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A wonderful movie ‘The Contact’
Basic features of the movie
Release: 97, Myung film, Korea movie investment and development.
director: Jang Yun Hyun
scenario: Cho Myung Ju, Jang Yun Hyun, Kim Eun Jung
staring: Han Suk Kyu, Jun Do Yun,
Park Yong Su, Chu Sang Mi
Kim Tae Woo, Kang Min A
1. Introductory Comment
Occasionally the title of this movie is the same with that of an American movie that was released in 97 and starred by Jody Foster, one of my favorite stars. The title describes exactly the themes of both movies. Both movies are talking about a contact with someone else. While Foster can contact with her dead father through SF inventions, Han and Jun can through an electronic mail. Foster cannot meet her father in our world but Jun happily could turn cyber space contact into face to face contact. As both two movies pursue face to face contact, they are humanistic drama. We can feel warm and heartful love or humane relation between people. No matter how much does the world change, warm humane relation is always an important issue. Luckily both two movies were very well done, far better than I expected. The stars of each movie were excellent. Foster assured of my belief in her and Han is doubtless the essential element of the movie. Whenever I am moved by a movie, I cannot resist to spending time over writing about the movie. This is exactly that time.
This movie can be interpreted comprehensively. While this movie is a well made melodrama, I also feel that this movie is coherent to its social background, otherwise saying, still keeps well reality. It’s not easy to balance between melodrama and reality. This movie achieved well such tough job. Through the following two sections I’d like to see this movie as not only its main feature of melodrama but also its realistic relation with society surrounding this movie. To be efficient in talking, the first section focuses on melodrama and the second on its social background. The second is hypothetical because this is based on my bold extrapolation of the limited information of this movie into unwarranted meanings.
2. In the viewpoint of melodrama
There has been always love between man and woman and will be. However, according as the situation surrounding love changes, the question how to love each other waits for a new answer. The background behind this movie is Korea that has just entered OECD and whose per capita GNP is about ten thousand dollars. Korea almost realized her dream. But economy starts to stagger. Considering the recent financial crisis which devalued Korean currency and also lowered per capita GNP to the level of ten years ago, the movie is the last rider on economic boom. Two ladies Heejin (acted by Kang) and Suhyun (acted by Jun) are living together in a neat two-bedroom apartment and Suhyun drives her own car. Suhyun is an on-line shopping guide and Heejin is a librarian. In my guess their jobs do not pay enough for their living. But in economic boom period, it’s not very unrealistic to assume that their parents can afford some extra money for their children. An on-line shopping guide also reflects on economic boom that accompanies active consumption. Two men Donghyun (acted by Han) and ? (acted by Park) and one woman (acted by Chu) are working each as producers and as a writer in a broadcasting company. Their jobs are now a symbol for independence, creativity and enough money. Korea’s economic boom made it possible for youngers to have jobs and to live independently from their family. And a movie can realize a new trend melodrama or romantic drama where only youngers show up and focus on love.
For a while there hasn’t been any noticeable melodrama in movie market. Old style melodrama has not found its place. We remember that in 60’s and 70’s melodrama was a very popular genre in Korean movie market. But ruthless military dictatorship and fight against it in 80’s did not offer any ground for melodrama. As Korean society changes, melodrama of nowadays departs from that of 60’s and 70’s when love between man and woman could not stand without family. A typical and also classic melodrama of 60’s and 70’s is ‘Love again over hatred’. Both a woman and a man are from poor family. The woman devotes herself for man’s success. But after success, the man finds another lover who is from wealthy family. He can keep on succeeding after marriage with the new love. On the while, the old lover has a baby who is the son of the man. The old lover gives up the baby to the man and disappears because she wants the man to go on for success without being bothered by her. This story was really stereotyped but reflected well the social background of those days and deeply moved viewers. At that time love cannot be free from a family because youngers have to serve their families that always suffer from poverty. Two or three young girls living together in one room, working hard in a factory and sending almost all money to the family except just basic money for their own living are very common. To the girls a prosperous man attending a law college was an ideal for love because the girls depressed from tough working condition had always a dream of higher education and wanted to make an economically better family than that she belonged to. But the man also has a family that cost all the resources of the family only to make him rise in the world. It was not easy for him to throw away the chance to have a wealthy partner and reward to his old family.
