This film is essential to understand post war Japan and Korea and even modern Korea. The community of Korean expatriates in Japan lived through the war and then had to cross a long period of doubt and enthusiasm. The enthusiasm came with Mao Zedong and the liberation of China, but also with the promise of the liberation of Korea, even if this promise got frustrated. But the essential part of the film is dealing with the violence of everyday life on all children, and essentially the violence of a tyrannical father who does not know any other rule to govern his own feelings, if not passions, and to dominate his fellow Koreans and neighbors, but to impose his violent law, his necessary violence between him and everyone else, be they his wife, his children, his lady friends or concubines, his employees, his clients, his next door relatives or strangers. It cultivates in the children the deep desire to compensate this violence and this frustration not to speak of alienation, and the direct compensation they cultivate on their side of life is violence with this father, violence with other people, and a political commitment that promises them justice, disalienation, liberation, even poetry and art, and this is realized in the communist party, in the communist dream in North Korea with Kim Il Sung. But then the film is a challenge to logic, to reason. Are all revolutions the same lie, the same false motivation, the same fake commitment? Is any revolution nothing but a vengeance, a revenge on the brutality of life and particularly on domestic and family violence? If so how can progress come out of it? Is progress bound to fail in front of such motivations? Or is progress bound to come out of such mis-motivated people, mis-motivated action? And that's where the film is optimistic. In spite of all difficulties in this life for individuals or communities, progress comes up and out of it all. The world altogether is moving towards a better level of existence and reality. The film even seems to advocate the idea that this suffering, this violence, this alienation, this frustration are necessary for commitment to be possible and progress cannot come without that commitment. And the cause of the suffering, be it a war, or a father, or any other cause, will disappear, end and vanish one day though all those who will survive it or him will never forget him or it. That's the very dilemma of life, but also its beauty: good cannot come but from evil and without evil good cannot be born, emerge and come to life, even if some evil will also come out of it in a way or another that will produce some new improvement and progress. This film thus advocates in the end that we have to let history and life go their own way and trust humanity in its search for a better life for everyone. You may think it is slightly simple but anyone will tell you that it is always simple things that have the highest chances to happen. History hates complicated solutions.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris Dauphine, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne & University Versailles Saint Quentin en Yvelines
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris Dauphine, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne & University Versailles Saint Quentin en Yvelines