Freud in a Barbershop

The President's Barber, viewed through a lens of Freudian psychoanalysis, becomes far more sinister and unsettling than it perhaps was meant to be seen.  On the surface, this film was (for me) a very interesting glimpse into what it meant to be a historical actor at a time of crucial juncture between past and present. If we try to understand the entire film as a process in remembering for Nak-an, some incredible psychological/temporal parallels can be drawn between Freud and Korean cinema. I thought this effect could be most fully seen by comparing what we are allowed to see, through Nak-an's narration, and what we are not allowed to see.

It struck me as no accident and no small decision to not show any of Nak-an's actual torture, framing it on both sides by the tickling, christmas lights scene on one hand, and his return to his parents' home on the other. What we do not see is the nucleus of the emotional aspect of the film, and we have only our imaginations to guide us. If we pull from Freud's statements about reliving and reshaping memory, one point stands out:  "There is one special class of experiences of the utmost importance for which no memory can as a rule be recovered. These are experiences which occurred in ver early childhood and were not understood at the time but which were subsequently understood and interpreted. One gains a knowledge of them through dreams and one is obliged to believe in them on the most compelling evidence provided by the fabric of the neurosis" (149).

Perhaps this can explain how the audience is supposed to recognize the gaps in visually recreated memory, they are events that were either repressed or so traumatic as to be completely beyond processing. In the skip from the scene with the Christmas lights (fun, funny, enjoyable) to the scene of returning home, what we miss is the event that ultimately gives Han-mo purpose, and is equally the point around which Nak-an's life revolves: it is a before and after. Maybe this is really how national memory works? In nationalist myths and tales of heroism gone by, generally things are characterized by "pre" or "post". The in-between is the most important part, however, it is where action and change truly occur. By skipping this in the film, visually, it seems to create a greater sense of thematic elision between before and after as well. Can we read this as a nod towards the importance of remembering what happened in the middle? That trauma/drama itself is important, not just the events leading up to or following it? Between cause and effect something else has to exist, and by not showing that to the audience, what do we have to do to come to conclusions?