Since the rise of the more mainstream work of the New Korean Cinema of the late 90s to the present, many directors of the Korean New Wave have become forgotten in favor of current auteurs such as Park Chan-wook, Bong Joon-ho, and Kim Jee-woon. And while directors such as Park Kwang-su, Jang Sun-woo, and Lee Myung-se have remained well-known for their past work, others have almost disappeared completely. The most tragic example of this is the late Kwak Ji-gyun, who committed suicide last year at least partly in despair over his inability to make films. Last week, I found a copy of his most well-known film, 1991′s PORTRAIT OF YOUTH, released by Taewon as part of their Korean Film Retrospective series. Looking back now at the 20-year old movie, it is very striking how different it is from Korean cinema today. Like most other aspects of Korean society, the change in Korean film from 1991 to 2011 is enormous, almost like comparing Hollywood today to Hollywood of the early 70s.
The plot of PORTRAIT OF YOUTH revolves around Young-hoon, a young man who has been traveling for two years. He returns home after his father's death and decides to go to university to study Korean Literature. While there, he meets an upper-class student who he dates but eventually separates from due to class differences, as well as two close friends who both die, one during an anti-government demonstration. After this, he hits the road and wanders the countryside, meeting a prostitute and a drifter with whom he forms close bonds. The film concludes where it begins, with Young-hoon returning to school, determined to carry on with his life despite its difficulties.
Both the strengths and the weaknesses of the Korean New Wave can be seen in this film. On the positive side, like many other Korean movies of the time, PORTRAIT OF YOUTH begins to examine the immediate past of the 1980s, the time of student protests and government repression. However, the main character, Young-hoon, is not really a political figure, remaining in the background during his time as a student and eventually dropping out entirely and wandering on the road. Nevertheless, the overt politics of the story mark it as a product of its time, and the death of his school friend recalls Park Kwang-su's CHILSU AND MANSU (1988), not to mention the Soviet-Cuban agitprop masterpiece I AM CUBA (1964). In many ways, one can see this as a kind of national trauma film, with Young-hoon as one of the many passive victims of the period, the representative of many students caught between radicals of the student left and the police repression of the military dictatorship.
As I mentioned, today, Kwak is nearly completely ignored by Korean film history. There is no mention of him in most of the recent work on Korean cinema, including Darcy Paquet's NEW KOREAN CINEMA: BREAKING THE WAVES (2009), Jinhee Choi's THE SOUTH KOREAN FILM RENAISSANCE, Frances Gateward's edited collection of essays SEOUL SEARCHING: CULTURE AND IDENTITY IN CONTEMPORARY KOREAN CINEMA (2007), and Chi-Yun Shin and Julian Stringer's collection NEW KOREAN CINEMA (2005). However, he does get a brief mention in Kyung Hyun Kim's THE REMASCULINIZATION OF KOREAN CINEMA (2004). Kim sees PORTRAIT OF YOUTH as part of a growing trend of "angry young men" that emerges at this time. As Kim argues, "the increasing images of angry men and their violence replaced the Korean cinema's tendency to create masochistic and self-loathing characters" (20). While I overall agree with Kim's thesis, I'm not sure that PORTRAIT OF YOUTH applies. While there are glimpses of anger from Young-hoon, such as when he starts a fight at a high society party his rich girlfriend is attending, he is generally very inactive, with events determining his fate. This can be seen as going back to his childhood, when he witnesses his cousin, who he loves, having an affair with a married teacher. It is notable that one of the most striking scenes cinematically in the entire film is one that he is watching from afar rather than participating in. This pattern continues for most of the running time, as Young-hoon sinks into despair and even has to have his life saved by Miss Yoon, the prostitute who loves him. If Young-hoon is an angry young man, that rage is all internalized, and he remains much more in the tradition of "masochistic and self-loathing" Korean male characters.
