Secret Sunshine

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Movie
German title Secret Sunshine
Original title 밀양 / Miryang
Milyang.svg
Country of production South Korea
original language Korean
Publishing year 2007
length 142 minutes
Age rating FSK 12
Rod
Director Lee Chang-dong
script Lee Chang-dong based on a novella by Lee Cheong-jun
production Hanna Lee
music Christian Basso
camera Cho Yong-kyou
cut Kim Hyun
occupation

The South Korean drama Secret Sunshine was written and directed by Lee Chang-dong . It premiered in 2007 at the Cannes Film Festival , where Jeon Do-yeon , who played the leading role, was voted best actress by the jury. The song Kang-ho, which is considered a star in South Korea, can be seen in a supporting role . The actors were largely left to their own devices when interpreting their roles, as Lee refused to give them a final explanation of their characters. The story has surprising twists and turns and changes the genre several times. The director has dispensed with a distinctive visual style. The film criticizes Christian missionary work and church practice in South Korea and poses the question of man's relationship with God.

Background of those involved

Director Lee Chang-dong was a teacher and worked as a novelist before making three feature films between 1997 and 2002. He gained fame at international film festivals with awards in Venice , Vancouver and Karlsbad , but remained in the shadow of more stylistically memorable compatriots such as Park Chan-wook and Kim Ki-duk . He made up for the lack of style with a clever motif. He is one of the most important film directors in his home country and is highly regarded as an intellectual, although his work is sometimes classified as rigid and academic. Secret Sunshine is his fourth feature film. It was created after a five-year hiatus after Lee was South Korea's Minister of Culture and Tourism from 2003-2004. He thought there were too many commercial films in South Korean cinema. In addition to entertainment, it is just as much an artist's job to depict pain and despair. Main actress Jeon Do-yeon had the reputation of a very changeable actress who is able to express a wide range of emotions in a wide variety of roles. She was already popular in her home country and received several awards, but hardly known abroad. Supporting actor Song Kang-ho has been a big star in South Korean entertainment films, especially since the box office hit The Host (2006).

action

Shin-ae, a single parent, is moving from Seoul to the South Korean town of Miryang with her young son . It is the hometown of her husband, who was killed in an accident. She wants to start a new life and rents a bar where she gives piano lessons. As soon as she arrived, she ran into the auto mechanic Jong, a self-important clumsy man who now runs after her all the time. The pharmacist hands her a Bible with missionary intent. Over meals with local residents, Shin-ae says she plans to invest in land purchases. When she returns home, her son has disappeared and a blackmailer calls.

Several film scenes take place on the square in front of the train station in Miryang.

She withdraws her little money - she only indicated the investments - and deposits it in the designated place. But the son does not return, a few days later his body is found on the river bank. She is desperate, especially since the family who have traveled from Seoul blames her. Soon the killer, a local teacher, is arrested and convicted. The pharmacist recommends Shin-ae attend a church service. She finds support in the evangelical, sectarian faith community and accepts the Christian faith. Jong also takes part in the Christian meetings to be around Shin-aes. He also accompanies her when she pays a visit to the murderer in prison to tell him that she wants to forgive him out of her Christian convictions. He confesses to her self-satisfied that he had converted to Christianity while in custody and that God had forgiven him. The horrified Shin-ae is confronted with her grief again in the following time and struggles for her faith. First disturbs, then she avoids the services. At the next evangelical march she puts a CD in the sound system of the event, which drowns out the preacher. The pop song has the text: “Lies! Lying! Lies! ”Jong's attempts to carry them out fail. Instead, she seduces the pharmacist's husband to have sex in the open air - God should be able to see him; but its potency fails. After a failed suicide attempt , Jong picks her up from the hospital. Since she is dissatisfied with her hairstyle, he takes her to a hairdressing salon. When she is being served by the murderer's daughter, she runs away. Finally, she cuts her own hair in the back yard of her apartment.

