Secret Sunshine

I love how Lee Chang-dong tells a story. I went in to this completely cold, and he had me hooked for all 142 minutes. I can't say I loved it, especially as it compares to some of his other work - it's just so unrelenting in its examination of grief - but its powerful moments which are deftly delivered will undoubtedly have real staying power. Among those is that scene in the prison, when through a beatific smile a man who has committed genuine evil claims to have been forgiven by god, which made the film an interesting examination of faith as well.

Those with faith sometimes claim that without it, any immoral act would be possible, but here we get the inverse. To have faith and believe your acts can be absolved can lead to the same depravity. The young woman navigating stages of grief as well as trying to process her evolving thoughts about god, starting with "if there is a god, why would he allow evil in the world to innocent children?" touch on things about the human condition that are impossible to reconcile, and may make you feel as tortured as she is if you think about them. To his credit, Lee never turned this into a crime story with a twist, or a revenge story, instead simply dwelling on the aftermath of something terrible happening to a good person.

There are clearly moments when religion is being critiqued, such as when the protagonist blares "It's a Lie" by Kim Choo Ja over the loudspeakers during a congregation, but it's notable that it's not completely portrayed as negative. The gentle arc of Song Kang-ho's character, starting from being a creep who jokes along with his buddies in aggressively harassing ways to a woman in their workplace, and ending with turning down an offer for sex and saying that attending church helps make him feel peaceful, was deeply humanistic. Throughout the film, the performances from Song and Jeon Do-yeon were fantastic, more than keeping up with a deep, emotionally complex script.

This is one I admire more than love, but I could see that changing over time. It certainly had me thinking about it for a long time afterwards, and Lee Chang-dong continues to be a director I'd see anything from.

"Secret Sunshine" reminded me of "The Rapture" (1991), with Mimi Rogers and David Duchovny, but this Korean production is a better film. It portrays super-religious Korean Christians in a provincial Korean city, and the main character's experiences interacting with them in the wake of a horrible personal tragedy. Shin-ae is a widowed single mother who moves to the city of Milyang ('Secret Sunshine' in Chinese) from Seoul with her young son. She has chosen Milyang because her late husband (killed in an auto accident) was born there, and she feels she needs to make a new start in life in a new place. She does not react well to the overtures of the local Christian zealots, one of whose members tries to convince her to come to their church and prayer meetings. Shin-ae is essentially irreligious and brushes these people off as politely as she can. In fact, she brushes just about everyone in Milyang off to begin with, but some of them are persistent in trying to invade her world, and the consequences are often hilarious. To say more would be to give the film away, but it should be noted that the performance of the woman in the lead role (Jeon Do-yeon) is stupendous. Having read that she won the Best Actress award at Cannes in 2007, I expected her to a decent job. But Ms. Jeon is captivating and it is impossible to take your eyes off her when she is on screen. The movie is a sort of harrowing Evelyn Waugh-esquire piece of work, showing how Fate can feel insane as much as strangely inevitable.

There are a few stills on IMDB from the film, one in particular where the lead character (played by Jeon Do-yeon) is sitting in a Church. I looked at that picture a year after I watched the film and tears came to my eyes. This woman doesn't just play the role, she becomes it. There is no other way to explain the grief she expresses. You know when you are watching an incredible performance when for moments, if not the duration, you are hypnotized into believing you are watching someone truly experiencing what they are sharing in a performance. I can only imagine the potential traumas of "channeling" such a performance. In an interview by another actor (Michael K Williams), he talked about tools that are available to actors to allow them to comfortably return to reality without the stress (ptsd) from going in "too deep". Jeon Do-yeon's performance reminded me of that interview because I wonder how she did not "crack-up" after this film. You do not simply switch on and off without being affected unless you are extremely talented. I repeat, EXTREMELY talented. It is not enough to say Jeon Do-yeon is the best (that I am aware of) from South Korea; she is among the absolute best on this planet!

If you've had drama in your life, either your own or by someone close to you, the stages of pain this woman (but, in my opinion, it could easily have been a man too)goes through are very very real. It is a movie about not being able to cope with your pain, about not knowing what to do to help yourself get through it. Obviously it then also is a movie about not knowing how to help someone close to you get through their pain. It is a movie that makes you realize that everyone is alone in their suffering. It is a movie that might push someone over the edge...which hardly sounds like a recommendation. I'm not sure I would recommend someone to go see this film, especially someone close, but for me...it is a movie that puts things into perspective, that shows real pain, and is therefore much relevant to being alive. It makes you realize that hey, you or the person close to you have lived through pain, that hey, all the things you worry about now are of so little importance

Initially, I would have thought that Secret Sunshine had something critical to say of religion (and here being Christianity), and wondered if it would be something of a rant against the ills of blind faith, or the manipulative power of those who are supposedly holier than thou. Surprisingly, it was none of the sort and was largely non-judgemental, putting in place events as a matter of fact, and allowing the audience to draw their own judgement and conclusion.

And I can't help but to chuckle at the role of Song Kang-ho, a man who's taken a liking for widower Shin-ae (Jeong Do-yeon), and starts going to church when she does. The reasons for church going are many I suppose, either to find inner peace, to seek help, being afraid of eternal damnation in the fires of Hell, to reaffirm faith, or even things like wanting to get married in a church, or to skirt chase (I kid you not). But to each his own reasons for turning up in church every Sunday and participating in prayer groups for fellowship, what is indeed dangerous, is when the underlying ulterior motives, do not get satisfied, and that's when frustration sets in. Or when you discover how hypocritical man can be, portraying one face inside the house of God, and displaying yet another outside.

Shin-ae and her son Jun moves to the town of Miryang, which is the birthplace of her deceased husband. Wanting to start life anew, she opens up a piano shop to give lessons, though in discovering her new found freedom and in a moment's lack of good judgement, has another tragedy befall her. And that takes one hour to get to. Secret Sunshine really took its time to get to this point, where things then begin to get slightly more interesting with Shin-ae now taking to embracing religion to deal with and accept her current state, reveling in the comfort that religion, and fellow believers, can offer.

What began as crying out for sympathy turns into acceptance and belief that religion offers that silver bullet to solve the ills of all mankind, and sometimes you wonder if it's because of your personal myopic view of what the almighty is doing for you, that you begin to adopt a somewhat selfish opinion that everything's good going your way, and in Shin-ae's case, her magnanimous attitude in wanting to forgive others who had trespassed against her, forgetting something very fundamental that it the feeling can cut both ways too.

The last act is probably the most fun of the lot as it says plenty, where most of us can identify with - why me, and why not someone else, as we rage against our faith and start questioning, unfortunately, with no hard and fast answers available. It is then either we fall by the wayside, or continue with destructive deeds so rebelliously. But somehow the plug gets carefully pulled in Secret Sunshine so as not to offend, and what could have been an ugly character mouthpiece, got muted.

If you bite into the hype this movie is generating, then perhaps you'll realize only Jeong Do- yeon's excellent portrayal is worth mentioning, as she totally owns her role as the widow Shin-ae who is probably the most unluckiest person on Earth in having to deal with that many tragedies over a short period of time, and if you look at it carefully, most of which are of her own doing. Watching her transformation, is worth the ticket price, and despite having my personal favourite Korean actor Song Kang-ho in the movie, this is something he just breezed right through.