tonosov-51238

South Korea's bitter battles with their own authoritarianism are heavily woven into their film industry. 1987 is an outright anniversary movie, telling of circumstances that led to the gradual death of the Fifth Republic.

Like all turbulent events that cause unrest, it starts with the death of a young student, a reaction to which leads to the death of more, but from their immolation a muster station will emerge, galvanizing people to no longer tolerate abuses of power. It sounds extremely idyllic, and it plays out like that in the movie too. Frankly, some of the portrayals come off as indoctrinating in the most graceless way possible. And as the movie's runtime gets allocated among multiple protagonists, it becomes a bit awkward when you find yourself more engrossed in the characters who are supposed to represent the wrongful side of the strife.

Case in point. Park Cheo-won is played forbiddingly by Kim Yoon-seok. I wouldn't mind the movie being from his perspective alone, in fact, watching his worldview of "ends justify the means" crumble from below him is so thrilling that it overshadows pretty much everyone else in the ensemble cast. And that's a lot of people. In fact, they gathered many highly prolific or at least recognizable Korean actors. Almost none of them play any actual people but rather represent the institutions that didn't let the government get away with the murder. Maybe that's why Park Cheo-won is so interesting because he might as well be the representative of the government's mindset. And that portrayal is much more than him being corrupt and evil. He believes what he preaches, genuinely thinking that all of the violation of human rights is ultimately for the safety of Korea, and he is eternally bitter about the Armistice Line. He rewards loyalty and punishes betrayal. He is a patriot but also cleverly made to be a North Korean deserter, signifying that his mindset is ultimately extrinsic. Every scene with him is excellent. On the opposite spectrum we have Lee Han-yeol and Yeon-hee. The two wholesome chunguses, one with an unnecessary romantic trope and scenes so blatantly designed to prickle civic awareness of a moviegoer that they come off as extremely insincere. The way she immediately starts crying from grainy footage of the Gwangju uprising is so synthetic it might as well be agitprop. And the way they chose to portray Lee Han-yeol was too uncanny for my senses. He is a bona fide symbol and a martyr, but I think he should still seem corporeal. Because aside from wearing a death flag the size of the Korean peninsula, the guy literally, and I mean literally, brings sunlight with him wherever he goes. It's very hard to not notice since the movie is in a very dour and grey palette. He even gets hit with "You think you can change the world?!" at some point. Contrast it with the actual human tragedy of Park Jong-chul and his family. Who can't even properly mourn him because his body is now in a proverbial tug of war between people trying to expose and conceal the circumstances of his death. Probably the most powerful scene of acting comes from his father, who is shown despondently staring into the distance while his wife howls. Only for that bottled grief to burst open when they are scattering his ashes at the river. Not only does it expose the tremendously human aspect of a father lamenting that he couldn't protect his son, but it is also amazingly acted and filmed, making even avaricious journalists who came for a scoop of the wronged family settle down as they watch this old man in the freezing river trying to make soaked ash go down the stream. Nothing close to this exists for Lee Han-yeol. The scene of his injury and subsequent beginning of protests was simply too idealistic as they all climbed the buses in careful arrangement and started a performative chanting with the sun beaming at them, illuminating the civic uprising for the better future of Korea or whatever whimsical connotations they were packing into that ending. It simply doesn't enrapture me.

There are many other characters in the movie, but all of them can be surmised to be embodiments of a "don't kiss the boot it will kick you in the teeth eventually" parable. And despite that, the movie is only 2 hours long and distributes its focus intelligently among its multitude of plotlines. Could have been a mess, but it's not. And even a person who knows nothing about this (like me, who at first thought this was about the Gwangju uprising) can easily follow and tune in to the outcry against tyranny.