see ourselves in the character of Yongho. We begin to recognize how life, and our response to it, takes its toll on the purity and innocence of our youth. Director Lee has dug deep to strike a universal chord. This is life not as the fairy tale we want it to be, but as the reality it often is. Sol Kyung-gu has the role of a lifetime as Yongho, whose life we see over a 20-year span. No, this isn't a fun movie, but it is a deeply moving film that stayed with me for months afterwards and is, in my estimation, one of the greatest films made.


Jakarta 2000
Directed by Jung Chosin

Think you're good at figuring out movies? This one will out-smart you at every turn. Director Jung is the cat to your mouse, playing with your expectations, giving them each a good twist and standing them on their heads.

It seems like this might be a fun bank caper movie. Three separate groups of bank robbers decide to rob the same bank on the same day. Wah-wah. Lots of laughs and some cuddly robbers winning our hearts with their good-natured, reluctant-criminal ways. Right? Think again. The director takes a dive into a dark and violent world where the complicated web of crosses and double-crosses leaves you surprised and unsure of anything.

Just when you're completely disoriented, the whole movie stops, backs up, and begins retelling itself from the beginning! It's here where the story shines as it begins to unravel each bank robber's backstory. We find everyone has their own private agenda and each of their stories connects to the others in surprising ways.

This is not a profound film or work of artistic genius. It's not a perfect film: the ending is a little too sentimental, the first act too long and grim. However it is a fun and smart film. The writer and director do a stand out job of keeping so many fractured subplots going and still have it all make sense. The joy of this movie is its ability to surprise and tweak the intelligence filmgoers weary of formulaic fare.


My Heart 2000
Directed by Bae Chang-ho

Certain religions pray to God not to be born a woman. After watching My Heart, I can understand why. Life as a woman in Korea during the 1920's sucked mightily. The story begins with 16-year old Soonie being married off to an 11-year old boy who is revered as a god by the family instead of the obnoxious little twit he is. However, this is nothing compared to the dragon mother-in-law our heroine gains, a psycho who delights in making Soonie's life a living hell.

Years of martyrdom pass (thankfully rather shortly for us). Soonie's child-groom becomes a man, but remains an obnoxious twit. Through him, Soonie inadvertently learns what love is and because of this decides to leave her home and make her own way in the world. This film follows her story over a 30-year span as she tries first to survive life and then to endure it, experiencing prosperity, loneliness, marriage, starvation, motherhood and old age.

I don't think I've ever seen anything like this movie. It is the very definition of "a good cry." At the end I felt simultaneously happy, sad, and completely satisfied. It's a simple story that evokes a floodgate of emotions. Somehow this film gets at the heart of what it is to live life. Dramas often drown you in unrelenting grimness. Comedies are often unrealistic fantasies. My Heart is more true to life, reflecting the sweetness, hard work, little pleasures and unacceptable losses that life brings to all of us (though some more than others -- I'll never complain again).

A large part of the movie's success is due to Kim, Yu-mi, the director's wife and the co-scriptor, who plays the extraordinary role of Soonie, who goes from cowed bride to feisty granny in the span of one movie. Her uncomplaining acceptance of life completely wins you over. Kim Myung-gon, the father from Sopyonge plays a delightful potter, her husband.

Apparently this film did not do well in Korea. It's hard to understand why. This is a wonderful movie; I recommend it without reservation.


BACKSTORY

Korean film history, actors, directors, social context will bore the pants off you if you haven't watched any Korean films. Come back and read about it after you've seen your first film, when you must know how the hell that brilliant film came out of nowhere.


HISTORY

In the 1930s Korea had a fairly thriving film industry. It was, however, almost completely wiped out by the Japanese occupation in 1937 and the Korean War in 1950. Only eight films made before 1953 have survived.

The film industry began to slowly recover after the Korean War with a spat of weepy melodramas, which were enormously popular. The climate shortly changed when Korea came under military dictatorship in the 1960s, which forced an intense industrialization of the country and maintained tight control of its film industry. The screening of foreign films was strictly limited, and production houses were ordered to churn out 15 entertaining films a year, in line with the dictatorship's sensibilities.