Under new economic condition at least before financial crisis offered movie makers a nice chance to get out of the restraint of family. But getting out of the restraint is not sufficient for a movie to be successful. Old melodrama had a persuasive story based on strong tension between love and family. With such a persuasive story movie makers did not have to be bothered by many technical issues like story line, edition, and camera technique. Although now they are given a chance to focus on love, they meets a new problem that love itself is too simple. If they exaggerate love in unrealistic way, then it may be a way to solve the problem. I remember two European movies, ‘Betty blue’ and ‘Bitter moon’. Love is a theme of the movies. But there is no family or family value. Love parts away from family and also from social relation. In those movies I could not match my idea of love to the that of the movie, was uneasy in watching those movies and so felt inclined to try a new interpretation about the love in the movies as a some symbol. I mean I wanted to interpret the love as another meaning which is not love. But I could not do that well, because the information obtained from the movies were not enough and my interpretation remained unanswered. However, Korean movies can not follow such radical romantic movie. Korea still has a tense competition among people. For a movie to be persuasive, all the characters of the movie should have jobs and be very faithful to the jobs. While there can be no family explicitly in a movie, still the value inherited from traditional family should exist. So in order for a melodrama to be successful it is a key point to balance well between love and family (value) Love that is not bothered by family but still keeps family value becomes a restraint for a movie. It’s likely for a movie to be dull. When the scenario was read among movie makers, it was said that a movie from the scenario will be very dull and be of failure. To overcome such dangerous possibility movie makers have to approach carefully to a movie and to be concerned about various technical issues like smooth story line, interesting scenes, talks, musics, etc But these issues should not be emphasized too much because if so, a movie may lose any focus. It is not an easy job to make a plain story interesting while keeping the simplicity of the story unhurt. Keeping plain story means to stay on reality. So the key point of this movie is how to make this movie unboring while realistic. To do this job, both well-established social understanding and sophisticated techniques are important. This movie ‘The contact’ did this job very well. Let’s see the story and talk more how this movie achieved well both needs.
Suhyun (by Jun) likes Kichul (by Kim Tae Woo) who is her roommate Hee Jin (by Kim Eun Jung)’s lover. Kichul also likes Suhyun but Kichul and Suhyun does not reach love. One night while Suhyun drives listening to a music from a radio she nearly escapes car accident. A car in the opposite direction lost control and smashed itself into another car. Later in the movie we see the driver was DongHyun’s unforgettable lover and was listening to the same music, upset and gave up her life. Next day Suhyun wants to listen to the music again and sends an email message to a radio station asking to play the music again. While, the same day when the car accident happened, Donghyun, a producer of a radio station, got an LP album which has a song called ‘Pale blue eyes’. We see later the sender of the album was his lover. He is stunned and sends the music on air. The car accident happened exactly when the music was on air. When DongHyun notices the email to request the music, he wonders whether he can get information about his lover but trys to contact to the email sender Suhyun. At first Suhyun pretends to know about Dong-Hyun’s lover but later confesses that she is not. However they continue to talk and feel comfortable with each other. Finally they decide to meet face to face and to see a movie together. But just at the time DongHyun is about to leave and to see her he receives a call and knows that his lover died. He does not show up at the date and decides to leave Korea for Australia. Suhyun finally knows why he wants to leave and sends dozens of email messages. By a message DongHyun finds that she is going to wait for him just a day before he is supposed to leave. He gets there but at first avoids meeting her just looking over her inside a cafe. Time flows and at last Suhyun gives up waiting, gets in the same cafe, asks a shop manager to turn on the music ‘Pale blue eyes’, calls DongHyun and leaves a message on the answering machine. Occasionally she calls at the public phone behind DongHyun. The music plays and she is leaving. DongHyun goes to her and finally sees Suhyun with a cheerful music called (maybe) ‘A lover’s concerto’.
