The Old Garden

Nearly two decades after the tumultuous years of social upheaval in Korea, Hyun-Woo Oh, one of the main characters of the film, is released from the prison, serving 17 years for trumped up charges by the Korean government. We follow Hyun-Woo's path as he looks for his place in the society where he took no part in during the last two decades where Korea has seen amazing economic growth. Unlike what the premise of the film hints at, much of the film is about the past, that of Hyun-Woo's journey prior to his arrest. It is, more specifically, a romantic journey that the filmmaker wants us to follow.

The journey takes place against the backdrop of the 80's, when socially conscious low-wage workers and college students protested against the government for social injustice prevalent everywhere at the time. Violent clashes between the two were frequent, but mostly it was the civilians who were unfairly victimized by the militant government, which ultimately resulted in hundreds of death. Hyun-Woo, who took up this cause, was part of this student movement at the time along with his friends, who were eventually arrested, tortured and senselessly killed.

He flees at the urging of his friends, while most of his friends were captured. As he roams through the countryside, he meets a girl by the name of Yoon-Hee, who provides physical as well as emotional protection.

The film slowly builds layers of Hyun-Woo’s subtle and complex emotional states during this time, which involve among other things responsibility to his comrades who had been captured or killed and his complicated romantic entanglement with Yoon-Hee. The fact that the film grounded the story in the historically, socially sensitive 80's did not catch me by surprise, after all I moved to the States in the 80's when this sort of thing was happening everywhere. But it's the filmmaker's attempt to leave the past as it is and not to draw out any moral or social implication it has in the present that surprised me.

The director, Sang-Soo Lim, once said he wanted to focus on the human aspect to the story. As if to prove that he really meant it, he eschews much discussed and criticized role of the militant government in favor of the two lovers caught in this complicated era. It is a noble attempt on his part, and I think it is the right choice ultimately, despite the fact that he half successfully conveys the characters' complicated emotions.

His noble attempt aside, however, we only get glimpses of the effects the social circumstance has on the characters, instead we get anecdotes of their predicament assembled in linear narrative fashion that more or less disrupted only by Hyun-Woo's memory. I can see why Lim chose to show things in fragments, as most of us see the past in fragments when memory is conveniently called up to suit the present. But his refusal to go into the depth of his characters stopped this reviewer from going into his also. The ultimate question for Lim is not why but how, and I could see the merit this inquiry into their inner depth could have elicited ; nevertheless, I am thoroughly unconvinced of his character renderings.

Surely, the operating principal behind his latest work is showing the characters as they are and not to fall on either side of the political and social spectrum by means of apolitical figures. But as the superficiality of the characters is all we get, we never fully engage ourselves in their ups and downs of life. Some scenes come off from the screen as if they are 30 second TV commercials designed to promote the latest home products or fashion trends.

It is, in a way, a paradox to make a film based on an era that yearned for a better future for its generation that now seems only to belong in a history textbook when it’s only two decades ago. That this longed generation of economically renewed Korea only sees the past decades that struggled for them as another historical incidents buried deep in the textbook is only to be expected, that the demographic of the theatre going group is pretty much limited to teens and twenties, that the movies nowadays catered mostly to this group that worships the façade of things and not the things themselves are not something to ridicule the filmmakers about – their intention being an honourable one no matter what the outcome is. Yet, I came away from watching the movie feeling like this was the way Hyun-Woo felt about his past, our past.