Features: Magazine | Literary Review | Life | Metro Plus | Open Page | Education Plus | Book Review | Business | SciTech | Friday Review | Cinema Plus | Young World | Property Plus | Quest | Folio |

Photo: AP

Adept at all genres: Im Kwon-taek.

Im Kwon-taek has lived through Japanese Occupation, Liberation of Korea in 1945, the Korean war which split the country into North and South and finally ended in an armistice, the dictatorship of Park Chung Hee and lastly the modern democratic rule in South Korea, which is still under the shadow of the U.S. presence in the area.

Im Kwon-taek has made 100 films, eight of which were screened at the Kerala and Chennai festivals, thanks to the Inko Center, Chennai and Korean Film Archives. But they offered only a glimpse of the great master’s monumental contributions to global cinema and Korean cinema in particular.

However, this glimpse is enough to get the basics of Im’s film making. The selections have to be commended as it represents a period when Im re-invented himself with regard to form and content, moving away from the commercial filmmaking he was involved in so far.

Im’s cinema represents the history of Korea during the 20th century as well as its cultural past, offering a rare peep into the essence of Korean life, art and aesthetics. At one stage, when he was involved only in commercial filmmaking, he worked in all areas connected with production. At that time, he treated it like any other profession, a means of life and survival.

But, Im had the courage to cross over from commercial to more meaningful and artistic movies. He is considered to be the architect of New Wave cinema in Korea.

Says he, “I felt a sense of responsibility as a director for the first time. I thought ‘Who is Im Kwon-taek if I die right now?’”

Im has tried out all genres: historical drama, action, anti-communist themes, road movies… Although he was never driven by form, he always adapted the camera to the forms his main characters requested for and questioned the forms repeatedly to find the best scenes for the story.

In that sense, the forms were always incomplete and at the same time atypical. Form and content were not separated into two different segments; for him they were an unbalanced combination of understated forms and overstated content.

Im was born in the southern part of Korea to a farmer. He had to leave his hometown very early in life as he was ostracised for being the son of a partisan (a person with leftist ideals). This distanced Im from what happened around him and made him an observer or spectator, literally an outsider. This quality of detachment can be seen in all his films.

He also has the instinct of a wanderer and many of his movies such as ‘Sopyonje,’ ‘Chunhyang’ and ‘Chihwaseon’ show a wanderer’s life. But along with this wandering there was also the yearning to return home, to his roots. He was fascinated by the artistic traditions of the south and the above movies recall the essence of pansori singing or the Joseon school of painting. Movies such as ‘Festival’ recall the impulse to return home and find his true identity.

Another aspect which is vital to Im’s films is his empathy for women, especially mothers. He felt that it was the women of Korea who had to bear the brunt of history and the continued violence that was foisted on their unfortunate country. So, the mother, the waiting wife, the assaulted woman, the woman who takes to the streets for survival are all there, playing a vital role in the day-to-day lives of people.

The film, ‘Festival,’ dedicated to his mother, clearly shows the ambivalent feelings towards the mother figure. Love, desire to protect and preserve, warring with a sense of independence and distancing. Surrogate Mother is often considered as a signifier for the absent mother who is nevertheless imbued with a beauty through her presence in various objects of nature and memories.

The film in which Im identifies most with his protagonist is ‘Chihwaseon’ (Strokes of Fire), about Jang Seung-up, the non-conformist painter of the Joseon Period. Jang painted in every genre and continues to change as he grows older. Though many historical events took place at that period, he was unaffected by it all and distanced himself from society.

Im could relate to Jung’s artistic journey as his was not very different from that. Often in ‘Chihwaseon,’ Jang Seung-up’s words on attitude, posture, conduct of life, his standpoint on artists and artistic ideals are the words of Im. To sum up, Jang Seung-up in ‘Chihwaseon’ is Im’s artistic ventriloquist.

Im has just completed his 100th film ‘Beyond Years’ and this is what he has to say about that movie, “In ‘Beyond Years,’ I want to stay [away] from the fast-paced world that is in my films, the world that pushes me ahead for somewhere in history. Now I want my film to be more loose with a sense of length, but very full inside just by itself.”

Printer friendly page  
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail