"Those who hate me, who deny me, will scramble to see my movies with a different attitude after I die"
- Kim Ki-duk
This is Kim Ki-duk's deepest film, reproduction, dignity, all wrapped in this film
But it doesn't have too much violence, no too much scale, and no too many taboo topics:
This is the national tragedy that belongs to South Korea, and it is the true portrayal of South Korea that left 28,500 American soldiers to defend South Korea after the Korean War.
This is the story of American soldiers and Korean people.
- "Unknown Recipient"
< h1 class= "pgc-h-arrow-right" ></h1>
In 1970, the 17th year after the end of the Korean War, remote villages.
Such is the case with war, whether it is just or not, it is always the masses who are ultimately hurt and sacrificed.
In that scarred era, most of the inhabitants were shrouded in post-war nothingness, confusion, despair, and a way out was difficult to find.
The tragic story also takes place with this star under the banner...
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > Shangwu</h1>
Shang Wu is a member of this remote mountain village.
His curly hair and dark skin symbolize his dad as a black American soldier.
In this remote mountain village where the US military is stationed, Shang Wu is regarded as a hybrid outlier .
He can be ridiculed, ridiculed at will, locked up in a dog cage, and his personality is becoming more and more tyrannical under discrimination.
The mother was an abandoned woman of the first mortgage garrison, and in the cramped caravan, the only thing that stood out was the worn-out family portrait.
She kept writing letters, hoping that her "husband" would take her away from South Korea to the United States to start her life again.
Not willing to be at the mercy of fate, Shangwu's mother wrote letters to the United States every day, hoping that her "husband" would take him to the United States.
But she didn't even know her father's name, and where she lived was only the approximate address.
How could this letter have been sent? Each time is just a return of the "unknown recipient" of the post office.
On that day, the postman at the post office returned her "unknown recipient" letter.
The mother took it, turned and went to the caravan, and sent a new letter to the man who had hurt her.
After sending the letter, the mother ran to the store to buy canned squid,
She asked the store lady in broken English for the price, and the lady was a little unhappy:
"This is Korea, you speak Korean."
"But I'm going to the United States."
The mother's superior gratitude angered the boss lady, and the two fought without a word.
Shangwu, who was passing by, saw all this, and he stepped forward and violently took his mother away.
He is actually an innocent person, to sacrifice his dignity and even his life for the emotional entanglement of the previous generation, he is unable to face the ridicule of the crowd, so he sends his anger to his mother.
He forcibly took his mother to the house where she lived and beat her up.
Scold your mother, don't do the stupid thing of "writing letters" anymore.
Life goes on, technology is progressing, but it hasn't completely changed people's lives.
Time ticks...
The more humiliated and twisted Shang Wu's heart became, the more tyrannical he became, and the more he intersected with his mother.
Inner distortion and inferiority are disguised by ostentatious violence...
That day, my mother quarreled with others outside the vegetable shed again, but Shang Wu forcibly abducted his mother——
He first slapped his mother a few times, then took out a knife to cut off her breast, which was tattooed with the name "Father".
Fortunately, all this was stopped by others.
After the dog dealer who admired his mother knew, he found ShangWu and beat him up, bluntly saying that he was not filial piety.
After the dog dealer repairs Shangwu, he returns to the caravan to comfort Shangwu's mother.
But she said, "Whoever let you beat my son, get out of here."
The dog dealer was confused and left confused, he didn't know what she wanted him to do.
They had struggled desperately in their own world, but hope and light had never come.
On the way, Shang Wu sneaked up on the dog dealer.
Identity replacement, this time he put him in a dog cage, he hanged the dog dealer.
After returning home, he quickly apologized to his mother, but he took out a knife and cut his skin.
The mother did not say a word, full of sorrow.
In utter despair, Shang Wu drove a motorcycle at high speed in the countryside fields.
The brakes failed, and he fell into the concrete floor of the field and died.
For Shang Wu, perhaps only such a tragic but silent farewell can end the pain of life.
When his mother found him, the sky was already snowing heavily.
She couldn't drag the mop out, so she cremated ShangWu with a ritual fire.
The desperate mother also took herself away with a fire.
(I had never seen clearly what my mother was nibbling on in the car, but then the last shot was given to the head, and I learned that it was her son who was nibbling on it...) ）
Motherly love, great but not clear...
"I have always believed that the pain of personal experience that can be expressed in words is much lighter than the pain that cannot be expressed in the heart, and those who really suffer will choose to end their lives silently or live quietly and numbly." 」
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > Enlo</h1>
Like Shangwu, Enluo lives in this remote village.
