Lee Man-hee's Humanistic Approach

I liked what Tudor said about how towards the end of the film The Marines Who Never Returned Home, it was no longer the fighting for their nation that mattered but for the team/squadron to stick together through thick and thin. And I liked the observation Sybill made on how the film exercises “a soft psychological manipulation through media and emotional appeal”. My thoughts were aligned with this statement when I was trying to piece together the strong presence of a girl in the care and protection of the marines and the theme of war that pervaded all the montages. Why did the director choose to have a little girl as a major constituent? I jotted down in my notes that it had to do with adding an emotional side to the film, to show that the men had a compassionate attitude and were not men who always thought of violence. Indeed, this essential quality was a sort of trademark of this director, Lee Man-hee. Diffrient puts this quality in more thematic terms: “[Lee] stands out among his peers for his humanistic approach to the Korean War movie, a genre commonly perceived to be a propagandistic vehicle for extolling the virtues of the political status quo” (23).

For those who aren’t too keen on old movies, the black-and-white nature of this film can be quite an upsetting feature. But this film should not be overlooked as there are only a handful of films out there that show Korean soldiers who do not fit into the Korean caricatures molded by Hollywood. Through these male characters, we see not just a “rarefied version of the ROK armed forces” (23) but also a glimpse into the more realistic and humanistic values of Koreans at war (which can be shared with any other group of enlisted men regardless of race). On another note, I wonder if it was the director’s intention to show that each person is capable of doing some good in whatever circumstances they find themselves in.

[The Marines Who Never Returned] Realism

Released in 1963, The Marines Who Never Returned is a Korean War film directed by Lee Man-hee. It talks about the marines trying to survive in a battle with the Chinese army during the Korean War. What stood out the most in the film were the war wounds, and through those injuries Director Lee emphasized love and comradeship shared between those suffering together for their home-country. This clear theme of the film could have aroused somewhat heavy atmosphere, but he added some comedic elements to the film which deeply moved the audience at the same time. For example, the character played by a popular comedian, Goo Bong-seo, was a humorous soldier who played a major role in entertaining his fellow soldiers. What he stated while he was dying was especially so touching: “who would make you guys laugh if I die..”

According to the reading by Sunyoung Park, the literary mainstream had been wary of taking an ideological stance during the two decades following the Korean War. The writers who endorsed socially engaged literature further articulated their position through the realism discourse in the 1970. Within the new discourse of national literature, realism was to be applied method of creation for truthful national literature, which would represent the individual lives of the Korean people as they pertained to the institutional problems specific to Korean society. Thus, The Marines Who Never Returned, as one of the national literatures, portrayed the struggle of not only the soldiers who fought for the country but also the Korean citizens as well. "War" kills numerous amount of soldiers, destroys villages, puts innocent people at risk, force those friends to point a gun at each other over a misunderstanding.  Many families get torn apart and many become war orphans. All of these occurred in the agony of the war.  Without having time to look back on those, soldiers had to make their pace to the front where they could never return and fight a war. In this way, the film captured every moment of the individual lives of the Korean people.  

The representations in the marines who never returned

It is rather interesting that in Diffirient’s article he mentions that the girl represents the “in between status of most civilians during the seesaw war… those who were put into compromised positions and force to take sides (39)” as well as one end of familial division. My knowledge on this topic is too limited to make efficient critiques – instead, I will just pose some questions that confuse me through the readings and the film.

At first I thought the girl was just a general representation of the familial connection lost/ambiguous to the marines – it might be a technical problem to show such affiliation of a group of macho men with

1.     a lover -distracting, easily falls into the melodrama kind;

2.     or an aging mother back home, which is rather banal during the fifties

Therefore, a close tie with an orphan is quite a smart manipulation – showing both the tender dynamic of the marines as well as the unpredictable future: what happed/will happen to the girl, one may ask?

But the problem – at least for me – is that the marines and Yong Hui are just too intimate, to a level of accumulating uncomfortable tension: more than enough touching!

So this bonding actually re-introduces the concept of “the compromised position of the civilian” – it seems that at surface Yong Hui accepts and accommodates the “family” with will and self-initiatives, but also it is a conditional compromise resulted from the enforced (by the particular war-time environment) warmth and human connections – she then at last takes a side, preferring the ROK. This is exactly what the film The Marines Who Never Returned is doing: change mentality by exercising soft psychological manipulation through media and emotional appeal.

There is a theory of citizenship being eroticized by the state – could the film be the cunning signal of that?

Anyway, he also talks about the gentrification, which to me is a bit of far stretching. If these two new comers are indeed intentionally characterized as “melodrama” and “comedy” then at least the other marines would have some genre representations as well so that it is systematically consistent?

