The Japanese occupation of Korea in the 35 years leading up to the end of World War II is common knowledge to anyone who has Wikied Korea, but what I found heartwarming to discover was when I learned how cinema was used as a communication tool between the masses. During the silent era, Japanese authorities would monitor the live, on-stage narrators of the films that were screened to the masses, but as soon as they left the cinema, the narrators would, through skillful use of language, inject anti-authoritarian commentary into their narration. In this way, it echoes Nazi occupation of France during the same period. There is always something delicious about the use of film as a tool for subversion.
Something else I never knew was that during the anti-government revolts in South Korea during the 1980s, South Korea came dangerously close to falling under military dictatorship. At the time, the country still functioned under a feudal system. The implications, had things gone the other way, are difficult to imagine. The Korean Peninsula very nearly had two separate fascist governments.
It comes as no surprise, then, that a number of Korea's most famous directors, like Park Chan-Wook (Joint Security Area, Oldboy, Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance, Stoker), can be seen as mavericks. It explains why their films are built on a sense of rebellion. This revolutionary spirit, in a sense, likens the 80s generation of Korean filmmakers to auteurs such as Pedro Almodovar of Spain, who hails from a similar protest era against Franco. One might even consider the similarities between modern Korean cinema and the films of the German Expressionists of the 1920 (The Cabinet of Dr.Caligari, Nosferatu, Metropolis), who used their fantastical stories and cinematic landscapes as allegories for political ideologies.
Looking at film history, it was always in the waves that we found some of cinema's most exciting and memorable work. The most famous of these was the French New Wave of the 1960s that saw a young band of filmmakers emerge out of Parisian working class society and capture the essence of the time. Not only did they make films, but they also wrote and theorised about them, breaking new boundaries from an educated standpoint. So infectious was their enthusiasm for cinema as a means of telling personal stories that it brought an end to a deeply conservative era of Catholic-infused censorship in the U.S. It sparked a new generation of filmmakers in America that went on to influence modern Hollywood in a very important way. Scorsese, Spielberg, Lucas, Jack Nicholson, Warren Beatty and Woody Allen all hail from this period.
But for awhile, it seemed that the film world had become devoid of waves. This is perhaps what excites the world so much about the comeuppance of Korean film. Korea's filmmakers are similarly informed. They debate and theorise and, because of their home audience's demand for constant change, they avoid complacency. Trends never last long, which means we can always expect something new from Korean films. It would certainly seem that the Korean Wave is at its peak.
Hanfred Rauch