Recognition and awards

Secret Sunshine celebrated its official world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival , where the film was a competition entry in 2007 . Jeon Do-yeon received the award for best actress for her performance. Most of the South Korean newspapers reviewed the film very positively. Almost two weeks after its theatrical release on April 24, 2007, the film had booked around one million admissions there. President Roh Moo-hyun called the film "Food to reflect on life." In October 2007, the work was on the program of the Pusan ​​Film Festival . At the Asia-Pacific Screen Awards , there were prizes for the best feature film and the best actress. At the 6th Korea Film Festival in Seoul , the director, the leading actress and the supporting actor each received a prize. In March 2008, Secret Sunshine received an Asian Film Award in the categories of Best Film, Best Director and Best Actress. Other awards for Jeon Do-yeon were the special award at the South Korean Daejong Film Award , the award for the best actress by the South Korean Film Critics Association, the Okgwan Order for cultural merit awarded by the South Korean Ministry of Culture and the South Korean Film Award, the Blue Dragon . The South Korean Film Council named Secret Sunshine as the country's official candidate for the list of nominations for the Oscar in the category of Best Foreign Language Film. However, the responsible committee did not shortlist him.

At the 22nd Freiburg Film Festival in Switzerland in March 2008, where a retrospective was dedicated to him, Lee appeared at the opening. In Germany, Rapid Eye Movies distributed the film and released it in cinemas on April 16, 2009, just under two years after its premiere in Cannes.

Reviews of the German criticism

The FAZ critic Rüdiger Suchsland said that on the surface Lee Chang-dong should tell a serious story that “this is at the same time a very funny film, characterized by warm-hearted humor and a life-wise, sometimes openly sarcastic, but never cynical look at them Weaknesses of people. "He saw a" film that, depending on your perspective, can be understood in very different ways, which is also due to the fact that it changes its pitch several times and sometimes very abruptly: as a realistic, modest provincial portrait, as a social comedy, as a horror film, as a religious satire, but above all as a melodrama. The film is by no means undecided or hesitant (...) ”and allows the viewer to experience a“ thrilling emotional rollercoaster ride ”. Birgit Glombitza from the taz commented on the narrative rhythm: “The cruelest thing about 'Secret Sunshine' is perhaps the relentless logic with which the film unwinds the course of this life, abandoned by everything. From the terrible losses to desperate coping strategies to free fall. It is told through without stuttering, without artificial acceleration or delay. "The work is a" fascinating, but also disturbing story about socially and religiously prescribed humility and compulsive harmony. She tells of an assimilation process that is so painful and self-destructive that everything comes out of it - just not social idyll and inner peace. "

In the film magazine of the Evangelical Press Service , epd Film , Heike Kühn thought that the film was "at two hours and twenty minutes an imposition and a challenge at the same time." She described the many changes in genre skeptically. However, Jeon Do-yeon is "to be admired for the unreservedness with which she throws herself on every conceivable state of mind." "The members of a sect-like Christian community" find "her more quickly than is good for her. Dazed with pain, Shin-ae engages in fateful prayer circles and the ecstasy of irresponsibility. God, she is told, has his reasons, the death of her son also belongs in the heavenly master plan. ”She becomes dependent on“ pious hugs and superficial conflict avoidance strategies ”and develops a gullible“ fast food holiness ”. In his "unmoved psychological and social analysis" Lee, like some other Asian directors, critically illuminates the fanaticism and the uncanny success of Christianity in Asia, "especially since the sectarian recruiters are apparently soul-catchers."

Josef Lederle from the Catholic Film Service not only praised the "extraordinary leading actress". He called the work “a quiet jewel that sparkles in many nuances, depending on which facets you are looking at”, and “that requires patient perception in order to absorb its finely woven picture and narrative threads.” The narrative is “a modest one , decidedly critical of religion, but life-affirming creed. The film, which is rich in unpretentious but lasting visual inventions, explicitly distances itself from Christian theism, at least in its evangelical form, whose drunken piety phrases are relishly reduced to absurdity, but suggests that time, humor and humanity can also help over severe disasters. (…) The persistent puzzling nature of Shin-ae's reactions, which are neither spelled out psychologically nor dramaturgically, secure the status of a small masterpiece for the confidently narrated film. ”Leni Höllerer of the Berliner Morgenpost criticized the film for this aspect . He always maintains a great distance from his heroine, so that the viewer cannot find any emotional access to the reasons for her all-too-sudden conversion. Her path of suffering is excruciatingly tough, and “this film does not grant her any redemption, not even a healing catharsis.” Sorrow and grief have no end.

Staging

Actor leadership

The main actors Jeon Do-yeon (left) and Song Kang-ho

When casting the lead role, director Lee Chang-dong chose Jeon Do-yeon because she has shown in previous films that she can express a wide range of emotions. Because of the reputation he had, she accepted his role offer without having read the script. After reading it, however, she had serious doubts as to whether these kinds of feelings could be experienced and whether she would be able to convey them to the audience. She described the recordings as difficult because she had never fully understood either the personality she was playing or the situation in which it was. The director did not provide honest answers to their questions. It was part of Lee's working method to hardly give specific instructions to the actors and only to discuss the moods and feelings of the scene in a very general way. He did not require actors to act towards a goal, but to react; they should feel their role figures themselves. “I didn't help her on purpose. I trusted in her. The answers were within her and she will find them. (...) I admit that it is a bit tedious for the actors. You feel lost sometimes. ”Lee hardly rehearsed with the actors. To make it easier for them to live their feelings instead of producing them, he rotated the plot chronologically. On the other hand, he had many shots taken of the same scenes each time he was shooting and admitted that this was a great challenge for the actors. Jeon Do-yeon said after completing the work that she grumbled at Lee. Sometimes she was disappointed in herself because she was not able to bring up the feelings that her character went through according to the script. In retrospect, however, she thinks she has grown from these struggles as an actress. She also got over the idea that you have to fully understand a character in order to play it well.

Dramaturgy and variety of genres

Lee Chang-dong took a novella by Lee Cheong-jun , set in Seoul , in which the heroine is a pharmacist and ends up killing herself as the starting point for developing the script . The theme of forgiveness adopted in the film has a political background to which the novella does not allude directly. In the aftermath of the Gwangju massacre in 1980, a parliamentary commission was formed to determine who was responsible. Some politicians pushed for reconciliation and thus forgiveness for the perpetrators, which sparked heated debates in the public, in which the victims were still very present. Because the novel was very simple, abstract, and lacking in detail, Lee had to invent "a whole world". He wanted the protagonist to continue her fight and canceled her death. The story should have neither a beginning nor an end, only show a section in the life of the heroine.

The two main characters, Shin-ae and the garage owner Jong, face each other as a tragic and a rather comical figure. The song Kang-ho , known for its sometimes brutal action roles, is therefore cast against the expectations of the South Korean audience. The character's humor is ambivalent; One of his acquaintances throws at the “sad clown”: “You don't look like drama, more like a comedy!” At unsuitable moments, the clumsy Jong speaks clumsily and straightforwardly truths about which others are reluctantly silent. There is only one thing he cannot do - an open declaration of love to Shin-ae. Lee considered this character to be important for the film's balance. Shin-ae searches, for example, for the meaning of life, while Jong accepts life as it is. She stares into the distance, at the sky, and does not relate to the people around her; She should look to the earth, according to Lee. Life on earth is embodied by Jong.

In the first half hour, during which Shin-ae infects Miryang's residents and Jong is introduced, the film resembles a comedy. After 37 minutes, the kidnapping turns him into a thriller. When the boy's corpse was found in the 52nd minute of the film, the possibility of a revenge story, which is frequent in Asian and especially in South Korean cinema, stands in the room. But just three minutes later, the police found the perpetrator. A melodramatic part follows, which turns into a farce on the religious community, especially with the visit to prison in the 92nd minute. The potential love story between Shin-ae and Jong runs over the entire length of the film, but it never happens. Gombeaud (2007) described the plot as a typical South Korean melodrama because the female main character has to endure a lot of misfortune. With the difference, however, that the heroines usually find strength and courage in themselves, while Shin-ae does not straighten up again, does not grow from the painful experiences; they just happen to her. Lee denies her and the audience a release, a divine intervention; any chance is banned from the story.