Humanistic Behavior during the War

The movie “The Marines Who Never Return” is the first movie we saw that dealt with the Korean War. I expected the movie to be somber and bleak, but the director managed to introduce some great comical moments. The movie deals with a sensitive topic, and as David Scott Diffrient mentioned in his article, the director Yi Man-hui had a more” humanistic approach to the Korean War movie”. He didn’t create a gloomy set in which he portrayed the hardships through which the soldiers went through, and he also didn’t show the soldiers as tools to winning the war. Often, war movies show that soldiers must die and sacrifice for the greater good. However, Man-hui showed the soldiers as individuals, each capable of pro-social behavior. For example, they all try to save a young girl who is left orphan as a result of the war. Or even in the beginning of the movie we see the helmet of a soldier being pierced by a bullet, and a lower rank soldier decides to switch his own helmet with the broken one, so that the higher rank soldier can have a better helmet. Those good relationships between the characters are even more strengthened by the comical scenes, which make the audience feel more comfortable and probably closer to the soldiers.

Another scene that I felt was important was when the soldiers were denied service at the bar. Initially I felt bad for them because they were risking their lives for the Korean people and at the same time no one was recognizing that; even more they were rejected just because of that (or rather because they were not foreigners). But later I liked how they acted and I felt that what they did was probably the best they could have done. The bar staff is representing the Koreans or rather the people (in general) that give up their pride (including maybe patriotism) just because they have a chance to gain wealth. For them it didn’t matter that their country was divided and in turmoil as time as they can gain something out of it. This is emphasized by how the soldier asks: “As long as we pay it’s okay?” The destruction the soldiers did was paid for so the staff realized that having money is not always worth it if your “home” is no longer there for you. The soldiers showed that dividing the country like this is not really worth it, and that sticking together makes more sense especially during the war.

Crazy Boy Presentation Visual Aid

Crazy Boy

Korean film industry witnessed a dramatic change in the Korean Film Industry in the 1980s. This is because of the influence of the Hong Kong action movies that made Korean actors to view acting in a different way. In fact, the influence can be compared to the current “Hallyu-Drama” that Asia is witnessing nowadays. After watching the movie, “Crazy Boy”, I remembered the Hong Kong action film called the Police Story’, and ‘Drunken Master (1978)’. It is clear that the movie’s actions and sound are similar to those of the 1980s action films in Hong Kong. In 1985, Lee Doo-Young published the movie “Crazy Boy” in Korea, in his well-documented film, Lee Doo-Young reveals a hero who is ready to fight for moral righteousness in the society. The movie is interesting and captivating.

In most action movies, the main character is living normally and grows up like a normal child. In fact, most if the heroes are morally upright and they become liberators when something unfair happens. ‘Vietman’, 'Super Man’ and ‘Spider Man’ can be the best examples. Similarly, the Movie ‘Crazy Boy’ follows the same trend. Crazy Man is the main character in the movie that appears normal. Actually, Crazy man sometimes even seems like a man with a few bricks shy of a load. Nevertheless, Crazy Man suddenly changes to a very powerful man when he face with unrighteous acts. He retains his righteousness and is facing the unrighteous acts in the society. He is likeable to the audience as he is approachable. Unlike other heroes, Crazy man fabulously captivates the audience with his moral uprightness.

*References

SuperLuchas staff ( 2010). "Caída Extra". SuperLuchas in Spanish. 

Melodrama and Action Film

"The dominant movie form of the 1970s was melodrama, and in particular the hostess melodrama, films about fallen girls who had migrated from the countryside to Seoul to work in factories but ended up as bar girls. In contrast to this genre, which showed the dark side of Korea's economic development, action cinema often tended to opt for the state ideology to reclaim the marginal male and incorporate him into the industrial labor force." (Li, 4)

On the surface, Crazy Boy (1985) is clearly a Hwalkuk film—action driven with a protagonist who is a natural born street fighter but also is handicapped. Hwang Suk-Ah is called “Crazy Boy” by everyone including himself because not only is he driven to fight for justice, but he is generally seen as a bumbling idiot. He even calls himself one. He is the marginalized male, socially awkward and made fun of by everyone. And he also does get incorporated into the industrial labour force, becoming a mechanic after Thriller disbands.

However, there are also things that make it a melodrama. All the girls in Thriller have a dream to make it big but end up becoming fallen girls by losing their gig at one club, getting gang-raped and almost committing suicide, and having their one chance at becoming famous turn out to be a scam where they were going to unknowingly smuggle drugs then get turned into prostitutes.

Essentially, Crazy Boy is really neither. It is missing the integral part of being a Hwalkuk film where it must be a commentary against Japanese forces because the force of evil is just other people – thieves, smugglers, rapists. But it also is not a melodrama because the girls are not completely fallen at the end, and the plot is still mostly action-driven.