What was life like in a prisoner-of-war camp?
Earlier, "Schindler's List" exposed the bloody killings in European concentration camps, and in 2018, South Korea also used the film to record the story of geoje Island, an Asian prisoner-of-war concentration camp.
"Swing Frenzy" is not as cruel as "Schindler's List", with tap dance as the carrier, depicting the short-lived good life of the prisoner of war camp, but the tragedy brought about by the rapid change of content from the early joyful dance life is also unbearable to look at.
The background of the story is that in 1950, after the war on the Korean Peninsula, the US military imprisoned more than 140,000 prisoners of war in the southernmost part of South Korea on Geoje Island, where communism and capitalism collided, and the prisoners of war were also divided into two camps, in addition to the red elements and reactionaries, during which war broke out, the US military violently suppressed and shot some prisoners of war, and was subjected to responsibility in the international community.
Under the pressure of policy, Jackson, a black official with experience in Broadway performances, was ordered to form a tap dance team, and everyone was a representative of a group in the choice of characters.
Red Molecular Roadguide Show
The male protagonist Lu Jixiu is the representative of the red elements of the POW camp, in addition to often challenging the authority of the US military control, he is also the younger brother of the national hero, and naturally becomes the figure supported by all the red elements in the POW camp. Ki-soo inadvertently spied Jackson practicing tap dancing, which inspired him to dance before entering the war, and drunkenly blended into the illegal club of the US army to show his dance posture.
In the film, Ki-so loves dance, but because of his identity, he resists contacting American tap dance, and dancing is also to indulge his body when no one is there, and here the director also uses non-stop rotating scene shots to show Ki-so's love for dance.
Reactionary Jiang Bingsan
Kang Byung-san and Lu Ji-so are two characters with different positions, labeled as reactionary in the pro-American camp who hopes to stay in South Korea, but in fact, Jiang Bingsan is not a reactionary figure who betrays the country, but is just an ordinary refugee who was taken to a prisoner-of-war camp because of the wrong car in the process of going south, and the reason why Jiang Bingsan hopes to be able to dance is also very simple, that is, by joining the dance team, he can let his wife see and find himself.
Civilian girl Zhu Panlai
Zhu Panlai is the only female character in the film, her parents died, she supported herself to earn money to feed her younger siblings, under the oppression of the war, Zhu Panlai was proficient in four Chinese, Korean, English, Japanese, Chinese, so she became everyone's translator and joined the dance team.
Chinese soldiers are chubby
Xiao Fat is a Chinese soldier, which is also a true portrayal of the team's prisoner of war camp at that time, but a large part of the prisoners of war in Geoje Island are also Chinese, and the reason why Xiao Fat loves to dance is to lose weight and cure heart disease.
Black Jackson
Jackson is a U.S. soldier, but he is black, in the film, Jackson is a complex character, because of the war to East Asia, in Okinawa to meet Japanese girls and give birth to children, but because the troops sent to Geoje Island, by the battalion commander on the grounds that he can find an opportunity to return to Okinawa to find girls to marry, forced to set up a dance team.
In the first half of the film, the carrier of dance is constantly used to call for the cessation of war and the cessation of violent confrontation.
The American soldiers teamed up to arrest Ji Xiu and wanted to teach a lesson privately, but they were saved by the other three friends who rushed to the scene, and staged a dance battle between the two sides under the camera, which dramatically put the concept of "no violence, only dance" in the first half of the film to the fullest.
Jackson saw Thatched "bully" others in the camp with tap-and-step dance steps and refused to give him dancing shoes, but because the American soldiers bullied Ki-soo into speaking ill of himself, he saw through the truth, and at the end of the story, Jackson stood on the stage and announced: "The dance is called 'The Idea of Fucking'", which also runs the dance through ideology.
Ji Xiu said, "Jiang Bingsan joined the dance team to find a wife to be famous, Xiao Fat joined to treat diseases and lose weight, Zhu Panlai joined to make money, what am I for?" ”
Probably love, as Ji Xiu's companion Wan Zhe said, "Do what you want to do!" ”
In the peaceful days of the POW camp, dance brought them joy, became a language of communication, and brought everyone closer. In order to save Jackson, everyone put on a mask and performed a clumsy and funny dance in front of the press corps; Jackson crossed the line of ideas and protected everyone in the name of "my members and family"; on a snowy day, american soldiers gave the little boy earmuffs, and the little boy returned with a dance; Wan Zhe put a patch on the sole of Ki-so's shoe to help him continue to make loud dance steps...
"In the dance hall, there is no violence, dance is everything. There is no communism and capitalism here, only dancing. ”
Dance makes the first half of the film happy, but dance is love, can not break through the shackles.
In the midfield shots, Zhu Panlai and Ji Xiu dance in different scenes, one falls into the crowd of uprisings, and the other can't step over the door of the dance hall and is doomed to the end.
The plot begins with a sharp turn for the worse after the appearance of Ki-so's young companion.
The appearance of a friend who had lost an arm and a leg appeared in the prisoner-of-war camp, and once again unveiled the topic of the cruelty of war, the radical friend called on the red elements to fight together, setting off a bloody riot in the prisoner of war camp, the red elements set fire to some of the reactionaries, and at the same time, Lu Jixiu's national hero brother Lu Jizhen was captured in the prisoner of war camp.
The meeting of the two brothers once again brings the conspiracy of war to a climax, and the actor chief who has been lurking in the red camp for a long time threatens Ki-soo to participate in a Christmas show and assassinate the battalion commander, and in order to save his brother, Ki-soo agrees to participate in the assassination plan.
Everyone participated in the last Christmas performance, the director used more than 5 minutes of footage to show the joyful atmosphere of this tap dance, Ki-so told the team to leave after leaving, but he stayed, the music was tight and hurried to perform a solo dance, this part has a strong personal color, the scene rotated from the stage of the prisoner of war camp to the American Grand Theater, in his heart for Ki-so completed the extravagant dream.
At the final moment of the final killing, the brother appeared to complete the task for Ki-soo, was shot, and the battalion commander who escaped from death ordered everyone to be executed, Zhu Panlai, Xiao Fat, and Jiang Bingsan were shot in front of Ki-soo, Ki-soo was also killed, and Jackson, who witnessed this tragic situation, was sent back to the United States and lost the opportunity to go to Okinawa to marry his Japanese girlfriend.
The film ends in tragedy, with no large-scale uprisings, no loud revolts, just a few young people with different positions and broken dreams buried together, and dance teams formed in difficult times, also developing in the context of complex wars, until finally to destruction.
The film tells the dance of the prisoner of war camp, the struggle between free will and ideology, and the tragedy ends only as a true portrayal of the war, in the context of the war, the individual can only obey the collective, the free soul kneels under the ideology, the erasure of the spirit is an indisputable fact, there is no peace, everything is a luxury.