Many people in the Korean film industry were predicting disaster for the year 2008. A broad-based slump that began in 2007 had shaken confidence and made it much more difficult to produce and finance ambitious or seemingly risky projects. The only truly giant-scale, high-profile film was Kim Jee-woon’s Manchuria-set Western, The Good, The Bad, The Weird. At the same time it was clear that Korean audiences were becoming more skeptical of local films. It wasn’t that they had lost interest entirely, but they were becoming more selective in their viewing habits, and showing comparatively warmer attitudes towards Hollywood and other foreign films. Many observers predicted a waning of creative vitality and a bloodbath at the box office for local films.
In fact, the market share for local films did drop from 50.8% in 2007 (and over 60% in 2006) to only 42.1% in 2008. This marked the lowest level since 2002 and there were a couple of months during which theatres seemed completely barren of Korean films capable of leaving any commercial or critical impression. Nonetheless, a look back at the year as a whole shows that a combination of strong debut films, small-scale works that exceeded expectations and an expanding slate of low-budget independent films meant that 2008 was far from a lost cause. Whether 2009 can count on such continued surprises, however, is an open question.
To begin with, the hits. Kim Jee-woon’s The Good, The Bad, The Weird, released in July, was a must-succeed picture. Featuring three major male stars (Song Kang-ho, Lee Byung-heon, Jung Woo-sung) and a epic-sized story of stolen loot in 1930s-era Manchuria, this homage to the works of Sergio Leone was also one of Korea’s most expensive films ever. Given a massive theatrical release by CJ Entertainment (the one Korean studio to maintain a consistent level of production during the slowdown), the film opened huge and hung on to sell about 7 million tickets - enough, more or less, to break even. Local reception of the movie was mixed, however, as has been the case with many of Kim Jee-woon’s previous works. Critics complained that the work lacked emotional depth, and word of mouth among general audiences was positive but not fever-pitched.
For much of the year, The Good, The Bad, The Weird ranked as 2008’s highest grossing film. However a surprise emerged in December with the release of a small-scale, modestly-budgeted comedy called Scandal Makers. Cheaply marketed, and saddled with a Korean title that is perhaps even less appealing than its English one, this debut film by Kang Hyung-chul looked at first glance to be like any other unremarkable Korean comedy that tends to leave little impact at the box office. But advance screenings of the film were a success, and in the ensuing weeks word-of-mouth began to propel it to a resounding commercial success that lasted through the holiday season and into February.
Scandal Makers does not aspire to be anything other than a well-made comedy It tells the story of a successful radio DJ in his thirties who discovers that he has a teenage daughter - the result of his first sexual encounter before he left his hometown. The girl has proven fertile at an unusually young age. The film doesn’t really take the viewer anywhere unexpected, but the director’s attention to detail and keen sense of comic timing gave audiences a reason to smile amidst the accelerating economic crisis. The film ended up with over 8 million admissions, breaking the previous record for a Korean comedy held by 200 Pounds Beauty (2006).
Two more of the year’s top ranking films also qualify as word-of-mouth hits. Forever The Moment, a drama about Korea’s national women’s handball team, and The Chaser, Na Hong-jin's widely praised debut about a serial killer had similarly received little attention before their release. The fact that three of the four top grossing Korean films of 2008 were comparatively modest-budgeted, word-of-mouth hits may suggest that although audiences are growing more skeptical of local cinema, they still turn out in force when a film is able to generate a certain degree of popular attention.
The biggest hit film of early 2009 was an even more striking example of this phenomenon. Old Partner is an independent documentary about an 80-year-old farmer and the aging cow that has toiled by his side for the past 40 years. Shot on DV by Lee Chung-ryoul, who had originally worked in the broadcasting sector, the $75,000 film first premiered at the Pusan International Film Festival in October before screening in Sundance’s international documentary competition in January. Before its release, the film’s producer was feeling ambitious. His goal was for 220,000 admissions, roughly double the all-time record for Korean documentaries set by the Japan/North Korea-themed Our School from 2007. As it turned out, the film opened to strong audience interest and soon it was being discussed on evening news shows, particularly when president Lee Myung-bak attended a screening in early February. Amazingly, the film eventually rose to number one in the weekly box office chart. At the time of this writing in mid-March, it had approximately 3,000,000 admissions. Much of the film’s audience were viewers in their fifties, sixties and seventies - a sector of the viewing public that has not really turned out in significant numbers since the release of Tae Guk Gi in 2004.
Another notable aspect of 2008 was the large number of debut films that earned critical or popular attention. In addition to the chaser and Scandal Makers, mentioned above, several outstanding works such as Rough Cut or Crush And Blush succeeded in capturing attention. Rough Cut is the feature debut of director Jang Hoon, who worked previously as an assistant director on Kim Ki-duk’s films The Bow (2005) and Time (2006). Based on a synopsis by Kim, the film centres on a rivalry between a hot-tempered actor known for playing gangster-like roles and the real gangster who agrees to become his co-star on the condition that all of their on-screen fighting is real. In this way the film is centered on an abstract dichotomy between the real and the simulated, such as is often explored in Kim’s films. But stylistically and dramatically, Jang Hoon is a very different kind of director. Spiked with humor and featuring great performances from its lead actors, the low-budget Rough Cut was a significant hit with both critics and mainstream viewers.
