"After death, a person becomes a ghost, undergoes 7 trials in 49 days in the dungeon, lies, laziness, injustice, betrayal, violence, murder, and innocence, through all the above judges, can be reincarnated." - "The Sutra of the Buddha's Sayings of Life"
Walking with God: Crime and Punishment is a fantasy film directed by Kim Yong-hwa and starring Ha Jeong-woo, Cha Tae-hyun, Joo Ji-hoon, Kim Heung-ki Kim Dong-wook, and Do Kyung-so. Based on a Korean comic of the same name, the film tells the story of firefighter Kim Zi-hong who was reborn in 49 days after his death and three emissaries of hades, including murder, laziness, deception, injustice, betrayal, violence, and Tianlun. After its release, the film won the Best Technical Award and the Highest Box Office Award at the 39th Korean Film Blue Dragon Awards, and the Korean Filmmaker Award and Best Director Award in 2017 by the Korean Film Journalists Association.
First, the organic stitching of narrative and ethics
The film uses a mysterious story surface, but it is actually an ultimate discussion of human ethics. The male protagonist Jin Zihong was unfortunately killed in a firefighting mission, and the emissaries of the underworld, Jiang Lin, Xie Wei and Dechun, helped him to go to trial again, play the role of a lawyer, and defend Jin Zihong. In the underworld, Jin Zihong was judged to be a nobleman, and the nobleman could successfully pass 7 trials in 49 days, otherwise he would have to accept terrible criminal laws such as ice hall sealing, piranha biting, evil ghost tracking, boulder crushing, etc., and could not be reincarnated.
What awaited Jin Zihong were the murder prison run by the Great King of Chujiang, the prison of laziness under the control of the Great King of Chujiang, the prison of deception under the control of the Great King of Taishan, the prison of injustice under the control of the Great King of the Five Senses, the prison of betrayal under the control of the Great King of Song, the prison of violence under the control of King Guangguang of Qin, and the Prison of Tianlun under the control of the Great King of Yan Luo. These 7 kinds of judgments, from the lightest to the heaviest, represent the 7 ethics of seeing death and not saving, laziness and slackness, lying and deceitfulness, unkindness and injustice, treachery, abuse of violence, and great disobedience.
In the murderous hell, the judge accused Jin Zihong of abandoning his teammates in a previous firefighting mission, indirectly causing the death of his teammates. The Messenger of Hades brought out the night mirror and restored the truth of the time: his colleagues asked him to fight the fire first, and Jin Zihong missed the golden rescue time of his teammates after saving the lives of 8 people. The judge and the king deliberated and acquitted him.
The Messenger of Hades and Jin Zihong came to the Lazy Hell, where they mainly judged whether the deceased was lazy and lazy and wasted time during his lifetime. In this trial, as long as Jin Zihong does not say a word, it can be passed. But when king Chu Jiang asked him why he was trying so hard to do these things, he declared that it was all for the sake of making money. The Messenger of Hades explained that all his efforts were for his sick mother and younger brother who was preparing for the exam. Jin Zihong escaped another disaster.
In prison, King Taishan believes that Jin Zihong has cheated in his letters to his mother, and also writes letters to his daughter in the name of a dead colleague, and at the critical moment when King Taishan is about to pull out his tongue, Jiang Lin and Dechun defend him, these letters were written by Jin Zihong to encourage the daughters of his sick mother and colleagues, these letters give them hope for life, and King Taishan thus declares Jin Zihong innocent. The group then went to the hell of betrayal of the Great King of the Song Dynasty and the hell of injustice under the control of the Great King of the Five Senses, and these 2 levels of Jin Zihong passed smoothly.
In the violent hell, because Jin Zihong beat his brother and then chose to run away from home for more than ten years, King Guangwang of Qin decided to punish Jin Zihong immediately, at which time Jiang Lin applied to the judge for cumulative punishment and would be tried together with the last level of Tianlun Hell. On the way to Heavenly Hell, Jin Zihong tells Xie Wei and Dechun that he was planning to kill his unconscious mother and then commit suicide with his brother, but later the good thoughts in his heart made him decide to run away from home, and when he became an adult, he desperately tried to earn money to support them to make up for his evil thoughts.
Sure enough, in the Heavenly Prison of the Great King of Yanluo, "Jin Zihong was convicted of trying to kill his mother." Dechun said from the side that he had not killed anyone and that his mother was unconscious at the time. The Great King of Yan Luo called out the karmic mirror to restore the truth of the incident. It turned out that the mother was sober at that time, just to avoid becoming a burden to Jin Zihong and her brother, and was willing to die. Jin Zihong, who learned the truth, was remorseful and willing to be punished. At this time, Jin Zihong's younger brother explained the origin of the incident to his mother through a dream and asked for her mother's forgiveness.
King Yan Luo believed that Jin Zihong's approach was only an escape from real suffering, in order to pursue the happiness of the next life, and had already asked for his mother's forgiveness, "According to the law of hell, if the mistakes committed by the deceased can be sincerely forgiven by the victims, hell will no longer be held responsible." Therefore, Jin Zihong was acquitted and reincarnated.