He was both tragic little people, but fate never allowed them to have a formal intersection.
As a young man, Enno was blinded in one eye by a pistol made by his brother with "USA".
In his old age, Enlo covered the defects of his eyes with a sagging hairline, but he could not smooth out the scars and inferiority in his heart.
Being teased by naughty children, being teased by adults in the village, being bullied by two devils...
Enlo closed himself off, but fortunately she still had a Changhua who cared about himself.
Changhua's father was a "meritorious veteran" at the beginning, and his father was proud of his injured leg.
But Changhua's personality is not so stubborn and not so traditional, he is a young man who advocates freedom and loves to paint, he likes Enlo, perhaps it is precisely because he likes Enluo, he spies on her... There was no way to save her.
Just like his father, who loved archery, never dared to point the arrow at the muzzle of the garrison soldiers, he could not protect him.
An American soldier appears, and the soldier can shelter the girl, and he can heal her eyes.
But how can there be a pie in the world, how can the soldier be an angel, and the price of healing the eyes is the need for her chastity.
She gave it to him, which she thought was an exchange of benefits, but also love.
But the American soldier took her to take drugs, took her to paper drunks, took her to dance...
Of course, he can also slap Enlo at any time and use violence to punch and kick her...
Brother Enlo discovers all this, he looks down on his sister, but he needs to take a beautiful knife from his sister...
There are too many two devils like my brother, who on the one hand regard themselves as high, but at the same time they cling to power to bully others...
This is Kim Ki-duk's vision of South Korea, people can not support themselves independently, American soldiers are a strong foreign force.
Those who approach power with the front power become agents of power in front of his people and vent the same backlog of emotions on their own people.
In this land, there is an unequal and unstable mood...
In the past two decades, the people of the village have regarded the US military as the savior, but in the face of reality, they have become synonymous with "women killers" and "power", leaving behind more contradictions.
The American soldier was also in this strange land, more and more lonely and more tyrannical, and Enlo became more sober and suspicious.
He was furious, and he asked her: Are you going to leave me because I healed your glasses? Yes, you've always been like this, have you forgotten how we helped you?
He was going to take a knife and carve a letter on Enlo's skin just because "let her not forget her"—
Enlo's resistance was fierce, but the resistance was so weak.
His initial approach to the American soldiers seemed like a premeditated plan, perhaps she just wanted to heal her eyes and stop being ridiculed
But when things went in the other direction, she was confused, she was desperate, but she also woke up.
She stabbed herself blind with a knife.
Changhua is a bystander of the story of Shang Wu and Enluo,
But like them, he couldn't get out of his mental predicament and struggled with inferiority and loneliness.
When he saw that Enlo was possessed by the soldiers and Shangwu died, his psychological defenses finally collapsed. He took the arrow and shot at the second devil who had bullied him, swallowed the wire and went to prison, trying to strangle the second devil who was attached to power.
However, the outbreak of resistance gathered in silence is so easy. The servility of war has long been deeply rooted in the marrow. The reality is that those who cling to power survive, and Changhua is also imprisoned for killing people...
Mutilated history, the real dilemma, they can not find their own independent personality, but history and fate are so fiercely burned in their blood, trapped in the rising vacuum.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > story</h1>
I used to think that with the retirement of time, these war servility, the pain caused by the war will also be gone...
But will the pain really go away?
At the end of the story, a group of American soldiers in the exercise crawl in front of the field, and one of the soldiers saw a letter and took it down to read
He read the letter from the United States, which began with "Shang Wu Mama"....
Ironically, the letter was sent by Ran, named Clinton, and the soldier who abandoned Shangwu's mother was called "Michael"
Maybe this guy named Clinton also had a wife here, but he also forgot the name of the woman he had possessed, and he had forgotten their lives.
The story of Shang Wu and Enluo has also occurred frequently on other lands.
Kim Ki-duk's "Unknown Recipient" is the clear current of that wave, and he shoulders the heavy responsibility of the common memory of the nation.
With such a film, there is no shyness to touch on the legacy of the war and the pain caused by the war.
But today's people seem to have forgotten this era, this neglected corner.
Many Korean films have also begun to become ambiguous and powerful, becoming vassals of power in this memory.
Under the multiple influences of colonialist culture and military oppression, some people are born as "deformed children".
After the loss of sovereignty, the subject of an unknown national identity, a vague cultural identity
The reincarnation of the Mobius ring never seems to have left.