The narrative constantly undermines the viewer's expectations about the progress of the action. Lee's style is reserved, without a distinctive signature. The images are simple and sober, the dialogues used sparingly, and only the opening and closing credits are underlaid with music. It is a "cinema of allusions and small gestures that force you to look and listen". To encourage this attitude from the audience was explicitly Lee's intention: “In my opinion, viewers tend to read a film according to the conventions prevailing in the cinema of their time rather than to see the film for what it is. I want to fight against this tendency. ”He wanted to avoid excessive identification of the audience with the protagonists as well as to describe them too objectively; he looked for the middle between subjectivity and objectivity. For example, he created scenes in which the camera follows the characters, but maintains a certain distance. In contrast to the sober staging are the violent emotional outbursts that follow the events that cause them with a delay. This was also the case with Shin-ae's visit to the detention center, a “monstrous scene” in which the murderer receives her message in “obscene calm”. Lee also works with subtle premonitions of the son's death, who likes to fool his mother by hiding in the apartment or pretending to be dead.

subjects

General interpretations

The town of Miryang , in which the film is set, is located in the southeast of South Korea. Neither the original novel nor Lee had any relation to this place. When Shin-ae arrives there, her Jong presents the town as suffering from economic misery, with a declining population and politically more right-wing. The name means "secret sunshine", from the Chinese characters me for secret and yang for sunlight. The director was amazed that such an ordinary, arbitrary city could have a poetic and symbolic name, and he liked this contradiction. One may interpret the film title in such a way that God's intentions are secret.

The readings of the open-ended film turned out differently; some saw it as social criticism. Lee has, according to Die Presse , repeatedly taken up the "mechanisms of displacement and the surface lust of his compatriots" in his novels and films. Behind the facade of a flourishing economy, he looks “at an insecure, misogynistic and violent society.” The South Korean entertainment cinema like advertising, Positif noted , like to praise “home”, the return to the place of birth and lost values. Lee pulls the plug on this myth. Birgit Glombitza from the taz saw the individual as the focus: “[South] Korean cinema with its realism dragged into magic, its radical metaphor and its wonderfully economic narrative is perhaps the most exciting in the world at the moment. There is no great psychology here, no socio-cultural analysis and no existential freedom for his heroes other than to recognize one's own powerlessness or not. ”The heroine is left with nothing but recourse to an emotional honesty devoid of civilizational rules. “Shin-ae screams, bares his teeth, rages, clenches his fists. (...) The heroine finally finds herself in howling, raging and in the anger that is not curbed by any decency. "

Religious interpretations

According to the 2005 census, almost 30 percent of South Koreans are Christians, and most of them are Protestant. In Lee's own assessment, the film was well received in South Korea, including the Christian community. Some pastors would have recommended him to their parish. He tried not to overdraw the Christian rituals, the services were presented very realistically and almost documentary. "If some are uncomfortable with this, or if they find it a bit ridiculous, they may be admitting that there is something wrong with Christian practice in [South] Korea." Sung-Deuk Oak, a US scholar on Korean Christianity explained “Christians are displeased with the film's presentation of Christian messages and activities in a simplistic, superficial way.

The film revolves around human suffering. Lee, who had lost a child himself, provided some explanations. “We all go through moments in our existence in which nothing depends on us and no will can change anything.” Because suffering cannot be explained with human logic, one necessarily looks beyond the human level. Religion could seem the only possible answer. Shin-ae, in which Miryang's residents have “a first polite, then hyena-like interest”, finds “all-embracing consolation” among Christians, who explains everything with God's will. Lee branded religion as a lie that enables an escape from reality, criticizes the "hypocrisy of practically lived religion" and the offered "instant religiosity". The protagonist develops in her religiosity a "gentleness and generosity that are so inhuman and masochistic". Soon their belief in God, like that of the biblical Job, will be put to the test. After visiting the murderer, she exclaims, “How dare God forgive him before I have done it?” She has thus been deprived of the possibility of meaningful forgiveness of her own. Lee wanted to relate human afflictions to God's response to them. “The problem with that is God's silence. Because these samples exist, I am one of those who believe that pain can have meaning. If you think that it has no meaning, life seems unbearable. "

If the first shot of the film is shot from below, a view of Shin-ae's son into the sky, the last one is a top view. You can see a corner in the courtyard behind Shin-ae's apartment; A plastic bottle and other rubbish lie between dust, dirt and puddles. Part of the picture is sunlit. Lee said in a conversation that he designed the ending openly because he didn't like the idea that viewers would forget the film after the screening. You should think about the questions raised. In other conversations, he said that the final setting should indicate that the meaning of life is close to us, in our life, "not up there." Shin-ae tends to mean the meaning of life elsewhere, far from life search. However, you should better look where you are.