While the story itself is not dramatic, the movie makes the story interesting by not following time order. At first I did not recognize that when the accident happened, Suhyun and another driver listened to the same music. In fact another driver was DongHyun’s lover and the music had a part of role to cause the accident. While the movie goes on and releases more information, I could realize why the accident happened and solve the puzzle. The accident and the music have a double role. One is to mediate Suhyun and Donghyun. The other one is to separate DongHyun and his lover by his lover’s death. While watching a movie, getting close to the puzzle’s solution makes an important role to make the movie interesting. And this editorial technique is not abusive and viewers can be on track keeping stick to the movie.
Interestingly, important three people do not see each other. DongHyun never sees his lover except that he sees her dead body. DongHyun and Suhyun do not see each other just before the ending of the movie. DongHyun and Suhyun just contact by cyberspace communication. This idea of introducing cyberspace communication is very fresh. But just an introduction of new idea is not sufficient for a movie’s success. They should tell why cyberspace communication is needed for romance and how it helps realize romance. This movie answers well both questions.
For the first question this movie notices the change of human relations: Direct and emotional relation between people become weak and indirect and formal relation becomes dominant. As I said, this movie does not show family which is the most direct and emotional relation between people and so each individual should solve one’s own problem alone. This means there is always a possibility to fail such a job and to fall into desperate loneliness. Suhyun would face such failure. She is too kind to insist on her lover. She always likes her roommate’s lover but realizes that he is not her lover. Whenever she realizes that and gets deeply disappointed, she tries to find a way to make herself comforted by talking to DongHyun through cyberspace’s anonymous contact. To her this is only one way for her to get help. DongHyun is of the same situation. He was severely hurt in love, still does not forget his lover and badly afraid to fall in love another woman. Although he started talking to SuHyun to get a hint about his missing lover, he also could get comfort by talking to Suhyun. While there is no family or friends who they can discuss with, they have to solve their hurt feeling for themselves. In fact nowadays this way of isolation from family becomes more common. Here lies the role of cyberspace communication. The anonymous meeting on cyber space offered a motive how both two people can meet. Once pen pal did a similar role. But pen pal is neither so anonymous, so fast, nor so interactive as electronic chatting and email. Cyberspace technology helps connect individualized people to some sense and the movie makers’ idea of introducing cyberspace communication is not absurd.
However, they still need to answer how to realize cyberspace romance. Here come technical concerns. In the sense that cyberspace romance is very occasional and does not assure any romance, basically the story of this movie is a fantasy which pretends to realize occasional or unrealistic idea. Fantasy is a trick that a movie uses to attract viewers. But viewers do not accept easily fantasy although they like fantasy. Movie makers have to find a way how to make fantasy accepted well. People like magic but only on the condition that magicians are so skillful that they cannot recognize any trick. Movie makers have to do that if they want to sell fantasy to viewers. As lovers of magic do not care of the reality of magic, movie viewers do not about the reality of the fantasy only if a movie is so skillful in its trick. The movie I am talking about is very successful in its trick. The story that the LP was sent to Han and the next day a request for the music again smartly justified the motive how both meet on cyberspace and keep going on. Beautiful roses showing up on monitor as gifts help viewers feeling fall into romance. Dozens of mails on DongHyun’s mail box can show how much concern Suhyun has for DongHyun. By such tricks we could fall into the fantasy of this movie. Once this tricks are done successfully, the movie offers inexperienced romance to viewers and makes viewers looking forward both Suhyun and DongHyun’s seeing each other face to face. This success of arousing viewers’ anxiousness is a point how to make a plain story unboring.
