[HanCinema's Film Review] What's South Korean Cinema Got?

Korea's presence on the world's silver screen has boomed in the last decade, forming the cinematic crest to the cultural phenomena know as the 'Korean Wave'. Along with Korean cuisine and the increasingly popular world of K-pop, Korean cinema and local dramas have managed to capture the international communities' interest and imagination. The mysterious force behind this drive is riddled in Korea's unique ability to dramatize conflict in a manner that, not only surprises and delights, but directly challenges, or presents alternatives to, the audiences' expectations and sensibilities. Hollywood has its blockbusters and silver faces, Japan its horror, Europe its lust for the experimental and expressionism, Bollywood has it's love affair with romantic musicals, and Hong Kong its fluid martial arts showings. But what is it exactly that marks Korean cinema as particularly interesting or even noteworthy? What is that golden thread that drives it forward and drags the rest of us with it?

The notion of 'national cinema' is a problematic classification that loosely defines itself in terms of the cinematic products from any given country or region at any given point time. Certain countries may favour a specific genre or set of themes, but that favouring is birth from a reading of a nation's cinema in both time and space. Optimism and idealism may mark a decade of cinema, while pessimism and cynicism may act as its precursor. In this way, film as art reflects and depicts the cultural consciousness of the society from which it was birthed. It's the blood that swells the narrative with meaningful signs and cultural intent, the phantom light that casts the shadows that mesmerise and linger. Korean cinema, much like the nation itself, has had it's blood pacified and boiled, its veins twisted and purged of self-expression and creative freedom. After years of imperialism, civil war, and socio-political reformation, modern Korea can now breath and the creative juices are indeed flowing, but not without remembering the pains and conflicts that prevented itself from arriving earlier.

Suicide, revenge, psychological suffering, and ultra-violence are some of the darker elements/themes that have coloured Korean cinema in the past decade. A filmic cleansing that has bathed many a film in bad blood. Films such as "Oldboy", "Peppermint Candy", and "The Chaser" have stunningly made themselves known to the world as pieces of cinema that shock, remind, and challenge. These, as well as many other stained pieces of art, have certainly clutched the gaze of the international film community, but even these efforts are products of a deeper passion to be found, a resilient cultural core that speaks to what it means to be a Korean on the world stage, told through art and moving image.

Psychological thrillers aren't the only genre that comes attached to Korean cinema. Each year Korean cinemas are flooded with a wide array of comedies, romances, action flicks, and, more often enough, each genre is infused with another. The mixing and merging of genres within Korean cinema has become apart of its creative scheme and has resulted in a freshness that favours an inside-out approached to their films. With Korean films being largely apathetic towards genre and the rigid scaffolding they present, viewers are left to ponder the meta-structure behind the spectacle and the core concerns of their industry.

Drama, or more specifically melodrama, exists within Korea's visuals arts with such robustness and claim that it's almost impossible to separate any discussions on Korean cinema without it. Conflict is arguably a prerequisite for any art form, but the degree to which the forces interact, and the result of that interaction, is where the creative freedom lies. Korean cinema and dramas have a uniquely Koreaness about them that oscillates between the promise or expectation of resolution and the seemingly masochistic unwillingness to fully embraces catharsis as a narrative mechanism. It is Korea's passion for the melodramatic and the emotional embezzlement that follows that has drawn the world's eyes towards this small Asian nation's cinema and culture. This undercurrent of emotion is deeply intertwined and can be examined by understanding the Korean cultural phenomena of 'Han' and its role in the cinematic arts.

'Han' is an extremely culturally specific term that even scholars and cultural academics struggle pin down to a single definition or workable term. The idea can be simplified as an emotive term that suggests a state of collective being deeply embedded within Korean culture as result of a historical collective consciousness. To talk of 'Han' is to dissect and capture a personal struggle that incorporates past injustices, future obstacles, and the hardships that exist in them. It's a suffering that persists and serves to define one's actions and approaches to life's happenings.

For South Koreans han is as amorphous a notion as love or hate: intensely personal, yet carried around collectively, a national torch, a badge of suffering tempered by a sense of resiliency - Taken from "A complex feeling tugs at Koreans" by John M. Gilionna

Han can be seen as the driving force behind Korean cinema, subconsciously impacting on the choices, directions, and the paths of any given film. It is why certain themes are favored; it defines the fate of the protagonists within their world, and the manner in with a resolution is reach within narrative structures. It is the cultural cog in a film's mechanics, a tool used for conveying meaning and emotions. 'Han' is the collective torch from which the shadows we see dance onscreen are birthed, the badge branded on the celluloid that marks it as Korean. As each frame dies and gives rise to the next, there Han can be found, flickering and dancing over and within the spectacle.

From popular dramas, to revenge thrillers and comedies, Korean cinema maintains its uniqueness through cultural projection and handling of conflict. It is this 'Han' characteristic that brands a film as 'Korea', and it is their handling of subject matter and conflict within their own culture parameters that fascinates the international community as the Korean wave continues to surge and cement its influence. To watch a Korean film is to surrender your senses and expectations, it is to abandon your wishes and desires to something intangible and almost alien yet deeply relatable and wickedly human.

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