Too bad, because there’s really something going on lately in South Korean
cinema - while the Hong Kong film industry battles economic problems and
piracy, and Japan’s market is TV-saturated, filmmakers from Seoul are making
genre-bending, risk-taking fare that has nourished the region’s box office and
intrigued international film festival juries.
“Taegukgi,” about two brothers who are conscripted into the South Korean
army and begin to drift apart emotionally in the heat of frequent, bloody
battles, is the latest Korean film to openly long for reunification of North
and South. Others have couched their messages in a murder mystery (the DMZ
drama “JSA”) or an action thriller (”Shiri”), but here we have the Korean War
itself, framed in a flashback structure a la “Saving Private Ryan.”
Locals are responding; released in South Korea on Feb. 5, the most
expensive Korean film ever ($12.8 million, looking like a $150 million
Hollywood movie) is the leading moneymaker in that country, with nearly four
times the admissions of the year’s No. 2 film, the American epic “Troy.”
“Taegukgi,” named after the South Korean flag, opens in the present day
when an elderly man gets a phone call. An archaeological dig has uncovered
remains from a long-ago battlefield, and it appears that they belong to the
man’s older brother, who has been listed as missing in action for 50 years.
Flash back to 1950, when Jin-tae (Jang Dong-kun), the protective older brother,
and Jin-seok (Won Bin), his bookish younger brother, are happily living in a
town near the 38th parallel. Jin-tae’s beautiful wife, Young-shin, (Lee Eun-
ju) runs a shop that is just beginning to be successful. They have two
children.
War breaks out, and the brothers are drafted. Thinking that being a war
hero (or getting killed) will allow his younger brother to go home, Jin-tae
volunteers for every dangerous mission, and becomes addicted to the violence
of battle. Jin-seok becomes horrified at his brother’s bloodthirstiness, and
thus writer-director Kang Jegyu (”Shiri”) sets into a motion a morality play
that assesses the cost of war, and how it changes a human being, a family and
an entire nation.
Epic in scope and violent in a way that every war film has to be since
“Saving Private Ryan,” “Taegukgi” is a big-time movie that never loses sight
of its human story.
Advisory: Extremely violent scenes of war and torture, and strong
language.
– G. Allen Johnson
‘Brothers in Arms’
Documentary. Directed by Paul Alexander. (Not rated.
68 minutes. At the Roxie.).
This timely documentary features interviews with John Kerry and four
other veterans of his Vietnam War swift-boat unit. The candid discussions of
what happened in the Mekong Delta back up Kerry’s recollection of events - and
rebut accusations made by the socalled Swift Boat Veterans for Truth - but the
most compelling reason to see this movie (and the accompanying short film
“Interviews With My Lai Veterans”) is the profile we get of the horrors of war.
Three of Kerry’s crew members on the six-man boat suffered severe postwar
symptoms, including alcohol dependency. All the soldiers, including Kerry,
were forever changed by the experience of fighting the Viet Cong. Director
Paul Alexander, a political writer and radio host, gets riveting, emotional
confessionals from the veterans, especially David Alston, who speaks about his
suicidal thoughts and the fact that some war opponents called him “baby
killer” when he returned from his tour of duty. The snapshots we see of these
men in Vietnam, when they are young, strong and, if not idealistic, at least
hopeful of returning home safely, contrast sharply with their reality 35 years
later.
Kerry is an exception. He seems in robust physical health and seems to
have lost none of the determination and spark that he showed his fellow
soldiers on the Mekong Delta. While not hagiography, “Brothers in Arms” is -
when it focuses on Kerry - a mostly flattering look at a presidential
candidate, done by a journalist who has written a sympathetic book on Kerry
(”The Candidate: Behind John Kerry’s Remarkable Run for the White House”). One
of the movie’s few critical moments comes from Mike Medeiros, a veteran who
calmly questions Kerry’s sudden evolution from soldier into war opponent.
By contrast, “Interviews With My Lai Veterans” is incendiary. This 20-
minute documentary, made in 1970, features interviews with five soldiers who
admit (sometimes with smirks and guilty or nervous smiles) that they
participated in the My Lai massacre of 1968, when American troops shot and
butchered hundreds of unarmed Vietnamese civilians. One soldier talks of
shooting a woman in the back and killing her and her 3-month-old child.
Another talks of putting bodies in ditches. Several mention cutting off ears
and worse. They say they were following orders, that there was an atmosphere
of “revenge” on that day in 1968 and that war crimes were committed. It’s no
wonder that public outcry over the massacre led to a big decrease in U.S.
publicsupport for the Vietnam War.
Advisory: These films contain strong language about war and violence.
- Jonathan Curiel
‘Yes Nurse! No Nurse!’
Musical. Starring Loes Luca and Paul R. Kooij. Directed by Pieter
Kramer. (Not rated. 104 minutes. In Dutch, with subtitles. At theCastro.).
“Yes Nurse! No Nurse!” is the best Dutch musical film ever made. The
competition isn’t that fierce: It’s the only Dutch musical film ever made.
Owing much to such classics as “Singin’ in the Rain” and “The Umbrellas of
Cherbourg,” “Yes Nurse!” is a pleasant enough movie whose overt charm
sometimes works against it.
The story, adapted from a popular Dutch TV series from the 1960s,
revolves around the comic tension between the quirky residents of a rest home,
run by a kindly nurse, and its landlord, a whiny and misanthropic neighbor.
One of the most appealing aspects of the film is its set, made to look
like a busy street brimming with flashy early-’60s colors and fashions. The
choreographed numbers performed here clop along with English-sounding
consonants and are as silly as they are catchy. (All together now: “Twip, twip,
twip/ don’t crash into the piano or you’ll slip.”)
– John McMurtrie
Andres Connor