The movie "Recipient Unknown 수취인불명" (2001) Korean Blu-ray Edition Cover
It's hard to evaluate director Kim Ki-duk (1960-2020) and his films because it takes a certain amount of risk. Like his Drifting Bath 섬 (2000) and Bad Boys 나쁜남자 (2001), Kim Ki-duk himself is the bullseye of controversy.
However, the recipient is unknown 수취인불명 (2001) is like a vicious boulder, crushing people with nowhere to hide.
"Unknown Recipient" is a very tense work, a combination of youth, politics, history, war, and fate, which is extremely difficult to control, but Kim Ki-duk has done a good job.
Images of Yang Donggen in the film Consanguinity Unknown 수취인불명 (2001).
Director Kim Ki-duk has always disliked to invest subjective feelings in the film, he just shows all the good and good, ugly and truthful in front of you, completely objective, without any subjective orientation of the way of expression is more shocking, such cruelty is more chilling, judgment comes from the heart of the viewer.
The story takes place in the 1970s, 20 years after the smoke of the Korean War dissipated.
South Korea is in a period of recovery after the war, and the war has caused the irreversible prominence of the first generation of young people who grew up after the war, and then mutated, and finally broke the to the despair of fate.
Image from the film Consourcend unknown 수취인불명 (2001).
This is cleverly summarized from the beginning of the film. The brother uses a homemade pistol to hit the target on the head of his sister Enlo (played by Lo Hui-mi), only to be blinded in one eye due to accidental injury.
The pistol was made on the wooden board on the US military ordnance box marked with the word "USA".
A crisp and piercing gunshot, a pungent and eerie gun smoke, the sister's hands weakly and vainly covered her injured eyes.
This detail is a profound metaphor for the inevitable beginning of the generation to swallow the bitter fruits of war.
Images of Lo Wai-mi (left) and Kim Yong-min in the film Consignee Unknown 수취인불명 (2001).
The film's oppressive atmosphere also begins to show people its cold heaviness step by step, and there are occasional cathartic struggles and resistances, but it is still doomed to embark on the road of no return of destruction.
The characters that appear in the film can be described as complex, but the independence of the personality extends the vividness of the characters, so that the plot of the whole film is not in danger of getting out of control.
The so-called plot is actually mainly around the three main lines stretched and interlaced with each other; or the intertwining of the tragic fates of three young people constitutes the basic framework of the story.
The heroine Enlo was mistakenly injured in the right eye by her brother with a gun when she was a child, and has been covering the defect of the eye with low-hanging hair, and the inferiority and pain derived from the long-term disability have always accompanied her.
When she entered high school, the repressed emotions and growing pains finally made her, who was always autistic, more obedient and irritable.
It is not difficult to see that in fact, the most unacceptable cruelty to Enlo is herself, and the pain brought to her by the discrimination and love around her is surprisingly consistent.
Images of Huimei Lo in the film Consignee Unknown 수취인불명 (2001).
Ji Hua (played by Kim Yong-min), who has a crush on Enluo, has changed from cowardice to bravery, and it is not a so-called individual performance in a specific environment, but a brand imposed by the entire era.
Ji Hua's friend Shang Wu (played by Yang Donggen) is even more out of place with this world, he is a mixture of American and Korean descent, and his embarrassing identity and skin color have made him ostracized. He tried to fit into Korean circles, and people saw him as an outlier.
His American father seems to have forgotten the existence of their mother and son, and the letters sent to him by his mother (played by Fang Yinzhen) have been ruthlessly returned one after another, and the title of "Address Unknown" is derived from this.
Fang Yinzhen's image in the film Consanguinity Unknown 수취인불명 (2001).
As a symbol of war and sin, the US military was nailed to the pillar of shame of historical reflection by the creators. The tragedy of Shang Wu is the best proof. He was American, Korean, and nothing, and the awkwardness of that identity had devastated his hopes of integration.
In addition, the film is interspersed with a large number of shots related to the US military. Some are characters incorporated into the plot, and some are simply military planes flying through the air. As an annotation of war and sin, their appearance has always reminded the audience, especially the Korean people, what is the root cause of this endless suffering?
Stills from the movie "Consignee Unknown 수취인불명" (2001), from left: Kim Yong-min, Lo Hye-mi, Yang Dong-geun
Today, the United States and South Korea have maintained ambiguous relations, but this film dares to face the unspeakable problems.
The tragic ending of the characters in the film pushes the theme of the broad reach to the peak of collapse in one fell swoop. Enlo did not hesitate to exchange her virginity with the American army in order to heal her eyes, but when she got her wish, she felt another cruelty of reality.
So she resolutely chose to use a knife to self-harm the eyes that had only recently healed. After all his efforts failed, Shang Wu finally embarked on the road of rebellion of crazy death, and after killing his mother's lover, he drove into the quagmire by the side of the field to end his short life.
After experiencing the betrayal of his lover and the tragic death of his friend, Ji Hua became extremely fierce, began to take revenge on the little gangster who had bullied him, and was eventually arrested for shooting the American army, waiting for his unfair social "fair" trial.
All of it is full of compassion to tell a history that cannot be looked back. This blood-stained patchwork of everything sketches together paints a group portrait of the tragedy of an era that has been forgotten.
Because it is extremely tragic, it is extremely humane. This heartfelt humanity is the driving force behind the creator's storytelling, and it is also an emotional shackle that cannot be refused.
"Recipient Unknown" should be said to have a lot of roots with war, but what it shows is after the war, not the tragedy on the battlefield, nor the joy after the victory, there is no bloody scene, but everywhere is the shadow of war.
Planes whizzing by from time to time, family photos, military boots and coats on Shang Wu's body, guns stained with dirt, empty wooden boxes written in English, and legs with iron racks all remind us that the war is over, and the war is not completely over.
The impact after the war is greater than the impact of the war itself, the people in that land, what kind of life are they living, will there be a new page in their lives, the war is over, will happiness be near?
Kim Yong-min's image in the film Consource unknown 수취인불명 (2001).
The film's creators may not have intended to speak passionately about national character, but the imagery it relies on is powerful enough to penetrate any self-righteous national stereotype.
Director Kim Ki-duk has shown his ability to show the radical changes in the fate of the characters and the distortion of human nature in desperate situations since the beginning of "Drifting Desire Room", and "Unknown Recipient" has gone further on this road.
The focus of these two films is extended from the distortion of the individual to the alienation of the crowd, so the latter is more tragic because of the vastness of the artistic conception.
The highlight of the whole film is the several manifestations of Kim Ki-duk's personal artistic ambitions.
Stills from the film Consort Unknown 수취인불명 (2001).
At the end of the film, a U.S. military participating in the exercise crawls on the cold frozen soil and reads the reply letter from Canada that fell to the ground.
However, at this time, the people who most hoped to receive this letter were long gone, and the glow of the blood-colored sunset in the distance stained the mist between heaven and earth, and then the film ended in darkness, and also led people to the road of spiritual torture.
The film is quiet, but it is shocking; the mind wanders with plainness; it is understated but still bloodstained. After reading it, I can't help but sigh in addition to adding a little bit of solemnity after playing.
The film "Recipient Unknown 수취인불명" (2001) Japanese Blu-ray edition cover
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