Question of faith

Lee Chang-dong was often asked about his beliefs in press briefings after the film was released. He grew up in a strictly Confucian family and attended a Christian school as a teenager. “The Bible interested me on a literary level. Does that make me a believer? ”During his time as minister of culture, he had to discuss issues with representatives of various religions that were ultimately quite political. These people were so stubborn that he had the feeling that he was speaking to a wall. That's why Secret Sunshine is not a film about religion, but about people. Once he parried the question of his faith with the Wittgenstein quote “What one cannot talk about, one must be silent about it”, which reflects his attitude towards faith. Another time he stated, “I can always say that God does not exist, but that will not prevent him from existing.” In another conversation he indicated that he had experienced the same stages as Shin-ae.

literature

conversations

Review mirror

positive

Rather positive

  • epd film No. 4/2009, p. 43, by Heike Kühn: Secret Sunshine

Mixed

Rather negative

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Release certificate for Secret Sunshine . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry , March 2009 (PDF; test number: 117 231 K).
  2. ↑ a b c d e Dennis Lim: A portraitist of a subdued, literary Korea . In: The New York Times , September 30, 2007, p. 18
  3. ↑ a b c d e f g Vincent Malausa: Au seuil du vide . In: Cahiers du cinéma , October 2007, pp. 29–30
  4. ↑ a b c d e f Birgit Glombitza: Losses, feelings of guilt, free fall . In: taz , April 16, 2009, p. 15
  5. ↑ Didier Peron: Lee Chang-dong en éclat de crise . In: Liberation , May 28, 2007, p. 4
  6. ↑ a b Lee Chang-Dong in conversation with Le Figaro , May 24, 2007: Lee Chang-dong au coeur de la souffrance
  7. ^ Cathy Rose A. Garcia: Secret Sunshine steals limelight in Cannes . In: Korea Times , May 26, 2007
  8. ↑ Yang Sung-jin: Jeon Do-yeon shows off talent at Cannes . In: The Korea Herald , May 29, 2007
  9. ↑ Bae Keun-min: Jeon Says Her Cannes Win is Near Miracle . In: Korea Times , May 30, 2007
  10. ↑ Yang Sung-jin: 'Secret Sunshine' sheds light on hope, redemption. In: The Korea Herald , May 8, 2007.
  11. ↑ Yang Sung-jin: Lee reinvigorates Korean cinema . In: The Korea Herald , June 4, 2007
  12. ↑ Yonhap, June 30, 2007: Raw instructs crackdown on film piracy
  13. ^ Jean Noh: Korea selects Secret Sunshine as foreign-language Oscar entry . In: Screen International , September 11, 2007; hollywoodreporter.com: Korea's 'Sunshine' peeks in for Oscar bid , September 12, 2007
  14. ↑ Florian Keller: World trips in the cinema . In: Tages-Anzeiger , March 1, 2008, p. 54
  15. ↑ a b Rüdiger Suchsland: It may be Job . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , April 16, 2009, p. 32
  16. ↑ a b Heike Kühn: Secret Sunshine . In: epd Film , No. 4/2009, p. 43
  17. ^ Josef Lederle: Secret Sunshine . In: film-dienst , No. 8/2009, p. 26
  18. ↑ a b c Leni Höllerer: No redemption . In: Berliner Morgenpost , April 16, 2009, p. 5
  19. ↑ a b c Lee Chang-dong in conversation with Le Monde , October 17, 2007, p. 25: J'ai tourné sans vraiment comprendre mon personnage
  20. ↑ Bae Keun-min: Jeon Says Her Cannes Win is Near Miracle . In: Korea Times , May 30, 2007
  21. ↑ Jeon Do-yeon in conversation with cnn.com: Interview with Jeon Do-yeon , October 9, 2007
