Extended Fight Scenes

Dolai is a movie about a girl rock band in South Korea along with their manager, who the girls often call Dolai – or stupid boy.  This film has a lot of influence from Hong Kong action cinema. There are a lot of fight scenes that go on for a very long time. This reminded me of our discussion in class last week about the extended scenes in Dachimawa Lee and The Good The Bad The Weird. The extended scenes in Dolai, however, gave a different feel to the movie. In The Good The Bad The Weird and Dachimawa Lee, the scenes lengths made the viewer feel uncomfortable while watching, and most likely made the viewers wish that the scene was shorter to avoid awkward situations or heightened tensions. 

The lengthened scenes seem to be more of a stylistic choice. They were dramatically long and unnecessary, but the scenes did not make me feel uncomfortable. Also, keep in mind that I’m not including the rape scenes in this category, just the fighting between Dolai and the other men. I was trying to think about reasons other than that of a stylistic homage to Hong Kong action films for the length of the scenes.

First of all, the action scenes add a dimension to Dolai, creating an individual who not only is protective, but also assertive, and takes the issues seriously. In quite a few of the fights he did not have to get physically involved, but made the conscious decision to use physical aggression to get what he wanted out of the situation. Therefore one effect of the lengthened scenes is creating balance between protector and aggressor.

 

The second effect of the scenes has to do with Koreans identifying with a man who is struggling not only financially, but also as a man. He is not taken seriously in his line of work, and is given an underdog-like quality. Having the extended fight scenes make up for any emasculation that he may feel  throughout the rest of the film.