By Chlotrudis Independent Film Society
Rating: 4 cats
Director: K Youn
Original language title: Gukjesijang
Country: south_korea
Year: 2015
Running time: 126
IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt381
Kyle says: “ODE TO MY FATHER is a Korean film about family promises and preservation at all costs. It is melodramatic in various ways, which may render it unpalatable to some Western tastes, for example, gratuitously slamming the audience with helpless crying children imitating adult emotions, and parents irritatingly stopping to speechify instead of saving themselves. But the scene near the beginning, recreating the Hungnam Evacuation during the week before Christmas 1950, is breath-taking, unmistakably evocative of the sinking of TITANIC, only in reverse, with about 14,000 people evacuated by a single ship called the SS Meredith Victory.
“When the armistice is declared in July, 1953, the wives do not understand politics or the vocabulary of war, so one of the men explains, ‘The war’s not over, it’s a ceasefire. Our country’s weak, so other countries come in, and now they fight and divide us up as they please’. This division of Korea into North and South is inexplicable to a single mother and her three young children, one of which, the eldest boy, has been solemnly charged with looking after his mother and siblings. The story cuts back and forth chronologically over six decades, with the principal characters such as Duk-soo observing the forces of modernity in his homeland, including, of course, racism, poverty, and class struggle.
“Duk-soo (Jeong-min Hwang, one of three protagonists in NEW WORLD, which is one of the great South Korean gangster films) and his buddy Dal-gu (Dal-su Oh) move to Duisberg, West Germany, to work as miners, the buddy stating as if he knows what he is talking about: ‘Life is all about timing’. And so they become exploited ‘guest workers’ with few rights, but at least they manage to make money and meet girls. Since they are miners, you know something horrible is going to happen. This points up a significant weakness in ODE TO MY FATHER: a predictable narrative arc, with unconvincing characters sketched schematically at times.
“There is a kind of inevitability that, after the horrors of mining in post–War Germany, Duk-soo and Dal-gu find themselves in Saigon, 1974. There is a virtuoso sequence of an explosion which is then played backwards and shown again, the devastation counterpointed by the text of a letter from Duk-soo to his wife lying about how calm, safe and routine his duties in Saigon are. A politically confusing attack by Viet Cong as Vietnamese peasants are being evacuated by Koreans in April, 1975 contrasts with the events of 1950 at the film’s beginning.
“The climax of ODE TO MY FATHER skirts the borderline of silliness, and there are two too many endings, as there are with many Asian movies. Ultimately what is interesting about the film is its treatment of the compromises you may be forced into by promises made long ago, and by a sense of duty that compels you to live for others instead of yourself. 4 cats
Saturday, August 15, 2015, on Netflix, New York.”