Nevertheless, the industry began to flounder in the 1970s because of censorship and did not bounce back until the early 1980s when a handful of new directors infused life into it. This was short-lived, however. In the late 1980s the government eased censorship laws and lifted import restrictions on foreign films. The competition of Hollywood and Hong Kong films nearly crushed the native industry, which inspired the government to do a little backpedaling.

The industry introduced a screen quota system where Korean theaters were required to screen Korean features for 106 days out of the year. This gave a modest boost to the industry, but it wasn't until the late 1990s that Korean films fully recovered and began to rival other countries' films.


RECENT HISTORY

We have Shiri (1999) to thank for being the film that broke Korean cinema out of art-house obscurity and into the mainstream film marketplace. Its unprecedented success showed the world that Korean films could compete with the best of the best in terms of production values, filmmaking technology and accessible, engaging storytelling. Shiri opened the floodgates, making Korean films accessible to the West.

The late 1990s and early 2000 have seen one film topping the last as biggest-grossing film of all time. The highest grossing film in 1996, The Gingko Bed, was toppled by The Contact in 1997, and then A Promise in 1998. Shiri has since been toppled as the highest grossing film of all time by Joint Security Area (JSA), which was toppled this year by Friend.

Before Shiri there might have been 5 Korean films on the market with English subtitles. Two years post-Shiri, the Korean film industry is poised for crossover success. Co-productions with Hong Kong and Japanese filmmakers are taking place. The United States is buying North American distribution rights to Bichunmoo and Shiri. Korean actors are crossing over into American, Hong Kong and Japanese films.


DIRECTORS

Raised in a country where the director is as famous as the stars in their movies, it's difficult to grasp the notion of a country with few directors lasting longer than their first film. The huge upheavals in the 1980s and 1990s have resulted in an industry dominated by first-time filmmakers. Of the new crop of directors, the following are most notable.

Kang Je-kyu has directed the box office success The Gingko Bed and then topped himself with Shiri. His films are a winning combination of high-tech Hollywood wizardry and melodramatic fate-driven love stories more typical of Korean films. His film Shiri was released in Hong Kong, Taiwan and Japan, introducing the idea of a Korean blockbuster.

Lee Chang-dong's debut film was Green Fish in 1997, which portrays the roots, family, traditions and innocence lost by rapid modernization. Lee's second film was Peppermint Candy, which again dealt with the themes of rapid social and economic changes and the cost to Korean's simple, innocent lives.

Jang Yoon-Hyun's first feature Contact (1997) was one of the most phenomenally successful films in the history of Korean films. It was produced by Myung Film, which also made The Quiet Family, The Happy End and JSA. His second film was the well-made, highly successful horror film Tell Me Something. Jang says he is interested in the problem of communication, in a world filled with personal desires but without any common ideals, a theme played out in both his films.

Song Neung-han is another promising director who also writes the scripts for his films. He made the brilliantly satirical comedy No. 3 in 1997 and the less successful Fin-de-siecle in 1999.

Kim Ji-woon has also revealed his original sense of humor in his two comedies, The Quiet Family in 1998, and The Foul King in 2000.

RESOURCES

Korean Film Database
http://www.kofic.or.kr/english/index.asp

Korean Top 50 as of 10/31/01
http://www.kofic.or.kr/english/database/statistics_011.html

Formation of Korean Film Industry under Japanese Occupation
by Noh, Kwang Woo

Im Kwon-taek Interview
by Ancha Flubacher-Rhim

Im Kwon-Taek: The Making of a Korean National Cinema Edited
by David James and Kyung Hyun Kim

Spring Cinema Hot and Controversial
By Kim Mi-hui Staff reporter

ON THE ROAD TO RECOVERY: Changing times for Korean filmmakers
By Alison Dakota Gee and Whitney Mason / Seoul

Mapping the Korean Film Industry
by Lee Yeon-Ho


-- contributed by Cheryl Cain (12/18/01)


*Many thanks to Darcy for his thorough and insightful contributions on Korean cinema, www.koreanfilm.org