South Korea,
1981, 117 min
Shown in 1998
CREDITS
- dir
-
Im Kwon-taek
- prod
-
Park Chong-chan
- scr
-
Lee Sang-hyon, Song Kil-han
- cam
-
Jong Il-song
- editor
-
Lee Do-won
- cast
-
Chun Mu-song, Ahn Sung-kee, Pang Hui, Ki Jong-su, Im Ok-kyong, Park Jong-ja, Yoon Yang-ha, Park Am
- source
-
Korean Motion Picture Promotion Corporation, 206-46 Changny ongni-Dong, Tongdaemun-gu, Seoul, South Korea. FAX: 82-2-9587-550
-
COMMENTS
Im Kwon-taek appeared in person to accept the Akira Kurosawa Award.
OTHER
Pobun, a young college graduate who has broken up with his girlfriend to become a monk, is traveling by bus when he encounters the older monk Jisan. Cheerfully untogether, Jisan is facing arrest at a police roadblock for not carrying an ID card; Pobun intercedes for him and the two men travel together for a time. Jisan turns out to be the most unconventional of Buddhists: he drinks liquor, eats meat and is far from celibate. Pobun is shocked, but also fascinated, because Jisan seems closer to enlightenment than anyone he has ever met. Im Kwon-Taek’s breakthrough film is based on a controversial Korean novel which has obvious affinities with Hermann Hesse’s Narcissus and Goldmund in the way it turns Buddhist orthodoxies upside down. Im anchors the spiritual conundrums in a realistic and highly credible account of Korean society in the early 1980s, reflecting both the off-screen authoritarian government and the widening gap between life in Seoul and in the countryside. Even when Jong Il-song’s ’Scope camera is following the characters up Korea’s snowiest peaks, the sense of life going on around the monks remains strong. But the core of the film is the friendship between two flawed and highly fallible men, and Im’s work with his two brilliant lead actors, Ahn Sung-kee and Chun Mu-song, makes it almost indecently moving.
—Tony Rayns
FACTOID #73
James Wong Howe was the first cinematographer to receive a tribute at the Festival, October 19, 1974. The legendary lenser photographed such classics as The Thin Man, Pursued, Sweet Smell of Success and Hud.
