Duk-soo, the main character in JK Youn’s Ode to My Father, is a man who has abandoned his dreams, risked his health, exiled himself to foreign countries and worked himself to exhaustion, all for the sake of his family. And yet, as we see him in old age surrounded by his sons, daughters and grandchildren, one thing is clear: his family doesn’t particularly like him. When his grandchildren arrive at his home, they avoid his outstretched arms and run to their grandmother. His grown children are quick to criticize him for every fault, their voices filled with exasperation. When the family goes on vacation, they don’t take him along.
This is one of the ironies at the heart of Ode to My Father, a blockbuster-sized epic of a film that attempts to tell the story of a generation. Specifically, it is concerned with the generation who were young children during the Korean War of 1950-53, and who then became adults in an age when South Korea was struggling to lift itself out of poverty. It is the generation of director Youn’s father, and he says that he intended the work as a tribute to their monumental sacrifice, which made it possible for today’s generations of Koreans to live in comparative wealth and comfort.
Duk-soo is just a boy in December 1950 when the Chinese army enters his hometown of Hungnam, North Korea, and his family is forced to flee. Amidst the confusion of trying to climb aboard a ship, he loses hold of his sister’s hand and becomes separated from both her and his father. (These scenes, incidentally, take place against the backdrop of one of the most famous incidents of the war.) The rest of his family relocate to Busan, but the absence of his father is like a wound that never heals. As he grows into early adulthood, Duk-soo (played by the versatile Hwang Jung-min – New World, You Are My Sunshine) takes on the responsibility of providing for his family.
Duk-soo’s story is part melodrama, part Forrest Gump, part black comedy, and part dead serious. One of the surprising things about this film is that with so many contrasting elements and moods, it still manages to pull the viewer along at a more or less comfortable momentum. As the years rush past, there is a brief love story with Youngja, played by Kim Yun-jin (Shiri, the TV series Lost), but it is his best friend Dalgu (Oh Dal-soo, Oldboy) with whom he forms the closest bond. Duk-soo and Dalgu’s efforts to earn their way out of poverty end up taking them to coal mines in Germany, and then later to the war in Vietnam.
What makes Ode to My Father interesting is not so much its noble intentions, or its impressively detailed re-creations of past landscapes and cityscapes. It’s that amidst its epic sweep and formidable ambition, there are moments that feel unexpectedly human, and which capture life’s underlying absurdity.
In all of director Youn’s previous films, from comedies like My Boss, My Hero (2001) and Sex Is Zero (2002) to blockbusters like Haeundae (2009), there have been unexpectedly serious moments that undercut the entertaining spectacle onscreen. The dynamic in Ode to My Father is somewhat different, but this work too is more complex than it seems at first glance.
Duk-soo does achieve some victories as the decades pass, but in the end, this is a film about the damage he carries. His tragedy is partly that the fact that he had to abandon his dreams and work so hard all his life. It’s partly about the lingering wounds and separation brought on by the Korean War. But it’s also that his unending sacrifice, and the many hours he has had to spend working, have left him without the time and emotional energy to form any close relationships within his own family. It’s an astute observation about a generation born into an era of hardship.