Well it wasn't. It was sad.
Park Chan Oo (I don't know why, but apparently English people cannot say Oo, without a 'w', or Ee without an 'l') is a superb Korean director. He really gets the love, the laughs, the sex, the confusion, the joy, and the pain.
Mostly the pain.
This is one of the 4 movies of his I've seen, and I have now decided his films epitomize the Korean ethos of "han" His other's are (most famously) Old Boy (most accesibly) Lady Vengeance, and Joint Security Area. Each contains all of those emotions, and characters who you love in situations you hate. This one and Old Boy and JSA, well I guess all of these movies of his I love, have this touch of Romeo and Juliet to them... so beautiful, so lovely, and so unnecessary that everyone has to die in the end. But then.. that's life.
an ethos I don't really understand, but I feel it everywhere about me.
Like the river that flows through Seoul, Han is something of desperation, or despair, of reverence and regret. I don't know. It's a frown on their face, and yet it brings out an unmatched rage, and laughter, and nervousness, and extroversion, and alcoholism.
I think it reminds me somewhat of the pain of the Jewish people, who feel pretty in the right, and when shit goes down, they look around and all they can see is Chinja? (really?)
Had to get this off my chest
There's little time for me to talk about my almost undoing of my apartment, and the rift in my heart, and my topsy turvy thoughts on religion. Back to sleep, and better living! Assa!
Apparently, too, I have chased away my readership with a new address. Well I like this one better, more concise and to the point.
Closing with the English translation of one of my favorite quotes from Oh-Dae-Soo, in Old Boy, describing the meaning of his name ... "it means getting by one day at a time....
... but why can't I get through today?"
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