There are many other such bright techniques. This movie has many interesting talks and scenes that are, however, so shortly introduced that we cannot notice even those. This technique is useful to keep viewers on the main story line and also to make sensitive viewers feel amused by the wits of the movie. Otherwise saying, such short talks and scenes are like passages of a poem that brightly can point out the implicit meaning of negligible or unnoticeable daily happenings. Anyone can feel something from a poem. To common people the feeling is not certain. But sensitive people can feel what the passages mean. No matter whether viewers can notice well the meaning of a passage, such a passage leaves delightful memory on viewers consciously or unconsciously. This movie has a lot of such passages that help the movies not dull while keeping simplicity of the movie. This technique makes the movie a poem that is simple in outlook but talks a lot implicitly and assures the possibility of the success of a poem-like movie. I’d like to start talking about a very impressive scene as an example. Suhyun once tries to wear Kichul’s large shoes but when Kichul shows up she pretends not to wear the shoes. Usually feet or shoes are regarded as a symbol of a partner in the sense of sexual or general. Although such a scene does not take a minute, it shows how eagerly Suhyun wants to be loved by Kichul and how shy she is to reveal her feeling for Kichul. While Suhyun talks to Donghyun through computer communication she asks whether Donghyun’s feet are as large as Kichul’s. This talk reveals Suhyun tries to find love in Donghyun instead of in Kichul and also shows she is less shy in expressing her feeling to Donghyun than to Kichul. Cyberspace talk makes her less shy and bolder in getting love. Suhyun’s different attitude to the feet of both two implies that Suhyun will succeed getting love from Donghyun.
There are hundreds more scenes that implicitly and briefly tell something. Some scenes even do not any behavior or talk. It’s just a contrast of light, a camera angle, or just music. Among them I cannot drop a chance to talk about music. In this movie music finds its perfect role. Among much music used in this movie two music show remarkable effects on the movie: ‘Pale blue eyes’ and ‘Lover’s concerto’. ‘Pale blue eyes’ at the car accident offers various roles; it makes Donghyun’s lover part away Donghyun and offers a motivation for Suhyun to meet Donghuyn. While Donghyun does not know his lover’s death, this music reminds him of his lover, makes him miss her and locked up in the past. Melancholic and sad feeling of the music matches quite well matches the story. By this music viewers can be sympathetic with Donghyun. But Suhyun’s friendly feeling for this music implies that she can help Donghyun get out of the deadlocked past. As Suhyun and Donghyun become friendly on cyberspace, ‘Pale blue eyes’ does not show up and happy feeling of both is expressed by ‘Lover’s concerto’ a little slow without voice. Finally at the last scene, two pieces of music were played consequently. When Suhyun gives up seeing Donghyun, ‘Pale blue eyes’ really represents her disappointed feeling. Her sincere talk on Donghyun’s answering machine makes Donghyun irresistible to seeing her. This music talks that Suhyun’s love even for Donghyun’s painful past deeply moves Donghyun. When Donghyun shows up himself in front of Suhyun. ‘Lover’s concerto’ start to play rhythmically with delightful voice. Both two smile at each other and the music congratulates both. How cannot viewers be moved by this beautiful scene and music? It’s no wonder that this movie attracted record high viewers.
3. Another viewpoint
Detour 1 - weight of a movie
We can talk about the epic aspect or ‘weight’ of a story. The weight, I mean, is how much a story is similar to history. History cares memorable or shocking events or facts and organizes them as if each of them be born to have determined or destined purpose. But history does not care routine or individual happenings and thinking. Movies that tell about historical events can be of course said to be ‘weighty’. And also, even if a movie tells about individual, focusing on important events around the individual can be said to be weighty. While my notion of weight is not clear, I suggest examples. ‘Warship Potemkin’ is a good example of weighty movie that describes history itself of Russian revolution. ‘Bike thief’ does not focus on history ifself but happenings or events lead the movie and also the movie is indispensable with the history of Italian post-war depression as background. Hollywood action movies can be also said to be weighty. There are heroes showing up and dramatic and heroic actions of heroes are main issues of Hollywood action movies. On the contrary to these weighty movies, there are ‘light’ movies. I do not mean ‘light’ as shallow, flimsy, or frivolous. Light movie, I mean, is to find that daily or routine life or story is worthy of notice and offers sharp understanding to our world and men. A recent Korean movie ‘A day when a pig falls into water’ is a good example of this kind. In this movie there are no typical cinematic happenings. All the happenings are quite common in our daily life. So at first sight such a movie can confuse viewers in that viewers would lose any meaningful or noticeable information from the movie. To understand such a movie, first we need to be ready to accept the possibility that routine daily life can be also material of a movie. Otherwise saying, we need to recognize new grammar of a movie. Second we need to read between screens. This means we need to extract a theme from a series of unnoticeable happenings. This work is more difficult job than just to follow typical ‘weighty’ movies. For understanding, we can say about music. Traditional western music is based on hierarchical structure of tones composed of a dominating tone, subordinate tones. While we hear repeatedly the dominating tone, we can feel comfortable in listening to music. On the contrary, twelve-tone music does not discriminate any tone. Without trained ears, it’s a very perplexing job to listen to the music. I can compare ‘light movie’ to this twelve-tone music. By the way, I have to add an idea that weighty movie and light movie cannot be distinguished explicitly from each other. Daily matters are in fact important materials to make a movie concrete and feasible to our understanding. Conversely, historical events or idea to form things into history are also important for a movie. It’s not possible for a movie can be just a random selection of daily matters. Even a movie that just arrays unrelated happenings has at least implicitly uniform history or grammar that endows a movie with meaning. We can note that twelve-tone music is not random array of tones but has another rule of deploying tones.
