After the crappy Interview, I decided that I wanted to see another movie from North Korea. I watched before Oh Youth from 1995, a sitcom that was made during the time of the great famine.
This movie, the Flower Girl was shot in 1972, when the country was still supported by its neighboring Communist brethren and didn't anticipate a famine later.
This plot is located in the 1930s, I'm told. There are very few clues to place the plot in time. The signs are written with Chinese characters (it seems -- or are they Kanji); some seem to be in Japanese. Korean letters are not seen in the village. It's also hard to spot the Japanese. Would the Korean audience recognize their uniforms, do they reveal themselves through language -- I don't know.
Anyway: we follow the hardships of Koppun's family. Her mother is terminally ill, she has worked herself up for the evil landlord. They have also blinded her little sister, meanwhile the brother is in prison. Mother wants to live on, for the sake of her daughters. They owe the landlord, who is miserably greedy. Koppun sells flowers and "edible grass", in the hope to make enough money to buy medicine for her worn out mother, also the blind sister gets this idea, but Koppun still has enough pride and doesn't want her sister to perform for the villagers. Private capitalism is the way, since Koppun indeed makes enough money to buy some medicine, but ... just then mother passes away. More misery, more tears.
O Brother - where art thou? He appears just in time and the revolution cleans out the evil landlords and the Japanese occupants.
Yes, the revolution starts all of a sudden. Just one brother is enough to mobilize the oppressed vllagers. But if all depends on one person, the leader, to ignite a revolution, can we then justifiably call this a popular movement? The message seems like this: when the situation is matured, the Leader just plucks the fruit like a ripe fruit. Or the revolution comes as deus ex machina.
This movie was an opera before, maybe that's why the characters are so far from life. The evil landlord is reluctantly evil, the suppressed heroine manages to preserve her granny perm.
This movie, the Flower Girl was shot in 1972, when the country was still supported by its neighboring Communist brethren and didn't anticipate a famine later.
This plot is located in the 1930s, I'm told. There are very few clues to place the plot in time. The signs are written with Chinese characters (it seems -- or are they Kanji); some seem to be in Japanese. Korean letters are not seen in the village. It's also hard to spot the Japanese. Would the Korean audience recognize their uniforms, do they reveal themselves through language -- I don't know.
Anyway: we follow the hardships of Koppun's family. Her mother is terminally ill, she has worked herself up for the evil landlord. They have also blinded her little sister, meanwhile the brother is in prison. Mother wants to live on, for the sake of her daughters. They owe the landlord, who is miserably greedy. Koppun sells flowers and "edible grass", in the hope to make enough money to buy medicine for her worn out mother, also the blind sister gets this idea, but Koppun still has enough pride and doesn't want her sister to perform for the villagers. Private capitalism is the way, since Koppun indeed makes enough money to buy some medicine, but ... just then mother passes away. More misery, more tears.
O Brother - where art thou? He appears just in time and the revolution cleans out the evil landlords and the Japanese occupants.
Yes, the revolution starts all of a sudden. Just one brother is enough to mobilize the oppressed vllagers. But if all depends on one person, the leader, to ignite a revolution, can we then justifiably call this a popular movement? The message seems like this: when the situation is matured, the Leader just plucks the fruit like a ripe fruit. Or the revolution comes as deus ex machina.
This movie was an opera before, maybe that's why the characters are so far from life. The evil landlord is reluctantly evil, the suppressed heroine manages to preserve her granny perm.
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| The Flower Girl - North Korea's Titanic - features on the oine won money bill |
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