Apologies to woquinoncoin for
blatantly ripping a page out of her expertly done book, mediadiary. :) (I just got a program that lets me take screen captures from my DVD program and OMG was I excited)
취화선 Chihwaseon [Painted Fire], dir. 林權澤 Im Kwon-taek, starring 崔岷植 Choi Min-sik, 2002.
If I know you, I've probably raved about this movie & insisted you (or we) watch it at some point.
I picked this film up in Shanghai because the cover was taken from this scene:
A drunken guy on a 19th century Korean roof, how could I resist?
I didn't actually watch it until several months after I'd gotten home; I was working on an annotated bibliography & let myself watch the movie in snips, in between entries. And I loved it. And so I watched it again. And again. And again.
Chihwaseon is about the 19th century Korean painter Jang Seung-eop, who was better known as Owon. In a lot of ways, it's your typical tortured artist story - incredibly gifted person who just can't seem to get it all together. He likes to drink (to excess), likes women, likes to paint, but is hardly the most stable of characters. Im Kwon-taek doesn't let the movie slide into some crappy biopic that amounts to one long, pretty sob story, though - the story of Owon & his issues (and achievements) is set against the rather turbulent background of 19th century Asian politics.
But first, here's why you should see this film even if you don't care about any of that stuff: it's really and truly gorgeous. The cinematography is brilliant and it's just masterfully done. The movie is worth renting and sitting through just for the landscape shots. Really.
I didn't get any captures of the "formal" painting scenes, but the highly detailed shots are just as amazing as the grand views of South Korean countryside.
More on the technical end of things: the "soundtrack" is pretty sparse, most of the background noise being comprised of, well, background noise. The overwhelming majority of actual music is traditional Korean, and the music-painting-cinematography-plot is woven together to such a degree that I'm not sure I've ever seen in another film. To whit, the top photograph below is from a series of scenes that pull together Owon's art, some plot points that are going on, and some really gorgeous traditional music (the music is - thankfully - subtitled as well). The next is from one of my favorite scenes in the whole movie, of a hawk chasing what seem like thousands and thousands of sparrows - the traditional song playing is continued into the next scene (third), and Owon goes on to paint the scene (last). So it's a very rich sensory experience (for me, at least).
(The music is great, by the way, but I really enjoy traditional Korean music - the only program on saw on CCTV-English last summer that was interesting was on traditional Korean music & they were doing songs with fans on that, too. It's neat to listen to, because the women snap their fans open and closed with the music.)
But no, Chihwaseon isn't the cinematic equivalent of a modern RPG - all pretty scenery and no plot. The film hops around quite a bit through the 19th century as we follow Owon back and forth from the past to the present; the turbulent times and problems facing Korea (and China and Japan to some extent, as well) underscore much of the film. Admittedly, if you had no idea what was going on, you're probably going to be a little confused; Chihwaseon isn't necessarily heavy on the history, but it's there. Frequently.
We have 9 Catholic missionaries & thousands of Koreans getting beheaded in the 1860s for being Catholic; we then have failed rebellion attempts, the Japanese marching in, peasant rebellions being suppressed. While Owon's busy being a tortured artist and trying to figure out what he needs to do in life (and it's true, many of his patrons talk about his art as being critical for the young people of Korea: it's inspiring, it's dreamy, it's beautiful. But Owon's not so sure - he did get his start copying Chinese paintings. How is THAT intrinsically Korean?), Korea is busy being taken over and people are arguing about what Korea needs to do.
<
There are real flashes of "Whoa" in this movie - the scene with the lollygagging Qing troops on one side of the street & the smartly dressed and oh-so-militaristic Japanese troops on the other made me sit up.
And then we get the scenes that made my heart ache - Owon, much older now, runs into his old patron (the man who basically saved him). Owon tries to convince him to come back to Seoul, but the old man says he's happy with his simple life out in the middle of nowhere. And besides, explains the old man in not so many words, the idea of rebellion, of revolution was silly. Rather, the plan they tried to put into place - "If the Japanese had helped us overthrow the government," he asks Owon, "what then?"
But for all the doom and gloom, the old man pulls out a painting by Owon, and here we have one of the great scenes of the movie - In it, I finally felt the heartbeat of Korea.
It's not one of Owon's copies of a classical Chinese painting.
I think, as a student of primarily Chinese history, I was snagged the most by the thread that runs through the whole movie on imperialism, "modernization," "Westernization," retaining some cultural sense of self. It's fascinating to me that at the same time China was started to get loaded up with "helpful" Western missionaries, the Koreans are happily decapitating thousands of their own citizens for being professed Christians.
The independent study of Korean history is still an emerging field in the US; Chihwaseon is what convinced me that I really want to do comparative studies of China, Japan, and Korea in the 19th century - since only the really big programs generally offer classes on Korea specifically. Fernsebner couldn't even give me a citation for a good, Search for Modern China-esque general history of the "modern" period.
Im Kwon-taek did a really brilliant job of weaving together all these elements - firmly framed by the "tortured drunken artist!" story of Owon - into something that isn't whacking you over the head with anything but extraordinary beauty. No, the scenes with the bespectacled, Western-clothes-wearing Japanese man asking Owon to paint him a particular painting - the hawk had such life in his eyes! - aren't exactly subtle. Owon says that if it's the painting he's thinking of, yes, he could probably paint it again - but in the old days, his brush was guided by a divine force. He, like Korea, is waning.
Still, Chihwaseon is one of those movies that you can enjoy purely for the gorgeous production, or for the main plot, or for all the little details that pop up not infrequently. The relation of art to life, art to country - both while your country is seemingly being gobbled up from all sides by foreigners. Modernize or die.
