Movie : Peppermint Candy

Oh man, I just finished watching Peppermint Candy, another random Korean movie I found... which honestly, I don't remember even how I heard about this film. What can I say, I am exhausted; this is one hell of a train wreck (no pun intended; watch the movie) of emotions.

I have a lot of feelings and ideas swirling around in my head about this, and it's hard to put into words without babbling. I thoroughly enjoyed the film, but this isn't one of those you can say you "enjoyed" in the traditional sense because it was very difficult to watch. I guess the closest idea would be along the lines of watching Requiem for a Dream...

As I said before, Peppermint Candy is brutal. Not brutal in an "over the top" , gratuitous, sense but pure and gut wrenching. It's the story about how a man's life is shaped by the brutality of Korean society. It starts off with the main character meeting fellow class mates for a 20 year reunion (Spring 1999), and him committing suicide; the rest of the story is told in a series of backward steps in his life, going all the way back to the spring of 1979 before his entire life changed. There's a lot of common elements in each period, but I don't want to give those away.

You learn, as the movie rewinds the clock, how his life completely fell apart. You see how the main character's brutality developed, but it's not told in a way to develop any sympathy or provide an excuse for his behavior; it is simply an observation. I guess you can see how really innocent he was at the end of the movie, in 1979, so the feelings are more of him becoming a victim of the system. Society's impact isn't used to directly explain some of his behavior, which I guess is more attributable to the stupidity of people (specifically him) in general. I don't believe the film is necessarily a critique of Korean society, but also an observation. He pays his entire life for the mistake he made.

The story is unique to Korea, because of the setting during 80s regarding martial law and military control of the country by the current government. I've learned about this in history class, but the other part of the setting is the role of the police. The police effectively operated like a gestapo, abducting people and literally torturing them until they "confessed". This fact is not exactly new to me, but hit harder this time because it was the second movie I've seen with the backdrop of police brutality (Memories of Murder; a very different but good movie with my favorite K-Actor, Song Kang Ho).

It's interesting to me because stories told in this setting make the history personal, instead of some random paragraph in a book that "says" what happens. It teaches me about some of the feelings that made some Koreans wish to emigrate to another country, and also explains the negative sentiment against the United States. The brutality is the reason to escape, yet the tolerance of the brutality by the "champions of democracy" is the reason the hate. Paragraphs in a book can never provide the tangible human factor needed to understand ideas like these.

[/babbling]