From ancient times to the present, the ethical order has been one of the norms that constrain human behavior. These 7 hell trials all seemed "guilty" at first, but after lifting the clouds, there was an unknown truth behind these 7 "crimes and punishments" events, torturing the audience's ethics and conscience again and again. "If I were an inquisitor, how would I judge?" Through 7 trials, the audience was able to achieve an ethical resonance with the film during the viewing process.
Scholar Liu Xiaofeng believes that the core feature of the "narrative ethics" model of research is the combination of "storytelling strategies" and abstract ethical thinking. The film effectively combines ethical order with narrative, so that the two form a benign organic interaction. Family ethics run through the entire film, whether it is the sincere and harmonious brotherly love between younger brother Jin Zihong and younger brother Jin Xiuhong, or the wordless interaction with a disabled mother, which is the most solid ethical appeal. In the final two trials, Jin Zihong finally deeply perceived his own identity significance to the family in the cycle of hell, and the sensational scene of the true exchange of true feelings across time and space between mother and son made the family's humane affection fully reflected. In the mixture of the real world constructed by the film and the world of the underground government, the audience undoubtedly achieves emotional fulfillment.
Second, the double narrative main line intersects
Walking with God: Sin and Punishment uses a two-line parallel structure in a narrative perspective. The main story is to solve the grievance pulse and Dechun to lead Jin Zihong to complete the 7 trials in the underworld, and the story of the side line is for Jiang Lin to solve the mystery of the Li Ghost in the Yang, and the appearance of the Li Ghost is due to the wrongful death of some of Jin Zihong's relatives, and the two clues intersect and affect each other. After Jiang Lin's investigation in Yangjian, it was found that Kim So-hong was accidentally shot because of the misfire of the gun of the caring soldier Yuan Dongyan, but their boss Park Zhongwei chose to bury Kim Soo-hung for his own career, but at this time Kim So-hung did not die, but was buried alive.
Buried alive and ruthlessly betrayed by his former friends, Kim So-hung turns into a ghost after his death, bent on avenging Park Jung-wei and Won Dong-yeon, who dare not tell the truth. It is also because he is a wronged soul that causes disasters on the road to the reincarnation of the male protagonist, and in order for Jin Zihong to successfully pass the trial, he must justify the cause of Death of Jin Xiuhong. The director began to insert the side plot from the third trial of the main line, leaving enough time for the later narrative, the two stories are presented very completely, the film uses montage techniques to transform time and space, so that the two threads are intertwined, complex and full of tension, and the juxtaposition narrative structure makes the entire narrative appear rich, has a strong attraction, and invisibly paves the way for "Walking with God 2: Cause and Fate".
Third, the fusion of the visual spectacle of reality and defamiliarization
According to Shklovsky, the representative of defamiliarization theory, "the function of art is to react to the habitual process of domination of the way of daily life." That is, the familiar and habitual things become unfamiliar through the processing of artistic techniques, so that we feel strange and fresh about it, and thus become interested in it. In Walking with God: Sin and Punishment, we are shown a hell scene with a complete worldview.
In the course of this trial, each level is full of fantasy, different hells have different natural features, using 7 elements of water, fire, iron, ice, mirror, air, and sand, lava in the murderous prison, boulder carousel in lazy prison, tongue pulling out in prison, ice cube freezing in unjust prison, mirror floor in betrayal prison, weightlessness in violent prison, and quicksand in heaven and hell, respectively, presenting these 7 huge hell faces. In addition, there are many scenes such as man-eating flying fish, sword forest ghosts, and ice canyons, and the filming team uses powerful post-production technology, each picture is realistic and tense, bringing the audience a strange visual spectacle experience and feeling a different horror effect.
While constructing the defamiliarized wonders of hell, Walking with God: Sin and Punishment is also embedded in the world. In each trial scene, it is actually a representation of the real world. Jin Zihong's work, family, life and other spatial scenes before his death are the true embodiment of real life, simple homes, cluttered streets, severe working environment... At the same time as the magic tone of the film, it also reveals the shadow of reality. In the homicide prison, deception prison, tianlun prison, there are also the shadows of modern amusement facilities such as ferris wheels, ropeways, and cable cars. The film organically integrates reality and defamiliarized visual spectacles, so that the audience can enjoy the shock of visual spectacles while adding to the film's viewing interest.
summary
"Walking with God: Crime and Punishment" as a phenomenon of more than 10 million viewers in South Korea, can be described as a full effort in the narrative and production industry. The director organically stitches narrative and ethics, and under the surface of its fantasy, it is actually nested in the exploration of the ethical order of the family, which is different from ordinary magic films, and its core has a broader humanistic value. In the narrative mode, the mode of merging the main line and the branch line is adopted, and the two threads are intertwined, rich and full of tension. The fusion of the visual spectacle of reality and defamiliarization, the embedding of the world scene while the construction of the hell landscape, and the complete construction of the hell world view, is undoubtedly a type of breakthrough in the Korean film industry.