Dachimawa Lee, Radio Dayz and Melodrama

Dachimawa Lee is interesting in its use of melodrama and hyperbole. It is especially interesting if we compare it to another film that used similar themes, Radio Dayz. In Radio Dayz, melodramatic plots and personalities are used as tools of resistance and autonomy against the Japanese imperial forces. In fact, Dachimawa Lee uses them to similar effect; however, wheras in Radio Dayz the characters actively hash out the construction process of the melodramatic narrative, in Dachimawa Lee the characters perform melodrama to the point that it is their lived experience. Many extras and unnamed characters in Dachimawa Lee express confusion at the overblown actions of the main characters--perhaps, then, in the world of Dachimawa Lee, melodrama is a tool reserved for structures of power and spies.

Dachimawa Lee and his co-conspirators, as in Radio Dayz, ultimately win their battle, partially through the use of melodrama. However, their final victory comes when, “just in case,” Lee replaces the list of Korean agents in the Golden Buddha with a list of Japanese ones. While the rest of the film played out in dramatic fashion, with deaths, love triangles and resurrections, this conclusion is given rather casually, with the main characters sharing a laugh about their success on the return train. While the spectacle of the film was achieved through melodrama, the characters accomplish their nationalist goals in the end through a simple, decidedly non-dramatic trick. Perhaps the film is saying something about the overdramatic nature of power, politics and espionage; perhaps it represents a more ambivalent perspective of dramatic narrative convention and its capacity to construct nationalism.