Detour 2 - reflectiveness of a movie
In order to analyze the movie, now I want to introduce another notion called ‘reflectiveness’. This notion is to measure how much reflective a movie is on human beings. Each Individual man and also collective men are always keeping on reflect their thinking and behavior. Such reflection enables us to proceed toward the future. Every art has a role to do this. And also this role is one of its responsibilities. An artist’s sharp intuition recognizes any need for reflection for human beings and their creativity turns such reflection into tangible concreteness. Such concreteness makes it possible for general people to share such reflection. Here lies the importance of art as a means of reflection. Picasso’s ‘Gernika’ is just a piece of drawing but it leaves strong impression of Korean War on people.
On the other hand, we need to tell art and its medium. For example, Drawing can a medium of art but drawing is not itself an art. In order to be recognized as an art, a medium or form needs more than just its outlook. Reflectiveness is one of them. In fact talking about art as a whole is beyond my scope and so my idea is that reflectiveness is a necessary condition of art. This idea is also applied to a movie. Movie as a form can show various things: SF invention, Hitler’s political propaganda, documentary, etc. To understand various aspects of movie, someone suggested telling about synonyms of movie: ‘movie’ as commercial product, ‘film’ as documentary, and ‘cinema’ as art. It’s not easy to decide to agree or not about that. However what is sure is such idea also supports my idea that a form itself is not art. As far as movie is the most popular among mass, it has a strong character as commercial product. Almost all movies have both commercial product and art. But there are extremes also. For example, Almost all Hollywood movies do not deserve art. They are extremes of commercial product of movie. There are other extremes of movies which cannot be understood by common people but by a handful of professional critics by its super reflectiveness.
Anyway, no matter whether to agree that art should have a role of reflectiveness, reflectivenss is an important touch stone to identify a movie. Commercially biased movies lack this point. Hollywood action movies are weighty as I mentioned in detour 1 but do not have any reflectiveness. All the people showing up there are not any more than those in computer games. Some movies are light, that is, do not have historical story, but remind us of reflection on our lives. On the contrary to common Hollywood movies, ‘Face off’ made by Ou Sun (?) has also some reflectiveness although it is in overall an action movie. Amazingly it questions what is justice and what is injustice. So viewers are partly confused by the director’s twisted question and try to think about that at least in watching the movie.
Return to the movie
In the sense of my notion of weight this movie ‘the contact’ can be said to be a light movie in overall or at the first look. As in the movie ‘A day when a pig falls into water’, this movie tries to avoid emphasizing any particular impressive story. Such intention is not as radical as in ‘A pig...’ But as I mentioned some examples in the previous section this movie shows its intention to make a movie as close to real or daily life as possible. I add one example for proof in addition to those mentioned in the previous section Donghyun and Suhyun saw each other a few times without knowing each other. The idea behind these scenes is that anything like love that is said to be dramatic is actually very common. Quite contrary to old melodrama, this movie recovers plain life and gives up myth which exaggerates common happenings in our daily life in unrealistic way. I’ve already mentioned in the previous section how this movie balances well between plain (real) life and interesting talks quite successfully. What I want to talk about here is the following issue.
