Mist

An atmospheric and finely-crafted work by a talented filmmaker, Mist has taken its place as one of the highlights of 1960s Korean cinema. Based on a 1964 novel by Kim Seung-ok titled Trip to Mujin, Kim Soo-yong’s film tells the story of a middle-class office worker in Seoul named Gi-joon who takes a trip to his rural hometown Mujin. As he revisits the place of his youth, familiar locations and people trigger flashbacks of his troubled past. At the same time, he meets a beautiful young schoolteacher who yearns to escape her confined life in Mujin. As the two grow closer together, Gi-joon also feels a yearning for escape from his wife, whom he married for money, and from the dreariness of modern life. A resonant and intimate portrait of its young heroes, Mist is also notable for its aesthetic achievements. Kim experiments with sound and montage to give the film a consciously modernist feel. The story stays within Gi-joon’s perspective, but the flashbacks and structure of the story give the film a stream-of-consciousness feel. As the story progresses, the past and present selves of Gi-joon start to carry out a dialogue, and he is made to look at his life again from a new perspective. Like the fog which envelops our hero’s hometown, Mist provides no clear-cut answers to the questions it raises. We see that Gi-joon has struggled throughout his life to become modern, but now that he has reached his goals, we question exactly what he has achieved. The aspirations and personality of the schoolteacher strongly echo that of our main character, but she too is left without any clear direction in life. Despite its subdued, somewhat pessimistic tone, Mist is also compassionate in its portrayal of people who cast off tradition to look for new paths. The generation of Koreans that this film originally spoke to were known for new ideas and their pursuit of personal fulfillment. For contemporary audiences as well, Mist remains an insightful and powerful film.