Peppermint Candy (1999)
Story, Direction: Lee Chang-dong
Everyone starts life with a chest full of zest. Slowly equipping themselves with a head of dreams and the arsenal of preparatory tools to sail through life, they head challenges head-on. The end point may be a goal, a desire to see a better tomorrow or a peace of mind. Guided but rudderless sometimes with the interference of raging adolescence or hitting a brick wall, they sometimes have to change course. Like an electronic toy which hits an obstruction, they recoil and re-direct, hoping to hit the path of least resistance. They recoup and relaunch like an Energizer bunny. They hit and bang till sometimes the internal constitution just gives up.
That, in summary, is life. The ocean is there, the journey, the unknown path, the vehicle, destination unknown, no compass, no GPS, no clue on ETA but endpoint eventually reached.
The writer turned filmmaker has been making quite a number of interesting movies over the years. This is one of them.
Okay, the movie starts with the end of it all with a visibly disturbed man lying near the railway tracks. We join his group of childhood friends whom he had not met for 20 over years, as an uninvited guest. He seems unrestrained in his emotional display and is bursting with energy. Suited in formal attire for a picnic by the river, he is obviously out of place and out of order. In his uncontrollable behaviour, he just runs into an oncoming train!
Unlike most stories which are told in retrospect from a said point of time, this one goes backwards! (Just like the vehicles and people that move backwards between segments). After a particular scene, the audience is taken in stages to a time before the event until the very end we can make a composite picture of the protagonist and his state of his mental status at the beginning of the movie which is his end! Ironically, it ends at a time when he, in his high school days, in at a picnic at the same spot in a more sombre composition.
We learn of Kim, who has a fling with a small time girl who continues to seek him when he goes to join the Army. She keeps sending peppermint candy to him by mail, hence the title of the film. After a traumatic experience in the Army; he joins the Police force. Marrying his high school flame, he starts his business afterwards. Straddled in debt and bogged by his post-traumatic stress disorder, he becomes more disillusioned. His wife leaves him and his old flame whom he took for granted is dying.
At the end of your journey, one may wonder whether he would have done better if he had done this or had it done another way. Who knows? Possibilities are aplenty. The dichotomy of choices are too numerous; the crossroads are too abundant. Who knows? The endpoint may just be the same, albeit the different routes of reaching it.
Story, Direction: Lee Chang-dong
Everyone starts life with a chest full of zest. Slowly equipping themselves with a head of dreams and the arsenal of preparatory tools to sail through life, they head challenges head-on. The end point may be a goal, a desire to see a better tomorrow or a peace of mind. Guided but rudderless sometimes with the interference of raging adolescence or hitting a brick wall, they sometimes have to change course. Like an electronic toy which hits an obstruction, they recoil and re-direct, hoping to hit the path of least resistance. They recoup and relaunch like an Energizer bunny. They hit and bang till sometimes the internal constitution just gives up.
That, in summary, is life. The ocean is there, the journey, the unknown path, the vehicle, destination unknown, no compass, no GPS, no clue on ETA but endpoint eventually reached.
The writer turned filmmaker has been making quite a number of interesting movies over the years. This is one of them.
Okay, the movie starts with the end of it all with a visibly disturbed man lying near the railway tracks. We join his group of childhood friends whom he had not met for 20 over years, as an uninvited guest. He seems unrestrained in his emotional display and is bursting with energy. Suited in formal attire for a picnic by the river, he is obviously out of place and out of order. In his uncontrollable behaviour, he just runs into an oncoming train!
Unlike most stories which are told in retrospect from a said point of time, this one goes backwards! (Just like the vehicles and people that move backwards between segments). After a particular scene, the audience is taken in stages to a time before the event until the very end we can make a composite picture of the protagonist and his state of his mental status at the beginning of the movie which is his end! Ironically, it ends at a time when he, in his high school days, in at a picnic at the same spot in a more sombre composition.
We learn of Kim, who has a fling with a small time girl who continues to seek him when he goes to join the Army. She keeps sending peppermint candy to him by mail, hence the title of the film. After a traumatic experience in the Army; he joins the Police force. Marrying his high school flame, he starts his business afterwards. Straddled in debt and bogged by his post-traumatic stress disorder, he becomes more disillusioned. His wife leaves him and his old flame whom he took for granted is dying.
At the end of your journey, one may wonder whether he would have done better if he had done this or had it done another way. Who knows? Possibilities are aplenty. The dichotomy of choices are too numerous; the crossroads are too abundant. Who knows? The endpoint may just be the same, albeit the different routes of reaching it.
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