I think this is part of the weakness of the film overall. While I liked the movie and think it is a great time capsule that says a lot about Korean film and society circa 1991, it is rather slow-paced and inert and without the formal dynamism and experimentation that mark the best of art cinema. It seems somewhere in the middle, too meandering and with too weak a lead character to appeal broadly, while also lacking stylistic and/or narrative innovation that would appeal to a more specialized crowd of cinephiles. That said, those with an interest in Korean cinema should track down Kwak's work, and this is a good place to start, considering PORTRAIT OF YOUTH was very acclaimed at the time, winning the Daejong Best Korean Picture award. Kwak was given a four film retrospective at last year's Busan Film Festival, so hopefully his work will be given more notice after his early death.
The plot of PORTRAIT OF YOUTH revolves around Young-hoon, a young man who has been traveling for two years. He returns home after his father's death and decides to go to university to study Korean Literature. While there, he meets an upper-class student who he dates but eventually separates from due to class differences, as well as two close friends who both die, one during an anti-government demonstration. After this, he hits the road and wanders the countryside, meeting a prostitute and a drifter with whom he forms close bonds. The film concludes where it begins, with Young-hoon returning to school, determined to carry on with his life despite its difficulties.
Both the strengths and the weaknesses of the Korean New Wave can be seen in this film. On the positive side, like many other Korean movies of the time, PORTRAIT OF YOUTH begins to examine the immediate past of the 1980s, the time of student protests and government repression. However, the main character, Young-hoon, is not really a political figure, remaining in the background during his time as a student and eventually dropping out entirely and wandering on the road. Nevertheless, the overt politics of the story mark it as a product of its time, and the death of his school friend recalls Park Kwang-su's CHILSU AND MANSU (1988), not to mention the Soviet-Cuban agitprop masterpiece I AM CUBA (1964). In many ways, one can see this as a kind of national trauma film, with Young-hoon as one of the many passive victims of the period, the representative of many students caught between radicals of the student left and the police repression of the military dictatorship.
As I mentioned, today, Kwak is nearly completely ignored by Korean film history. There is no mention of him in most of the recent work on Korean cinema, including Darcy Paquet's NEW KOREAN CINEMA: BREAKING THE WAVES (2009), Jinhee Choi's THE SOUTH KOREAN FILM RENAISSANCE, Frances Gateward's edited collection of essays SEOUL SEARCHING: CULTURE AND IDENTITY IN CONTEMPORARY KOREAN CINEMA (2007), and Chi-Yun Shin and Julian Stringer's collection NEW KOREAN CINEMA (2005). However, he does get a brief mention in Kyung Hyun Kim's THE REMASCULINIZATION OF KOREAN CINEMA (2004). Kim sees PORTRAIT OF YOUTH as part of a growing trend of "angry young men" that emerges at this time. As Kim argues, "the increasing images of angry men and their violence replaced the Korean cinema's tendency to create masochistic and self-loathing characters" (20). While I overall agree with Kim's thesis, I'm not sure that PORTRAIT OF YOUTH applies. While there are glimpses of anger from Young-hoon, such as when he starts a fight at a high society party his rich girlfriend is attending, he is generally very inactive, with events determining his fate. This can be seen as going back to his childhood, when he witnesses his cousin, who he loves, having an affair with a married teacher. It is notable that one of the most striking scenes cinematically in the entire film is one that he is watching from afar rather than participating in. This pattern continues for most of the running time, as Young-hoon sinks into despair and even has to have his life saved by Miss Yoon, the prostitute who loves him. If Young-hoon is an angry young man, that rage is all internalized, and he remains much more in the tradition of "masochistic and self-loathing" Korean male characters.
I think this is part of the weakness of the film overall. While I liked the movie and think it is a great time capsule that says a lot about Korean film and society circa 1991, it is rather slow-paced and inert and without the formal dynamism and experimentation that mark the best of art cinema. It seems somewhere in the middle, too meandering and with too weak a lead character to appeal broadly, while also lacking stylistic and/or narrative innovation that would appeal to a more specialized crowd of cinephiles. That said, those with an interest in Korean cinema should track down Kwak's work, and this is a good place to start, considering PORTRAIT OF YOUTH was very acclaimed at the time, winning the Daejong Best Korean Picture award. Kwak was given a four film retrospective at last year's Busan Film Festival, so hopefully his work will be given more notice after his early death.
