Aloners

I am really surprised - though honestly not shocked - that more people don't note that the glaring truth of this film is that it's about the invasion of Western capitalism in South Korea. The more SK has Westernized, the more its people have the same problems as anyone stuck in a capitalist grind.

The main character is basically a robot who takes abuse constantly in her job as a customer service agent who answers phones for a credit card company. She handles every call with rational detachment and feigned politeness, obeying the commands of rude and irrational customers who don't see her as a person.

Jina's plight is further complicated by her bottled up grief over the death of her mother. It takes the death of a neighbor, who appears to her as a ghost, and a young, needy trainee at work to reach into Jina's solitary world of work and television.

Aloners swiftly enchants its viewers with quiet and simple images that slowly build up the solitude of our protagonist. Ji-na isn't per se lonely, she might not even be unhappy, she simply chose to be alone, wafting through the weeks with single lunches and the ever-accompanying noise of technology. When a few encounters threaten to unravel her solitude she is forced to face her past, present and future. Hong Sung-eun's debut is so tender and warm and struck a deep cord within me. The way she uses the camera to portray Ji-Na's life, always focused, always following the same movements, never shattering to slowly making the young woman re-experience her surroundings is incredibly powerful. I especially appreciated Gong Seung-yeon's delicate performance as well as the script's refusal to make its aloners a bad thing - there can be comfort in being alone, and there might be a different comfort in finally connecting with people and life again. Absolutely incredible!

Film, like all art forms, has to offer us something personally. That also means that there will be lot of film that just never click. I would ask those who were bored, however, that they consider what the director was trying to do. Here we have a young woman who has fallen into a sort of despair. She works at a call answering service for a credit card company. We get to see how this could be really unpleasant. People often call because their own incompetence led them there. Some are angry because they needed their cards to work but they don't. And some treat these operators as if they were like minded friends. One guy has supposedly built a time machine and he doesn't want to carry cash into the past. He is a frequent caller and always gets the same response. What has happened to this young woman as that her life has become so consistently withdrawn, that she has lost all the joy. A man dies next door to her, and it turns out she never really knew him. She retreats to her apartment and shuts out the outside. Her father has become a widower and she can't handle his loneliness and rejects him out of hand. Eventually, she gets an epiphany from a young woman whose incompetence invites her cruelty. But there is much more to the story. I rather enjoyed this.

We work the 9/5 to get along. We survive and yet we feel so disconnected by the people around us. I would compare this movie to Fight Club, but a drowned out introspective feminine version. It's a story about a woman working a job, living in a one room apartment, as life happens around her. Of course she doesn't have a murderous compulsion to do violence, but a slow realization that life isn't what it seems and that life is of the habit to keep us from living. If you are into film and understand the lifeless grind of working to survive, this movie hears you.

If you want a solid Korean movie about the working class that has zero frills and tons of humanity, this movie is for you. If you need action and still want some class consciousness, there is always Snowpiercer or Parasite. This one is a much more low key vibe.

This is a review for those who, like me, like to come back here after watching a film, just to see if anyone else shared their concluding thoughts. Thought there are no spoilers, this short review will only resonate with those who have already seen the film.

The director/writer felt the need to insert a few completely uneccessary and very implausible events into the plot, which almost spoiled what should have been a quite good viewing experience. Not sure if the "uneccesaries" were derived from cultural humor or whimsical creativity. Once again, without giving anything away, the silly implausibles were: the magazine death; the hidden camera confession; the restaurant seating incident.