Summary:
A man runs into a woman that he used to know by chance and they form a tenuous friendship. After the woman returns from a trip, she introduces him to her new mysterious friend.
My Thoughts:
The world is a metaphor.
- Kafka on the Shore, Haruki Murakami
“What does ‘real’ mean,” Fuka-Eri asked without a question mark.
- 1Q84, Haruki Murakami
My desire comes from a place that reason and common sense can’t reach.
-1Q84, Haruki Murakami
To describe Murakami to someone who is not already a reader of his is difficult. I’m a huge fan of his work (I’ve read nine of his books so far and I own all of his books that have been translated into English), but any time I try to describe what reading him is like I fall short. Murakami likes to ascribe meaning to the mundane; “The world is a metaphor,” he says in one of my favorites of his works, Kafka on the Shore. Many scenes in Murakami’s work feature protagonists doing trivial tasks like cooking food, listening to music, or gardening. But while his protagonists go about their lives, they find meaning in small things, in the small victories they win and also the small hurdles they have to overcome.
Murakami’s work has a sense of nirvana to it. Part of that sense comes from his prose (I’ve found some translations are better than others- Philip Gabriel’s translations (1Q84) seem to flow more than Alfred Birnbaum’s (Hard-boiled Wonderland and the End of the World)), but a good deal of it comes from Murakami’s unique worldview that everything either has meaning or can be given meaning with context. Murakami might be talking about making pasta, organizing pots and pans, or even the joy of taking a very good poop (I’m not joking), but really he’s addressing an existential crisis. He might be showing us a talking cat or a manifestation of Colonel Sanders or Johnny Walker (yes, that does really happen in one of his books), but he’s asking us to push the boundaries of our metaphysical limitations.
Murakami’s work asks you to reexamine your own life and ascribe meaning to things that you might not have considered before- his work is life altering, transformative, and moving, but I also think it takes the right kind of mind to appreciate this kind of literature, just like it takes the right kind of viewer to appreciate films by Tarkovsky or Bergman. People who gravitate towards movies like this are searching for answers even if there aren’t any answers to be found.
It takes a mind that is hungry, not for food, but for a greater knowledge. That brings me to this film.
“Why do we live, what is the significance of life?”
This film is something marvelous to behold in that I think it captures the essence of Murakami more than many adaptations I’ve seen. The short story on which this film was based, ‘Barn Burning’, is only about twenty pages long in his short story collection The Elephant Vanishes, but this film is two and a half hours long. Going into this movie, I knew that it would be a rather loose adaptation, but what surprised me was actually how close to the source material this movie stuck. The story revolves around a man running into an old friend- a girl he used to know from years ago. They continue to run into each other for a while until finally she and her boyfriend come over to the POV character’s home and smoke a joint. After the girl passes out, the boyfriend tells the POV character that as a hobby he likes to burn barns. After that, the boyfriend and girl leave, and the POV character runs into the boyfriend only once more; neither of them see the girl again.
This film follows the same general idea of the short story- almost all of the major details are there- even down to the little character quirks, like the girl practicing to be a mime. But really, the story is only scaffolding in Murakami novels- the real meat is in the details and in the subtext.
Near the beginning of this film there is a scene near the beginning of the film when the girl, named Shin Hae-mi in this movie, talks about her desire to go to Africa. She talks about the ‘Bushmen,’ and here is what she says:
Do you know Bushmen in the Kalahari Desert, Africa It is said that Bushmen have two types of hungry people. Hungry English is hunger, Little hungry and great hungry. Little hungry people are physically hungry, The great hungry is a person who is hungry for survival. Why do we live, What is the significance of living? People who are always looking for these answers. This kind of person is really hungry. They call it the great hunger.
That’s what this film is about: searching for answers. Searching and not knowing and not being satisfied by the lack of answers and wanting with everything in you to just know why. This film addresses that burning desire in all of us that wants to know why there is so much pain and suffering and hurt in the world when there is also so much joy. This is a film for those of us who stare up at the clouds, searching for the face of God, wondering why he both cursed and blessed us with this existence.
The way Lee addresses these topics: isolation from others, a feeling of anger towards a faceless idea, division amongst peers and divisiveness amongst friends is subtle, worked into the background, and it does it in a way that appeals to the world as a whole. Lee uses Trump and his border wall as a symbol of fear and xenophobia, and the place that it has in our modern world. He illustrates class disparity between rich and the poor through subtle hints. And perhaps what is most impressive is the way he starts a film as a drama and slowly changes it halfway through so that it becomes a thriller. It feels like an awakening that quickly turns into a nightmare as our protagonist realizes that though he might think he understands the world around him, really the world is completely different than he thinks.
Our protagonist wants answers, but there is no one that can give them to him. Justified or not, he is, in a way, a personification of human anger and grievances towards fate.
Verdict:
You know that feeling when you watch a movie and realize that you’re going to have to watch it several more times before the film fully sinks in? This is one of those kinds of movies for me. I haven’t seen anything else by Chang-dong Lee but I intend to now. This film owes a ton to the brilliant writing of Murakami, but Lee brought quite a lot to the table as well. Watching this movie made me rearrange my top five of 2018 list, if that’s any indication of how good it is.
Watch this movie.
Read Murakami (I recommend Kafka on the Shore or Norwegian Wood first).
Take time to make great pasta and talk to the cats.
Your life will be blessed.
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