Mr. Kim has lost all hope. One day he stands at the edge of one of Seoul’s famous bridges that cross the Han River and jumps into the swirling water. All goes black. However the following morning he awakens with the sun in his eyes and his face in the sand. This isn’t heaven, he has drifted to one of the small uninhabited islands that lie in the middle of the Han River. At first he is merely frustrated that his suicide was a failure, but soon he realizes that he faces a more immediate problem. There is nobody else on the island - nothing but plants, trees, the odd duck and bits of trash. The far edge of the river is well within sight, but Kim never learned how to swim. His efforts to contact the mainland fail. He is stranded, there is nothing to eat, and even though he is in the middle of one of the world’s major metropolises, he has become a modern-day Robinson Crusoe.
Kim will eat a lot of mushrooms in the coming weeks and months, and his isolation will slowly but surely start to change him. But there is another unexpected character in this drama. A young woman, also with the surname Kim, lives in a riverside apartment building. Like the hikimori portrayed in Bong Joon-ho’s Shaking Tokyo, Ms. Kim is a recluse who has not ventured out of her room for years. One day she is peering out her window with a pair of binoculars when she catches sight of the strange disheveled man on the island. His actions mystify her, and then gradually intrigue her. Eventually she will be moved to do the unthinkable: to step outside her apartment building and enter into a strange sort of communication with him.
Castaway On The Moon can lay claim to being one of the more creatively imagined films produced in Korea in recent years. It makes the most out of its unique setting, but at its core it is a fairly simple character-based drama about two sensitive recluses. Director Lee Hey-jun seems to take a special interest in social outsiders. His debut work Like A Virgin, co-directed with his friend and working partner Lee Hae-young, centered on a short, pudgy high school boy who dreams of getting a sex change operation. Both films present their heroes’ predicament with warmth, understanding and sense of humor.
For a film such as this, acting is crucial, and Lee succeeded in casting one of contemporary Korean cinema’s standout actors in Jung Jae-young (Welcome To Dongmakgol, Someone Special). Jung’s deadpan comic performance is a good match with the director’s style, and he creates sympathy for his character without ever pandering to the audience’s emotions. Ms. Kim is played by Chung Yeo-won, who grew up in Australia and started her career as a pop singer before debuting as an actor. This is her second leading role in a feature film.
If we are meant to see the two central characters in this film as being broadly compatible, there are nonetheless significant differences between them. The man becomes isolated from society by accident, and yet his experience turns him into something greater than his former self (though he may no longer be able to readjust to modern society). The woman isolates herself from society by choice, but this is portrayed as something damaging, as a condition that needs to be overcome. In observing the man and starting to interact with him, she is slowly drawn out. Why is the man’s seclusion a positive experience, and the woman’s a negative one? Is it simply that the man has gravitated towards a more natural state, while the woman has moved away from it?
Personally, I found this film interesting, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that it wasn’t quite reaching its potential. I was also left wishing at the end that there had been a bit more real communication between the two leads. However I seem to be in the minority here - most people I talk to adore this film. For its unique setting if nothing else, it deserves a look.
Darcy Paquet