  22. ↑ Jeon Do-yeon in conversation with cnn.com: Interview with Jeon Do-yeon , October 9, 2007
  23. ↑ a b Lee Chang-dong in conversation with Positif , October 2007: Entretiens avec Lee Chang-dong. Trahir l'attente du spectateur , p. 20 right column
  24. ↑ Yang Sung-jin: Lee reinvigorates Korean cinema . In: The Korea Herald , June 4, 2007
  25. ↑ Jeon Do-yeon in conversation with cnn.com: Interview with Jeon Do-yeon , October 9, 2007
  26. ↑ Jeon Do-yeon in conversation with Le Monde , October 17, 2007, p. 25: J'ai tourné sans vraiment comprendre mon personnage
  27. ↑ Lee Chang-dong in Positif , October 2007, p. 19
  28. ↑ Lee Chang-dong in Positif , October 2007, p. 20 middle column
  29. ↑ see also: Emmanuèle Frois: In: Le Figaro , May 24, 2007: Lee Chang-dong au coeur de la souffrance
  30. ^ Michel Ciment and Hubert Niogret: Entretiens avec Lee Chang-dong . In: Positif , October 2007 p. 20
  31. ↑ Lee Chang-dong in Positif , October 2007, p. 20 middle and left column; scarcer also in Dennis Lim: A Portraitist Of a Subdued, Literary Korea . In: The New York Times , September 30, 2007, p. 18
  32. ↑ Lee Marshall: Secret Sunshine (Miryang) . In: Screen International , May 27, 2007
  33. ↑ Lee Chang-dong in Positif , October 2007, p. 18 left column
  34. ^ Michel Ciment and Hubert Niogret: Entretiens avec Lee Chang-dong . In: Positif , October 2007 p. 22
  35. ↑ Didier Peron: Lee Chang-dong en éclat de crise . In: Liberation , May 28, 2007, p. 4
  36. ↑ a b c Christina Tillmann: Life without God . In: Der Tagesspiegel , April 18, 2009, p. 22
  37. ↑ Lee Chang-dong in Positif , October 2007, p. 22 right column
  38. ↑ Lee Chang-dong in Positif , October 2007, p. 22
  39. ↑ Rupert Koppold: It smells of weapons, metal and men . In: Stuttgarter Zeitung , May 26, 2007, p. 35
  40. ↑ Le Monde, October 17, 2007: Anti-mélo pour une femme en enfer
  41. ^ Adrien Gombeaud: Bleu, presque transparent . In: Positif , October 2007, p. 18 left column
  42. ↑ Lee Chang-dong in Positif , October 2007, p. 19, left column
  43. ↑ Lee Chang-dong's statements in Positif , October 2007, p. 19 left, and in: Chung Ah-young: Tour to Filming Sets . In: Korea Times , November 1, 2007
  44. ↑ Markus Keuschnigg. A little sun in Miryang . In: Die Presse, April 20, 2009
  45. ^ Adrien Gombeaud: Bleu, presque transparent . In: Positif, October 2007, p. 17, right column
  46. ↑ 2008 U.S. State Department Report on International Religious Freedom .
  47. ↑ a b c d e f Lee Chang-dong in conversation with La Croix , October 17, 2007: "Je suis de ceux qui croient que la douleur peut avoir un sens". Entretien de Lee Chan-dong.Cinéaste, écrivain
  48. ↑ Sung-Deuk Oak, professorial assistant for Korean Christianity at the University of California in Los Angeles, quoted in. in: Dennis Lim: A Portraitist Of a Subdued, Literary Korea . In: The New York Times , September 30, 2007, p. 18
  49. ↑ Lee Chang-dong in Positif , October 2007, p. 19 right column
  50. ^ Adrien Gombeaud: Bleu, presque transparent . In: Positif , October 2007, p. 18 left column
  51. ^ Arnaud Schwartz: Lee Chang-dong, un ancien ministre en compétition. In: La Croix , May 25, 2007
  52. ↑ Lee Chang-dong in Positif , October 2007, p. 20 middle column
  53. ↑ Lee Chang-dong in Positif , October 2007, p. 20, left column
  54. ↑ Le Temps, March 3, 2008: Un cinéaste au pays du soleil secret
This article was added to the list of excellent articles on December 18, 2010 in this version .