In fact this movie has enough potential possibility to make this movie weighty but such possibility is not realized or is just briefly mentioned. My question is why this movie avoids taking a lot into consideration such possibility. Let’s see the potential possibility. Donghyun’s elder friend died while serving military obligation. His death is guessed to be a suicide while his being disappointed by missing his lover who was also Han’s lover. Han’s lover died mainly because she gave up her life. Suhyun and Kichul could also be very serious in their relation either by deeply loving or severely hurting each other. But it did not happen. If they had wanted to do, they could have made this movie serious enough. But they made this movie light. Before finding an answer to the reason why they did so, let’s see another point of the movie.
This movie is reflective not explicitly but implicitly. Donghyun has almost forgot his painful lover by giving up finding his lover but, just recognizing his lover ended her life in tragedy, he finds he cannot forget the past. He cannot turn into past again, either cannot enjoy daily lives. He wants to avoid all the tough and confusing by way of immigration. But he returns again to life with the help of Suhyun who is also hurt by her fail of love but tries to be a kind of help to Donghyun. Suhyun is still concerned with another and doing her best for another while she lives in remarkable comfort considering our history. She is not very different from the woman in old melodrama who devotes herself to her lover and her family or related people. This story needs not to be interpreted as if this has a serious hidden story behind. But I wonder whether there is a possibility to interpret this into another meaning. Donghyun and Suhyun can be a prototype of so called X generation. Donghyun has a job that is now one of the most prosperous jobs among the young. Suhyun lives in remarkable comfort. She does not seem to care money and she drives her own car while living in a neat apartment. But both two keep old style attitudes: self-sacrificing and pure-minded. How different both are from the couple in the trendy romantic movie ‘Doctor Bong’ (Starring also Han)? although the situations of the former are very similar to those of the later. Here lies my motivation to get an implicit meaning from this movie. By this implicit meaning I can say this movie is reflective at least implicitly. Now I am almost ready to get a solution about lightness and reflectiveness. To do so, I need to retrospect the history of Korea and of movie.
Every Korean has passed really serious history through in each own experience. So many serious story telling movies poured into market, for example, ‘A petal’, (about Kwang Ju massacre) and ‘Jun Tae Il’ (about labor movement). Viewers welcomed such ivies. They needed movies which finish a serious era and make it possible for them to start a new era. Making and viewing such historical (weighty) and serious (reflective) movies was in some sense like having a funeral that closes one era and opens a new era. However, according as history overcame a terrible era incompletely (I mean military dictatorship finished but new political leadership could not be free from and had to compromise the old dictatorship), still there remains very careful attitude toward history. Koreans maybe understand they do not stand on so solid ground. This feeling becomes clear in 1997 when a bunch of scandalous bankruptcies continued and finally financial crisis hurt Koreans severely. I interpret Donghyun’s stick to the past as that Koreans miss the past which was just partly successful and leaves hidden landmines. His current cynicism (He avoids trying to love another) is almost like that of Koreans who just see helplessly the compromise between the old dictatorship and broken democratic leaders. Suhyun’s self-sacrifice reminds me of the devoted people who fought against the military dictatorship. The meeting of both seems to encourage people to build up Korea, not forgetting their once great love and sacrifice for Korea.
This movie stands around where Korea stands. The fact that Korea at least got out of the ruthless dictatorship makes the movie ‘light’, otherwise, take care of each indiviual’s daily life. But the fact that Korea realized it is not clearly free from the bad legacy of the past makes the movie ‘reflective’ by retrieving those people who devoted themselves for Korea and still are very much needed now. Current trend of movies and response of viewers supports my idea. Nowadays melodrama gains popularity among viewers, for example, ‘Letter’ and ‘Christmas in August’. (Both about death) I have not yet watched these movies but got information about their stories. Both are talking about death of a lover and so more serious than ‘the contact’. But the essential aspect do not seem to be different from that of ‘the contact’ in the sense of ‘light’ and ‘reflective’. |
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匿名
发表于 2004-9-27 20:05
