The Good, The Bad, and the Weird

The director Kim JiWoon filmed, “The Good, The Bad, and the Weird” in 2008. It’s an action genre film with the background settings of desert at Manchuria. There were many scenes that remind me of the Western actions films while I was watching. In the beginning of the film, the scene shows the train runs and the eagle flies fast and snatches the fishes. This scene briefly shows that the story in this film will be unfolded. There were many scenes that show the director did not clarify the identifications in this film. While I was watching the film, I recognized that female characters in this film were not wearing Korean traditional clothes (Hanbok) while female characters always wear Korean traditional clothes in other Japanese colonial era backgrounds films and show the “gender role”. This could be one of the examples that the director does not clarify the identification in this film.

The castings of this film would be one of the reasons why this film could be successful. First, the weird guy, Yoon Tae-goo (Song, Kang-Ho) is the most famous movie star in South Korea (most of the films that he acted became the successful films). However, in the beginning of the film, the scene he sells the rice-cake in the train led people in the train to be confused, but it led the audience to laugh (there’s no specific reason why but some people just laugh when he acts something). Second, the bad guy, Park Chang-yi (Lee, Byung-Heon) is the most romantic star in South Korea. However, in the film he shows completely different from what audience would remember. Last, the good guy, Park Do-Won (Jeong, Woo-Seong) also shown as obedient person on most of the screens and gain audiences’ affections a lot. Just like me, actually there were many people who watched this film based on the castings in Korea. After I realized that I put empathy into the castings rather than the whole story lines, I could say that the casting of the film would affect one's decision of whether to watch the film or not. 

The Friday's conference was about the Japanese peace preservation law. There are three terms of the Peace Preservation Bill (1925), which are the kokutai (location of sovereignty), seitati (state form), and shiny zaison seido (system of private sovereignty). According to the Yomiuri Shimbun (1925), "anyone who has formed a society with the objective of altering the kokutai or denying the system of private property, and anyone who has joined". He mentioned that the independence would have an 'effect' on imperial sovereignty' and both kokutai and private property clauses applied with the peace preservation law.