It's a thought provoking and beautiful film, one that I highly recommend. It won the Best Director's prize at Cannes in 2002 for very, very good reason.
취화선 Chihwaseon [Painted Fire], dir. 林權澤 Im Kwon-taek, starring 崔岷植 Choi Min-sik, 2002.
If I know you, I've probably raved about this movie & insisted you (or we) watch it at some point.
I picked this film up in Shanghai because the cover was taken from this scene:
A drunken guy on a 19th century Korean roof, how could I resist?
I didn't actually watch it until several months after I'd gotten home; I was working on an annotated bibliography & let myself watch the movie in snips, in between entries. And I loved it. And so I watched it again. And again. And again.
Chihwaseon is about the 19th century Korean painter Jang Seung-eop, who was better known as Owon. In a lot of ways, it's your typical tortured artist story - incredibly gifted person who just can't seem to get it all together. He likes to drink (to excess), likes women, likes to paint, but is hardly the most stable of characters. Im Kwon-taek doesn't let the movie slide into some crappy biopic that amounts to one long, pretty sob story, though - the story of Owon & his issues (and achievements) is set against the rather turbulent background of 19th century Asian politics.
But first, here's why you should see this film even if you don't care about any of that stuff: it's really and truly gorgeous. The cinematography is brilliant and it's just masterfully done. The movie is worth renting and sitting through just for the landscape shots. Really.
I didn't get any captures of the "formal" painting scenes, but the highly detailed shots are just as amazing as the grand views of South Korean countryside.
More on the technical end of things: the "soundtrack" is pretty sparse, most of the background noise being comprised of, well, background noise. The overwhelming majority of actual music is traditional Korean, and the music-painting-cinematography-plot is woven together to such a degree that I'm not sure I've ever seen in another film. To whit, the top photograph below is from a series of scenes that pull together Owon's art, some plot points that are going on, and some really gorgeous traditional music (the music is - thankfully - subtitled as well). The next is from one of my favorite scenes in the whole movie, of a hawk chasing what seem like thousands and thousands of sparrows - the traditional song playing is continued into the next scene (third), and Owon goes on to paint the scene (last). So it's a very rich sensory experience (for me, at least).
(The music is great, by the way, but I really enjoy traditional Korean music - the only program on saw on CCTV-English last summer that was interesting was on traditional Korean music & they were doing songs with fans on that, too. It's neat to listen to, because the women snap their fans open and closed with the music.)
But no, Chihwaseon isn't the cinematic equivalent of a modern RPG - all pretty scenery and no plot. The film hops around quite a bit through the 19th century as we follow Owon back and forth from the past to the present; the turbulent times and problems facing Korea (and China and Japan to some extent, as well) underscore much of the film. Admittedly, if you had no idea what was going on, you're probably going to be a little confused; Chihwaseon isn't necessarily heavy on the history, but it's there. Frequently.
We have 9 Catholic missionaries & thousands of Koreans getting beheaded in the 1860s for being Catholic; we then have failed rebellion attempts, the Japanese marching in, peasant rebellions being suppressed. While Owon's busy being a tortured artist and trying to figure out what he needs to do in life (and it's true, many of his patrons talk about his art as being critical for the young people of Korea: it's inspiring, it's dreamy, it's beautiful. But Owon's not so sure - he did get his start copying Chinese paintings. How is THAT intrinsically Korean?), Korea is busy being taken over and people are arguing about what Korea needs to do.
<
There are real flashes of "Whoa" in this movie - the scene with the lollygagging Qing troops on one side of the street & the smartly dressed and oh-so-militaristic Japanese troops on the other made me sit up.
And then we get the scenes that made my heart ache - Owon, much older now, runs into his old patron (the man who basically saved him). Owon tries to convince him to come back to Seoul, but the old man says he's happy with his simple life out in the middle of nowhere. And besides, explains the old man in not so many words, the idea of rebellion, of revolution was silly. Rather, the plan they tried to put into place - "If the Japanese had helped us overthrow the government," he asks Owon, "what then?"
But for all the doom and gloom, the old man pulls out a painting by Owon, and here we have one of the great scenes of the movie - In it, I finally felt the heartbeat of Korea.
It's not one of Owon's copies of a classical Chinese painting.
I think, as a student of primarily Chinese history, I was snagged the most by the thread that runs through the whole movie on imperialism, "modernization," "Westernization," retaining some cultural sense of self. It's fascinating to me that at the same time China was started to get loaded up with "helpful" Western missionaries, the Koreans are happily decapitating thousands of their own citizens for being professed Christians.
The independent study of Korean history is still an emerging field in the US; Chihwaseon is what convinced me that I really want to do comparative studies of China, Japan, and Korea in the 19th century - since only the really big programs generally offer classes on Korea specifically. Fernsebner couldn't even give me a citation for a good, Search for Modern China-esque general history of the "modern" period.
Im Kwon-taek did a really brilliant job of weaving together all these elements - firmly framed by the "tortured drunken artist!" story of Owon - into something that isn't whacking you over the head with anything but extraordinary beauty. No, the scenes with the bespectacled, Western-clothes-wearing Japanese man asking Owon to paint him a particular painting - the hawk had such life in his eyes! - aren't exactly subtle. Owon says that if it's the painting he's thinking of, yes, he could probably paint it again - but in the old days, his brush was guided by a divine force. He, like Korea, is waning.
Still, Chihwaseon is one of those movies that you can enjoy purely for the gorgeous production, or for the main plot, or for all the little details that pop up not infrequently. The relation of art to life, art to country - both while your country is seemingly being gobbled up from all sides by foreigners. Modernize or die.
It's a thought provoking and beautiful film, one that I highly recommend. It won the Best Director's prize at Cannes in 2002 for very, very good reason.