If Kim helped to orchestrate the debut of Jang Hoon, then Park Chan-wook did the same for another talented newcomer Lee Kyoung-mi. She had previously attracted notice in Korea for her short film Feel Good Story. Crush And Blush, which Park produced, is hard to describe. The plot centers on a high school Russian teacher who is demoted to teach middle school English, which she barely knows. In love with another married teacher, she is distraught to find out that he is having an affair, so she enlists the help of the man’s daughter to sabotage the illicit relationship. More to the point, however, the film is a turbulent trip into the erratic mind of its lead character. Lurching back and forth between cutting humour and frenzied hysterics, the film is an emotional carnival ride and a unique vision by a very talented director.
Among the more established directors, one interesting work was by Yu Ha, whose previous film A Dirty Carnival had opened many eyes in and outside of Korea. Yu’s latest work Frozen Flower was his first period piece, a ravishing drama set in the Imperial Palace of the Koryo Dynasty which lasted from 918 to 1392. When the king, who is gay, is unable to produce an heir, he asks his most faithful general and lover to sleep with the queen. The result is an ever-thickening brew of suspicion and crossed loyalties that make for a dramatic and entertaining story. Yu’s expert handling of narrative and dramatic tension imbues life into every scene in the film, further marking him out as one of Korea’s strongest directors. Released at the very end of 2008, the big budget film ranked as a solid hit with 3.7 million tickets sold.
Lee Yoon-ki’s new film My Dear Enemy also represented a step into higher profile filmmaking by casting two highly acclaimed stars. Lee cast Ha Jung-woo, whose career has surged in recent years especially with his role as a serial killer in The Chaser, and Korea’s leading actress Jeon Do-yeon, who was appearing in her first feature since winning the best actress award at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival for her role in Secret Sunshine. Like Lee’s recent Ad Lib Night, My Dear Enemy is based on a story by Japanese writer Taira Azuko. It follows a woman who tracks down her ex-boyfriend in order to collect an old loan worth about $1000. He doesn’t have the money, but he promises to raise it in the course of the day. The film is driven not so much by turns in the plot, but by subtle emotional changes, and in this sense the acting performances are allowed to dominate. Although not a mainstream hit, it clearly found its way into the hearts of many cinephiles, and later received its international premiere in the Forum section of the Berlin Film Festival.
If there was one notable absence in the industry in 2008, it was summer horror films. Korea has developed a tradition over the years of releasing the bulk of its horror films during the hot summer months. Although audiences have come to expect this, the comparatively weak performance of most horror films in recent years meant that virtually all the major distributors passed through the season without a single horror title. At the last minute, new distributor SK Telecom financed and released Death Bell, a high school-set story of an anonymous adversary who locks a class of students inside their school and begins to kill them off in the order of their grade point average. Although not particularly well-made or conceived, the film did enjoy a strong run at the box office, suggesting that other film companies were perhaps too quick to give up on the genre. Sure enough, a fifth installment of the famous Whispering Corridors series of horror films set in girls’ high schools is due out in summer 2009.
Given that there were a reasonable number of hit films in 2008, and a total of 108 features released in theaters (even if many of these were low-budget independent films, or works produced in previous years), outside observers might reasonably question whether the industry is in fact on the brink of collapse as many industry insiders claim. Certainly, from the perspective of a producer working in the Korean film industry, the situation is dire. Film financing has grown scarce, costs have risen and viewers are more cautious. The number of people trying to make feature films in Korea has grown, too. Any individual producer now faces long odds in trying to get all but the highest profile projects off the ground. This is unlikely to change soon.
Nonetheless, it seems unlikely that South Korea will experience a drop in production levels comparative to that seen in Hong Kong in the past decade. Governments on both the left and right sides of the political spectrum have found it politically expedient to pledge support for the film industry - even if the current right-leaning government has approached the task in a somewhat chaotic manner. Investors still notice the success of hits like Scandal Makers, and some people in the industry talk cautiously of a revival in the second half of 2009. In the meantime, two giant projects are nearing release this spring: Park Chan-wook’s emotionally intense vampire movie Thirst, and Bong Joon-ho’s fourth feature Mother, about a woman trying to clear her son of a murder charge. The biggest name directors will probably continue to attract financing and will enjoy enviable levels of creative control for their future projects. That is as long as they choose to stay in Korea instead of taking up one of the many scripts being sent to them from Hollywood.
The real question is the fate of lesser-known and first time directors in the tough environment that lies ahead. If 2009 can replicate the level of success seen in 2008, then they will have a fighting chance of success.
Darcy Paquet