The Day He Arrives

Same guy, same place, same characters, but different combinations. Same day? Maybe. Is this the same day in different combinations, or different days that show how utterly repetitive life is? There is room for debate there. If you've ever kept a diary over a period of years, then gone back to read them, the most shocking thing that many people find is not how much they've changed, but how much they haven't. You make similar decisions and similar mistakes. The situations are always slightly different, with some minor variable, but the results end up in the same place. This film is an examination of that idea. It's may not be for popular tastes, but it's good stuff, reminiscent of Eric Rohmer and the French New Wave.

This is me second Hong Sungsoo film. The first, Alone on the Beach At Night, was very good with an excellent performance by Kim Min-hee..

This is in similar territory. In real life Sungsoo had an affair with Min-hee, which became a tabloid scandal. He has apparently made several films set in and around the film world dealing with fictional variations of their story.

In The Day He Arrives, a former director returns to Soule to see an old friend and encounters a combination of former acquaintances, and new people, some of whom know him by reputation.

In very subtle ways events replay with variations. People seem unaware of previous conversations, encounters are slightly too dramatic and revealing, women react - more or less like they might be in a movie.

The movie never directly says that it's about constructing stories but there are hints. We see him writing, we hear him doing voice over that seems no more aware of other events than characters are. The overall sense is of the director character reworking his entangled life and trying to put it into a story.

Just as the real director. Hong Songsoo is doing in film after film. Highly recommend this moving, intelligent film

The fine line between art and nonsense has been crossed in this movie. In terms of script it is on the level of an average TV drama. However, even a viewer with basic knowledge of cinema would notice awkward framing. Endless shots with flood of dialogue show authors ambition to portrait authentic situations from everyday life. But when in one of them the camera guided by an unapt hand first swings and then zooms in without any connection to the scene, i lost the sympathy for this movie.

The main character is somewhat lovable and obviously in some kind of introspective dwelling (writer's block, mid-life crisis or simply boredom). The most interesting moments are when he meets other people and the way they react to him, since he is a famous author.

Watch only if you're a movie buff.

I'm a big fan of South Korean cinema, particularly their action thrillers, their horror films, and the art-house movies of Kim Ki-Duk, a guy who's quickly becoming one of my favourite directors. Unfortunately THE DAY HE ARRIVES is a low budget, black-and-white, arty production shot on the streets of Seoul with very little story to propel it along.

The narrative seems to involve a down-on-his-luck former director who revisits some of his old friends in the city during a long weekend. Many of the events that transpire are repetitive, with lots of piano playing, drunkenness, and visits to various restaurants and bars, but there's not really much point to this and zero explanation. There's no discernible beginning, middle or end, either. It feels like the work of a first-time director just finding his feet and asking the viewer to endure with him.

THE DAY HE ARRIVES contains lots of endless ad-libbed scenes with static camera-work. The performances are the only good thing about this; the rest of it is a bore. I was thinking this might be some GROUNDHOG DAY time loop style movie but it's far more subtle and obtuse than that, and by the time it finishes the only thing you can do is scratch your head and move on to the next movie.

OK, so I get that this is a foreign film, and I get that I'm supposed to be super-sensitive to cultural differences. But, and a huge BUT here, I was bored beyond tears with this one.

I'm regretfully placed in an awkward position to witness the characters stutter their way through their seemingly contrived scripts, from the tedious profile angles that the director seems to prefer. I was witness to over the top and quite frankly, ridiculous responses to otherwise benign dialogue contrivances.

I really, really tried to give this flick a chance, but I just couldn't get into it. I'm no stranger to foreign films, and watch and enjoy a number of them. This one, however, bored the living fecal matter out of me.